Where Demons Fear to Tread (20 page)

Then she leaned back on her elbows, with the ease of a she-lion stretching in a patch of sunlight. Displayed herself for his benefit, her blond hair spilling against the bronze bedclothes. Dangled a shoe off the toe of one foot. Tilted her head to one side so that a feathery lock of hair fell across her high cheekbone. Slowly, ever so slowly, she reached up to flip it away. In the same instant, she raised her eyelids, licked her lips and gave him the sultriest come-hither look he had ever had the supreme pleasure of witnessing.

He raised his voice to a roar, trying to scare her. “Who do you think I am? Do you want me to make you fall?”

“I won’t fall.” She didn’t even blink. She looked up at him through inky lashes, fully aware of her own sensuality and shockingly adept at using it. “There’s no passage in the Christian Bible that specifically forbids sex between unmarried people. It’s not in the Torah, either. Nor does Buddhism forbid premarital sex, as long as it’s consensual and doesn’t harm others. I know what’s in my heart,” she said. “I want to share my body with you.”

She was enough to test the patience of a saint. Last time he’d checked, his application for canonization had been denied. He didn’t stand a chance. His hands burned to touch her; he curled them into fists to stop himself from reaching out. “Don’t even suggest it. Serena, I’m a demon. Any intimate contact with me would be unclean. Immoral.”

“Then come to me not as a demon, but as a man,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Whatever you’ve done, you will be forgiven.”

Would he? Staring into the vivid clarity of her eyes, he actually wanted redemption. Longed for it as he had never done before, not in all the centuries of his existence.

He heard her high heels drop to the floor, first one then the other. She posed on the bed with her breasts accentuated, the molten silk of her minidress sliding over her. The dress stopped midthigh. She shifted so it rode higher.

What she wore beneath it was pure sacrilege—a scrap of black lace trimmed with scarlet that caught his gaze and brought him to the edge of delirium.

His hands fisted so tight the muscles of his forearms strained. “You’re too naive to realize what will happen to you. You exist in a world of rainbows and butterfly wings. Look around you. Do you know where you are? You’re in a demon’s lair. Unless you want to stay here forever,
get out.
”

That little smile flickered. “I know what I’m doing.”

He came to stand by the side of the bed, uncurled his fingers and looked down at her. “You don’t. I’m going to destroy you.”

“I don’t think that’s possible, but I’ll take my chances.”

She was determined to undo him. He was already undone. He tried, one last time. Tried to steel himself to drag her from the bed, out the door. But it was futile. His resistance had been worn away by stages, the way a river erodes rock. Every minute he spent without touching her seemed like a year. Now, after what felt like eons, his defenses had been worn to their foundation. She offered an enticement he couldn’t resist.

He leaned down and kissed her, licked open her lips. She tasted of champagne, intense and provocative. Addicting. Her lips parted as a sigh of pleasure broke from her throat. He drank it in.

Free-falling into that heady space, he dove deeper, hands mapping out the places he was coming to memorize, roaming over the contours of her breasts, the flat terrain of her toned belly. His lips set about unlocking the secret places he was still learning to navigate: the spot beneath her ear, the curve of her jawline, the tender divot between her collarbones. His fingers tangled in the brightness of her hair, curled in the sterling of her dress.

Raising his head, he paused, waiting. The room was loud with the sound of their mingled breathing, shallow gasps of craving that echoed off the walls and reverberated in the crevices his unfulfilled infatuation had carved inside him. Their union would mean the certain destruction of them both. He half expected the floor to open and swallow them, right then and there.

When it didn’t, he kissed her again. Dared both God and the devil to take them.

He had made his choice.

Chapter Thirteen

I
n the moment before he kissed her, Serena lay on that burnished silk bed, watching him deliberate over his choice. He stood utterly still for an instant that seemed to stretch into an eternity. His jaw was so tight she could see the muscles of it flexing. A small vein emerged in the middle of his forehead, a valve about to blow.

