Golden Stair

by Jennifer Blackstream

  “Dismiss the spell,” she told her mother, her voice tight with restraint.

  The witch crossed her arms. “Do not speak to me like that, Ivy. I am your mother and I know what’s best for you. Now come here, before that demon tries something else.”

  A ripple of light wavered over Ivy’s skin, flowing down her arms. Adonis raised his eyebrows and glanced up at the sun. The heat in the air grew thicker, making it a little harder to breathe. He smiled and turned his attention back to the witch. Waiting.

  “I said, dismiss the spell,” Ivy said again, taking a step closer to her mother.

  “I won’t,” the witch snapped. “I don’t care if you hate me, I have to do what I think is best for you.”

  “He is what is best for me and you will dismiss the spell right now.”

  “Who do you think you are to order me—”

  “This is my world!”

  A wind kicked up, roaring over the witch and ripping the cloak from her body. She stumbled back a step, facing Ivy with wide eyes.

  “I created this world, Mother. You put me here, but it’s still my world. I am not a child and I won’t have you ruling my life anymore. Whatever his past sins, Adonis has shown me only kindness, and whether or not he has a place in my life will be my choice, not yours.”

  Suddenly the witch’s body went taut. She straightened her spine, and Adonis could have sworn the air around her flickered with shadows that shouldn’t have been possible in such sunlight.

  “You’re not thinking clearly, Ivy,” she said finally. “Perhaps you’re not feeling well.”

  Ivy stumbled, her hand going to her stomach. Adonis winced and closed his eyes as her skin flared like sunlight on the water, nearly blinding him with the intensity. A wail pierced the air and he opened his mouth to shout, terrified that the witch was hurting Ivy…until he realized it wasn’t Ivy who was screaming.

  He opened his eyes and his jaw dropped. The witch was burning. Brilliant, white-hot flames were flowing from Ivy to the witch in a pulsing beam of light.

  “Ivy, stop it!” the witch cried.

  “Dismiss the spell!” Ivy shouted.

  The witch raised her other hand, drawing intricate gestures in the air. It wasn’t until the smoke shot from her palm and flowed through the air that he realized she’d cast a spell. And it wasn’t until it hit him that he realized what she meant to do.

  The world went dark and Adonis felt as though he were falling, spiraling down a never-ending tunnel. Nausea flowed over him, pain seized his muscles, and sweat broke out on what he could feel of his physical body as he returned to it with a crack of power.

  He was dimly aware of Ivy screaming, followed by a sizzling sound and then the most blood-curdling howl he’d ever heard. Heat flowed over him as if someone had just opened a giant furnace, but he didn’t know what was going on. Whatever spell the witch had used was truly wicked. The body he was trying so hard to hold onto was dying again—fast.

  Suddenly the stream of magic snapped, sizzling away like a wick doused in water. Adonis collapsed onto the ground, sand digging into his skin. Someone’s hands were on him and then his body was burning, burning. He thrashed on the ground, trying to escape the wave of molten lava that was holding him. Slowly he realized that despite the intense heat, he felt no pain.

  When he finally opened his eyes, he saw Ivy looking down at him. His body felt better, a thousand times better. Relief poured over him like cool water when he found his flesh incredibly whole, not a mark on him to suggest he’d ever been injured. And his spirit was firmly secured in his body once again. He sat up, ready to embrace her when he realized her eyes were sightless suns.

  “Adonis,” she whispered. “The memories…they’re gone. Fake… She…most of the time she…she wasn’t even there. Just a mirage…”

  Unease washed down Adonis’ spine like an ice bath. Ivy’s voice sounded off, airy and detached. He sat up and looked behind her, shocked despite being satisfied to see the witch’s ashes smoldering in a pile a ways away. Then the full weight of the situation hit him.

  “Adonis,” Ivy whispered again.

  “It’s okay,” he said softly.

  He stroked her hair back from her face and winced as his flesh sizzled from the brief contact. She was burning up—literally. Without the witch to siphon off her power, Ivy was being consumed.

  “Ivy, listen to me,” he said, keeping his voice calm and even. “There’s a lot I need to tell you about the woman who claimed to be your mother, but there isn’t enough time right now. You have a lot of energy that you’re not used to, and I need you to hold on to yourself.”

  “I feel like I could just…float away.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re gonna feel like that. This is probably the most power you’ve had in your entire life and your…” he glanced back at the pile of ashes and tried to keep the panic off his face. If he’d had any doubts that Kirill was right, they were gone now. With the witch dead, Ivy was feeling the entirety of her power for the first time. She was a sun elemental, in a desert, with no idea how to cope with the power building up inside her.

  Melting against him, she ran her fingers through his hair. Adonis clenched his teeth against the blistering heat against his skull and the smell of burning hair.

  “I feel like I could do anything,” she whispered.

  Anything? Adonis stiffened as she drew his head down and closed her mouth over his in a searing kiss. Heat blasted through him, flowing over his skin like a sweltering summer wind. Her mouth was hot, so hot it scalded. Instincts born from having a flesh and blood body urged him to back away, to keep himself from burning against the elemental. But his incubus instincts pressed forward, drawn to the desire and raw power. Ivy’s arousal perfumed the air, swamping Adonis’ senses until he barely felt the burn of her skin.

