Page 73 of Devil Bound
Thedaywasreasonablynice—not too cold, sunny, only a mild breeze.Nelly and I should’ve been walking down Chymical Street hand in hand, discussing the beauty of our romance and how to gain the Dragon Mother’s approval.It would’ve allowed me to palm his butt and make sure he didn’t forget that I had my plug in him.
Instead, I followed him at a distance, deciding to let him think that he was leading me.That slow pace gave me time to think about what he had told me about that fumbling teenage love he had allowed to be his first.
The thought made an involuntary growl break out of me, and Soul stared at me with black eyes, huffing out a bark.
“What?He let some pimply-faced fool deflower him.He’s a swan prince being sent away to boarding school only to find the experience beneath his standards.What else could it have been?He simply didn’t know any better.”
But the more I thought about that, the more I wondered.Perhaps, to Nelly, the world of physical love was like all the colors and various flags of Chymical Street—bright and advertising different kinds of magic—and he was a tourist not knowing what was good.Or what he wanted.
I let out a stuttering breath as we passed a soothsayer’s.Perhaps he was a virgin at heart, looking to offer himself to whoever crossed his path for whatever little thrill that might give him.Finding him in that state the previous night only seemed to confirm that.
Which meant the Dragon Mother was absolutely correct.I had a duty here; a duty to provide care for this innocent ingenue who couldn’t tell a good cock like mine from the shriveled excuse of a dried-out wiener that was no doubt what he had experienced for his first time.
“He needs me.My swan prince needs me,” I said.A tourist in the crowd overheard and gave me an odd look, but it didn’t matter.I knew I was right about this.I picked up my pace, Soul at my side.
Nelly’s next destination was a smith.He slipped through the door quickly, but I got to the entrance not a minute later, taking a deep breath before I entered.Magical crafters and smiths in particular were in the habit of making wards and hanging them all around their spaces—building them into the foundations, even.
The warding here was no more annoying than a fly circling an outhouse, but there were nicer locales.And while Nelly lacked finesse as a necromancer when it came to de-animating the recently raised, I was under no illusions about how powerful he was.My boyfriend had no need for silly foci to unleash his magic and raise a nice battalion of the dead if he so wished.Yet, since he never wished so, he should invest in a good magical cleaning service for all the questionable fluids he seemed to attract when caving in zombie skulls with rocks.
Instead, we were at a smith’s shop.
From the way Nelly glanced at me over his shoulder and the low-voiced conversation he’d started with the dreadlocked smith, I assumed I’d interrupted either the delicate question of how one might go about removing a spelled item from one’s person, or Nelly was trying to make me jealous again.
Nelly unsubtly cleared his throat.“So.Foci,” he said.“Do you have a list of people you sold them to?”
The smith was the stylized kind of pretty.His dreadlocks were very neat and fell in orderly lines over his shoulders.He either wore contacts or some kind of illusion charm to make his irises a sparkling purple, which went extremely well with his rich copper skin.The smith brought out the unusual golden color of his eyes with golden eyeliner and dark emerald eyeshadow, probably for the tourists.Maybe he posed for reels of his shop that showed the talisman coins and the never-rusting scissors and all the other things a magic user of Nelly’s caliber had no need for.
“I really shouldn’t be showing you that without a warrant,” the smith said.“By which I mean, I really won’t show you a list of customers without a warrant.”He shrugged.“Sorry.”
As Soul sniffed the display cases, leaving snot lines with her nose, I approached the smith.“Maybe you’ll show me?”I said, loading the words with subtle enchantment.
Well, the amount I put in made it somewhat less than subtle, but by the eddies in the smith’s aura, he wore talismans like jewelry, and I wasn’t going to let them prevent me from coming to the rescue of my swan prince and aiding him in whatever investigatey thing he was doing here.
The purple eyes wavered, despite the smith’s talismans, and he slowly nodded.“Maybe I will.”
“I’d be so grateful,” I added, the words now dripping with enchantment.
The smith went through an archway to another room where I could see a meeting table and chairs—probably where he discussed the details of bigger jobs with his clients.Nelly followed, though not before casting me ahow dare you?look.I shrugged.Would it kill him to thank me?
What Nelly lacked in gratitude he made up for in curiosity.The smith had a laptop on the table, and Nelly looked over the man’s shoulder as he opened it and brought up the list of clients in his bookkeeping program.I scanned the names as well, but they meant nothing to me.With nothing more to offer my swan prince, I took a step closer to Nelly and put my hand on his butt.He gasped.
“S-stop,” he said.Oh, that single word cost him.I could see the bulge that was forming in the front of his pants.His cheeks were flaming in the most gorgeous way.
“What, this?”I gave his tight cheek a harder squeeze.“You want me to stop this?”
Nelly nodded, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth.
“I see.Just say please, and I will.”I adjusted the pressure, trying to get him to gasp again, and he did.
“Please.”
The word was barely above a whisper.He looked up at me with his pretty golden eyes, the irises now just sparkling rings around wide pupils.I smiled.He was beautiful like this.
I pulled my hand away because Nelly had been good and had done what I told him to.
“Better?”I watched as a bead of blood welled up where he’d bitten his lip.I lifted my hand to his cheek and brushed the blood away with my thumb.Nelly froze in surprise, but for once, he didn’t pull away.“Careful with your teeth, Nelly.”I raised my thumb to my own mouth to lick his blood off.
“Umm…” the smith said, the enchantment waning.
