Wicked Wonderland (5 page)

Kris gave a low groan, thrashing against his restraints. The lustful sound made Lilly’s heart kick up its frantic pace, and underneath her hand, she reached the first tiny shocks of climax.

“Oh yes! God, yes, Nick, fuck me, make me come.” Kris’s begging sent her over the edge. She opened her eyes again to watch Kris’s body shudder from shoulders to hips, once, twice, three times.

She had no idea how many seconds passed before she heard Kris’s final muted cry, saw his limbs spasm, and seconds later heard Nick’s guttural, “Fuck yeah!” as he collapsed on top of Kris. It was the sound of Nick’s ecstatic voice that finally pushed her over the edge to her own complete release
.

Amazing how she could remember so much detail about that day. Well, it wasn’t really amazing. She’d been fantasizing about it for ten years. Perhaps her imagination had added or subtracted certain details as the years had gone by. Who knew? But one way or another, the memory had stayed strong.

Later, when Nick and Kris had finally left the room, Lilly had snuck out of the closet and walked back to her own dorm room, where she’d locked herself in and cried for an hour, barely responding to her roommate’s questions about what was wrong. She’d felt utterly humiliated, betrayed and rejected. How could Nick be gay? He’d been her boyfriend for eighteen months. He’d been such an enthusiastic lover. He couldn’t be. He wasn’t gay. And Kris! She’d just begun to have something more with Kris than friendship. They still hadn’t had intercourse, she’d felt it was too soon after Nick for her to jump fully into another relationship. But they’d dated casually. They’d been involved.

Finally, curiosity overwhelmed humiliation. She needed to know more, understand more, however much it hurt. She needed to know
why
.

Kris and Nick had tried to talk to her. They told her they were bisexual and that they sometimes shared women. Nick had sworn to her that they both loved her and wanted to be with her. He’d said there was no reason they couldn’t form a ménage a trois. Lilly had told him to go to hell and thrown the bracelet he’d once given her at his head. She’d said neither of them should ever speak to her again.

Yet she’d felt a bizarre mix of betrayal, arousal, love, a sense that however wrong her brain told her their lovemaking was, it simply felt right. It had been too much for her eighteen-year-old mind to comprehend.

Over the years, she’d read many books about bisexuality and alternative sexuality, about BDSM, ménage and many other things besides, and the memory of that day had lost any sadness and become only an erotic fantasy.

Now the three of them rounded the corner, and Nick swung Lilly down and set her on her feet at last, breaking her out of her thoughts. “We want to show you something very special Lilly, something we never would have dared show you when we were in college.

Lilly’s white heels sank deep in the snow. She stood still for a long minute, shocked, then took a hasty step back, almost toppling over but for Nick’s steadying hand on her arm.

“Oh…my…God!”

This cannot be real. This can’t be happening.

Woozy and light-headed from shock, Lilly felt her legs give way. Luckily, Nick caught her, pulling her tight against his body to stop her from falling into the snow.

A massive sled stood before her. It could have seated twenty people, and it blocked the entire road. Made from some kind of polished dark wood, it gleamed in the moonlight. Hundreds of fairy lights sparkled along the sides, front and back. Sleigh bells covered the harness on the team of thirteen reindeer. The animal at the front of the team had a shiny red nose. Her mind fogged over, and she couldn’t speak.

I must be dreaming.

Nick stood behind her, his strong hands on her shoulders, his breath warm on the back of her neck. He couldn’t have felt more real. This was no dream.

“This is Santa’s sleigh? Wh…where are the presents?”

“Oh, they’re in a magic cargo hold. It’s bottomless. But tonight’s the twenty-second of December. We don’t have children’s toys in there. Tonight’s Adults’ Night, the night when Kris and I deliver.”

One of the reindeer snorted and pawed the ground, giving Lilly a start. Kris scratched the animal at the base of his antlers and pulled an apple out of his pocket, offering it to the creature. The animal snorted happily.

“S-so…it’s all true? You’ve really lived with Santa Claus? You’re…elves or sylphs, like you always claimed?” She eyed Nick, noting the way his muscles strained the seams of his red Santa coat. “I thought elves or sylphs were meant to be tiny, wispy things with fairy wings.”

