Page 31 of Bound and Tide

Hooking fingers into the waist of his breeches, she made expert work of undressing him fully, and Xander’s biggest and best asset rose like a mast. She took a long, admiring look at him, palms coming to rest on his thighs. Unable to contain himself, Xander wiggled his hips, waving her a stiff if excitable hello, or rather, get on with it.

Red squinted, approval falling off her face, and she stood from the bed to go to a small shelf that held a number of jars. Her fingers danced over the unmarked containers before she plucked one up and popped off the lid with a devious grin.

Oh, basest, darkest, foulest beasts, Xander liked that grin. “What’s that, Red?”

“Just one of my silly human potions.” She dipped a finger in, and it came out coated in a thick creamy something or other.

“Half-human potions,” he corrected because for all of the talking Xander did, he wasn’t completely immune to listening.

Red hummed, brows arching. “Would you like to find out exactly what it does?”

Under the spell of the evil glint to her eye, he didn’t care at all where that finger ended up—in fact, the obscener the better—and he nodded with vigor.

Red settled herself on the bed between his legs, still fully dressed, her hair secured in a messy knot atop her head. Gods, she really was beautiful with her tongue licking at her lips as she considered him. So beautiful, in fact, he didn’t think about that tongue on his cock and instead imagined it lightly grazing his lips, teasing them open, and then pressing her mouth to his. Xander’s mouth was usually much too busy forming curses or insults to make time for kissing, but how long had it actually been?

Red’s touch jolted Xander back into the moment. She drew her ointment-covered finger down the length of a thick vein that ran to the base of his cock and then spiraled back up around his girth. Her touch was feather-light and as delicate as he’d imagined while watching her take carefully measured pinches of herbs and dissecting stamens from dried flowers. But then her fingers flexed, and she gripped his length, slathering him in the cream as she began painfully slow strokes.

Xander let out a sound close enough to a whimper to be embarrassed by it, but he didn’t care—she was finally touching him, and it was fucking Empyrea the way she worked him steadily and firmly and hotly and—well, that was quite warm, wasn’t it?

Brow raised, he took a steadying breath. “Dearest Red, has anyone ever been allergic to that concoction?”

She shook her head, a lip caught between her teeth as she handled him with even more force. Another stroke downward, and her emerald eyes sparkled as she sucked in a heated breath. Well, if she was going to enjoy it so much, he may as well too. His head fell back, and his eyes closed, and every muscle in his body tightened and relaxed with each of her leisurely yet unyielding pumps.

But then her hand was gone, though the throbbing didn’t cease. It was a good throb, surely, but it begged for someplace warm and wet to bury into followed by a release that would probably blind and deafen him for a full minute. The weight of Red on the bed was also gone, and when he lifted his head, she was meticulously wiping her hand off with a linen.

“Red?” he asked, voice wobblier than he would have liked. “Darling?”

“Hmm?”

He gestured with one head to the other, hands still immobile.

“Oh, I have things to do,” she said flippantly. “You can wait, can’t you?”

Xander cleared the concern out of his throat. “I’m not sure I follow, dearest.”

“Well, that’s because you don’t follow. You stay, like a good boy, if you want to.”

“I don’t want to,” he scoffed, jaw going tight.

“Of course you don’t. And you and I both know you can get out of those ties with all that magic you have swirling around in your veins or wherever, but that doesn’t change the fact I’ve got a business to run. Though, if you behave, I’ll probably come back.”

Xander’s cock pulsed. He could see it, the heartbeat thrumming through him and begging to be used. Gods, she was fucking evil. “For…for how long?”

She sidled up to the bed and laced clean fingers into his hair, brushing it back as she leaned her face so close he could feel her breath as she spoke. “As long as it takes.” She tugged at the pillows behind his head then pulled back, patted his cheek with a sharpness that made him gasp, and strode out of the room, door shut and—what was that? Locked behind her.

Left in the shadows of the drawn curtains, as erect as a temple’s pillar, and alone, Xander’s mind filled with a burgeoning darkness that urged him to follow—no, pursue…no, hunt. Noxscura slipped unbidden to the silks around his wrists, but the moment it touched, the fabric began to disintegrate, and his mind sharpened out of the primal urge to chase.

Gods, she was clever—using an arcane-sensitive material so he couldn’t even free himself and then tie himself back up. Xander frowned at the thought of her not trusting him—she shouldn’t, of course, but, well, did he want her to? No, no, that wasn’t necessary, it was just that…what would that be like? To have the trust of someone clever not because he’d worked hard to convince them but just because they did? Because they wanted to?

Xander shook the ridiculous thought out of his head, and his cock simultaneously gave its own wiggle, and darkest Abyss, it throbbed even harder. He considered his state and let what little noxscura he’d tamed linger downward and wrap around his length’s base. It would probably be dangerous to take care of things this way, and cleaning up was almost entirely out of the question, but the magic tightened anyway, and fuck it felt good. His eyes rolled back as heat built, the pain subsiding for pleasure, but he just couldn’t, she would know he had misbehaved, she just knew everything.

And more than that, he would know.

“Damn it!” Xander thrashed against the binds, knowing they would hold as he doused his magic, and then fell limply—well, most of him, anyway—into the bed.

Her bed.

Evangeline’s bed.

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