Page 67 of Lucky or Knot

Maybe he’d sent his gods-damned mother to turn me into a diseased frog.

But when I turned the knob and opened the door, there he was. Sitting on the edge of the massage table with his bare feet dangling, his hair up in a knot with the loose part flowing down around his shoulders, wrapped in some kind of tunic toga thing made out of a shimmering black cloth that could’ve been cut out of the desert sky at night.

And smiling tentatively, eyes shining brighter than the stars—as if he could have any doubt about what reception he’d get from me.

Two steps across the room and I’d swept him into my arms, bending down to claim his mouth all over again, the scent of him drowning out the spa’s weird magic and drowning me, too.

I never wanted to come up for air, but at last I had to, pulling back enough to look into his eyes. His smile hadblossomed into something bright enough to outshine every star there was.

“Did you miss me?” he asked, and it was probably the only stupid thing he’d ever said to me.

“I love you,” I said, and he pulled me down to kiss me again.

We toppled over onto the massage table, my hands already busy finding their way under the toga thing, searching out smooth bare skin and warmth, Raven laughing into my kiss and trying to rip off my pants. I moved down his body, needing my mouth where my hands were.

“Mate me,” he gasped, as I kissed my way up his thigh.

My head popped up like he’d electrocuted me, and I felt like it, too. “Here? On this—the massage table’s toast if we do that, Raven.”

He propped himself on his elbows and looked down his pointy nose at me. “Yes, here. Now. Tony, I didn’t tell you before I left, because I didn’t want to get your hopes up, but I went home mainly to find out if there would be any magical consequences of your kind of bond. For you, since I—you know.”

“Own me?”

“Yes, that. And there aren’t, by the way, as far as the experts can tell me. We can mate anytime we want. Such as now, for example,” he said pointedly.

We were going to have a chat about keeping me in the loop in future, but I could see why he’d kept his own counsel on this one. If mating had been magically impossible, the disappointment might have crushed me.

But instead—gods, I was the luckiest man alive. He’d been thinking about being my mate, wanting it, trying to make me happy. Not that he needed to try very hard.

“You could’ve come home for that.” My apartment might not be a bower of roses, but it had to be better than a fairy salon.On the other hand, the cart in the corner had a ton of bottles, and some of them looked like that fancy lube he’d had when we met. I’d started to have my doubts about what services this place offered, actually. Better not to explore that in too much depth. “Why here?”

He bit his lip, cheeks going pink. “I didn’t want to wait,” he said, uncharacteristically shyly. “I wanted you to—I wanted to see you the second I came through the portal. I wanted you.”

Like when you got off the plane after being far from home, and you were in the too-bright, too-loud airport all tired and lonely, and then there was the person you loved, familiar and comforting and real.

It caught at my heart, a string only he knew how to pluck. After everything he’d been through, everywhere he’d been, I was his piece of home.

“You have me,” I said, and bent down again, pushing aside the fabric to lay him bare for me.

The massage table collapsed halfway through me driving him wild with my mouth between his legs, and we rolled off of the wreckage onto the thick rug that had been next to it, my jeans open in front but still caught around my hips, his fairy garment hanging in loose folds around him like a robe and his body glimmering pale and lovely, tantalizingly half-hidden.

He climbed on top, blushing but intent as he spread his thighs wide around me and worked himself down onto my cock, trembling with the strain, eyes going wide as he took me in for the first time in three weeks.

“Easy,” I said. “There’s no rush.”

Even though there was, because I might not last long enough to get all the way inside him if he didn’t hurry up. My heart thundered like I’d been racing, and I could hardly breathe.

At last he took me all the way, riding me slowly, panting, eyes heavy-lidded.

“Lean down, sweetness,” I said, and gently eased him onto my chest. It wouldn’t be the easiest way to do this, given the angle, but when had anything with Raven ever been easy, exactly? Life was never going to be predictable with him. I couldn’t fucking wait.

I rocked up into him, impaling him on my full length and then withdrawing enough to make him moan, pushing his hair aside to bare his slender neck.

There, right there. That soft, irresistible bit of his skin. My mouth watered.

As he cried out, shuddering in my arms and spreading heat over my stomach, I let myself go. My knot punched up into him, harder than I’d meant to, but gods, his body clenched around me like a blood-hot, slippery vise, and I curled down and set my mouth over the curve of his shoulder and neck.

Fangs down, pricking his skin…and I bit, my alpha power surging and the connection he’d formed when he bought me sparking up to meet it, a swirl of color and sensation and pure, perfect, spine-tingling magic.

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