What Happens in Vegas…After Dark Read online

  “No?” he asked in a dazed voice.

  “No.” Grabbing hold of the counter ledge, I pulled off from his erection and moved back on the counter. He stood immobile, and I stage whispered, “Ryan, I think someone’s about to come into the kitchen.”

  Shaking his head, he emerged from whatever trance he’d fallen under. “Shit.”

  “Cock?” the deep voice shouted again, sounding closer this time.

  “I’m coming,” Ryan yelled back. He pulled my robe around me and secured the sash in a tight knot before tucking his glistening shaft into his briefs and pulling up his pants.

  “You almost were,” I tossed out flippantly as a funny sensation passed through me over his consideration to see me dressed first.

  I diagnosed that sensation then. Not gratitude for his selflessness. Rather, the mind and body knowledge that he was a fraud attempting to make himself look good for the sake of ensuring I’d continue to sleep with him.

  As if in testament to my thought, he sent an arrogant grin in the direction of my breasts. “We’ll be out of here in six hours. Keep working the knob till then.”

  Chapter Three

  Deitre

  A lot of demons felt mortals were good only for feeding. I felt that way about a lot of them, too, but not all. Jada had been truly kick-ass. Karen—a friend I’d met through Jada a few years back—was becoming that way, more and more. In fact, I’d given some serious consideration to letting her in on what I was and seeing if she was interested in being turned into one herself.

  Or I had been until I walked up to the bakery-style café she operated in the first floor of the Liege casino and saw her through the nearly floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall windows. Two weeks ago, she’d been spewing that men were pigs good for nothing but sex. Now, she was sucking face with some rangy guy whose hair was the same shade of white-blond and as closely cropped as Karen’s own. It wasn’t just a random face sucking, either. But the kind that involved her arms tenderly embracing his neck in a way that hinted she was seriously into him.

  Right there was the reason most demons loathed humans. Far too many allowed themselves to be victimized by their hearts. Today, this guy was tops. Tomorrow, he’d ring her up from some new fuck’s bed and tell her they were through.

  Hell, for all I knew Ryan was in some other fuck’s bed, too. He’d said he had a standing poker date with his brother and his brother’s fiancée every other Wednesday night, but since he hadn’t invited me along to play, he could’ve been lying. I could find that out easily enough if I wanted. I didn’t want. For one thing, my gut told me that he wasn’t lying. For another thing, I was eager for a girl’s night out.

  I let Karen and her man maul each other another minute, and then gave her a little mental prompting to break things off and usher him out the door. The café had closed a half hour ago. It was high time to get our butts to a club.

  With my prompting as an impetus, Karen led the guy to the door. She wore a moony expression that didn’t fit with her black near-goth attire of a snug shirt, ripped-hem skirt and clunky combat boots. Though I was standing less than a yard away, she didn’t look over as she opened the door, stepped out into the relatively quiet hallway, and sealed their goodbye with another heated lip-lock.

  The guy broke things off with a rough laugh and a few murmured words that got Karen laughing, as well. Then he took off toward the casino’s front entrance.

  “Hey, woman, what’s going on?” I piped in, sans the feigned Southern drawl, when she leaned back against the café door and sighed like a love-struck puppy.

  I’ll admit the guy had a nice set of buns from what I could tell through his jeans. But c’mon!

  Karen turned to look at me. Surprise passed through her hazel eyes ringed with a generous helping of kohl, but she played it off like she’d known I was there all along. “Hi to you. I haven’t seen you around in—what—a couple weeks?”

  “Almost,” I said as she opened the door and I followed her back inside the café. “I decided to finally put my training to use again and got hired on at the firehouse across town.”

  “Now, there’s a tough job. Being surrounded by hot, sweaty men with hard muscles and wet hoses.” Karen laughed and then quickly sobered. “Seriously, that’s great. I’m proud of you. Aren’t you a little intimidated by the fires, though?”

  Intimidated, no. Intoxicated, yes. Fire fueled me almost as effectively as feeding off blood and sex. “You just have to respect them.”

  “Mmm…whatever. I still couldn’t do it.” She slid behind a midtorso-level counter with a built-in glass display case. “Hungry?”