  Desire flared and he surged forward, using his body weight to carry her down to the ground. Her mouth was so soft, so delicate even as she pressed against him with desperate enthusiasm. She tentatively licked his bottom lip and he groaned as they deepened the kiss, sharing breath as their tongues dueled. He held himself up on his elbows, trying to keep from putting too much weight on her even as his muscles screamed to press down until not even a sliver of sunlight showed between them.

  Energy lashed up from somewhere deep inside her to mingle in their kiss and crackle along their lips. It was erotic and just the right side of painful. Adonis clutched her tighter to him, drinking in the energy trying to force its way into his body. The kiss was like a small babbling brook, incapable of holding the flood waiting to escape. Her energy flowed free and willing, but as an incubus, his ability to take in that energy to fill his own reserves was limited. To truly take advantage of all she had to offer, he needed more…

  His cloak gaped open, the clasp destroyed beyond repair. Adonis thrust down, dragging his hot length between her legs. Ivy cried out, breaking their kiss and clutching his shoulders as she responded with a thrust of her own. She writhed beneath him and Adonis gripped her hips, groaning with the effort it took to keep himself from tearing the robe from her body and plunging into her like an animal in heat.

  “Adonis,” Ivy moaned. “Adonis, please…”

  Her voice was nearly his undoing. Not like this, not outside like an animal, he swore to himself, scrabbling to grab hold of the last threads of his self control. Gathering that bit of magic he’d gleaned through the kiss, he touched the web of power weaving the painting together. He tugged on a thread here and there, drawing a picture in his mind. An illusion glittered into being, drawn from the same power as the desert sand.

  A bedroom appeared around them, a random image drawn from his recent memory. Soft silk sheets hit his arms and he hungrily took in the sight of Ivy framed by all that enchanted lake blue fabric. Energy sizzled over him and his wings tore from his back and his horns pierced his temples to curl around his crown.

  “Adonis, please,” she moaned. She grabbed hold of one of his horns and jerked his head
down, muffling the chuckle that fell from his lips with a kiss.

  Her demanding mouth melted his best intentions and Adonis gave in to his urges, grabbing hold of her robe and tearing it from her body. The sound of rending cloth was loud in the silent room as his claws reduced the garment to shreds, baring her silky skin to his touch. He danced the tips of his talons down her body, careful not to hurt her, mesmerized by the sight of the wicked black curves against her glimmering flesh.

  Ivy gasped, tearing her mouth from his and thrusting her hips up. She dragged her legs over his sides, framing him between her thighs and letting the tatters of her robe fall, baring her lower body. Smooth curves teased him, lured him closer. Unable to help himself, Adonis slid down her body, dragging his lips across the smooth expanse of her thigh. Ivy moaned, arching her back. Her desire laced the air around them like the scent of rain before a storm. Delicately, reverently, he lowered his face between her legs and gave her slick flesh one long lick.

  The cry that tore from Ivy’s throat punched through his senses, flowing into his blood like liquid power. She writhed beneath him, thrashing her head from side to side. His self-control shattered and he scrambled to pick up the pieces before he lost his mind to the arousal seeping into his pores like a drug.

  He closed his hands around her hips, flexing his claws enough to hold her without hurting her. In the state of mind-numbing power she was in, he could likely plunge his talons deep into her flesh and she wouldn’t notice, but he didn’t want to frighten her. He lifted her hips off the bed and her struggles weakened as she lost traction. Every nerve in his body crackled with anticipation as he lowered his mouth to her glistening flesh, licking and sucking, all the while watching the way her burning eyes stared unseeing, her hands twisting in the bed sheets. Her hips jerked and trembled in his grasp and he held her in a vice-like grip, deliberately slowing his motions as he brought her to the edge with his mouth. Her energy sizzled against his senses, heating his blood. When her orgasm broke over her, the surge of power that engulfed him tore a roar from his throat.

  Wave after wave of light poured over him until he half-expected to look down and see himself glittering with the force of a sun. His body throbbed, achingly hard, aroused to the point of madness. Ivy’s body undulated in his grip as she rode out the tide of her orgasm and Adonis kept her at the peak as long as he could with erotic kisses against her twitching flesh.

  “Ivy,” he rasped when he finally raised his mouth. Drunk on power and desire, he was vaguely aware of his power deep inside him, opening up like a giant, black maw with jagged teeth. Ivy’s power reached far beyond what he’d ever experienced before, her light shining into depths of his being he’d forgotten existed. Adonis lowered her body to the bed. He crawled forward, black claws sliding like hot blades through the mattress as he crept up Ivy’s body. Her power shivered over his skin, taunting him with the energy to be had in her body, the feast waiting to be consumed.

  “Adonis,” Ivy moaned, her eyes still unseeing as she groped in front of her, fingers reaching for him.

  Her voice called to the part of him that could still think, the part hovering just behind the predator his incubus instincts had coalesced into. He came back to himself just enough to feel a flicker of fear for Ivy, to realize how far his control had slipped from him.

