What Happens in Vegas...After Dark (30 page)

Mal traced a path with his tongue to one of her hard nipples. The bud pulsed with anticipation as his tongue neared, and she cried out at the first stroke over her nipple. He circled the nub in slow, maddening circles, gradually tightening his focus until he was flicking just the very tip. She arched against him, needing more. Mal complied by sucking her nipple into his mouth. He inhaled, sending ripples of pleasure through her breast, and then sucked again. She buried her hands in his hair, wanting to hold him at her breast forever.

The ignored breast was hard and full, anxious for its share of attention, and Devi stroked her nipple, squeezing and pinching it as Mal sucked more vigorously on the other.

Her clit twitched in time with her heartbeat, and her lower body rocked against his in desperate need of his cock to fill her empty slit. She gritted her teeth to hold in a scream of frustration when he abruptly lifted his head, leaving her in that revved-up state without a chance of release without the stimulation from his mouth. “Don’t stop.”

“I’m not, love. We’re just shifting gears.” He urged her backward to lie down on the floor of the elevator after he fashioned a makeshift bed from her dress and his shirt. Devi let him direct her, aching for completion and willing to do just about anything he asked of her. Mal took time to shed the remainder of his pants before kneeling between her spread legs. “Have I told you how much I love your pussy? I enjoyed it completely bald, but this

—” he ran his fingers through the new growth of soft pubic hair that now shielded her folds “—is nice.” Dipping a finger inside her, he rubbed her clit in a circular motion. “So is this. Your clit is very, very nice. Not as nice as your pussy, of course.” He lowered his hand to push two fingers into her opening. “Nothing compares to the wet heat of your tight pussy around my cock.”

“Stop torturing me.” She arched her hips. “Fuck me, Mal. Please!”

He had the nerve to laugh. “I will. Be patient. First, I want another taste of your sweet cream, love.” Mal parted her thighs wider to make room between them. She closed her eyes and balled her hands into fists with anticipation. His breath wafted across her hot cleft before his tongue breached her. Devi whimpered, her body shaking just from the light contact of his tongue on her clit. When he drew the bud into his mouth to suck gently, she cried out. “Easy, love,” he said against her pussy, triggering more convulsions.

Mal twisted and circled his tongue around her clit, often straying downward to sweep inside her opening. Lost in the sensations, she grasped his hair and held on to him. He was her only anchor in the passionate maelstrom. When Mal sucked her clit into his mouth and feathered the tip as one finger entered her opening, and another probed her anus, even her anchor couldn’t keep her centered. A scream of pure primal arousal escaped Devi as she came. Her pussy clenched around his hand and mouth as spasms racked her body.

The last traces of the orgasm hadn’t yet dispelled when Mal shifted positions and plunged his cock deeply into her quaking pussy. Devi tightened her legs around his waist and drove her buttocks upward, taking in as much of his length as she could get. He grasped her cheeks in his hands, kneading her ass as he thrust into her. Their eyes locked, and his spoke volumes. Love shone from his eyes, and he seemed to make no attempt to shield his vulnerability. The last of her anger melted, and she crumbled. “I love you, Mal.”

“I know, love, but it sure is good to hear you say it.” He pistoned his lower body again, sinking into her heat and withdrawing slightly before adding, “You believe I love you now, don’t you?”

Devi nodded, letting her eyes close again as ecstasy overtook her. A dragging sensation in her stomach told her release was close, and she concentrated solely on meeting each of his thrusts and matching his pace.

Dimly, the sound of the doors opening penetrated her hedonistic fog, and she blinked open her eyes, wondering who had overridden the emergency stop. Two men in the dark suits commonly worn by the casino’s security team stood there, eyes wide. She knew she should stop Mal, but was in the moment, too close to orgasm to say anything. Instead, she closed her eyes again and continued to make love with Mal.

One of the men laughed softly, and as the doors shut again, she heard him say, “This happens a lot around here, Evan. It’s best to just let them finish.”

