He quirked a grin. “You’re sure you’re not royalty?”
She laughed. “Depends on who you ask.”
“I prefer to keep our interactions private.”
“Good,” she said, leaning forward and teasing his lips with hers once again. “I was thinking the very same thing.”
Six
Alexa hardly knew what had come over her.
Okay, that was a bald-faced lie. Lust had come over her. Years and years of fantasizing about a mysterious, ghostly stranger fading into her room late at night and introducing her to decadent pleasures of the flesh. Hot dreams. Wet dreams. Dreams that had haunted her with particular vigor since her month-long stay in the hospital, when she’d had little to do but sleep and surrender to the medications coursing through her body.
But now she was healthy. She could have exactly what she wanted with a lover who wasn’t completely real—if only she took the leap.
The room darkened around her. She leaned away from Damon and watched candles and torches in iron sconces and elaborate candelabras materialize all around them. Silk draperies and tapestries unfurled from the stones on the wall. In seconds, the landing was transformed into a sensual hideaway, with the cushioned chaise as the centerpiece.
“You’re getting the hang of using the magic,” she whispered, awed by the finery glowing around her.
“Wondrous what a man can do when properly motivated,” he replied.
Alexa sank to her knees, knowing she’d lost her mind in pursuing this mysterious phantom—and not really caring. “Maybe the magic is what is making me so hot for you.”
He quirked a half grin. “Do you truly believe that?”
Leaning back fully against the chaise, Damon locked his hands behind his head and stared at her with those stormy eyes that sucked her in like a watery vortex. She didn’t know what to think—until she realized that was her problem.
Alexa didn’t want to think anymore. Day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, Alexa Chandler was expected to use all of her brainpower to ensure that her father’s legacy didn’t falter. One hundred and thirty-five luxury hotel properties in eight countries fell under her responsibility, along with thousands of investors and employees. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of premium guests.
Even at home, someone always needed her. Jacob. The staff. Various and sundry members of her extended family who had no use for Alexa until they needed a suite for a good friend for their wedding, an advance on their dividends from the company or even her opinion on their latest vacation destination—which was only a roundabout way of bucking for a free room. Even the men she’d dated came up short in fulfilling her most basic desires. Or else she’d been too afraid to accept what they had to offer, so she’d found lame excuses to send them away.
The only peace she ever found had been alone in her bedroom, in the hour between when she slipped into bed and finally fell asleep, fantasizing like a schoolgirl about a mysterious man who would slip uninvited into her room and ask her for nothing while he gave her everything she ever wanted.
Girlish, yes.
But damn it, Alexa grasped escapism when it came, which wasn’t often. How could she now deny what she so desperately wanted? Her entire body thrummed with the gravity of her need. In every other aspect of her life, she’d always taken what she wanted without looking back. Why not here? Why not now?
“Make love to me, Damon,” she said.
He sat bolt upright, touched his fingers to the straps of her blouse and, in a blink, the material disappeared, leaving only her bra to cover her breasts. And under his heated gaze, even that seemed too much.
“I will make love to you, Alexa, but not because you order me to. As a man, looking at you, feeling you against me…I have no other choice.”
The soulful longing in his voice sparked a flame inside her that raged the minute he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her down atop him. Whether their clothes disappeared completely via magic or through the insistent ripping away of fabric, Alexa wasn’t sure. In a haze of heat, she knew only that her skin had ignited where every nerve ending in her thighs, stomach, breasts and arms moved against his. Instantly, the fire melted her insides until liquid warmth seeped from between her pulsing labia. She stretched her body completely over his; his sex jutted against her, hard and ready.
She couldn’t wait. What if she awoke before she’d had her fill? What if someone roused her prior to the fantasy playing out? She’d been there before. The frustration had been maddening. No, she wouldn’t wait. Not a minute. Not a second. Instead, she pulled her knees beneath her, took his cock boldly in her hands and guided him inside her.
An explosion of sensation rocked her. She cried out from the blast of ecstasy, burying her fingers in his chest hair, holding on for dear life as her body rode the wave until it crested, then fell. She was nearly unaware of his presence until he spoke.
