Chapter 13

Raven filled my senses: his sweetness mingled with the scent of some herbal and slightly spicy spa product or other, the warmth of his body, the tingling presence of him all along my right side. When he half turned in his seat to face me, we were only a foot apart, and the jet black of his eyes glittered, reflecting the strip mall's overhead lights. A flush spread over his cheeks, and one waving tendril of his hair that had escaped the bun curled along his jaw.

"I would ask how you found me, but I'm not sure I want to know," he said. "And I'd ask what you're doing here, but I'm afraid that I do know."

I had to lick my lips and swallow before I could force my throat to push any words out. Every cell in my body strained to touch him.

"I doubt you do, actually," I rasped. "You probably think I'm here to try to fuck you."

A shadow passed across his face, so briefly I almost missed it, and then he'd composed himself again, impenetrable.

Blank, Sean had said. The face Raven showed the world at large.

And now me, apparently. I felt like a starving man plastered against the bulletproof glass window of—nothing as mundane as a grocery store, obviously. Maybe the kind of bakery that listed its pastries' fillings in a language you didn't know and which they refused to translate for you, but that you knew would be able to sell you the most delicious thing you'd ever tasted.

"That possibility had occurred to me," he said levelly. Too levelly? Or with genuine indifference? "But that would be better than the alternative, that you want to… talk to me." His tone suggested that "dead, bloated, stinking fish" would've been the right synonym for "talk."

Since I'd come here to talk to him, that took most of the wind out of my sails.

What I had left, anyway, after sitting here across from a fairy probably-not-really-massage joint for hours, facing up to the fact that I'd landed myself on the wrong side of doomed, unrequited feelings.

"Maybe I am here to fuck you," I said, since he'd left me without a next scripted line. I want more than your body, Raven. I don't want to own you. I want to help you. We need to talk. Not so much, damn it. "Or maybe you could tell me what really goes on in there, since no one else has been in and out all afternoon and it smells like fairy magic."

He lifted a hand, fingers spread, and waggled it a few inches from my face. "Endless Sky doesn't take many appointments, because the clientele is exclusive. And as you see, my nails are now purple. Completely different from the last time you saw me. They take time to dry perfectly, and my toes must match, so of course I was there for a while."

Raven tried to drop his hand back to his lap, but Christ, I had to touch him or I'd explode, so I caught his wrist before he could get away. His pulse jackrabbited under my fingers, and when I rubbed my thumb over the back of his hand, a faint shiver ran through his arm.

"Purple" apparently meant super pale purply iridescent, in this case. Last time it'd been more of a creamy silver, I was pretty sure, although I never would've noticed if he hadn't pointed out how "completely different" they were.

"I've never noticed your nails," I lied through my teeth. "But it looks nice."

He tried, without success, to pull his wrist away. I leaned in and kissed his knuckles, flicking my tongue, a wave of helpless want rolling through me all the way down to my balls as I tasted the faintly salted-honey warmth of his skin.

The hitch in his breath mimicked my own when I'd caught sight of him.

Encouraged, and dizzy with all the blood rushing to my suddenly rock-hard cock, I kissed up his hand and sucked his index finger into my mouth. He didn't taste or smell like nail polish chemicals, surprisingly—score one for fairy salons. Only, and intoxicatingly, like him.

Raven's gasp turned into a low moan, quickly cut off. A glance up showed me his teeth digging ferociously into his lower lip, and he'd half-closed his eyelids. Sultry. I'd never used that word before, didn't even realize I'd known it, but nothing else captured the way he eyed me as if he wanted me to eat him—but not until he'd driven me insane first.

Redundant effort, you already got there without even trying , I could've said, if I hadn't had two fingers in my mouth now, rough-textured tongue prodding and teasing at the juncture between them.

His scent intensified, now tinged with arousal, musky and tart and absolutely unmistakable.

Maybe I should fuck him after all. My shitty old sedan had plenty of room in the back seat compared to a similar model. He could probably ride me if I slid down as far as I could go, and maybe cut off my feet.

The base of my cock throbbed, right where my knot would swell inside the wet, hot grasp of his pretty little hole.