At that moment, she climaxed, her pussy tightening around Mal’s cock. He bucked his hips, grunting as he came. Her eyes opened and collided with his gaze. Spellbound, Devi let the green in his eyes suck her in, binding her to him in a way completely different from the artificial binding spell he had imposed upon her before. This time, it was as though their souls merged, and she voluntarily gave herself to him, never wanting to part from Mal again. Whatever their future held, she had no doubt they would be together.

THE PROMISE

Anya Bast

The Promise is a prequel to The Deal, which appeared in the first What Happens in Vegas… anthology, and occurs about one year before Cassidy’s story.

For James. As ever, thank you

for your support and your love.

“C ome on, man. You’re going to be late for your own wedding.” Tom slumped down in a chair in Damian’s bedroom and stared at his friend.

Damian glanced at Tom in the mirror he faced. “I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying.” He knotted his tie, unknotted it and knotted it again for the twentieth time. “Damn it.” The only person who could ever get it right was Cassidy, his fiancée…his soon-to-be-wife.

Fuck. He fumbled his tie again.

The thought that he’d be married in the next hour stil made his hands tremble and created the sensation of a noose being slowly tightened around his neck until he couldn’t breathe. “Just like this fucking tie,” he growled, pulling the offending fabric off and throwing it to the floor of his bedroom.

Tom shifted in the chair. “What?”

“Nothing. Screw the tie.”

“You can’t screw the tie. You can’t get married without a tie.” He motioned with his hands in his agitation. “Don’t be such an asshole, Damian. Cassidy is the best thing that ever happened to you.”

Damian fought the urge to snarl at his friend.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that something huge besides the wedding was about to happen—something bad. Something that would change his life forever. He’d dismiss the feeling as only fear about getting married, but he’d been having other “feelings” about things lately that later had come true. Damian was about ready to sign himself as one of the precog acts in the casinos. Maybe he could make some cash on the side, predicting events.

“Listen, we gotta go,” said Tom, standing. “Stop talking to your clothing and let’s get out of here. It’s stil a fifteen minute drive across town and you should be walking down the aisle right now.”

Yes, he should be walking down the aisle of the White Wishes Chapel on Hamilton Street right now. Tom was right. Gee, could it be he was procrastinating about getting married? Damian studied his ref lection in the mirror. No doubt on that score. His feet weren’t just cold, they were blocks of ice.

But he’d made a promise. A promise to Cassidy to see this through.

Truth was, he should have broken up with her long ago. But how do you break up with the most perfect woman in the world? Damian didn’t have any solid reason to do it, that was for sure. He loved her, maybe not as much as Cassidy loved him…but he loved her enough. And what was the alternative to marrying Cassidy? Just loneliness, that’s what.

Damian had had enough of lonely to last him a lifetime. All his life he’d felt like he didn’t fit in with his people, a round peg in a square hole. He couldn’t ever lay his finger on exactly why he felt that way, only that he did.

Damian scooped the tie off the floor. “Okay, let’s go.”

“I don’t know why you want to keep a woman like Cassidy waiting,” Tom muttered, herding him out the door. “I’d kil for a girl like her.”

“Cassidy is awesome.”

“Yeah, she is. So what’s up with dragging your feet?”

“I don’t know, man.” He shook his head and opened the door to his apartment. The traffic on the busy Las Vegas street in front of his apartment building hummed and honked. “It’s just…the permanence of marriage, I guess. Losing my freedom.”

Yeah, maybe that was it.

Cassidy was great, there was no denying it. She was beautiful and intelligent. She shared his taste in music and movies and when they were together they had a great time. They could talk about anything. He should be racing to the church to marry her and counting every one of his lucky stars along the way.

So why wasn’t he?

He was ready to settle down. He’d just landed a job as an insurance agent, allowing him to leave his job as a poker dealer at the Gold Diggers Casino down on the Strip. He wanted to buy a house, have kids. Cassidy would be a great mom. He and Cass had been together for two years now. They were best friends.

It was just…

If he truly examined his feelings in this moment, he’d probably be happy if something prevented him from ever getting to the White Wishes Chapel today.

He followed Tom out the front door of his apartment and turned to lock it. A man stood to his immediate left outside.

Noooo…make that two men. One on either side of the door.

Big men.

Thugs. Oh, shit.

