CHAPTER NINE
Vaughn stood in the middle of the living area in Elena’s suite.
A hundred scents that made up the sorceress pummeled his senses from every direction.
Clothes draped across the furniture, a half-empty martini glass, nail polish on the table by the sofa, a bottle of hand lotion on the floor, a nearly untouched bowl of strawberries on the counter, and that wasn’t counting the smell of her shampoo and soaps that wafted from down the hall.
Drowning a little, he glanced down at the hand tucked into his, the small nails painted a blue that almost matched her dress. He hadn’t let go of her since they’d left the elevator, and she hadn’t tried to worm free. In fact he kept catching her staring at their linked hands, too.
“What now, Ivy?”
The far-off look on her face faded as she pulled her gaze from their hands. She stroked a line down the front of his shirt, nudging him backward. His knees hit the back of the sofa and he dropped down.
Elena straddled him. “Don’t tell me this is the first time a girl ever brought you home.”
He studied her eyes, shaking his head. “Don’t do that. Don’t pretend this is just another casual hook up.” They were both grown-ups, had both been with other people, but he refused to dismiss their time together as some one-night stand.
She cocked her head, equal parts cautious and curious. “Then what is it?”
He frowned, not sure how to describe the charged pulse that hummed on the air between them. “It starts here.” He touched her stomach, circling her navel in lazy arcs. “A slow burn that makes you think you swallowed a field of fireflies. And the more you try to ignore it, the hotter it gets.”
Elena watched the path of his finger move to her ribs.
He followed the slight curve of the lower bone, moving up the side of her breast. “And then you feel it with every breath you take. It doesn’t matter if you fight it or not, you draw it in, holding it close, unable to shake it.”
He felt Elena’s eyes on him, but he didn’t look up, drawing a trail across the top of her dress to her heart.
“Before you know it, the light of it chases away the shadows buried inside. Awakens something that could be your destruction—” he angled his head, drawing a heart shape on her skin, “—or your salvation.”
He brought their joined hands to his lips. “So yeah. This is more than some girl bringing me home with her.” He pressed a kiss to the back of her hand. “Now are you scared?”
“I don’t know what I am,” she whispered, her words seeming to surprise her.
Vaughn brushed her hair behind her shoulder, wanting a clear view of her face and the eyes studying him so closely he could feel her probing at places he didn’t let anyone see.
“Why are you here?” The question came from the sorceress the rest of the world knew, the devil-may-care immortal who didn’t care what anyone thought of her or her wild behavior.
He played with the ends of her hair, wrapping them around his finger and using the leverage to draw her closer. “Just to be with you.”
Elena’s poker face failed her, indecision flashing in her eyes.
He pressed their laced fingers to her chest. “Trust the light,” he murmured, needing her to be the one that took that last step and closed the few inches separating them.
A shiver worked through her, and she braced a hand on his shoulder, leaning the rest of the way in, her nose sliding along his until their mouths met.
Vaughn didn’t breathe, didn’t move, every cell in his body hyper-aware of the woman in his lap. She would kill him if she stayed that way, nails gripping his shoulder, lips sinking into his one sinful degree at a time.
Almost as if she knew it, she slid all the way into his lap, determined to push him all the way to the edge. Each slow rock of her hips brought them together in a teasing rub. He released her hand, catching her waist and grinding her down on him a little harder.
They both moaned.
Vaughn adjusted his position, lifting up to meet the next drag across his groin.
Elena drew back, her eyes closed, her bottom lip trapped between her teeth as she rocked forward again, doing her best to turn his brain to complete lust-drenched mush.
He felt every millimeter of friction between the head and the base of his cock. He didn’t stop the exquisite torture, just watched the pleasure of the contact rush across her face.
He could watch it all day. Every day. The only thing better than watching her come like that would be undoing his zipper and tugging her damp panties out of the way.
One thrust, one smooth slide and he could be inside her. Then her nails really would sink into his shoulders. It would be a battle of wills over who could last the longest and who’d break away from the slow pumps and rush into the wild ride.
