What Happens in Vegas...After Dark by Lauren Dane

early-morning light streamed in past the thin white curtains covering my bedroom windows, I was going to get my answers. At least, I was going to give Ryan a final chance to provide them.

    Tossing back the top sheet, I climbed naked from the bed. I didn’t bother to dress, but made my way downstairs to find him passed out on the couch, sunny-side up. I lifted him from la-la land with a hard slap to the right cheek of his far too appealing sunny side and a little mental stimulation of the magical kind.
    Jerking awake, he rolled over and right off the edge of the couch. He winced as he slammed ass-first into the floor. That boyishly lopsided smile appeared on his face then, spreading into his deep green eyes as he pushed up on his elbows. “Good morning to you, too.”
    I was beginning to hate that smile. Hate even more the way it raised a gush factor I had no idea existed until I entered his life.
    Focusing on his involvement with Jada, I kept my lips from smiling back. “I’ve been thinking about Jada.”
    Losing his smile, he sat bolt upright. “What about?”
    “I’m surprised you don’t remember her death. I couldn’t stop thinking about her long enough to fal asleep last night, so I went online and I found some old news threads on her apartment fire. Ladder 19 was one of the crews that responded to the blaze.”
    He looked thoughtful for a few seconds before glancing away with a shrug. “I probably had the day off.”
    Damn, I didn’t want Ryan’s denial. But that he was giving it to me was the answer I needed. He was a fraud. A smooth player who, if he cared at all, would have the balls to trust me with the truth as fully as he claimed he did with his body.
    For the sake of my fiercely beating heart, I pinned him with an expectant look and gave him one more chance. “Did you?”
    A hundred different responses raced through his eyes. Was the truth in there? I couldn’t tel . I could only hear the detached tone of his voice as he gave a resolute nod and said,
    “I’m sure that I did.”
    Fuck. Fuck, and yet, I should have expected no less.
    Every bit of the hatred I’d lost for him the last weeks resurged as an acidic burning in my belly that quickly ate its way outward. That he could act so aloof about Jada’s death…
    it proved him the bastard I’d always known. Coldhearted and deserving of a death just as agonizing as hers had been.
    Flashing a supreme smile even as my belly quivered with loathing, I went down on my knees in front of him and took his cock in hand. A dose of mental stimulation had his shaft rousing to hardness in seconds.

    I bent to swipe my tongue across the pre-cum oozing at the tip. Despising how much I stil loved his taste, I feigned an eager grin. “What do you say to a welcome-to-the-morning blow job?”
    “I could use more sleep first.”
    Now that he mentioned it, he did look tired. Too bad for him I no longer gave a shit.
    “Just shut up and enjoy the entertainment, Cock.”
    Hitting him with a heavy shot of seduction, I wrapped my lips around his dick and took it deep into my mouth. I licked at his rod as my lips worked up and down the steely length. All the while, I concentrated on stealing his strength.
    Ryan had done incredibly well at resisting my attempts to drain his energy and take over his mind the last while. But I knew now that was only because I hadn’t been trying hard enough. I’d wanted to like him. Maybe I’d even wanted to love him to the point of rings and vows and, one day, kids, regardless that our progeny would have been far less powerful Damphir for their half-human blood.
    Now, my illusions of love, lust and offspring burst.
    Now, I turned every ounce of my power on him with the plans to render him unconscious and then take him to the one place on Earth I could count on both my powers being at their strongest and an audience eager to view the demise of a mortal with bloodstained hands and a vicious heart.
    Ryan
    “Open your eyes,