A Mermaid's Ransom (18 page)

"I've never done it like this." His brow furrowed. "In fact, until you, I've never done this with anything but a Dark One."

Lex bit her bottom lip as he slid his hand further under the shirt and found her breast, tracing the curve, making the nipple ache. "You're very good at it, for someone who's never done it."

"My mother's memories were very vivid in places. She did this often, and she had detailed memories of her best lovers. The things they would do to her."

"You know, some people might find it a little revolting to see their parents . . . you know. Oh . . ." She whispered it, emitting a tiny moan as he found the nipple, then dipped his head and suckled her through cloth.
But I'm not complaining. Oh, Goddess.

She clutched at him, slipping her thumb beneath the waistband of his jeans, her fingers curling and holding on as she lifted her hips to him, rubbed against his turgid length, straining against the denim.

Nervous talking was done. She needed him inside with such a desire she could barely speak. When he opened the jeans, pushed them down his hips with her help to get them out of the way, her fingers clawed at his muscular flesh. He came down on her body, pressing her into the mattress, himself between her legs. Catching her hands in one of his, he stretched her arms over her head, tilting her upper body to him. Even as he restrained her, he continued to suckle her through the cotton, one nipple then the other, as she thrashed and rolled against him. The blood in her temples was pounding, her stomach starting to roil. She was going to be too weak for this, damn it.

He released her hands then, cupping her head to bring her to his throat.
Bite hard, Alexis. Use your canines.

I'll hurt you.

I welcome pain from you. Bite me now. You will hurt me more if you hesitate and do not bite me as hard as you can.

Because she inhaled his flesh, and it made her mouth water, she obeyed. He let out a growl as blood filled her mouth. Just as in his world, she was amazed at the taste of it, and wondered if having the marks was what made his blood so appetizing. She drank deep, sensing the strength in the nectar he was offering her, and her body's response rebounded. She had her legs wrapped over his back, working herself against him in mindless, untutored need. When he freed her from his throat with a finger eased into her mouth, she latched onto that, imagining doing it to another part of his body. With an oath, he slid deep inside of her. She cried out, but opened up further to him, tilting instinctively to take him deep.

From Clara and romance books she'd sighed over, she remembered foreplay descriptions, of drawing out lazy need until it was desperate yearning. Goddess, being around her parents was like being in the front seat of one long foreplay session. But this . . . she had no patience for anything but his cock filling her, completing her, joining them. Perhaps Anna was right, that his growing agitation at their separation, his influence on the marks, did this, but she rejected that because she didn't want it to be chemical. Whatever the reason was, though, it was undeniable.

Seizing her behind the neck and pulling his hand away, he kissed her, plundering her mouth with ruthless, demanding force. She writhed beneath him, begging for movement, and he answered, beginning to thrust with a force that brought a guttural moan of pleasure from her with every impact.

She could get pregnant. It was a fleeting thought, but the idea of his child growing inside of her only inflamed her in a shocking way, for she saw it as further proof of their connection, of the bond between them.

He stopped, framing her face in his hands. The roaring fire in his eyes was so close, searching her face. That tangled confusion of emotions again, and then he renewed his pleasurable assault.

She was close to climax, but she struggled to hold back, to wait for him. He was having none of it. "Come for me," he whispered, and she was lost, screaming out her orgasm into his mouth as he held her, pumping even harder so she was driven deeper into the mattress. The headboard hit the wall with a force guaranteeing broken drywall. Her cry broke into a series of notes, shrill to pleading, waves of sensation buffeting her and stealing every worry she had.

Thank the Goddess, it took a while for those waves to stop pounding, to become gentle surf that deposited her weak body on the shore of her present reality. Even then she was slow to orient herself, for he was still moving inside of her, and the friction detonated aftershocks such that she continued to cling to his broad shoulders, tease his skin under her lips, savor the lingering taste of his blood in her mouth.

While her tissues were still vibrating, he pulled out. Before she could protest the loss, he brought her off the bed, and pushed her to her knees before him.

"Take me in your mouth as you wished, in your mind," he ordered.