  Technically, I never got hungry. Not for food, anyway. But I could eat and I enjoyed the taste of good food the same as a mortal would. Karen’s offerings were always top-notch. “Sure.” I sank down on one of three backless black bar stools in front of the counter. “Whatever you have on hand.”

  She bent a little and reached somewhere out of range of the display case’s glass. Straightening, she lifted a plate sporting a huge chunk of chocolate cake laced with gooey caramel. My stomach gave an obnoxiously excited rumble as she set the plate in front of me.

  Caramel and I were friends from way back.

  Practically salivating, I grabbed a plastic spork from a glass jar on the counter and sporked a huge, gooey bite into my mouth. Ooh, yeah…The only way it would be better was served on Ryan’s rock-hard abs.

  I took another bite, murmuring my elated gratitude before I cut to the chase. “So who’s the guy?”

  Karen’s moony expression returned. “An old boyfriend. He moved back to Vegas a few weeks ago. I ran into him at a club the Saturday before last, and things clicked just like old times. Only, this time they’re a lot more serious.”

  “Like multiple, mutual orgasms serious?”

  Her gaze traveled to her left hand and her lips curved in a beaming grin. “Like rings and vows and, maybe, one day kids serious.”

  My belly flip-flopped at the sight of the rock on her ring finger. Holy Hell, the situation was far worse than I thought.

  As much as I liked the woman Karen was on her own, I’d vowed to never use my powers on her aside from in a minor way, like getting her apparent fiancé out the café door. Seeing the ring on her finger, I began to doubt that vow. It was possible the guy would turn out to be worthy, but it was a lot more possible that he wouldn’t.

  I stabbed the chocolate-covered tines of my spork in the air a few inches from her face. “Last month you swore you never wanted that stuff.”

  “Yeah, and so did you, but the second I mentioned it, your eyes lit up.”

  What?

  Was Mr. Rings and Vows and Maybe Kids an incubus in disguise, warping her mind?

  Karen had to be warped to suggest I wanted a husband. Now, kids…Since being placed in charge of the lesser succubi’s education, some latent part of me had been warming to the idea of offspring. I’d suggested to Ryan that I couldn’t get pregnant. But I could get pregnant, with the right desire and the right sperm.

  Snorting over the absurdity of Karen’s suggestion, I stuffed another bite of cake into my mouth. Obviously, the caramel was of the highest quality. Even when I was feeling irritated, its succulent taste took a tight third to blood and semen.

  “A trick of the light,” I assured her after I finished chewing. “I don’t do serious relationships. I definitely don’t do husbands.”

  She studied my face, looking unconvinced, and then shrugged and turned to her register. “I’ll be ready to head out in ten minutes. Brian’s got plans with the guys. Want to take in a club with me?”

  Going clubbing with her had been my point in coming here. But now I wasn’t in the mood for a girl’s night out with a moony mortal. I needed the kind of place where I could let my wings out and relax. The type of laid-back yet feel-good atmosphere guaranteed to be found at Darkness—the club across the street from the Liege. Unless a supernatural being deemed it otherwise, Darkness was visible only by non
human eyes. In other words, Karen and most every other moony mortal weren’t allowed.

  I took another bite of cake, and then pushed the plate to her side of the counter. “Thanks, but I think I’ll call it an early night.”

  Concern entered her eyes. “Work catching up with you?”

  Damn, she would have to break out the sympathy. It almost made me want to disregard the love-struck vibes coming off her to accept the clubbing invitation. Almost. “Something like that. But don’t sweat it. Once I get into my stride, I’ll be fine.”

  Ryan

  I could handle Deitre, I reminded myself as I pulled into the garage of the two-story rental house. Our first week together had been a little taxing on my system—even with my most sexual of lovers I’d never screwed so much. But the last couple days I’d been adjusting to her strenuous expectations and those she had me expecting of myself.

  I’d also come to appreciate how well she erased my negative thoughts.

  Yeah, the occasional nasty shit still entered my mind, but all in all, I was feeling good. Feeling like I could keep up with any guy from her past. Feeling overly aroused from not having seen her for almost thirty hours now.

