“Then tell me when to stop,” he said, so softly, so gently I would have given him anything he asked.
 
 Sharp teeth bit into the muscle of my throat. I didn’t tell him to stop. A hand slipped under my shirt, pressed against the ridges of my stomach. I didn’t tell him to stop. The same hand slipped low, thumb and forefinger on the zipper of my jeans.
 
 I pushed him off.
 
 Leon’s face was a scrambled palette, a painful mixture of disappointment, hurt, betrayal. God, how much I wanted to kiss those horrible colors away.
 
 “In the car,” I told him, my breath hitched as I guided him toward the backseat. “Please. Now.”
 
 My hands trembled. I opened the back door, sliding into the seats, Leon diving in after me. He pulled the door shut, licked his lips, his teeth a gleaming crescent in the streetlight, in the glow of a pale moon. The tint of my windows should be enough. In my life as a finder, the darkness was always a friend. My kingdom for some shadow magic.
 
 The last thing I wanted to be arrested for. I could take the Masques hauling me in for misuse of magic, for stealing something that even their accord with the spiders wouldn’t allow them to overlook. Taken in for public indecency? My family would never let me live it down.
 
 Warmer in there. Buttery soft on the leather seats, too, especially as Leon wrestled me out of my jacket. Laughter spilled out of me, this giddy, heady flattery from knowing how much he wanted me. I gasped when he kissed my collarbone, under my arm, nipped through my shirt as he searched for a nipple.
 
 God, the boy wanted me bad. I fucking wanted him, too.
 
 “When?” I asked, stubborn and earnest as his hands worked at my zipper, wanting to know. “How long?”
 
 “That night in the Smith house,” he answered, unbuckling, unzipping me. “Thought you were a stud. A miserable, brooding stud. Wanted to make you laugh, knew you’d be gorgeous when you smiled. Knew I was right.”
 
 Leon kneaded the heel of his palm against my hardening cock, only the material of my briefs separating our bodies. I thrashed against the seats and groaned. How long had it been? How long since I had the pleasure of being manhandled by someone I wanted just as much, if not even more?
 
 “When?” he asked, licking his lips again, eyes widening with anticipation as he tugged my briefs down.
 
 “The Smith house,” I said, growing harder and harder each second. “Thought you were adorable. Wanted to take you right there on the hallway floor. Wanted to see you squirm and scream. Still want to make you. So badly.”
 
 “Fuck,” Leon breathed. “Fuck, Max. That’s so nasty.”
 
 “I know.”
 
 My briefs went as far as they’d go, midway down my thighs. Good enough. Leon’s fingers teased at my balls, cupping them in his hand. He studied my cock, the bead of wetness balanced on its tip. He looked up at me, clucked his tongue, and grinned.
 
 “Even better than I expected.”
 
 I opened my mouth to answer with something funny, something cocky. But he’d opened his mouth, too.
 
 Leon Alcantara bowed his head, licked the end of my cock with his warm, pink tongue. I hissed. I bucked. I nearly broke my skull against the window.
 
 “Fuck,” I moaned, caught in that horrible, indecisive limbo between keeping perfectly still so I could let him do his work, or fucking fully into his mouth. I stretched my arms above my head, sighing, squirming, terrified of exploding too soon.
 
 He decided for us both in the end, still clutching my balls in one hand, grasping the shaft of my cock with the other, pumping and stroking as he worked my head with a soft tongue and even softer lips. I bit into the back of my knuckles, so close to drawing blood, but it was the only way for me to really contain myself.
 
 I’d be screaming my head off otherwise.
 
 Had it been a while since I’d gotten sucked off? Sure. But it’d been even longer since I’d been blown by someone I was so attracted to. I couldn’t put my finger on why Leon turned me on so much, why he infuriated me even as he intrigued me.
 
 And I knew he felt the same way, and with the same intensity. There was something so aggressive, almost violent about how I’d kissed him, about how he’d demanded that I finish the job. Even the way he sucked my cock felt so wildly spirited, like this was something he needed as badly as water.
 
 I needed water as badly as water. I’d been gasping the whole time, my mouth dry as a desert. I licked my lips, throat parched, watching as his head bobbed up and down, his tongue working at the slit of my cock, fingers rhythmically stroking and squeezing.
 
 Voracious. That was the only word for it. And then he angled his face just so, just enough so I could see the clarity and crystal brown of his eyes.
 
 “Oh, fuck,” I groaned. “Don’t look at me like that. How are you so pretty right now?”
 
 Something wet lingered in the corners of his eyes, tears from the effort of trying to take so much of me in his mouth and his throat, maybe. Tears of exertion, or, not to flatter myself, of joy.
 
 He batted his lashes, never breaking eye contact, staring up as he serviced me, letting me know with his mouth just how much I mattered. His hand traveled up through the hair at my crotch, up my belly, drawing deep, incisive grooves into my muscles.