Chapter 5

Stepping out of my jeans and toeing off my socks gave me a way to stall for a second. How do you want me? Fuck. Let me count the ways.

But I could cross one of them off the list. If I took him on his back, the temptation to kiss him wouldn't be something I could resist.

"On your hands and knees," I growled, and had to grab the base of my cock and throttle it back at the thought.

He rolled up, snatched the lube off the nightstand, and flipped over again in one smooth motion, all with the grace of an acrobat. Yeah, if he'd auditioned at a strip club, they'd have given him top billing.

The way he was making me watch him reach behind his round, firm globe of an ass and slide the tip of one slender, lube-slick finger into his hole—without my being able to touch or lick any of it—had to be against the Geneva Conventions. Every muscle in my body went taut with the effort of not participating. A soft-looking brush of black hair surrounded his cock and balls, but it didn't reach as far as his hole, which glistened rose-pink as it swallowed up two of his fingers. And then three, and gods, but he was flexible, and the wet squelching of his hole and his soft gasps as he took his own hand…

At last I couldn't stand it anymore. My cock pointed straight at him like a dowsing rod, knowing exactly where it wanted, needed, to go before I exploded. The bed dipped and groaned in protest as I knelt down behind him, my knees nudging his calves.

Two points of contact, and the heat of him burned through me and set me alight. He pulled his fingers out and braced himself, his head hanging down.

My big hand wrapped around his hip looked obscene, a violation of perfection. Graffiti on a Renaissance painting. I leaned in. The head of my cock brushed between his cheeks.

Now that was obscene. Thick and purplish-red and shiny and so much bigger than its target, even though he'd done a good job working himself open. Sliding my hand over to spread his cheek made him moan, the line of his back bowing down and his ass pushing up in the air. With the other hand, I picked up the bottle and drizzled lube along my shaft, letting it drip down and pool at the head, trickling onto and into him.

I'd gotten us both so wet that my cock nearly slipped off of him when I tried to thrust in, but I steadied him and pushed—so tight, my eyes rolled back—and then my cockhead popped inside and wedged there, stretching him open to fit.

The quality of his vibrating silence suggested a suppressed moan. No, fuck that. I deserved to hear it.

And maybe I wanted a lot of things I wasn't going to get, but this I could have. Besides, I was practically vibrating myself with the urge to bury my cock deep, feel his wet heat clenching around every inch of me.

So I satisfied both desires, splaying my hands over his cheeks to hold him open and leaning forward, letting my weight sink my cock into him inch by inch. Slowly. One inch, and his fingers clenched convulsively in the bedspread. Two, and his legs shook where they pressed against mine. A little deeper, fuck, and I might break before he did, with sweat starting to prickle at my shoulders and my balls tight, pressure beginning to build.

He whimpered, low and soft.

There.

I pulled back slightly, letting him feel the drag of my thick cock on his sensitive inner walls…and then thrust forward, deeper, drawing out a helpless, breathy murmur.

Again. A sharper cry as I angled down, almost fully in, the thickest part of the base of my cock pressing on everything inside him.

Muffled sounds suggested he'd tried to bite his lip or the bedding to keep himself silent, but he didn't stand a chance. I tilted up his hips and pounded down into him, holding him up so that his knees didn't even touch the bed, ignoring his half-protesting cries that trailed off into rhythmic gasps and moans. The bed thudded and creaked, with one of my knees now noticeably lower than the other as the mattress gave way.

Fuck it. I adjusted my angle to compensate and swiveled my hips, testing out how deep I could go, wondering how he felt with the thick length of my cock buried so far inside him. Holding him up with one hand, I reached the other underneath his hips.

By the way he whined and moaned and kicked at my calves, trying desperately to get some leverage, and rutted his rock-hard cock into my palm, he thought being impaled on my alpha cock felt incredible.

I'd already noticed he was a lot stronger than he looked. He could take it.

Both hands on his hips again, I stopped restraining myself. My fangs dropped, my claws pushed out, and I lifted my fingers to keep them from piercing his skin and fucked him harder. I wouldn't be able to keep myself from coming for much longer. That tingling had started in the base of my cock, and another sensation that only an alpha would experience: a throbbing pressure that meant my knot was ready to fill my lover's soft hole, wrench him open, lock us together.

