Rapture (Elfin Series) by Quinn Loftis

lips parted and her eyes widened at his grin. “It says the portals can also be opened by the willing sacrifice of a servant.”
    “You mean one of the dark elves would have to sacrifice themselves?” Elora asked.
    “It just says a willing sacrifice. It doesn’t say it has to be their life,” Cush points out.
    “Well that’s a little more doable,” she said as she pulled her long, dark hair up into a ponytail securing it with a rubber band from her wrist. She lowered her arms and propped her hands on her waist and chewed on her bottom lip as she thought. “Now we just need to find a sacrificial lamb amongst the dark elves in the human realm.” She looked at her mom and then to Cush and smiled. “You know what this means?”
    “Uh, what?” Oakley asked blankly.
    “Vegas baby!” she whooped.
    “What’s in Las Vegas?”
    “From what Cassie told me, it’s the dark-elf capital of the world.”
    “And do you really believe you can get a dark elf to willingly give a s acrifice to open the portals?” he countered.
    Elora shrugged. “Everyone has a price.”
     

     
    Elora tapped her chin with her finger as she stared into her closet. She had already packed all the mundane items needed for traveling but she knew she needed something with a litt le swagger; they were going to Sin City after all. Her mind drifted to Cassie and she felt a twist of regret in her gut that her best friend wouldn’t be with her to see the bright lights of Vegas in all their blaring glory.
    “What’s your price, Little Raven?” A deep voice rumbled from her doorway startling her from her thoughts.
    She turned slowly, giving herself time to compose herself, to see Cush standing in all his Elfin warrior glory. His hair was pulled back and in its long braid down his back , and the band that he wore around his head should have looked feminine, but instead it made him appear regal without diminishing any of his masculinity. His green vest molded to his chest. Brown pants outlined powerful legs and the boots were like icing on the cake—dude was hot. She would love to say that her breath didn’t catch, or that her heart didn’t do some ridiculous girly flip, or that the damn butterflies weren’t doing the tango in her stomach again, but the fact of the matter was that she was over the freaking moon for the guy. And there he was, standing there, staring at her with those eyes and that mouth and, get a grip, she growled to herself.
    “What do you mean?” s he asked cautiously.
    He took a step inside and let his eyes wander over the room. She knew that her room didn’t exactly resemble that of a typical teenage girl. It was dark and edgy, just like her. Where some girls might have One Direction, gag me, she thought, hanging on their walls, she had Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And where some girls might have cozy flannel sheets, she had black satin.
    His eyes finally made their way back to her and she was still drinking in the tall glass of elf chardonnay.
    “Show me what the humans see,” she said suddenly very curious as to what his human guise was. He tilted his head to the side, obviously surprised by her request, but then suddenly standing before her was a guy who appeared to be aroun d twenty with short blond hair and light blue eyes, which weren’t glowing as they had previously been. His clothes altered just a tad, the vest becoming a shirt and the boots no longer laced over the outside of the pants. Then the image was gone.
    Her first thought was she liked the short hair but then another thought occurred to her as his elfin form reemerged. “Why was Syndra able to keep her form hidden from me if I’m half elf?”
    “Syndra is royalty,” he told her simply as if that answered all her questions.
    “Must be nice,” Elora mumbled as she continued to stare at the masculine perfection that was so out of place in her room.
    “You never answered me,” she told him. “What did you mean ‘what’s my price?’”
    Cush stared