She should leave now. Take his offer and walk out the door, as she’d wished so many times in the past five days. Shut all memory of him into an iron box in the very back of her mind and never open the lid. She closed her eyes for a moment, staring into the blue-black darkness behind her closed eyelids.

I won’t fall
…
I know what I’m doing.
What brought her to speak such brave words a moment ago, she had no idea. But the little voice inside her that she had ignored so long—the one that regretted leaving her human life behind so early, that yearned to experience love—that tiny whisper would no longer remain silent.

She thought of Arielle’s words, also:
Keep love in your heart.
Sex was a physical manifestation of love. If she kept love in her heart, surely she would always be safe. She had understood that as she’d lain dying in that canyon, and as he’d rescued her from that beautiful death.

When she’d first come to Vegas, she’d prayed to be released, to go home. Now, faced with a choice, she prayed he would want her to stay. Because even though she had seen the goodness in him, she still needed to make him see it in himself.

Then he reached down and slid his hand beneath her neck, bent to kiss her. Strong yet gentle, dangerous yet infinitely tender, his lips descended on hers, claiming, capturing, drugging her into a haze of desire. His mouth ventured across her cheek to envelop her earlobe, his breath echoing in her ear. She opened her eyes. In the mirrored ceiling, she saw them reflected, her bright hair splayed against the copper-hued silk, and on top of her, the broadness of his back as he leaned over her.

That voice inside her, which had now risen to a roar, shouted,
Yes!

“Not here,” he said, his voice low and gruff. “Come.”

He led her out of the suite, past Corbin’s party guests, into the elevator. At the door of their own suite, Julian slid his card in the lock. At that moment, he turned to look back at her and asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“If you keep asking, I might change my mind,” she answered.

He bent low, swept a kiss across the back of her hand. “But then you’d miss all the fun.” He went to the stereo and selected something low and sultry. He dimmed the lights. Then he kissed her. As his lips brushed over hers, she sank against him, all urge to resist gone out of her. Tonight, all she wanted was to love him.

He took her hand and led her into the bedroom. When he moved to turn on the light, she stopped him. “Leave it,” she said. He shrugged. Light spilled in from the hallway, illuminating the room without the brightness of lights overhead.

With infinite care, he bent down and kissed the place she’d been bitten, where the puncture wounds of the snakebite had healed over. “Perfect,” he said. “You are perfect in every way.”

“So are you,” she said. “You just don’t realize it.”

He shook his head, sorrowfully. Painfully. “I’m the antithesis of perfect, Serena. I’m everything that is evil.”

“Every being is divine. Even demons. I think you’ve just made a mistake.”

“Then how do I get to the other side?”

“Love,” she said. Then she kissed him, fearlessly. She had no fear of him—love had washed it away.

His hands moved over her, sliding over her curves. This was no slow exploration of her body. This time, he was ravenous for her. She knew that nothing short of a lightning bolt sent from the heavens would stop him. She answered his passion, kissing him back with equal fervor. She ran her fingers through his hair, reveled in its softness. His scent enveloped her: the sensuous notes of his expensive cologne mingling with the scent of pure man.

They stripped out of their clothes, fingers fumbling, made suddenly clumsy with wanting and speed. Panting, he lowered her onto the bed and levered himself over her, laying his weight carefully along her, one knee pressing into the space between her thighs. He kissed a trail leading down the side of her neck, across her chest to the tops of her breasts, lower, to her stomach, and lower still.

He stripped off her panties, pausing as his gaze roamed over the freshly waxed curves of her pubic mound. “Beautiful,” he murmured, a little smile playing around the corners of his lips.

“I’ve spent so much time at the spa in the past few days, and I…” She blushed, too embarrassed to admit that she had known it would come to this.