  “Ivy.” His voice was the sound of an animal using a human’s throat. It scared him, urged him to fight his way back.

  Ivy wrapped her legs around his waist, pressing her slick lower body against the painful tension in his flesh. “Adonis, I need you,” she whispered.

  Her voice nearly undid him, nearly threw his sanity off the cliff to be dashed to dust on the rocks below. His hips snapped forward, sliding his solid length along her wet folds and drawing a whimper from Ivy and a bone deep groan from him. “Ivy, I just need a moment to…” he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, “get a grip.” Careful. Must be careful. Don’t hurt her.

  It was no use. He’d put his body through too much, starving it and then taunting it with a glorious feast of energy unheard of even in his wildest dreams. His hunger was well and truly awakened, rising like a separate entity in his body, pulsing with energy and the ravenous appetite for more. Adonis opened his mouth, to say what he didn’t know. He cried out as tension peaked in his body, prepared to take the gentle woman lying beneath him.

  Ivy shoved herself up off the bed. Adonis’ eyes widened as she grabbed his shoulders and an explosion of energy threw him backwards onto the silk. His flesh sizzled as it healed, the pain not even an after-thought in his energized state. He shook his head, too stunned to react as Ivy threw a slender leg over his body to straddle him. There wasn’t time for a single word to pass his lips before she slid over his length, sighing as she impaled herself on him in one heavy thrust.

  A roar ripped from the depths of his being as her energy snapped against his skin like the lashes of a thousand whips. He buried his claws in the mattress, fighting to hold on as Ivy rocked back and forth on him, her soft breasts swaying gently above him, her head tilted back with a rapturous expression on her face. Ecstasy curled inside him, fed by every surge of her body on his, every plunge of his flesh into hers. His head spun helplessly as wave after wave of pleasure-soaked power broke over him. The hunger that had been a terrifying predator inside him just a moment ago could only lie there as it was force-fed the energy it craved. Ivy had crushed the danger without ever having known it was there. A deep chuckle reverberated in Adonis’ chest. How in the world had he ever worried that Ivy needed protection?

  Without his fear to hold him back, Adonis’ gave himself over to the woman possessing him. He raised a hand to cup one of her golden-hued breasts, flicking his thumb across her nipple until she cried out and thrashed her head from side to side. He repeated the motion with her other breast, loving the way passion twisted her features. Pleasure grew in their bodies until it towered over them. Then suddenly it was there and they both roared their release.

  Energy erupted from Ivy with the force of a volcano. The energy poured into him, filling every pore, invigorating every sinew. His nerves sang with it and he laughed, a deep, chest-rumbling sound, half-drunk with power. When the last ripple finally released him from its grip, he collapsed, boneless against the sheets, smiling as Ivy sighed and folded on top of him.

  For several bone-melting moments, they lay there, catching their breath and letting their hands wander over each other’s bodies, working off post-coital energy.

  “Do you have a plan now, Adonis?” she asked.

  “What?” Adonis mumbled, opening his eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d closed them.

  “A plan. For us.” Ivy raised her head and folded her hands on his chest so she could rest her chin on them and look into his eyes. Her irises were once again a warm golden brown, the brunt of her energy gone.

  It took Adonis a moment to process what she meant. Oh, yes, the plan. “Zeus’ lightning, yes. I told you the plan, didn’t I?” His brain seemed to have melted, taking his ability to think and speak with it. He figured he had maybe seconds left to form words before he turned into a pile of demonic goo.

  “Marriage, right?” Ivy guessed.

  He nodded, so vigorously he feared permanent neck damage. Gods, she has to stop talking before she finds out what a simple-minded fool I am. Even an incubus needs time to process after sex.

  “And will you take me to all the places you told me about?” she prodded.

  “Yes.” I think my brain is floating in golden wine.

  “And will you paint with me so that we can surround ourselves with all the wonders we see?” She eased forward, brushing her breasts against his chest.

  Adonis sucked in a breath at the erotic caress of her nipples across the shivering muscles of his chest. “Yes,” he choked. Oh, Aphrodite help me if she wants another go. If I take one more drop of energy, I’ll explode.

  “And will you trust me to make my own choices, and promise never to think you know what’s
best for me?” she breathed against his lips.

  “Oh, gods, yes,” he growled. What’s life without risk? One more drop can’t hurt.

  Suddenly someone cleared his throat from across the room. “Ahem. Adonis?”

  Adonis hissed as Ivy shrieked. He rolled them over, covering her body with his and jerking his wings down to further shield her nude body. He glared over his wing at the source of the voice. His eyebrows shot up as he found Kirill standing in the doorway.

  “What are you doing here, Kirill?” Adonis asked warily.

  Kirill sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is my bedroom, Adonis. Wouldn’t the more pertinent question be, what are you doing here?” He inclined his head slightly toward the bed. “And a pleasure it is to see you, Ivy. I’m so pleased you’re well.”

  There was a moment of quiet and then Ivy shifted. Adonis looked into the cocoon he’d created to see Ivy watching him with wide eyes.

  “Is that Kirill, as in the vampire prince from Dacia?” she whispered.