Mind on fire from the images in his head, Vaughn wrapped an arm around her, flipping her to her back and following her down. “You can’t always be on top, Ivy.”
She parted her thighs, letting him settle between them.
He ran a hand along the outer side of her thigh, pushing her dress up as he went. He reached her ass, filling his palm as he tugged her a little lower on the couch. Closer to her mouth, he parted her lips with his tongue, kissing her deeply.
Now he was in full control of rubbing against her, pushing hard enough he imagined the lacy barrier would give way.
“You need to stop,” Elena murmured with no real conviction.
It was too easy to silence the half-hearted protest. One slow tease of his tongue across her lower lip and she buried her hands in his hair, the kiss as hard as it was deep. Never mind what happened in the elevator. She’d fucking destroy him with her mouth.
She rocked up hard enough that he lost balance. Elena settled on top of him when he went along with it, landing on the floor. One look at the satisfied smile on her lips and he knew the move had been intentional.
“You do have control issues, don’t you?”
She pushed her hands against his chest, but he was faster, pulling at the material draping her shoulder. The fabric tore easily, exposing a black strapless bra that offered her breasts up on a delectable platter.
He raised his head, finding the plump curve that didn’t quite fit into her bra and tasting her skin. A single drop of water to a man who’d crossed the Sahara, the touch only deepening the craving for her.
She moaned. “Vaughn.”
“Again.” He yanked the bra out of the way and sucked her nipple into his mouth.
She moaned again, arching with every greedy tug.
“No, my name. Say it again.” Not a nickname or a dig meant to get a reaction. Just his name on her lips.
“Vaughn.” She hissed, then pulled away from him, rising and looking like he’d already worked her over a dozen times and she wasn’t sure she could handle anymore.
Sensing she’d bolt if he reached for her, he merely pillowed his hands behind his head and stayed on the floor.
Elena backed away, her expression momentarily unreadable. “Not a one-night stand, huh?”
He rose to his elbow, following her movements as she caught the hem of her torn dress and dragged it up over her head. With every exposed inch he felt like he was unraveling the one mystery he’d spent half his life waiting to solve.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, the words nearly locking in his throat.
The dress slipped through her fingers to hit the floor, joined moments later by her bra. She kept her panties on as she turned and walked toward her bedroom. “You’re not going to stay on the floor all night, are you?”
The wolf howled at the challenge in her voice, and the man bolted to his feet and pursued his prey.
***
Elena caught a glimpse of her reflection in the floor to ceiling mirror just inside the bedroom. A curl of blue vines unfurled across her shoulder and then vanished beneath the magic she used to veil her tracings, her skin abuzz with power.
She touched one of her flushed cheeks and smiled.
Vaughn came into view behind her, her gaze finding his in the mirror. He stopped directly behind her but didn’t touch her.
One small step backward and she’d be able to lean against him, feel the fierce pounding of his heart against her back. She stayed where she was. “You’re staring.”
He shook his head. “No. I’m remembering.”
She didn’t see him move but he suddenly felt closer even though they still weren’t touching.
“That smile. I’ve seen it before.” He swept her hair aside so carefully she didn’t register so much as a graze of his fingers, contact she craved more than anything else. “It’s the same as the day we first met. You had just finished dismissing one of Avalon’s most lethal immortals, and the next thing I knew you were throwing me a towel.”
“You were naked.”
“And dirty and bleeding and had no idea what was happening. But this—” Eyes on hers in the mirror, he ran the back of his fingers down her cheek, “—this smile somehow made it all okay. Even if it was just for a second.”
Her eyes drifted shut, but his touch was fleeting. She sank her toes into the plush carpeting, trying to ground herself, anchor herself to something real, because the sensation expanding in her chest, a pleasure so deep it pricked the backs of her eyes couldn’t possibly be real, could it?