“Why the rush, my lady?”
He curled his hands over hers and softly loosened her grip. Panting, she opened her eyes and saw a smile twinkling in his eyes. She’d used him for instant gratification.
Embarrassingly instant gratification.
Wonderful instant gratification.
“I didn’t want you to disappear,” she admitted, breathless.
He shifted so that the thickness between her legs jolted her with another wave of pleasure. “I’m certain I have no better place to be than here.”
He felt so real. So solid. Unlike the lovers from her dreams, whose very insubstantiality had haunted her. Climaxes while in the throes of sleep left her wanting more. Like just now. Her body, so starved for satisfaction, had taken the least he had to offer.
And from the look in his eye, he clearly wanted to give her so much more.
She smiled shyly, keenly aware of how their bodies were still merged and how she’d reacted like she’d never had sex before in her entire life. “I suppose I jumped the gun.”
He clucked his tongue. “Clearly, you jumped something.”
Surprisingly, his chuckle didn’t send her running. “Some
one
, you mean.”
He arched a brow. “Not that I mind, but such haste defies logic. Had you waited, I could have done this.”
Lifting her hands to his lips, he kissed her fingers one by one, then lolled his tongue along the inside of her palm, flicking down her wrist to stir her pulse points. He then guided her hands to her breasts and smeared the moisture over her nipples until the tight pucker of arousal no longer ached, but instead pearled with needy vibrations she knew only he could alleviate.
“Your breasts are perfectly lovely. So sensitive. May I?”
His polite request left her stunned, but she dropped her hands to her sides and managed a nod, her eyelids drifting closed as he applied his singular touch. He smoothed his roughened fingertips over her, weighing the fullness of her flesh in his palms, using his thumbs to draw tiny circles around her areolae, then flicking the tips of her nipples with his thumbnails until she cooed from the sensations.
She found herself running her hands over his stomach, reveling in the resistance of his abs and in the soft pelt of hair arrowing down his chest. In a dizzy swirl of sensation, he pressed his hands against her shoulders, pulled her close, then flipped her beneath him.
“Ah,” he said, his grin wide, “that’s more like it.”
She blinked rapidly. “Women on top threaten you?”
His chuckle spawned another wave of sensations within her, each more delicious than the one before. “Threaten? You have an odd view of men, my lady.”
“You haven’t lived my life.”
“No, but I have lived mine. Trust me when I tell you that nothing you do, nothing you say, will threaten me in any way.”
She grinned and laced her hands behind his neck. “You said yourself that I’m a powerful woman.”
“Yes, and this intrigues me. Challenges me. If the men in your life have run from you because of your strength, you are simply pursuing the wrong men.”
She cradled her cheek against the pillow as she laughed. “You’ve said a mouthful,” she agreed.
He eyed her breasts hungrily. “Ah, but a proper mouthful has nothing to do with words.”
Damon proved his point by scooping his arm beneath her back, arching her body so he could wrap his lips around her erect nipples. Instantly she reacted, boldly scrambling her fingers into his hair and tugging him closer. Had he not been certain of her station in life, he might have thought her a courtesan, at the very least—or more likely a queen. From the moment she captured his cock, shoved it within her moist folds and milked instant pleasure from him, she’d snared him. Now it was his turn to enslave her. Only through their mutual delight would he find his way to freedom.
He flicked his tongue across the tight tip of her breast. She writhed beneath him, impatient. Needful. His tentative control slipped from his grasp. He needed to orchestrate this seduction to his advantage, but more than that, he needed to feel her, taste her, lose himself inside her until the wasted years refilled with new, glorious memories.
He’d been alone too long. Longer than his entrapment. Longer still than his married life, mistress or no. He dropped lower and bathed Alexa’s naked belly in hot kisses. She spread her legs so that her feet dropped over the sides of the chaise. Her need crystal clear, he thought he’d lose his mind.
And he did. In the taste of her. In the feel of her. The heat of her desire and the fire of his own tossed all thoughts of freedom and captivity, magic and evil, from his brain. He wanted nothing more than to learn her, brand her, make her his in ways neither of them would ever forget.