“Hey, guys,” said Damian with a friendly grin. “How’s it going?”

One of the men grabbed him by the throat and pushed him up against the wal .

Another man grabbed Tom. Damian gagged and desperately tried to think of al the people he’d pissed off lately. Or maybe this was Tom’s deal. He knew his friend had some gambling debts.

Then he noticed the man’s eyes.

For a moment, they seemed to shimmer…like a fish cresting the top of the water on a sunny day. Molten silver, brilliant blue, green—then back to prosaic brown. Damian stopped struggling and stared, wondering if he’d really just seen what he’d seen.

“Stay stil ,” the man growled.

Odd. He wanted to do as the man asked. In fact, his compulsion to do exactly what the thug had demanded of him was overwhelming. He knew he should be fighting, but he just…didn’t want to.

The other thug holding Tom against the wall pressed his hand to his friend’s chest and stared into his eyes. Tom went motionless, limp. “You wil forget this incident. You will forget you ever came to Damian Porter’s apartment this morning. This morning Damian cal ed and told you he wanted to get ready alone. Now you will go to the chapel. When Damian doesn’t show up for the wedding, you’ll be as surprised as everyone else.”

What?

The partial hold on Damian’s wil evaporated with a pop. He pushed against the guy holding him and brought his fist up in a hard and fast right hook. To Damian’s total surprise, it connected. The thug fell backward to collapse against the railing behind him.

The other guy left Tom, who just stood there staring ahead as if caught in a trance, and came after Damian. They scuff led. Damian threw another punch and missed. By then Thug One had recovered and they were both on him. They yanked his arms behind his back and pressed him face-first against the wall.

Tom didn’t even look at him. He just walked away, down the stairs and toward his car, parked in the lot below.

“Hey! What the hell, man? I thought you were my friend!”

“He can’t hear you,” Thug Two said. “Save your breath.”

“What the fuck is going on? Who are you guys? How do you know me? I have a wedding to go to, goddamn it!”

“Not today. Not any day if your people have anything to say about it.”

His people?

Thug One leaned in, holding his cheek where Damian had punched him, and grimaced.

Damian was happy to see the thug’s nose was bleeding and his lip was split. “It’s your birthday, boy.”

Damian made a scoffing sound. “It’s not my birthday, you IQ-challenged ape. You have the wrong guy.”

“Don’t have the wrong guy,” Thug Two snarled, hauling him away from the wall and pushing him toward the stairs. He gave him a good shove forward that made him stumble.

“And don’t make us do this the hard way. As long as you come along nice with us, we won’t have to hurt you.”

T hey loaded him into an SUV and took him to the Strip. Secreted in between two buildings and across from the Liege casino, was a nightclub that Damian had never noticed before. Not in all the times he’d been up and down this street. He’d been born and raised in Las Vegas; he thought he knew every stick and brick in this city. Yet, there it was, hidden away in an odd space that seemed to suck away and make disappear all the light around it. The club was aptly named.

Darkness.

The thugs parked the SUV on a side street and yanked him from the vehicle. They muscled him up to the front entrance of the building, pushing him through some unseen film of stickiness that made his stomach turn. It made him want to turn around and run the other way…even more than he already did.

Another thug opened the door and Thug One produced a card and flashed it at him.

Damn. This was obviously an establishment of many thugs.

They pushed him inside.

“Look, guys, nice as this visit has been, like I said, I’ve got somewhere to be.”

Thug Two pushed him forward again, into the club proper. “Elena wants to see you.”

He spoke as if that answered everything.

Damian stumbled forward and caught himself against a chair. When he looked up, he gawked. The interior was done in all blacks and dark, deep red…bloodred. It looked like a place where Goths would hang out.

A bar lined the wall and the place was filled to bursting with tables and chairs. This time of day, he’d expect a night club to be closed, but this place was pretty packed…and these patrons were definitely not local. His eyebrows rose into his hairline as he examined the nightclub’s unique customers. Some guy with pale skin and prosthetic fangs peeking from curled lips snarled at him.

“What is it, Halloween?” he mumbled as Thug One took him by the arm and pushed him to the left.