She wanted to rewind the clock and go back to the couch and let this be just a one-night stand and not something so impossible it only existed in a naïve girl’s imagination.
She opened her eyes to find his expression caught somewhere between the same disbelief and twisted hopefulness she felt. Now she really had to be losing her mind. “You’re still not pouncing when I expect it.”
“That’s more of a cat thing.” His hands moved in the reflection, and she held her breath as his
fingers sank into her hips. “Besides, I don’t think you can handle a full pounce right now.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to disagree, right up until he snagged the sides of her panties and tugged them down.
He moved with them, crouching to slip them off her feet. He cupped her ankles, his palms massaging as he drew them up her legs. He paused to press an open-mouthed kiss to the back of one knee, then the other.
Her legs might have trembled if her toes weren’t still anchored in the carpet, or worse, given out altogether at the decadent caress.
He reached her behind, finding a handful to stroke and squeeze, and then his lips brushed her skin.
She jumped at the playful nip.
Vaughn laughed. “You have no idea how long I’ve been thinking about doing that.”
Rising, he turned her around, pulled her from the world of reflection, and making sure there was nothing separating them.
He opened his mouth over hers, propelling them right over the edge of a sheer drop knowing there wouldn’t be a damn thing to break their fall.
Her back hit the mirror, her arms snaking around his neck, as they smiled, moaned and panted their way through a kiss that rocked her.
He took a step back, catching the hand she flung out to reel him back in. He brought it to his mouth, the kiss as chaste as the last one was molten.
“Tease.”
“You didn’t think I was letting things go any further before I was inside you, did you?”
She responded by grabbing his shirt and ripping. Buttons flew and bounced across the carpet as the material tore easily. She pushed the destroyed shirt off his shoulders. It landed next to her panties and she kicked both items out of the way as she dropped her hands to his belt. “Are you always so bossy or do I just bring it out in you?”
His pants came down, and he tipped her face up. “Last chance, Ivy.”
She slid her hand into his boxers. “I went all-in the moment you showed up at the elevator.”
A growl that was half man and half wolf rumbled in his chest. He scooped her up and tossed her on the bed.
Laughing, she bounced on the mattress, snatched a pillow off the bed and fired it at his head. The lacy decoration grazed his cheek before he knocked it aside. “Is that the best you’ve got sorceress?”
“Maybe you should get your ass on the bed and find out for yourself.”
All humor fled Vaughn’s expression, and she imagined the singular focus she glimpsed in his eyes was the last thing the Shadow’s target saw before he made his move.
A wolf in human form.
“My father is going to kill me.”
Halfway up the bed, Vaughn paused. “That’s probably the last thing I expected to hear right now.”
Definitely the last thing she’d expected to think about at the moment, let alone say out loud. But then she never expected things to go so far with the wolf. Things that could complicate everything from her strained relationship with her parents to her more recent activities that would no doubt stun the wolf in her midst, even more so because he was a Shadow.
Elena sat up, meeting Vaughn in the middle of the mattress.
Paying attention to his rough jaw, she rubbed her thumb across the stubble, drawing him closer. She didn’t take her eyes off his mouth as she touched her lips to his.
He sucked in a breath but she didn’t want him holding onto the moment. She wanted him diving into the next and the next, right alongside her.
Vaughn guided her onto her back, coming down on top her, the drugging pressure of his weight seducing her all over again. His gaze landed on the blow she’d taken courtesy of the giant. “You’ll have to tell me about what happened later.” He dropped a soft kiss on the tip of her nose. “Much, much later.”
She arched her back, feeling him from her shoulders to the tips of her toes. And then a slow slide brought him back to her mouth.
Gods, the way he kissed her…
How many hours of her life had been wasted kissing the wrong people? Vaughn’s lips were like silk drenched in lava on her jaw, her neck, and then nothing.
She opened her eyes to find him staring at her again.
Holding her gaze, he reached between them. The head of his cock slid along her folds as he pressed and pulled back, slid against and then away from her.