She was panting hard when he finally looked up from between her thighs. She grabbed him by the cheeks and pulled him close.
“I can’t wait anymore. You’re driving me mad.”
He kissed her hard, loving how her flavors mixed and mingled with his. The tightness of wanting her made his whole groin ache, particularly when she clasped his buttocks with both her hands and drove her fingernails into his flesh, urging him inside her once again. He saw no reason to prolong the agony and immediately complied, though he did not impale her swiftly as she expected. Instead, he pressed the head of his sex into her just an inch, waited for her to gasp in pleasure, then withdrew.
“What?”
He drove into her a little deeper, relishing the sensation of her hot, moist skin against his hardened flesh and the way her breath caught in her throat when he teased.
“You are too hot,” he chastised.
Her eyes widened. “I’m too—?”
He eased back, leaving the top of his penis nestled in her tight opening, but denying her—and him—the full sensation they both so desperately sought. “Slow and steady wins the race,” he claimed.
She grabbed his buttocks and pulled him hard inside her.
“Not in my century,” she claimed.
His laugh soon turned to unbidden groans as need overtook him and he could think of nothing else but pumping them both to climax. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and the tilt of her womb nearly drove both of them mad. In a haze of pleasure, Damon felt centuries of control slip out of his grasp. Around him, candles blinked in and out of existence. The tapestries and silk sheaths rustled from an unseen wind and the music of her gratified bliss rang in his ears.
The moment of climax came hard, and Damon’s entire body tensed, then released. He crumbled atop her, sated and stretched to his limit. The gentle way she curled her fingers in the long strands of his hair nearly lulled him to sleep.
“I can’t believe this is real,” she said on a stilted breath.
He pulled up onto his elbow and watched how the reflection of the flames from the sconces flickered in her emerald eyes. Her beauty truly was unsurpassed. Her intense passion enhanced her attractiveness to the point where it almost pained him to look at her. Against the pillow, her burnished hair taunted him, reminded him of the Gypsy’s promise. He could only wonder how deep Alexa Chandler’s influence would remain over his destiny. She’d already released him, albeit partially, from Rogan’s cursed painting. Now she’d brought him intense pleasure in an act so simple and basic, with any other woman, the physical actions might as well have been by rote. Yet with Alexa, Damon felt renewed. Invigorated.
Alive.
Completely. Not a shadow of a man, but solid to the core.
“This is amazingly real. A few hours ago, I was trapped in a single room, staring out at nothingness for centuries on end, too exhausted by monotony and emptiness to dream about either my future or my past.”
She released the lock of her legs around his waist, but he remained inside her. Now lax, a single movement enough to separate them, he remained perfectly still.
“And now?”
He brushed a lock of her hair from her dark eyelashes. “The present has grasped my attention in a most amazing way.”
As their bodies readjusted to normalcy, Damon shifted beside Alexa, and after untangling legs and arms and slick skin, they spooned. He placed his hand protectively on her belly, splaying his fingers to possess the maximum amount of skin. He concentrated, and seconds later, a silk coverlet draped over them, chasing away the chill. Surprisingly, he felt the muscles in his shoulders and arms go completely lax. His legs barely seemed to exist. The only part of his anatomy having trouble embracing this laziness was his cock, and with her buttocks snuggled so tightly against him, he could hardly blame his intimate anatomy for attempting to regain its strength.
He leaned in and, burying his face in her tousled hair, took a deep breath. When he pulled back, he felt a scrape across the bridge of his nose. Brushing aside her burnished locks, he found that a gold chain twisted the tight strands at the nape of her neck.
“What’s this?” he asked, tugging on the necklace.
She attempted to turn toward him as he worked to untangle the chain. “Oh, it’s a good-luck charm.”
He chuckled, thinking the talisman had clearly done a brilliant job for both of them.
Working as nimbly as he could, he eased the hair from the chain, twisting and tugging until the charm came free. Only once the torn triangle fell across his fingertips did he realize what Alexa wore.