Page 22 of Lucky or Knot
And other than that, I didn’t have anything to do but pretend to give a shit about the people staring at me. My lack of interest showed in my measly tips, and by the time I finally called it quits a little before ten, I only had a couple of hundred dollars, and that headache had trickled back into my skull, pulsing in my temples and setting my teeth on edge.
That still left me with too much time to kill. I could go home, get really clean, make sure not a trace of sweat and glitter and oil remained. Put on some nicer clothes.
But no, fuck that. A quick stop in the locker room shower, and my usual old jeans and hoodie, would be good enough for the purpose. This wasn’t a date, dammit. And I didn’t need to impress him. Who cared what he thought of me? It already wasn’t much, anyway, judging by how he’d treated me. And I’d still be cleaner tonight than I had been when we’d gone to that hotel two nights ago. He’d been willing to get fucked by a sweaty, glitter-dusted stripperthen, so I’d be damned if I’d try to make myself appealing to himnow.
The drive from the club to the Silver Lode wouldn’t benearly long enough to fill the time, since I hadn’t lingered over getting dressed, so I found myself pulling over halfway there—strangely enough, into a strip mall with a 24-hour sex shop. Maybe they had the same brand of lube the fairy had brought to our rendezvous the other night.
I’d parked and shut off the engine before it hit me what I’d been doing.
Fuck. I leaned my forehead against the steering wheel, struggling to get a breath to go all the way down to the bottom of my lungs. My head still hurt, throbbing in time with the weird itching under my skin, a craving that I couldn’t seem to satisfy.
I had a really horrible suspicion that only one thing would satisfy that craving, and that it might or might not be turning up at the Silver Lode at midnight.
That’ll wear off, I think.
Well, it fucking hadn’t. My anger grew along with the pain in my head, both throbbing in time with the matching sensations in my hardening cock.
No. I would not buy lube. I would not give in to this. The second he appeared, I’d wrap my hand around his throat and I’d squeeze, pricking him with my claws, watching his eyes go round and terrified, and I’d force him to fix whatever the fuck he’d done to me.
And pay me.
Then I’d leave him there and I’d never want to see his lying face ever again in my life.
With that all sorted out and clear in my mind, I started the car again and pulled out of the lot, heading for the Silver Lode. And if I drove a little over the speed limit, well, no one could blame me for wanting to use my time efficiently.
Chapter 8
At exactly 11:56, not that I’d been checking my phone obsessively every three seconds or anything, he knocked on the door of the hotel room. And I knew it was him, because I could sense his magic in every cell of my body, scent him even through the door.
Relief washed over me and weakened my knees. If he’d called my bluff and blown me off, I didn’t know what I’d have done.
Actually, I did. Because calling Cunningham, satisfying as it might have been in one way…well, I knew I couldn’t and wouldn’t do it. The half hour I’d had to wear a track in the hotel room’s carpet, pacing and waiting, had been enough to let me think that through.
The fairy—and I simply couldn’t bring myself to think of him as Tyler, of all the bullshit—had sounded genuinely afraid on the phone. Not of me, except insofar as I represented a blackmail threat, but of Cunningham. Maybe I’d have been offended by the fairy’s lack of respect for the more concrete threat I represented, except that it occurred to me that I’d promised not to hurt him, and he probably considered me still bound by that, fae logic being what it was.
Honestly, it offended me more that he thought I needed a promise to keep me in check. Choking fantasies aside, I’d never be able to bring myself to beat up on someone so much smaller than me, even if he had powerful magic.
Spank him, maybe. My cock twitched. Yeah, I could spank him, possibly even mark up all that perfect white skin by nipping and sucking on him until he squirmed.
But not beat him.
Cunningham might beat him. Or worse. That asshole’s reputation didn’t give me any confidence in his having a gentlemanly reluctance to abuse his lover.
Somygentlemanly reluctance to land the fairy in the kind of hot water that could get him bruised, battered, or even dead would’ve meant he got away scot-free.
Thank the gods he’d shown up, and I didn’t need to choose between my morals and my pride. I rubbed my hands over my face to scrub away my worry and weakness before I stepped forward to answer the door.
When I wrenched it open, the sight of him standing there froze me in place for a long, suspended moment. And the scent of him, my gods. Light and tart and somehow green like the beginning of spring, soft like a breeze off a warm sea. He’d worn his hair in a ponytail tonight, sleekly pulled back from his face to show off those cut-glass cheekbones and the delicate line of his jaw. He’d worn all black again. His long tunic had another high collar, this one more of a wrapped scarf sort of affair. Tight, shimmery black pants led down into knee-high leather boots.
He blinked at me, long eyelashes sweeping down and then up again, feathery soft, his eyes wide and deep and dark, more enchanting than his magic. If he ever wore eyeliner he’d give me a fucking heart attack. My heart galloped anyway, trying to force its way out of my ribs.
His lips were pressed together in a tight, anxious line, and he raised his eyebrows at me.
Right. I’d been standing here gaping at him like a teenager catching his first glimpse of porn, and with much the same effect below the waist. Hopefully my jeans would camouflage my reaction a little bit.
“Nice of you to show up,Tyler,” I ground out, trying to regain a bit of the upper hand, and stood back to let him in.
Moving farther away from him took conscious effort, as ifI had a solid object behind my legs that I had to push through.