Sweat trickled down my spine and my legs, and a sheen of it dampened his back, too, catching strands of his silky hair and sticking them to his skin. My whole body had gone so tense I shook with it. The air around us crackled with magic, his wild fae strain and my own alpha power blending and folding over and over on top of each other.

The way he moved against me, like water, yielding but endlessly resilient…

Except that his cries had risen to an almost pained timbre, and I forced myself to stop.

Everything in the world seemed to freeze for a moment as I bent down over him, lungs laboring, blinking the sweat out of my eyes. His body quivered under my hands, around my cock, which was still buried to the hilt. His sharp sit bones dug into my groin.

"Oh," he gasped. "Why are you—what's wrong?"

I stared down at him, the delicate lines of his torso, one outflung arm, the curve of his cheek where the curtain of his hair had parted to give me a glimpse. Something in my chest caught and twanged. Gods, I hoped it wasn't tenderness. That way lay madness.

But my voice came out a lot gentler, and a lot more breathless, than I wanted as I said, "You know, I don't have to knot you. I can control it." If I used every bit of willpower I had, and then some. "We can… not knot, and say we did." But that wouldn't work for a fae promise, would it? In a burst of selfless, unwilling inspiration, I added, "You can finish me off with a hand job. If I knot your hand, I've still knotted you, right? You can win your bet."

His shaky little laugh vibrated through my cock, and I had to choke back a groan. The sound of it lodged in that same place in my chest that I'd been trying to ignore. Damn it.

"No," he said, and then, in a strange reversal of his usual M.O., answered a question I hadn't asked rather than dodging one I had. "You won't hurt me. Don't—worry about me."

I wanted to believe him, except that he almost sounded like he might be about to cry.

Shit. But people had all kinds of odd reactions during sex, right? And not-quite-people had them, too. Exhibit A: that twinging, twisting not-quite-guilt-or-something under my breastbone.

Nah, you couldn't ask another dude if he was crying, not even if you were balls-deep in him. Maybe especially not if you were balls-deep in him.

"Okay," I said. "Then heads up."

At this point, coming wasn't going to take me any effort at all. I didn't need to fuck him hard to get there. Instead, I rocked into him, gazing down, letting the slow, easy friction get me buzzing, the sight of his shiny wet rim stretching and swallowing me up mesmerizing and unbelievably hot, the hottest thing I'd ever seen.

And then there was no turning back, with the pressure forcing its way up my cock, my knot swelling, the spasms that whited out my vision and bowed my spine as I spilled into him in pulse after pulse. Over the sound of my own wildly thudding heartbeat, I could barely hear his cries, and my knot grew more, forcing me to thrust deeper to get it all the way in. The pressure of his insides against the hardness of it wrenched another aftershock out of me.

Knotting had never taken me like this, an irresistible force that blurred my senses, leaving me with nothing but static and the need to collapse down, close my eyes, and get a breath. At the last second, I managed to tip us sideways and tuck him into the cradle of my hips so I didn't crush him, and then I closed my eyes and tried to drift.

But the panting of his breath hadn't let up in the slightest, and he kept squirming, the motion massaging my cock and knot, almost too much and too intense. His wriggling brought me back to reality after a moment, and the world rushed back in: the cool air in the room drying the sweat on my skin, the pipes clanking in the wall, a car outside.

Wait a minute, had he…

I closed my eyes, swallowed hard, and focused, forcing my claws back in, and then reached around him.

My hand closed around his cock and balls. They weren't small, but my broad palm and long fingers encompassed most of what he had.

He'd said no kissing, but the peak of that slim shoulder, skin gleaming with perspiration like dewy flower petals, drew me in like a magnet.

"Come on," I whispered, and pressed my lips to his skin. My tongue flicked out, and one drop of his sweat beaded on it, heady and delicious. "Come on my knot, sweetness."

The endearment came out of fucking nowhere, fuck, and I overcompensated, giving his cock and balls a firm squeeze. He convulsed in my arms, legs scissoring, clenched around me hard enough to make me reel dizzily, and spilled all over my hand. With a drawn-out—dammit, a sob, I really couldn't mistake it for anything else—he slumped and went limp. The scents of tart citrus and honeysuckle rose up around us, mingled with my own sweat and the salty musk of my come.