Nick made a face. “Personally, I prefer to look like a guy. Both Kris and I are part mortal. We can shift into that kind of fairy form if we want, but we rarely do. I’d rather fly in the sleigh than fly with wings. To be honest, it’s incredibly painful for a half fae like me to take that form.”

Lilly’s heart knocked against her rib cage. She couldn’t get her head around all of this. It was crazy! She knew she was babbling, asking too many questions, but she had to know. Had to understand. Had to get some clarity. “If you were brought up by Santa, as you claimed, and lived with him during your childhood and helped him with deliveries, wouldn’t that make you Santa’s elves? When I thought you were making these stories up, I never understood why you called yourselves sylphs and not elves.”

“We don’t like that term because of all the silly books and things that show us with pointy ears. I mean, do these ears look pointy to you?” Kris pulled back a few locks of his golden hair to show his perfectly human-looking ears, and a giggle escaped her despite herself. “None of us at the North Poll have those stupid pointy ears. I don’t know where that rumor got started.”

Nick’s lips twitched. “We get called Santa’s elves all the time, Lilly, all the time. To many people, elves are indistinguishable from fae, but being half mortal and having spent time in the mortal world, Kris and I are more aware of how mortals perceive things, I guess. That’s why we prefer to be called fae.”

All those silly conversations she remembered having with them in the student pub about how they grew up with Santa flooded back into her mind. There’d been times she’d laughed and enjoyed what she thought of as their shtick, and other times it had just been annoying.

So many questions filled her head, and randomly, some formed on her lips. “I remember you two always used to talk about being half mortal. Does being part mortal mean you’re, um…immortal? Do fairies never die?”

Nick shook his head. “Fairies can die, but they don’t die of old age like mortals. We…they can potentially live forever, providing they avoid certain things. As for us half fae, it comes down to the luck of genetics, I guess. Some are more like the fae and never seem to age once they get to about thirty. Others die very human deaths. The offspring of humans mating with fae have a wide range of different abilities, a whole spectrum. As I said, it’s all down to genetics whether you’re mortal or immortal and what powers you have.”

“What do fae die of?”

“Oh, a number of things, depending on what type of fae they are. Most fae avoid cold iron. Half-fae men who take the path of iron and fight with iron swords lose their magical ability.”

And I’ve avoided iron as much as I could all my life. I thought it was a quirky phobia.

Surely that doesn’t mean
…

Nick laid his hand on her shoulder, and she jumped. “Are you okay?”

Lilly nodded. “It’s a lot to absorb, that’s all.”

Nick gave her a gentle smile. “Of course it is.”

Kris was still feeding the reindeer, but he called to Nick over his shoulder. “Hey, Nick, I was right! Lilly can see the sleigh, so that means…”

But Nick shot Kris a fierce look that made the younger man fall silent.

Lilly wasn’t going to let it slide. Nick might be a natural Dom, but that didn’t mean he could always get his way. “That means what, Kris? What does my seeing the sleigh mean?”

He looked distinctly uncomfortable, his gaze flicking back and forth between her and Nick. “Well, you know… That you’re not one hundred percent human.”

Not one hundred percent human! What kind of insult is that? Is it an insult?

“Hey, Kris.” Nick’s tone was dark but smooth. “I think Lilly’s been through enough for one night without having to think about that. She must be freezing. Climb in, Lilly.”

Lilly glared at Nick. “I want to know what he has to say.”

He sighed. “You can see the sleigh. That means you must have some fae blood in you. Like we both do.”

Kris continued, “When we heard the rumors about you being found in a Dumpster as a baby… Well, it did occur to us that maybe your birth mother might have noticed your fae qualities and feared her newborn was a changeling child.”

Lilly’s head snapped back as it would from a blow; her cheeks heated with flame. She wasn’t used to anyone mentioning where she’d been found, apart from her stalker in his vicious messages.