Each almost-stroke made her heart thump faster. She grabbed his shoulders, finding the one anchor she’d been looking for all along. “Vau—”
He thrust inside her.
Pleasure catapulted from the balls of her feet to her core, her muscles clenching. She moaned against the strong column of his neck, his body settling even deeper into hers.
He didn’t need to read her mind this time, her body telegraphing what she wanted with one rock of her hips after another, craving even more of the friction. Vaughn’s breath caught, his mouth close to her ear as he pulled out and pumped back into her.
“Fuck,” he growled, catching one hip to get even deeper.
She helped him out by grabbing as much of his ass as she could reach, dragging him back to her when he slid away on the next thrust.
He grunted at the bite of her nails on his skin, but she didn’t let go. Not until he drove into her over and over again, rocking them both to a mindless rhythm, the blankets tangling beneath them, their bodies locked together.
Somewhere in the middle of furious pumps that pushed her toward release, her insides spinning tighter and tighter, he crushed his mouth down on hers, his tongue plunging slow and deep. His hand sank into her hair and the sound he made against her lips, part pleasure, part pain—all relentless predator—made her catch his face in her palms.
He could have stopped moving inside her, could have pulled free of her body completely and she wouldn’t have cared as long as he kept kissing her exactly like this.
Sweet Avalon.
On a fierce groan, he broke from her mouth and thrust into her so fast and deep, the molten center of her exploded. She held on even tighter, drowning in the supernova burning itself out. Her world shook and churned and then righted itself so fast she could barely process the staggering calm that settled in her bones.
For the first time in her life there was no whisper of magic, no tease of it, no clambering for more of something. Just…calm.
What the hell had the gargoyle done to her?
***
Elena had mesmerized him.
It was the only explanation for the heart ready to beat its way out of Vaughn’s chest, his body burning to possess every inch of the sorceress who arched beneath him.
Flashes of blue exploded across eyes so hypnotic they cast a spell all their own. A curse. An enchantment.
Something magical or mystical had to explain the way he clung to her, giving her everything, wanting only to please her in every way imaginable. And beneath that sheer want, a fierce desperation to know this female clawed at him. There wasn’t a part of her that he didn’t want to touch, caress, or mark.
Her damp walls squeezed and pulled at him, goading him to sink deeper, pump faster. His ass still stung from the grip of her nails and he fucking loved it. Loved it almost as much as driving himself into her, his cock slick from her wetness, his muscles locking as he filled her over and over again.
Elena held onto him, her fingers framing his face, her touch exciting and soothing, and undeniably consuming. The storm had broken, no traces of the sorceress in her eyes, only Elena.
Fun, sexy, amazing and remarkable Elena.
He could have held on, could have buried himself inside her again and again, pushing her to cling tighter, arch her body harder, take him deeper until the heat building inside him burst free.
But it was that unexpected realization that she held so much more than just his face in her palms that triggered a scorching release.
He groaned at the hot current that shot through him, thrusting once…twice…a half a dozen times as he rode the pleasure, finally collapsing, exhilarated, sated.
And undoubtedly screwed.
Elena didn’t complain about the fact that he didn’t move for a long moment, trying to wrap his mind around what was happening between them. She merely drew her fingers in a soft line up and down his spine.
Neither man not wolf could recall a more satisfying moment.
“If you fall asleep on me, I’m feeding you to Mac’s dragon,” Elena finally murmured a few minutes later.
Vaughn lifted his head. “Mac has a dragon? One of the Forgotten?” Losing yourself entirely to the beast half and forgetting the human side completely was a fear few gargoyles could deny.
“Probably.”
Vaughn let her push him off, but pulled her into his arms after he stretched out on his back. She shivered and tugged at the blankets crumpled beneath them. Laughing, he lifted his hip as she fought to drag the comforter over top of them. She wiggled a few more times then finally set her head on his chest.
“You sure you don’t want to shake off any more bedbugs?”
“Ew.” She smacked his chest, squirming once more before stilling.