“Hush, darling. No need to explain. It was a thoughtful gesture, and you deserve to be thanked.” He reached a hand forward to touch her, gently sliding his fingertips over her pubic mound to explore the bare folds of her. He caressed her closed slit, feeling the satin softness of the skin. Then he nudged her to open wider, so that the lips parted, exposing her wetness and the delicate peak of her clit. His gaze lit, fixed between her legs as though he had discovered a rare jewel. Featherlight, he brushed his fingers up the insides of her lips, deliberately avoiding her clit. “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

He continued to explore, teasing her until she tilted her hips upward, wanting more. He slipped a finger into the moist core of her, slowly testing the grip of her body. He inserted another finger, stretching her, and muttered, “God, you’re so tight.”

Then he dipped his head between her parted legs. His tongue swept over her in long strokes, delving repeatedly into her opening, plunging as far as it could reach until it retreated to travel upward, along the sides of her lips. He paused, his hot breath fanning her skin. Finally, he kissed the sensitive bud of her clit. It was no more than a whisper of contact at first, a mere brush of his lips over her wanting flesh. Then he laved his tongue over it, hot velvet drawing over her. And again. He lapped slowly, urging her hips to rock with his rhythm. His tongue moved lower, to drive again into the opening to her body. Retraced its path upward to flick her clit with the tip of his tongue. She arched upward, lost in the pleasure of it.

He filled his hands with her ass, kneading her buttocks, and growled a low, guttural sound of appreciation. Then he dove in, licking and sucking and driving her so wild that she grasped the sheets in handfuls to keep from bucking off the bed. He reached up and circled the nipple of one breast with his fingertips, pinching it until she almost came.

“I want you inside me,” she gasped. “I want to feel you moving in me.”

He sat up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Instead of his twitching erection, he slid his middle finger into her, circled her clit with his thumb. She closed around it, instinctively clutching for more. “I want you to beg me for it. You’ve been such a tease all week. I want to hear you say it.”

She shifted on the bed, pinioned there by a single finger.

“See how it feels to be teased?” His smile was sin incarnate. He waited for her to beg, but she would not relent.

She narrowed her eyes, “You’re a bastard.”

He kissed her, long and deep, driving his finger farther into her. Waiting, he withdrew his finger, traced her own moistness across her nipple. “Say it. Say the magic words.”

She gazed into the brightness of his blue-green eyes. “Fuck you.”

He laughed. “No, those are not the magic words.” He took his thick cock in his hand, rubbed its head in her slit until his erection was slick with her desire. Close to her ear, his breath was hot on her neck. “Say it,” he whispered. “Say it or I won’t do it.” He teased her clit with his cock, playing there until she panted and whimpered.

She reached down, closing her hand over his, running her thumb over the crown of his glorious penis. “I can wait. We’ll see who does the begging.”

She rolled so that she was on top of him, slid down the length of his body, tracing the same path that his mouth had taken on hers. From his muscled chest, she kissed down the chiseled plane of his stomach, traced her fingers through his curling pubic hair before she stopped to admire his impressive manhood. She took a moment to study it, for the first time examining the veins that traced the smooth skin of the shaft, the ridge that ran beneath it. He watched her, his gaze intense with anticipation.

Then she ran her tongue along the ridge, licking up the length of him up to the head of his cock, where a clear drop had emerged. Tasted the saltiness of it. She took him into her mouth, swirling her tongue around the head of his cock, then flicking it over the ridge as he pressed his hips upward.

He moved to kneel, and she shifted to her knees, as well, arching her back and supporting herself with one hand while she wrapped the other around his male hardness. He gathered her hair in his hands, gently cradling her head as she sucked his cock, taking in as much of him as she could. He might have driven for the back of her throat, but she kept her hand around him, controlling exactly how far he could thrust, savoring the feel of him in her mouth. She drew her other hand down the hard muscles of his thighs, reached beneath to caress his balls. She sucked until she sensed that he was close to orgasm, then she took him out of her mouth, kissing and licking more gently to bring him back from the brink.

Pushing him down, she climbed on top, legs straddling him. Instead of pulling him inside her, she hesitated. She lowered herself so that her pussy was poised above his twitching cock, and rubbed herself against his hard shaft so that he groaned. “Who’s going to do the begging now?” she whispered.