And my own groan echoed in the car, half muffled by his fingers and all the more obscene for it. His cock down my throat, my tongue driving him crazy…I'd love that too. Although given the space constraints of the front seat, it might make more sense to have his soft lips wrapped around my cock, head bobbing up and down in my lap as I wrapped my hands in his hair…

"Stop imagining all the things you want to do to me with that ridiculous tongue of yours," he complained. "And stop, oh, Tony, you…oh." I captured a third finger and sucked like I meant it. " Oh ." He'd started squirming in his seat, the car jouncing lightly. Shit, maybe my shocks couldn't take fucking in the back after all.

Plus we were in public. But yeah, professional stripper. My fucks given were zero on that particular issue.

Deep-throating his fingers would make me come in my jeans, so I pulled off and kissed the tips of them. Raven had blushed velvety, rosy red, eyes glittering and lips parted. More hair tumbled down from his messy updo.

"If you'd answer any of my questions, maybe I'd be paying attention to that instead of thinking about fucking your mouth. Or doing more with my tongue, you aren't wrong," I admitted, in the spirit of fairness.

Not that he ever bothered with fairness. Maybe I could set a good example.

"I'm not wrong about anything, oh, don't—" I bit his fingers, and Raven broke off in a whimper, swaying toward me as if the gravity well between us had suddenly doubled in magnitude.

I dropped his hand in favor of wrapping my arms around him and hauling him halfway over the center console, my mouth finding his unerringly. Soft lips, a wet, flicking tongue, the smoothness of his teeth and the hot roof of his mouth, and I explored it all, devouring him, swallowing his little moans and clutching him close as he writhed in my grasp. Too possessive, and too desperate, but his efforts weren't directed at escaping from me. He seemed to be trying to climb me, to press himself against me until not even our clothes would fit in the space between us.

Fuck it, I didn't need the back seat. With a good yank, I got him out of the passenger seat and almost into my lap.

With a wrench and a shove, he broke the kiss and pushed away with both hands flat on my chest.

"Why do you keep doing this to yourself?" he demanded, and his breath against my face had me shuddering with the need to do it some more. He evaded my lunge for his shiny, kiss-swollen lips by tilting his head all the way back.

That exposed the line of his throat.

My low, rumbling growl vibrated the air between us.

Strong, slim fingers caught a fistful of my hair and yanked my head up and back. The console under him eliminated our height difference, and I found myself eye to eye with a furiously glaring fairy.

"Yes, eyes up here, please," he snapped. "I can't even imagine the complications of that on top of everything else. I hate alphas!"

By that , he surely meant me losing control and adding my own magic to the mix. And Cunningham, what would he do to him if Raven came back with another alpha's bite on his neck? It didn't bear thinking about.

"I wouldn't do that unless you wanted it," I said, because I wouldn't, no matter how my fangs dropped and my mouth watered. Blood didn't taste particularly appealing to most predator shifters in our human forms, but his…I didn't want enough to hurt him. Just enough to know him down to his bones. "And you don't hate me."

"There are exceptions to every rule, not that I'm saying you are one." The tiny smile he couldn't seem to suppress belied that.

"Not biting," I whispered as I leaned in, and he stopped pushing, letting me press the softest possible kiss to the hollow of his throat between his collar bones. He quivered in my arms. "I'm an exception. The only exception. Say it."

I nuzzled the side of his throat and flicked my tongue.

"Ah," he gasped. "In, mmm, Endless Sky. We have a portal to our own lands. It's not really a spa for humans, but they do, oh, they do paint nails."

"Interesting, but that won't work. Say it." I licked a stripe up to his chin, nipped at the little point of it, breathed out, "Tell me I'm the only alpha you'd ever want."

"He can't keep me from my own people, they'd take that very poorly," Raven babbled, "so that's why I can come here, to—" And then I kissed him again, and again, until he sagged in my arms and gave in, head tipped back and mouth yielding.

One of my hands slid down his spine, and his pants were stretchy today, enough that I could get my fingers down the back of them and tease into the crease of his ass. Raven jolted like I'd electrocuted him, hips thrusting against nothing. I found the tight clench of his hole with one finger. A knuckle's worth of penetration had him clinging to me and shaking, practically sobbing into my mouth, and gods, I'd have given anything to be inside him—anything except the triumph and the perfection of holding him as he came apart, knowing that he didn't need to say a gods-damned thing about exceptions. Words weren't needed.

Raven would never moan and whine and come in his expensive pants for another alpha.

This was mine. He was mine. The hot, sweet come he'd spilled into his clothes was mine, along with that honeyed alkaline scent that wafted up to me. Someone else might technically own him, and that motherfucker's days were numbered, but the panting, gasping mess of previously elegant and composed fairy in my arms belonged to me .