He could almost hear the wheels in her mind start turning.
“Is there something your animal senses are picking up I should know about?”
Like actual bedbugs? He grinned. “My superior senses?”
“Superior ego maybe.”
He rolled to his side, undoing all the careful tucks she’d made trying to get comfortable. He hovered above her, slipping a hand under the covers.
“What are you doing?”
Giving the inside of her thigh a testing squeeze, he answered, “Tickling you.”
“What are you, five? I am not ticklish.”
He moved to the other thigh. “And how many people do you know who actually admit that they’re ticklish?”
She shrugged. “I guess I’ll find out next time I set out to torture someone with tickles. But you know what, knock yourself out.”
Vaughn tried her hip next, then her stomach. She twitched beneath him. Getting warmer. He dug into his task with complete focus but she didn’t shove him away or dissolve into a fit of giggles. Too bad.
“Maybe it’s not fingers that set you off.” He snared her wrists and pinned them to the bed on either side of her body.
“Vaughn.”
“Hmmm?” He threw a leg over her thighs in case she tried to squirm free, then lowered his mouth to her stomach.
“Ooooh not the mouth,” she shuddered in mock fear.
He sucked in a deep breath and planted his mouth on her stomach and blew out hard.
Her body locked, a gasp of surprise parting her lips and then laughter erupted. “You did not—” laughter broke her words apart “—blow a freaking raspberry on my stomach.”
He shook his head and did it again, stopping her from slipping free of his grip. “Two times if we’re counting.”
She continued to laugh, exposing a blue vine that appeared and vanished on her lower ribs.
Fascinated, he touched the spot. “Will you show me?”
She stilled, her expression guarded.
He held up a hand, fingers curled into a fist with the exception of his baby one. “Pinky swear I’ll never tell anyone.”
She swatted his hand out of the way and laughed, the sound not quite as light as before.
Caressing the spot where he’d glimpsed the tracing, he waited. “I want to see the real Elena, just for a second.”
“What makes you think you haven’t?”
“You show the world how fierce and brazen you are, but hide so much. Too much. You don’t need to hide with me.” And he meant it.
He wanted to see, touch and hear about all the pieces she kept hidden from the world, and even crazier than that, he wanted to share some of the dark pieces of himself.
“Vaughn.” She glanced away.
Shit. He’d made her uncomfortable, the last thing he wanted to do. “Forget I said anything. You’ll show me when you’re—”
Her magic gave up it’s hold on masking her tracings and hundreds of tiny blue vines covering at least eighty percent of her body revealed themselves.
“—ready,” he finished lamely.
The marks ranged from tiny marks to an elegant twisting vine as thick as two fingers that curled around her throat, the blue leaves painted on her skin in perfect detail, right down to the fine lines of the veins running across the leaf.
Below her neck the design was infinitely smaller, the leaves barely distinguishable from the loops of vines that circled tighter and tighter down her ribs. He touched a loose wrap of the blue foliage that circled her navel before racing across one hip and wrapping around to the back of her thigh.
It curved back around the front of her knee and then all the way down to her toes, the design so intricate he could almost imagine it writhing on her skin, a living embodiment of her magic.
Wondering if there was a path to follow through the vines, he followed another twist of her tracings that snaked around one arm, up her shoulder and disappearing behind her neck.
He finally allowed himself a moment to physically trace the stunning path of ivy that caught the left side of her jaw and curved across her cheek. The design framed one eye in leaves fading from dark blue at the edges to a lighter shade closer to her pupil. From there the vine took a sharp climb to her temple and vanished into her hair.
He’d barely taken them in yet somehow knew no two leaves or stretch of ivy would be the same.
Elena watched him, waiting, and he knew what he said in this moment would matter more than either of them might be prepared for.
“It’s beautiful.” He traced the path of vine that wound its way around her hip. “You are beautiful.” He drew his forefinger across her skin, back and forth. “But that still doesn’t mean you’re not ticklish.”