She looked down into the blue-green depths of his eyes, saw them glittering with humor. Then he rolled, switching their position so that he was on top, nestled between her widespread thighs. “It seems that neither of us is in the mood to beg tonight,” he said, lowering his head to brush a conciliatory kiss across her lips.

He guided himself to her opening, then he slowly inserted himself into her, pausing an inch inside of her as she gasped at the size of him. She blinked, trying to breathe deeply as she shifted to accommodate him. He waited, bending to kiss her hairline. “Are you all right?” She nodded, and his cock pressed farther, stretching her with every inch, pushing deeper into the core of her until she thought she would faint from the ecstasy of it. “That’s it, sweetheart,” he said. “Take all of me.”

With one hand, he grasped her hip, his fingers digging into soft flesh. She ran her fingernails gently up his back, clung to his shoulders as he pumped into her. The pleasure built, rising to a pitch so exquisite she wished she could keep him inside of her forever. He reached down and slid his hand between them, stimulating her clit in slow circles with his fingers as he thrust.

The moment of her climax came with a flash of lucid truth: he was neither demon nor human, but pure energy, light that shone so brightly it merged with the light that was her light. She knew, beyond a doubt, that he was not merely himself, she was not merely herself; they were both part of the universal energy that encompassed the existence of all living beings.

Entering her was the sweetest thing he’d ever felt. In two centuries of existence, he’d experienced nothing like it. It was like coming home. He felt his body dissolving, not like he felt when he was dematerializing, but as though he were merging with a shower of ethereal gold. The light wrapped around him, melted into him.

He rode the waves of her orgasm, grinding his hips into her so that the tip of his engorged cock, so deep inside her, seemed to touch the very heart of her. He came with her, pouring his pleasure, his elation, his joy into her body, like a deluge of rain pouring from the heavens onto a parched plain.

For a moment, they lay still together, joined at that sacred place. His cock pulsed inside her as the last drop throbbed out of him. He rested on top of her, wanting to stay inside her body forever.

Time seemed to stretch, to elongate, measured out by a new scale where every inhalation was momentous, and every exhalation, a precious event. He wanted to stay here, like this, forever. Not moving, not speaking. Just being. He felt her breathing with him, synchronized as though the flesh and bone and blood of their bodies could bridge the divide between heaven and hell.

Finally, he pulled himself out of her and rolled to one side, covered in sweat and gasping for breath as if he’d just run a marathon. He glanced over. She lay with one knee bent upward, an arm flung over her head and the other hand resting on the stretch of her stomach. He could see her ribs where her skin drew over them, wanted to count them from the bottom upward, until they merged into her magnificent breasts. He could not believe she had just allowed him to take her. Not simply allowed him. Had coaxed and cajoled him to be with her. He felt privileged and proud like he never had before.

Before, sex had been about pleasure, and about other, darker things: temptation, humiliation, exploitation. In two hundred years of debauching women, it had never occurred to him that sex could be like this. He had always ridiculed the idea that intercourse could be about spiritual union. Possibly because he had never experienced it himself. But
this.
This was an elevation of consciousness, and the moment had been eternal. He had felt himself merging with her, and more than their bodies had united. It was as though their souls had fused, and not simply during the moment of copulation. They were linked, he and she. He wasn’t sure if he could ever go back.

And it scared the shit out of him.

Well, it hardly mattered anyway. Frankly, he was surprised she hadn’t already disappeared, sucked into an abyss that opened up in the floor, or struck by a lightning bolt cast down by her puritanical god. In the morning, certainly, she would be gone, sent to hell by divine wrath.

And he would go on doing what he’d always done. Corrupting humans. But now, he would live in a special hell of his own: a world without Serena. It was a punishment only Satan himself could have dreamed up. Julian would probably even get a promotion. The thought of it made him want to fight, to kick and scream, to punch a hole in the wall. But he knew his rage was useless.