I pulled back enough to appreciate the sight of him, damp with perspiration, hair a rat's nest, lashes fanned out over glowing cheeks. He'd slumped sideways with his head leaning on my upper arm, twisted up on top of the center console in a way that would've had anyone without his natural flexibility headed straight to the chiropractor.

He'd do anything I wanted right now. Let me spread his legs. Or suck me off, if I told him to. I knew it the way I knew my own name. Some combination of fairy obligation, desire, and the submissiveness that came out at odd moments when I'd pleased him would make him agree to whatever I asked for.

My erection hadn't subsided in the slightest. In fact, watching Raven come had almost tipped me over the edge.

But my arousal felt…not quite distant, but secondary. Pleasing him had been enough for me. Proving he wanted me, whether he'd say it or not, had been a nice little side bonus. And more than any of that, in the context of his relationship with Cunningham—if you could call it that—the thought of asking for sex acts he didn't volunteer for made me sick.

So I eased him back down into the passenger seat, keeping my arm around his shoulders for support, and pulling my other hand out of his pants. That left me leaning uncomfortably over the center of the front seat, but the brush of his hair against my neck and cheek more than made up for it. I could've sat like that for a long, long time.

But of course Raven stirred and opened his eyes, tension returning to his relaxed body.

"My mouth is available if you need some relief," he said. But his tone didn't suggest eagerness.

The last of my overwhelming need drained away. Yeah, still hard. And yeah, later on I'd jerk myself raw thinking about his mouth, probably twice. But no.

"No," I said, and it came out harsher than I'd meant it to. Now the arm I had around him felt weird. Half of me ached to grab him again and pull him close, but I slid it out from behind him and dropped back into my own seat, staring out at the sickly violet glow still radiating from the "spa's" windows. What he'd said to me when he'd been trying to distract me replayed in my head—the big one, which finally had a bit of blood going to it. "Wait a second. You have family, or whoever, who'd be pissed if Cunningham kept you away from them? So how come they haven't helped you? I assumed you were on your own. You can't use your magic against him, you said. But presumably they can. What gives?"

His long, deep sigh could've indicated a lot of things from annoyance to regret, but the law of averages suggested disgust at my stupidity.

"Of course they can't interfere with a bargain I entered into freely." Yep. Shocked disgust. I'd called it. "However, their power gives me more leeway than he might allow me otherwise. They can't release me, but they could make his life…uncomfortable. Which he'd then take out on me, of course. So no one wants that."

Fairies. Fucking fairies, man. If my family had a choice between a cultural technicality and leaving me in what amounted to sex slavery, no rules existed that they wouldn't be willing to violate.

"Your family sucks," I said, because I simply couldn't find any better words. "Christ. That's—uncomfortable?" I rolled my head on the headrest to look at him. He'd kept his gaze straight ahead, also fixed on the eerie lighting, as far as I could tell. The clean, pointy lines of his profile gave nothing away. "They'd make him fucking uncomfortable, and that's it? That doesn't compute. You need their help!"

Raven shrugged one shoulder, and his lips pressed into a flat line, but he didn't reply. Probably that was as close as he could get, within the constraints of his species and upbringing, to agreeing with me. I'd have to accept that.

Still. If I ever met his family…realistically, they'd turn me into a diseased frog.

Cunningham. I had to focus on the enemy I could defeat. A bunch of nail-painting fairies who wouldn't get off their asses to rescue their own family and friends even though they were overpowered to do so were obviously out of my league.

"Look, we should—"

"No," he said, echoing my earlier harshness, but with a weary undertone to it. He turned his head to meet my gaze steadily. "You're about to start talking about it all again, aren't you? I really wish you'd stop this. It only makes it worse. There's nothing you can do. I'm starting to think there's nothing I can do, either," he added, wearier than ever.

"Not with that attitude." Jesus, I sounded like my dad. Raven raised his eyebrows disdainfully. "Sorry, that was a joke?" His lip curled. "Fine. Not funny. But obviously there's a way out, right? You said fae magic likes symmetry. There has to be some other way to flip the bargain you made with Cunningham that we haven't thought of yet. Also, and stop me if I'm missing something important, but killing him seems like a pretty valid solution."

His eyes widened.