Though she'd never done it before, she drew him in eagerly, her body still jerking with the aftermath of her climax as his hand fisted in her hair, driving her down on him.
Oh, Goddess.
She wasn't sure why she'd wanted this so much, but she had. She moved over him the way he'd moved in her, following instinct and his reaction to tell her the right way of it. As his hand spasmed in her hair, she reveled in his grunts and the tremors through his legs, telling her how close he was getting. Her own response leaked on her calves. She was torn between wanting him to come this way, and having him come inside her, that hot, searing fire branding her, dispelling the emptiness his absence had created.

This was madness. They knew nothing of each other, but could not get enough of one another, a kinetic spell gone awry. Pulling free, he took her down on the floor, sliding back inside her.

It is what I wish, too. I want you all ways at the same time, in the same moment.

Closing her eyes, she pressed her face into his throat as the thought splintered and was replaced by white-hot pleasure when he released. His arms locked around her, and she reveled in his strength, the feel of him all around her.

She hoped this was the way this was supposed to feel, this reckless speed and heat, the inability to think. Otherwise, she was allowing a situation to spin out of control that needed to be kept under a very tight rein, for his sake as well as everyone else's.

Fifteen

AFTERWARD, he followed her to the bathroom, apparently wanting to watch how she prepared herself for her day. She politely asked to be excused, but when she began to close the bathroom door, he caught it.

"I want to see you," he said, his jaw set.

Alexis planted her feet, but it was more likely the wood would splinter than his grip would loosen. Vampire and Dark One strength combined made him far stronger than even vampire lore suggested. Since he'd gone toe-to-toe with her father and three angels, it was a reasonable assumption. But if that was the case, it meant he'd held himself back during their lovemaking when he could have bruised her far more.

"You can. In a minute. In this world, we don't do this in front of one another. As courtesy." She narrowed her gaze as he refused to move his arm. "I am not going to disappear. The sooner you let me do this, the sooner I'll open the door and you can watch me get dressed. You kept the Dark Ones out of your chamber when you didn't want them around."

"You do not want me around."

Her response to that was instant, reaching up to touch his suspicious expression. "You know I do. I just don't want you around for this. If we're going to make this work, you're going to have to trust me when I tell you things about this world, all right?"

He considered her, his gaze shifting around the bathroom, to the one window. The brief flash of emotion startled her, so that she put her hand back on his arm. "Dante, I'm safe. No one is going to hurt me here. This world is different. At least here it is," she amended, having a brief thought of war-torn African countries.

"Someone can hurt you if they wish. I did."

She met his gaze. "And yet, here I am, back safe and sound. Believe me, being kidnapped through a dream portal was not part of my usual schedule. If I need anything, I'll call out. Okay?"

His grip loosening reluctantly, he nodded.

He didn't go far. Dante moved the several steps to the bed, sat down and stared at the door. Distracting himself, he tested the bounce of the mattress, bemused by it, pressing down with his hand. He considered dismantling it to figure out how it came back into its shape that way, but her disappearance behind that door made him too uneasy. He rose, pacing.

Rationally, he knew she was correct. What little he'd seen was a very different world from what he'd known. Even Hell had been different, as Lucifer said. When the time began to stretch out such that he'd considered tearing Hell apart stone by stone to get free and find her, he'd been allowed to explore with supervision, learn about the workings of the Underworld, gain an understanding of the redemption that the souls there had to endure. Dante found a calm familiarity to the pain and suffering that soothed his agitation to a manageable level.

He was not soothed now, even though, being inside her mind, he could know everything she was thinking. Any threat to her would be known to him instantly. Yet he'd said it himself. The greatest threat she'd experienced in her short life had been him. He'd caused her the most pain and terror. As such, Jonah and the others hadn't perceived his agitation as a desire to confirm she was all right, that she was recovering properly. To give her blood if she needed it.

Truth, he couldn't understand his feelings right now, either.

He'd returned her to her world at a risk to his own objective, in order to preserve her life. That entirely unexpected compulsion had turned him on his axis. Given that, this inexplicable protectiveness was merely a bump on that same road.

It was also irrational. This was her world. She had powerful allies. Jonah, the seawitch, David. She thought of them as her family. But Dante didn't know about family or allies. He knew about minions, those forced to serve through fear, trickery and threat. Alexis's perception of how he felt to be here had been startling.
Yes, no, I don't know.