  One of the guys had come down with the flu, so I’d had to pick up an extra twelve-hour shift. I’d gotten the call while out at Jack and Carinna’s place for our bimonthly poker night and had headed straight to the firehouse. Though I’d had the nearly unstoppable urge to speed home as soon as my shift let out at ten this morning, I didn’t want to scare Deitre off by making it seem I couldn’t handle being without her.

  Christ, it was scary enough for me to think that.

  Of course, it wasn’t that I couldn’t handle being without her. I could. But why bother when coming home meant spending the morning making up for all the sex we’d missed out on in the last thirty hours?

  Grabbing two small, brown bags of goodies I’d picked up for her while killing time after work, I got out of my Jeep and headed for the door that led from the garage to the kitchen. The door opened when I was a foot away. I expected Deitre to be standing there, waiting to jerk me inside with a blood-boiling kiss and grope. But she wasn’t in sight.

  Hoping to hell she was somewhere inside, for how anxious I was to see her, I moved through the door. Aside from the dim light filtering in from the garage, the kitchen was mostly dark.

  “Welcome home, bad boy.” Her sultry twang came from the direction of the living room.

  My eyes adjusted to the blackness as I moved through the kitchen to find her standing a few feet from the stairs. A halo of fiery light sliced up from somewhere behind her. The halo shape mocked her demonic horns and tail while the light illuminated the tauntress’s smile curving her shiny red lips and the glimmering red leather that made up her miniscule, skintight she-devil costume.

  My heart and cock throbbed in tandem as I slid my gaze along her body.

  Nipple holes had been cut out of the low-riding dress’s top and thin black rope crisscrossed over her belly. The dress’s hem had to damn near skim her pussy. Red fishnet stockings dipped down to four-inch-heeled black-and-red lace-up spikes, and would keep her crotch from being completely nude. Somehow the knowledge her sex wasn’t completely bare had my dick pulsing even harder.

  Feeling like I was hovering a couple inches off the floor for the magnitude of pent-up lust rocketing through my system, I went to Deitre. Dropping the goody bags, I tugged her bodacious bod against my own. She purred out a sexy little growl, and I crashed my mouth over hers like a starving man.

  She tasted like heaven and hell all in one. Too damned good just like she was too damned perfect. Almost perfect. She still had that whole need to control me thing going on, letting me have the ropes just long enough to pacify me.

  Tonight, that was going to change. Tonight, I showed her who the man was in this relationship.

  Coming up for air, I fondled her velvety tail. “All this is for me?”

  She tossed back her head, slapping the weight of her lustrous hair against the air while she moaned like she could feel my fingers’ stroke and was majorly getting off on it.

  Freeing her tail, I cupped her backside. And what a delectable treat that was. Like her nipples, the leather over the curves of her butt had been cut away, and smooth, muscular ass filled my palms.

  Circling her groin against my erection, she brought her head back up and smiled knowingly into my eyes. “Like it, do you? I saw it while I was visiting a friend at the Liege and thought of you.”

  So I was sticking in her head during our time apart, too. I could take a small measure of comfort in that. Maybe.

  Damn, but this thing we were doing felt like it was getting complicated.

  If one of us could leave after the sex ended it might not seem like more than the physical was happening. But we never went further than our respective bedrooms, and even then Deitre spent the night invading my dreams.

  Focusing on the present—and she did look like a present gifted straight from the gods—I said, “Carinna, my brother’s fiancée, used to work at the Liege. I visited her plenty and I don’t recall ever seeing anything like this for sale.”

  She glanced down at her nipples, stabbing erect through their holes and gleaming in the fiery halo light like they were coated with some kind of gel. “You just weren’t looking in the right places.”

  My mind painted the gel as cum from some earlier masturbation exploration, and my balls snugged tight.

  Glancing at the floor had the forgotten goody bags coming into view. I picked up one at random and held it out to her. “I got you something while I was out, too.”

  She took the bag, unwrapped its neck, and pushed her hand inside. Licking her lips excitedly, she pulled out a container of lube and a silver-sparkled butt plug. Her eyes—ice-blue even now when rapturous anticipation claimed them—swept up to mine. “Can I use it on you?”