If his come tasted the way it smelled, no wonder he had to warn guys not to blow him.

With an effort of will that deserved way more credit than anyone was ever going to give me, I resisted lifting my hand to my mouth and sucking it clean. Instead, I massaged his limp cock and his spent balls, because he kept shuddering and clamping down around my knot and making me crazy, and—overstimulated sauce for the goose, thank you very much.

His breath hitched, and I squeezed him again, and his little shiver had me curling around him, all my instincts screaming at me to keep him warm, enclose him, stuff him full, hold him, taste that tempting curve of his neck…

"Stop licking me," he said, and I froze mid-lick, caught like a kid with my hand in the cookie jar. "It's for your own good."

Okay, now I was going to fucking well ask, because he was taking a little bit of nuzzling way too seriously. I hadn't eaten out his pretty ass, so what the hell more did he want from me?

"What's the worst that could happen?"

His long, long pause didn't reassure me in the slightest. If I hadn't still been deeply knotted in his delicious body, every inch of mine tingling with endorphins and with the pleasure of having his sleek curves and angles pressed up against me, I might've been some variety of concerned.

"I don't like hypotheticals," he said at last.

His voice still had the slightly thick quality of someone who'd been crying. Yeah, he really had been. Fuck, had I hurt him after all? And the fact that the possibility of having done him harm worried me way more than whatever "hypothetical" he didn't like, well…that worried me the most.

"I don't either," I replied, wishing I could get angrier. But with him in my arms, and the taste of him on my tongue, and the music of his heartbeat and his breath in my ears, nothing else really seemed to matter. Gods, I could lie here forever. Knot him again and again. Fuck, I had to focus. Hypotheticals. Right. "I especially don't like imaginary, unknown hypotheticals that you won't even tell me about."

His scent kept getting stronger, sweeter, more soothing. My eyes drifted shut. I tried to force them open, but my lids were so heavy. I tucked my arm around him more tightly, my come-sticky hand pressing against his sternum, and laughed as he made a disgusted little noise.

Still no answer. Mmm, whatever. Hardly shocking that he was being cagey, and anyway, we could nap before we discussed the worst that could happen. Surely it wouldn't be before we woke up.

His heart had an odd rhythm to it, fast and a bit thready, vibrating against my chest. I petted him, nuzzling his shoulder, wrapping myself around him as best I could to shelter him from anything and everything. Nothing would get through a weretiger. Even without my ego involved, there really were very few beings on Earth that could.

Between one breath and the next, I dozed off, my arm pinning him safely in place, my knot keeping him tied to me.

***

What seemed like one more breath later, my eyes popped open, my whole body coming tense and alert instantaneously. I rolled onto my back and out of bed, claws out, mouth open in a silent snarl.

Heart racing, I whipped my head around.

The hotel room lay in a gloomy murk, with all the lights off but with threads of sunlight leaking in around the edges of the drawn curtains. But that was more than enough to show me no fairy—and no all-black clothes or stripper heels. My own clothes still lay scattered on the chair and the floor where I'd left them.

Sunlight. Fucking daylight, and by the down-slanting angle of the sun, at least mid-morning. That meant I'd been asleep for a minimum of seven hours or so, a ridiculously long time by my usual standards. I straightened up from my automatic defensive crouch, sniffing the air and figuratively cocking my ears. Cars went by on the street outside, someone yelled and laughed in another room of the hotel, a distant phone rang. Tart sweetness lingered in the air, along with a hint of soap. I'd have been able to hear any movement anywhere in the room, but I went around the bed and pushed the bathroom door open anyway. Nothing.

Although not quite nothing. One towel had been used and tossed on the floor, and a couple of the complimentary toiletries had been opened and scattered on the counter. All the steam of the fairy's presumed shower had already evaporated, though, so it hadn't been the sound of him using the bathroom that had woken me.

The outer door closing?

Two seconds later I'd flung it open and stuck my head out.

No fairy. No one at all in either direction along the length of the hotel, and no one in the parking lot except…shit, a woman in a housekeeping uniform, standing by the palm trees, who'd looked up from her phone and cigarette to gape at me.

Naked. I was naked. Fuck.

I dashed back in the door like a reverse Jack-in-the-box and slammed it shut.

Double, triple fuck.