In the Dark One world, he'd understood how things worked, and Alexis had been completely his. He'd fought his way up from the bottom, and knowing the road behind and ahead had a comfort to it. From his brief time here, he was uneasily aware this world might require a different skill set than the ability to kill the strongest rival and therefore bring the others into line. If that was all he knew, how was he going to succeed, find a position of strength and hold it? Who would take advantage of his weakness if he couldn't find such a position?

While he was aware of the metal band on his neck, he also knew the threat of pain would not stop him from fighting or killing if it was necessary. Pain was only a deterrent to someone who feared pain. But he didn't like her being behind closed doors. Where was she?

The door opened then, and Alexis was there, smiling at him and bringing that unfamiliar warmth into his chest. The warring factions battling in his mind stilled. He could tell she was worried she couldn't stay balanced, help him the way he needed to be helped, because she was too overwhelmed by her desire for him. He had no problem with her desire. It was a weakness he could exploit as needed. The problem was he had a similar difficulty when he inhaled her scent, touched her body, sensed her willingness to be with him. Her openness made him feel . . . not in a cage. After being trapped for so long, it was as if he had wings like the angels, capable of stretching as far as he wished. As far as he dared. Perhaps that was the problem. In his world, only one kind of fear had to be conquered.

"It's soft, isn't it?"

He noticed then he had one hand clutched in the quilted coverlet. He glanced down at it, then at the other things he hadn't taken time to notice, too caught up in her body, soft and available to him. Pillows. His mother had given him so many images in her mind, words to go with them, so he knew these things. Things had also been brought to the Dark One world, reinforcing that knowledge before they were inevitably destroyed. But knowing and touching, experiencing, were entirely different.

"Why does your father call you Seabird?"

"It's a nickname. A term of affection," she amended, "because I'm an angel and a mermaid both. Nicknames come from looking at someone and thinking they're like something or someone else." She gave him a half smile. "Do you look at me and think of something from your world? A marsma, for instance? I can hop."

"You are like nothing else I know."

Her cheeks pinkened, and he sensed that had pleased her, but she crossed the room to pick up the folded clothing her mother had left her. "Feel free to prowl around and look at things while I'm getting ready," she said. Rummaging in a dresser, she pulled out some more things. When she went back into the bathroom, she left the door open, so he cautiously did as she suggested, rising and touching the pillow, picking it up to squeeze it, turn it over and examine it.

"When I was young and stayed over with human friends, what we call slumber parties, we'd have pillow fights." She looked up in the mirror, seeking him, then her eyes widened. She turned. "Wow. So that one's true, too."

He raised a brow, and she gestured to the mirror. "No reflection. Guess that's why vampires are so good-looking all the time. Since you have no way of checking if your hair is out of place or you have something smeared on your chin, genetics makes you out of Teflon. It all slides off or falls back into place." When she gave a quick, easy grin, the surge of warmth came again, though he sensed something more tentative and wary behind the pleasant facade. He left it alone for now, since he felt a similar way when they were not coupling as they'd just done.

"Pillow fight?"

Putting down the brush she'd been working through her hair, she picked up an extra pillow that had been left in the chair by the bathroom door. Clutching the top two corners in her slim hands, she took a swing at him.

He blocked it, halting her follow-through and shoving her against the wall in the same flow of motion. Taking her off her feet earned a startled cry, but he held her there, searching her mind. What she'd thrown at him had been harmless. Soft. Why would she use that as a weapon?

It's a game. It's not meant to harm anyone.

She was trembling. He'd frightened her with his speed. Her hands, so fragile and breakable, were clutching his shirt at the shoulders, her pulse racing. Dante swallowed, brought her back to her feet. "I do not know about games."

"It's play. Let me show you." Giving him a searching look, she bent and picked up the pillow, holding it out for his examination before she took the open end of the covering over it, twisting the excess fabric into a handle. "See, when you're at slumber parties, you grab up pillows and hit each other with them." She gave him an arch look, still tremulous at the corners of her mouth. "Okay, don't go crazy here, but I'm going to swing it at you, to demonstrate."

She let it hit him in the side. Then, with an impish grin, she took a stronger swing at his head. Dante ducked it, but she was already turning and managed to hit his hip with more force. He circled the bed, considering, and picked up the other pillow. "What's the goal of this . . . game?"

