Page 23 of Lucky or Knot
He slipped inside like a beam of moonlight, and I shoved the door and let it click itself shut. The fairy stood facing me, biting his lip, hands balled into fists at his sides. The air between us thickened, buzzed, drew me in like quicksand. The hotel room blurred into a halo of cheap lighting and unimportance, a meaningless background to his shining beauty.
I leaned in, my body straining toward his, my breath fast and rough.
“You shouldn’t,” he whispered. “You’ll only make it worse.” But he didn’t move away from me, and his chest rose and fell as quickly as mine.
Make it worse.That’ll wear off, I think.
The buzz faded enough to let me shake my head, shake it off, at least a little bit.
Fuck. I’d been about to—gods dammit. Everything about this was already worse, including my growing suspicion that kissing him had been like the first hit of heroin, and that my longing and my headaches and my mental strain and fog had all been symptoms of withdrawal from his particular brand of heady, intoxicatingly deadly magic.
“That’s why you stopped me from sucking you off or eating you out,” I said, and it wasn’t a question. “Trying to make yourself feel less like a son of a bitch for enchanting me to get me to take your deal, and then again so you could sneak out and steal that coin you supposedly paid me with. And you didn’t stop me from kissing you last time. So I’m not that impressed.”
“It’s not my fault that you kissed me without asking permission!” He spoke too quickly and too breathlessly to be convincing, and I started rethinking the choking thing. I could choke him a tiny bit, couldn’t I? Shake some honesty out of him like a stubborn bottle of ketchup? “And licked my neck and my—”
“Youtold me to do anything I needed to do to get it over with, andyoutold me it’d probably but not definitely wear off, without even explaining what ‘it’ was, andyou—”
“—shoulder and my ankle and—”
“—cheated me, stole from me, and lied to me!” I finished in almost a shout, drowning out his list of body parts that I’d supposedly licked. I didn’t remember licking his ankle, but whatever.
He crossed his arms over his chest, mouth tightening, and lifted his chin. “I did not lie to you,” he said loftily. “I don’t directly lie about factual, objective things, although I do occasionally exaggerate when it’s a subjective matter that’s open to interpretation.” Subjective…open to…the sheer, jaw-dropping chutzpah bullshit of that statement had me, well, standing there gaping at him like an idiot. He took advantage of my total gobsmackedness to keep talking. “I can pay you another way, since you seem to have lost the coin. You can do anything you want with me, as long as it doesn’t involve your mouth, and if it does, that’s your lookout. I’ve warned you.”
It took a moment for all of that to sink in, but…was this what it felt like to be the only sane person in an asylum?
“Lost the coin,” I repeated flatly. “Lost. The coin. And so you propose to pay me another way? Let me get this straight, pay me. For fucking you. Which you offered to pay me for. By letting me fuck you?”
My hands flexed at my sides, claws sliding out and all the muscles in my arms going hard and rigid. Everything in the room had taken on a gilded tinge as my alpha glow intensified.
“Ah,” he said. “I, ah.” He glanced shiftily from side to side, feet shuffling, as if he sought an escape route that he already knew didn’t exist. “Ah? Yes? You seemed to enjoy it the first time?”
Enjoy it the first—the golden glow went crimson aroundthe edges as my chest tightened with pure, incandescent rage.
I was going to fuckingkillhim.
Kill him, or—I lunged, and he cried out and twisted like an acrobat to dodge me, but I seized him inexorably around the waist, jerked him against me, and fused my mouth to his, hard and brutal. My head went light and spinny as the whole world narrowed down to the sweet softness of his lips, the flick of his tongue, my own forcing its way into him. He writhed in my arms and I clamped him tighter, and maybe I’d have come to my senses and let him go.
Except that between one instant and the next, his arms wrapped around my neck and he clung to me, his helpless moan swallowed in my kiss, his body arching up to melt into mine.
If I hadn’t needed my mouth to ravage him, I’d have let out a roar of triumph deep and wild enough to bring the whole building’s roof down. Instead I yanked him even closer, bending my body over his, shoving a thigh between his legs and half lifting him off the ground.
He squirmed on my knee, riding me, spreading his legs, and that forked tongue curled around mine, and that was it.
We crashed down onto the bed, his hands clawing at my back. One of mine wrapped in his long tail of hair, with the other working under the hem of his shirt and splaying over the softness of his skin.
I tore my mouth away from his and nipped him under his chin. His scarf-like collar was in my way, concealing that throat I needed to bite and lick—
“Don’t rip it,” he gasped, and shoved at my shoulders. “Don’t!”
The frantic note in his voice shocked me out of my single-minded focus on stripping him bare and splitting him open on my cock, reminding me that I was…
Angry. I was also furiously angry, in addition to the surgeof pure, bone-searing lust.
“Why not?” I growled, and lifted my head to stare down into his eyes, baring my teeth. “Why the fuck should I care about your fucking clothes? Hmm? Why shouldn’t I claw every stitch you’re wearing to shreds and leave you here to find your way home in a fucking hotel bedsheet?”
His cheeks, already pink, went cherry-red. They’d be burning hot if I pressed my lips to his skin, and my cock pushed violently against his thigh, seeking his tight wet hole—
And the look in those beautiful eyes was pure, unadulterated terror.