  My sphincter muscles tightened with the enthusiasm in her question. Maybe I couldn’t handle Deitre, after all.

  Feeling like my ego was about to shrivel up and die, I stepped back from the temptation of her barely clothed body to confess, “I should’ve told you from the start, but I’m not up to the level of the guys you’ve obviously been with in the past. Maybe a year ago, I would have been. But my life has changed since then. I need some downtime now and again.” I eyed the anal toy and winced. “And probably not a butt plug stuck in my ass during the up time.”

  Smiling wide and wanton, she stroked the shaft of the plug. “So that’s not a no?”

  “Not a definite no.” Her smile grew, and I realized what I’d said while my logic was clouded with her sexy stroking. “Also, not a probable yes.”

  “What happened?”

  With effort, I yanked my gaze from her finger play. “When?”

  “A year ago. Why the changes?”

  The anxious beat of my heart went from that of arousal to that of unease. I hadn’t told anyone the answer to her question. Not even the department shrink we were required to see once a year to ensure dealing with casualties on the job wasn’t affecting our mental health. For whatever reason, and despite my unease, I wanted to tell Deitre.

  Guessing that lust was continuing to cloud my judgment and responsible for that want, I offered a partial response. “I did my job. Part of me knows that. Part of me is convinced that I screwed up.”

  Deitre

  The way this week was going I would soon be adding myself to the list of demons who loathed all mortals.

  First, Karen had to go and get all moony. Now, Ryan was acting like he actually felt remorse over Jada’s death. His body was aroused to the point his thoughts were once again clear to me, and there was no doubt that it was her death he was referencing.

  I was fully aware of his thoughts, but he was managing to hold back his emotions. That withdrawal made it likely that his behavior was nothing more than another attempt to keep me around by acting like he had a sensitive side. Even so, I couldn’t convince myself to lead him
into the kitchen and feed him the drugged stew I’d made for dinner. Normally, I would never rely on mortal pills to help drain my victims. But, like his ability to keep his emotions from me, Ryan had started to resist the full effect of my feedings. I still left him tired, just not nearly as much as he should be.

  Sniffing, he glanced into the kitchen. “Something smells incredible. Did you cook?”

  “Yes.” I feigned a pout. “But we’re not eating it. I tried a new recipe and it didn’t turn out.”

  “No need to pout, devil girl, I’ve got a present number two.” He squatted to grab another small brown bag from the carpet.

  Ignoring how much I liked his incredibly accurate endearment and, more, his desire to see me happy, I took the bag from him and unrolled the top. And, ooh, yeah, he got me happy with that gift.

  My pussy tingled as I pulled out a bottle of edible caramel body sauce. “Can you read my mind, or how did you know what a sucker I am for caramel?”

  “Honestly?” I nodded, and he got a sheepish look complete with a lopsided smile. “You’re not the only one with a weakness for caramel. I bought it for you to put on your body so that I can lick it off.”

  Like I’d noticed from day one, the guy was hotter than Hell. What I hadn’t noticed that day was that he was also cute in a boyish sort of way.

  A boyish sort of way? What the fuck was that about?

  It was the kind of thought for a moony mortal, not a she-devil who got off on screwing the life out of her lovers.

  Soon, I would screw the life out of Ryan. Tonight, I was just going to forget that cute concept ever entered my head and let him stroke my tail some more.

  My sex spasmed with the remembered feel of his callused fingers caressing my tail. Clearly, he believed it part of the costume as I’d intended. But it was part of me that I’d kept secreted before this and my biggest erogenous zone by far.

  Or maybe not where he was concerned.

  One second I was standing there preparing to seduce him. The next second he had me on my back on the couch, and was pouring the caramel sauce between my spread thighs. The diamond-shaped openings at the crotch of my fishnet stockings added remarkable friction against the slippery glide of the sauce. His fingers, as he bathed my otherwise naked labia with caramel, added a thrill so primal and delicious, it had my pussy burning with need and me considering that my sex might just be my new favorite erogenous zone.