Another wild look around the room showed me nothing new. No sign of where he'd gone, or when, though unless he could vanish into thin air as well as everything else, he'd left a while ago.

Usually I slept lightly, half-attuned to what went on around me even while unconscious, like the giant cat I was. And yet he'd slipped off my cock, climbed out of my arms and the loudly creaky bed, and then gone into the bathroom and taken a shower. Gotten dressed. For all I knew, he'd watched some TV and called a friend and repainted his gods-damned toenails.

And I'd been dead to the world through all of it. Lying there with my mouth open snoring, probably.

Drooling.

Fuck me.

The way I'd fallen asleep hadn't been natural. That had been magic. The intensity of his scent. The warmth and comfort. All of it. And I hadn't noticed the enchantment creeping over me, of course I hadn't, because it'd made me too mentally pliant to notice anything at all.

Rage rose up and nearly choked me, rage and offense and something I absolutely did not want to recognize as betrayed hurt.

My claws popped, and the roar that tore out of my throat rattled the lamps and echoed in the small room, probably sending any small animals for a mile around running for cover with their ears back. I subsided, panting, as little bits pattered down from the popcorn ceiling, sprinkled over the carpet like snow and dusting the rumpled bedding where I'd kissed and licked and knotted that sneaky little fucking magical prick.

Christ. Well, I hadn't paid for the room, which meant I wouldn't be liable for the ceiling or the suspiciously tilted and crooked-looking bed, but after that roar—and flashing the housekeeper—I should probably clear the hell out of here.

A shower could wait. My nose and a cursory visual inspection informed me that the only residue the little bastard had left on me had the consistency and scent of the kind of fancy wildflower honey I couldn't afford to buy at the bougie grocery store.

Ironic, that. He'd paid me, and I wouldn't be able to afford him.

After I ducked into the bathroom to piss, I pulled on my jeans and T-shirt, skipping the sweaty G-string in favor of freeballing it. Socks and boots were next, and I sat there for a second after I'd finished lacing them up, elbows on my knees, massaging my temples.

What a fucking clusterfuck. A slight throbbing had set up residence in the edges of my head, probably a reaction to magic.

Or to one of those unknown "hypotheticals" the fairy had said he didn't like to think about. Great.

The G-string caught a stray shaft of sunlight from around the curtain, and its glittery accents winked sadly at me from the dingy carpet. Ugh. Well, I wanted to wear it again even less now that it'd been on the floor of the hotel room, but on the other hand, I couldn't afford to keep replacing my stage outfits if they could be salvaged. Even with whatever I could get for that coin, I had to put every penny toward my debt. I snatched up the G-string, stood, and stuffed it into my pocket…

And then froze. My pocket was empty. I scrabbled into the other front pocket of my jeans, and then the two back pockets, just in case.

Nothing.

The coin hadn't gotten stuck in my jeans somewhere, that was absurd. I'd feel it, or it'd have fallen out when I got dressed.

But I still took every scrap of clothing off and checked in my boots before I got dressed again.

Then I got down on the floor and looked under the bed. Another pair of flimsy, tacky underwear appeared to be wedged at the head of it, halfway behind the headboard. Fucking gross. But no coin, and no corners where it could've rolled to.

Besides, I absolutely knew I'd put it into my pocket! And when I'd undressed and dropped my jeans the night before, I hadn't seen it fall out.

Frustration almost had me roaring again. But I forced myself to keep it together, to be methodical, because the moment I admitted that searching would be completely fruitless, I'd have to face the truth.

I went through that fucking hotel room like a forensic analyst, every second expecting a knock on the door from one of the hotel staff demanding I get out before they called the cops. By the time I'd finished, I was sweating and dusty and desperately in need of a shower after all. I stopped short of taking apart the built-in air conditioner under the window, but I came close.

Finally, standing there in the middle of the room, all the furniture pulled out and at odd angles, I didn't have any choice but to acknowledge that the coin had disappeared just like the fairy.

With the fairy, in fact.

He'd enchanted me, lied to me, cheated me, and then enchanted me again so that he could steal from me. I'd been made a fool of in every possible way, and the humiliation of it burned like acid in my gut.

No. No one did that to me and got away with it.

I was going to find that motherfucker and get what was mine if it was the last thing I ever did.