Whatever else I’d hoped for was lost in the urgent need to come, right the hell now, in any way possible. I fumbled my jeans open, got my cock out of my shorts, and closed my dry hand around my shaft. My vision tunneled, dark around the edges, as I drove my dick through my fist once, twice— relief flashed through me in a firestorm of release. At the last moment, I managed to turn and avoid shooting all over Robin’s slacks. Instead, pulse after pulse of jizz hit the tile floor as I shook and gasped and pumped myself dry.
“Oh fuck.” I shivered. My cock squeezed out one last drip. Unclamping my hand, I sat back on my heels and stared at the mess on the floor. My brain reeled and floated, untethered from my body. I jumped as Robin stroked my hair again, tucking a strand into place.
He chuckled. “You’re so fucking hot.”
I coughed. “You’re not bad yourself.”
Robin took a step to the side and pulled his clothes up, zipping, buttoning. He reached behind him, snagged the leather belt, and slid its length between his fingers with his eyes on me. I remembered that instant when he’d wrapped the leather around my wrists. I didn’t like bondage, never had, but my traitor dick gave a last helpless twitch at that memory.
From the wicked grin that grew on Robin’s face, he noticed and was remembering that same moment, but he threaded his belt back through the loops without commenting. I clenched mysticky hands together because I had an instant’s desire to offer to do that for him. Stand close, wrap the leather around his waist—No.
A quick scan of the room showed me a sink in the back corner. I pushed to my feet, got myself tucked away, my jeans zipped, then went over to wash the spunk off my hands.
“Can I get you anything?” Robin asked.
I was going to say no and rinse my mouth under the tap when I remembered the reason I’d gone through with this seduction in the first place. Not for this buzz along my nerves like nothing I’d felt before, not for the heady pleasure of seeing that light in Robin’s eyes, but for business. Sorcerer’s business. “Would you bring me a water? Or soda?”
“We have both. What would you like?”
My head still spun and I wasn’t capable of any decisions. “Surprise me. I like it all.”
“Right. Give me a minute.” Robin opened the door a crack, checked through it, then let himself out and shut the door behind him.
As soon as he was gone, I grabbed a couple of damp paper towels from the sink and hurried over to the cabinet.
Its aura hadn’t been sweetened by watching our hot sex. Something nasty simmered in there. But if I hadn’t been able to get the doors open with straightforward magic, then at least no one else would find it easy either. I pondered my options as I swiped away my chalk runes with a damp towel.
I’d offer to buy the cabinet, I decided, and if that failed and I couldn’t get the doors open with one more fast spell tonight, I’d have to steal it. Leaving that malevolence smoldering in Robin’s private workshop wasn’t safe.
Magnus Fairborn had been far from a joke, and the only mirrors or smoke around him were sulfur fumes from the demons he’d summoned when his quest for power turned dark.One of which had killed him, to no one’s disappointment, although banishing the demons had wiped out our two local necromancers for a week.
As always, when a sorcerer died, two members of our local council had gone straight to his house before the corpse was cold to remove any books and artifacts that we didn’t want humans to see. We always tried to clear away the evidence of magic before the heirs arrived. Corbin and Naismith had left with a truckload of books and tools and devices that desperately needed burning. And yet, somehow, they’d missed the cabinet.
I’d have called that mistake sloppiness, except I’d worked in the Three Rsfor a week now, searching magically in my private moments for traces of Fairborn’s goods, and my seeking spells had noticed nothing in this room till I saw the cabinet with my own eyes.
The dark, hand-carved wenge wood was ideal for holding power, but still… Usually, when a sorcerer died, his magic faded with him. This time, the hiding and lock spells on the cabinet were still going strong. Either they were someone else’s work, or Fairborn had infused a shit-ton of power into them before his death.
Or they were powered by something else. Something that didn’t want to be found. Like the book. The reason I was here.
Because once she’d recovered from exhaustion, Necromancer Sylvanwood had returned to Fairborn’s house to make sure all the demons were truly gone, and she’d found a ghost. Some unfortunate apprentice, dead by supposed accident two decades back, whose tattered, insubstantial, almost-lost form warned about“The book. Kimber’s Death Rites. He hid it. Destroy the book.”Sylvanwood hadn’t been able to get more than those words, over and over, out of the poor specter, and eventually she’d given it mercy and laid the ghost.
But in the week between Fairborn's death and Sylvanwood's recheck, while Fairborn’s home had stood untenanted, his sister had showed up, co-ownership papers in hand, and brought in a company to sell, discard, and donate all the house’s contents. Fairborn’s goods were scattered to the four winds, and the book with them.
Our council meeting had been… in generous terms, vigorous. Loud. Acrimonious. Kimber’sDeath Riteswas a notorious black magic tome, of which perhaps a dozen copies were supposed to still exist around the world. The knowledge that one had been in our community and then slipped through our fingers was nauseating. The discovery of how far down the dark path Magnus Fairborn had gone also made us all look at each other with distrust. Fairborn hadn’t come to our meetings in a decade, no doubt to hide the growing demon taint in his magic, but he’d once sat around that same mahogany table, talking about how to keep the local community safe and well.
Which of us should be trusted to hunt down a dangerous book of great evil? Who among us might be hiding the same lust for power that had driven Fairborn?
In the end, we’d done the only thing we could do, which was to share the search for the book in logical ways. Since I worked for myself, I could take a week off from my PI business to check out the perennially short-staffed Three Rs store where the dregs of his estate had been donated. Using seeking runes, I’d scoured the stock for magical items. A few bits and pieces in boxes had held a sour residue and I’d stolen a couple for destruction before retaping the cartons, but nothing had glowed dark like the book would. I could’ve quit after four days, reassured, but something had made me stay longer.
Something? Premonition? Or your cock hoping for a chance with “Mr. Forrest?”
I didn’t answer my inner voice, which seemed to be channeling my familiar, Harry.
As if thinking about the rat had conjured him, I heard Harry’s sharp voice from the corner of the workshop. “Smells like you got a bit of fucking done, anyhow. Any actual work accomplished?”
I straightened from wiping off the chalk and gestured at the cabinet with my thumb. “The longer I hang about that thing, the more certain I am the book’s in it. The aura stinks.”
Harry scrunched his pointed nose at the cabinet, whiskers twitching. Then he blinked his beady eyes twice. “Fuck me sideways with a spoon.” He nodded to me. “I looked in this room three times this week. Didn’t once notice that great hulking mess of dark magic. How—” He cut himself short and scurried under the workbench.