Kris made gentle eye contact with her, walked away from the reindeer and came to stand beside her. He reached out and took a strand of her hair in his hand, stroking the curls lightly. The soft empathy in his expression as he looked down at her worked to calm her nerves. “You were only a little baby. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

She looked down at her hands and played with her ring. “My mother dumped me in the trash when I was born. Of course I’m ashamed.” Lilly wasn’t going to mention how much more ashamed her stalker had made her over the years than she might otherwise have been, with his nasty notes and letters. The vandalism he’d done to her property so many times, the words Trashwhore written in lipstick on her dressing table mirror, on the outside walls of her mother’s townhouse. Even across the frame of her music degree when he’d somehow managed to break into their home.

Over time, she’d learned not to talk to most people about her stalker, because most people thought it was weird and decided she was somehow weird by association. Some of the people in her life ignored her if she mentioned it. Others saw it as an exaggerated drama of her own making.

Kris moved closer to her, and the scent of his cedar-wood cologne surrounded her. She remembered Kris had always smelled like a man who’d just had a bath, fresh and clean and yet male. The heat of him fogged her brain.

“Come on,” he said. “Your legs are turning blue through those sheer stockings. Climb in!” He dumped her handbag into the sleigh.

Lilly looked inside. It was like a bed in there, with red, orange and gold jewel-toned satin and mink pillows and small rugs. It gave new meaning to the phrase “sleigh bed”. Ribbons in bright jewel colors lay scattered across the floor. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

Nick stood behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. The man was a danger to her psyche. Just the touch of his hands on her was enough to send her mind spiraling to all the sexual fantasies she’d had about both him and Kris ever since she’d seen them making love.

She’d had the odd one-night stand when she’d been lonely enough, and they’d been fun. And it would be many women’s fantasy to make love with two men as hot and gorgeous as this. It was certainly
her
fantasy. It had been for ten years. If she got in the sleigh with them, anything might happen.

Her body began to heat at the very thought of the possibilities, but she had to maintain some dignity.

That ass smacking had been beyond the pale.

She let out a breath to relieve the pressure in her chest. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to ride with you in your sleigh because it’s so damn cold, but that doesn’t mean I forgive you for picking me up and smacking my ass like that. I’m not an innocent eighteen-year-old anymore. I’ve read about dominance and submission, but you’re supposed to discuss these things with a partner before you do something like that, Nick. God damn!” She took another deep breath, prepared to carry on with her scolding, despite the fact she felt more turned on than before. “That may be how sylphs treat women, but mortal women expect a little more finesse. You can take me for a ride in that wild sleigh, and then you can take me home.”

Even as she spoke the words, Lilly knew in her heart that if they pushed just a little, she’d give in to her lust for them both.

Nick watched Lilly slide one shapely, sexy leg over the side of the sleigh. Her flimsy skirt flipped up in the wind, showing her beautiful, curvy ass. He imagined those legs wrapped around his hips, and his cock stiffened.

But he heeded her earlier words. He must not jump her. If he did, she wouldn’t trust him.

I was always so sure Lilly was one hundred percent mortal female. Kris was right, and I should have known better. Those eyes are a fairy color, too unusual and perfect to be wholly mortal.

He and Kris had messed things up with her before by not understanding the mind of a mortal female. He knew some of them liked dominant alpha men like him, but they still seemed to expect a different set of manners or preliminaries. When Lilly broke up with him, she’d said he was too macho, too dominating. That she needed some space. When she’d stop talking to Kris as well, it had been because she couldn’t handle their bisexuality.

But there was no point in thinking about the past. There was only one thing he was sure about right now, and that was that he wanted Lilly more than he’d ever wanted another woman. He’d wanted her when she was eighteen, and he wanted her now with a hunger that could drive him crazy if he didn’t do something about it. But this time, he and Kris had to go slow.

The fae world was completely foreign to her. She’d never believed it existed, and he’d never pushed it when they were at college together. Now, if either he or Kris moved too fast, pressed her too much emotionally, they’d risk pushing her away again.

Nick climbed in the sleigh. Despite her tough words, Lilly didn’t move away when he sat beside her. She smelled of jasmine and feminine warmth. The perfume on her neck was different from the stuff she’d worn as a teen, a much lighter fragrance that blended sensually with her own natural scent. Nick clenched one hand into a fist, fighting to rein in his desire.