"Just to have fun. There's no scorekeeping in pillow fights. Technically. I've known some people who think it should be an Olympic sport." As he probed her mind, she quickly picked up his intent. Images appeared for him, filling in the blanks. Then she decided to hop up on the bed, giving herself a height advantage, and took another swing at his head.

He dodged it, retaliating with a swipe that hit her thigh and knocked her legs out from under her. He'd attempted to hold his strike, but she landed with a decided bounce on the intriguingly springy mattress. "
Oof.
Good thing I went for the bed."

He peered down at her, then his gaze went lower, to where her nightshirt had slid upward, nearly revealing her pretty sex. Thinking about the soft give of the mattress and pillows, he recalled the way those tender lips had spread for his cock, taking him in deep. Though his mind was not open to her, Alexis obviously read his emotions, for she scrambled back to the other side, leaving the pillow. "I'll get dressed," she said hastily. "Otherwise, we might never get back to my place today. Have you walked down to the beach yet? Oh . . ." She turned around again. "Can you go out in sunlight?"

"I was told by Mina that I could, that my Dark One blood dulls the effect that sunlight normally has on vampires. I can't stay out in it long, though, and she recommended something she called
sunglasses
. Very dark ones," he added.

"Good point," she agreed. "We'll stop somewhere to get those first thing. You're going to be unsettling enough without someone seeing your eyes."

"Humans don't know about beings other than themselves. I find that odd."

"So do all of us. I mean, the nonhumans who live here." Alexis shrugged. "For some reason the Goddess allows humans to decide whether to believe in angels, mermaids or worlds like yours as a matter of faith. After the Mountain Battle, it was weird how many of them rationalized it into something else. They decided they'd imagined seeing angels because of the trauma of fighting off
alien
attackers."

She rolled her eyes. "Since then, there've been stories that the Dark Ones were bioengineered soldiers being tested out by some country. I guess it works best for us to hide our identities, except from the few humans who would understand. As a whole, they really don't. They need to control what they don't understand, or they destroy it. Even my closest friend doesn't know what I am, and she's clairvoyant."

"Yet you prefer to live among them, while your parents do not."

"Well, Myel has lived among them before, for short periods of time. I just . . . it feels like where I'm supposed to be, for now. I like it. They're very busy, you know? Active. Always something going on. But I do love the ocean and sky. They're active, too, in a different way. Pyel says I straddle the boundary between sky and water because I feel most balanced here."

After a brief hesitation, she shed the sleep shirt, revealing the fragile slope of spine and sweet curve of buttock. He still saw bruises fading under her skin, the result of the rift energy's bludgeoning, and her fight against the circle's shields in his world. Only a handful of days ago, he'd been in that world, the place he'd been all his life. Now he was here. He was certain in some ways it was a dream, only he could not have imagined some of the things in this dream, having never experienced them. The fragrance of the lotion she smoothed into her hands and on her face. The crumpled look of her clothes on the floor. The smell of salt water drifting in through the open window and the sound of the ocean. Even when he'd had the rift windows, sounds had been muted, distorted, and there'd been no ability to smell, taste.

She stepped into her undergarment, a quick hitch, then she was putting her arms into the straps of her bra, hooking and working it around to cradle her breasts. It commanded his attention, the erotic movements of her body performing such a simple task, the wriggle of her hips as she pulled on a skirt that hugged them, arching into a shirt that clung to her curves. The V-neck showed the valley between her breasts. He knew enough to know it was not a deliberately provocative outfit, but his palms heated with the desire to touch regardless.

Alexis twisted her hair up and stuck in a pair of dark shiny sticks topped with glittering sapphire stones to hold it. "All right. Why don't we go to my place, get you settled there? Is that all right, or is there something else you want to do right away?"

When she turned and faced him, color rose in her cheeks. "Other than that. I'd feel more comfortable being with you where I live. My parents may decide to stay here tonight."

Her gaze went to the wall behind the headboard. "I'm hoping they'll think they did that. The one advantage to having immortal and amorous parents."

Clearing her throat, she continued to stare fixedly at the headboard. "Can you stop looking at me like that?"

"Why? Because it makes you want to do exactly what I'm thinking?"

She shot him a narrow look. "You get a free pass on comments like that because you don't know what a smart-ass is. For now."