"Killing him," he rasped, and cleared his throat. "Killing him? Tony, have you ever killed anyone?"

"Tigers are natural predators, and Cunningham's a fucking piece of shit."

Raven glared at me. "I'll take that as a no, then? Well?"

"No," I admitted.

"Well, hopefully this doesn't surprise you, but neither have I. And aside from the moral implications, and yes, thank you, I do have something like morality, it would be complicated and messy and dangerous, and I obviously can't do it myself or to be frank I probably would have by now despite all of that, and if you try to do it, you'll get yourself killed or put in prison for the rest of your life!" He broke off to suck in a couple of deep lungfuls, since he'd ranted all that at me in one breath. "There are prisons strong enough to hold you here in the human world, aren't there? Or would they just kill you? The authorities, I mean, not Cunningham's security team. They'd definitely kill you."

"Aren't you a ray of fucking sunshine, and yes, there are prisons that would hold me. If they could get me there. But you could use your magic to hide me if it came to that, right? Take me to the spa or something." I tried for another joke. "Paint my claws purple."

He didn't even dignify that with a response, simply countering with, "And then you'd never see your family again, and reading between the lines, you seem to like them rather a lot. Killing him isn't an option. At least not for you."

Not for me. Right. The only person who seemed to be showing the desire, will, and possibly even ability to get it done. "Let me guess, your fae buddies won't do it because it'd be cheating your bargain."

He shrugged again. "That, and we don't really kill. That's not our way."

"More of the ‘ensnare for a thousand years of confused torment that you didn't really deserve' kind of people, huh?"

"Yes," he said primly. "It's more fun that way."

"Endless torment and nail painting," I remarked absently. "Thematic."

To my shock, that won me a soft laugh. "I won't take you to the spa with me, then," he said. "But I enjoy it. Aside from seeing my people. Facials are lovely."

No, I wouldn't say it, even though I could feel the words forming on my tongue and a leer on my face.

Coming all over his face had a certain amount of appeal, but the way he was looking at me, open and soft (for him, anyway), head leaned back and the parking lot's lights gleaming on his white neck, stirred up stronger impulses. Less crude ones.

Slightly less crude, anyway. I'd never claimed to be a poetic romantic.

"What now?" I asked. "Since you don't want me to kill him. Although full disclosure, I might not be able to resist if the opportunity comes up. But a thousand years of torment sounds okay, if that can be arranged. I'm open-minded. As long as you end up free of him." And all mine . But I knew better than to say that. And it wasn't true, anyway. I wanted him free of Cunningham whether he ended up mine or not.

"Now?" He couldn't meet my eyes, eyelashes sweeping down as he fixed his gaze on his hands where they rested on his thighs, running a thumb over his brand-new completely different (identical) shiny nails. "Now I go back to Audacity. And you go to work. Nothing. There's nothing you can do, Tony. You shouldn't have tracked me down today."

Every time he protested that he wanted me to go, or that he wished he hadn't been with me, it sounded less and less convincing, and it gave me a thrilling swoop in my stomach that I didn't know what to do with.

I reached out and laid my hand over both of his where they twisted together in his lap. My much bigger hand covered both of his, enclosed them. Gods, I wished I could wrap myself around him like that, physically and in a more metaphorical way.

What the hell could I say to him that'd convince him to stop arguing?

"Your magic wore off. The kissing thing? This morning. I felt it dissipate." That snapped his gaze back up to me. "I mean, now I've kissed you again, so who knows."

"You," he said, and stopped. "You, ah, you. Came to see me, with no magical compulsion at all?"

That would've been the perfect time for a cheesy line. Your sweet ass is magic, baby , possibly followed by a wink.

Jesus, I'd been a strip club stage performer for way too long.

"You really thought I'd left you for good when I walked out of that room, Raven?"

"Yes," he whispered, and his eyes had gotten suspiciously shiny. So had his lashes, gleaming wetly. He blinked and a drop fell. "I did, and I didn't, I didn't—"

With a gun to my head—actually, strike that, a gunshot or two wouldn't even kill me. With an aircraft carrier to my head, I couldn't have resisted.

Raven collapsed against my chest as I caught him in my arms and gathered him close again, and he shuddered and shook, the front of my shirt instantly soaked through, his freshly painted nails digging furrows in my sides.

I buried my face in his hair and held him, temporarily safe from the world, knowing as I did that I'd inevitably need to let him go.