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A shelf shifted to the side to catch me, and I jumped at the sudden movement, staring at what looked like a recycled cabinet full of jewelry boxes. Mael chuckled as he shut the door behind me, the glow of his ring fading with the design etched into the wood. “Yeah, sorry, she does that sometimes. The Kid and I have awful coordination. She’s learned to kind of compensate for it.” “Oh, well, thank you?” I awkwardly patted the shelf, trying to ignore the way my ears burned when Mael gave me that small, amused smile of his.
A taxi waited for us outside, and I quickly decided that the skirt wasn’t the only mistake I’d made tonight; showing up in the first place was my biggest mistake. Because damn it, it did feel like a date—the two of us pressed together in the back seat of a taxi with nothing but the poof of my skirt between us.
Three pieces: the shirt, the waistcoat, the jacket,” I argued, ticking them off on my fingers. Mael snorted, trying to hide it behind his hand as he shook his head. “No. Waistcoat, jacket, trousers. The shirt doesn’t count, you’re already supposed to be wearing that.” “Wha—you’re already supposed to be wearing pants too! You’re much more likely to be walking around shirtless than pantless! That’s ridiculous, who decided these rules? I just want to talk, I swear.”
The rest of the ride—and turning in our tickets, and finding our seats—was filled with Mael’s excited info-dumping about the so-called ‘Most Important Celebration in History.’ He kept his voice hushed so as not to be overheard, his head ducked in close and his hands moving rapidly between us as he explained the intricacies of sídhe parties and celebrations. Apparently, of which, included a lot of public sex and other hedonistic endeavors.
And now I stood on that precipice again. It took everything in me not to storm through the crowd and beat his face in, to claw his eyes out with my chipped black fingernails until there were flecks of polish left in his rotting corpse.
He got this sort of faded look in his dark eyes when he looked at things sometimes. I’d noticed it at the markets, and sometimes when he was looking at me. Like he was seeing something no one else could see—which…I guess he was. “Like your eardrums refusing to pop when you’re sick,” Mael grumbled finally, wincing as he touched a fingertip to his ear. He tapped the plug there and his shoulders relaxed a bit. “Kind of a heavy pressure in the air, I guess. He’s got some sort of illusion on him to hide from the humans, and it hurts behind my eyes.”
“He doesn’t really look like much. Kind of like an accountant turned serial killer.
The knife dug deeper into my back and I sucked in a breath, trying to figure a way out of this without ruining my favorite suit jacket. Or… you know, dying.
I’ve been pretty careful about being seen. So how many?” I snorted. “Careful? Dude, the Order were the ones who told us where to find you. They’ve been tracking your movements the whole time you’ve been in the states and now they’re trying to pin you with murder.” Mael leaned tense shoulders into me, though he didn’t call me out on the lie. Vormese, though, looked about ready to bolt. “Murder? I didn’t murder no one!” “That’s a double negative, which is technically a confession—”
The shadows around us were moving. No… not moving. They were throbbing, writhing, like a dark fabric separating us from something dangerous on the other side. Long fingers of darkness seeped through the cracks in the asphalt, crawling like molten lava closer and closer to our feet until I pressed myself against Mael’s back to avoid their grasp. “What the—” Vormese stumbled and the shadows retreated, swallowed back up into the walls and ground as if they’d never been there in the first place. “You’re unseelie?” That was his fancy fae magic? Unseelie magic? I couldn’t tell whether I was turned
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“You made a deal for Lori’s necklace.” It wasn’t a question, but Mael nodded anyway. His cheeks burning a dark red and the tips of his ears flushing the same color. “Oh, yes. Yeah. I could um—I had a suspicion he took it, and I could feel the magic—well, I just figured you’d want it back is all.” He held it out, resting it in his palm like an offering. My fingers shook as I took it. “You offered to lie to the cops for this—for me?”
“I thought I told you to listen better when we were at the markets. Words are important, but the way you use them even more so.” I didn’t understand and I told him as much, my voice like quiet aftershocks of distant thunder. “I told him I’d tell the Order he was getting out of town to whatever destination he chose. I didn’t agree to when I’d tell them that, or if I’d tell them only that.” A wide grin spread across his face—young and dashing, a smug mischief lighting up his features. “I’ll just tell Julia exactly what happened and exactly what deal I made. Technically, I’d still be telling them
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“Is your kid home?” Thrown by the rapid topic change, his smile stuttered and he shook his head. “No? They’re out with a friend tonight. Why?” “Because that was the hottest, sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me, and I plan on thanking you for it all night long.” Before he could respond past his sputtering, I grabbed him by the sides of his face, digging my fingers into his loose hair, and tugged him into a kiss so deep I could taste my name behind his teeth.
I’d fucked plenty of other people with magic before, and it’s not like I could turn my synesthesia off, but Leo made me want to soak in the starlight of his veins, to lap the glow of his freckles from his throat and drink the sun’s reflection from the dip in his collarbones. He did in fact taste like sunshine.
Gods, he looked beautiful, perched atop me like a king on his throne. His shoulders and chest dotted with freckles, stomach rising and falling beneath my hands when I grabbed at his hips. His hair fell around him like fresh wheat in the morning light, eyes sparkling like tree sap the moment before a forest fire. “Mael?” I breathed out a quiet “yes” and yanked him back down to my mouth, unable to form any other words. His giggle tasted like liquid gold, and his fingernails etched epigraphs in my skin as he dragged them across my chest, one of them catching on my nipple.
Have I told you how much I love your tattoos?” “You did drool over them the first time you saw them.” “It was justified. Look at these, you’re like a walking piece of art.”
I arched into his tongue when he set it upon me again, tracing burning rivers across every tattoo he could reach, digging trenches into the negative space with his teeth. He trailed lower and lower, leaving a trail of wet bruises across my chest and ribs, his fingers tracing the hem of my boxers.
I wasn’t sure why the panic came. He already knew I was trans. He’d clocked my top scars that day he showed up for the markets, and they weren’t hidden now. I wasn’t ashamed of it, didn’t normally have an issue since most of my lovers were magical in nature and didn’t usually hold the same prejudices against me that humans did. But growing up when I did, the way I did, didn’t just go away. People like me weren’t accepted as we were until extremely recently, and even now it’s still a struggle. Still a possible death sentence depending on who found out.
I wasn’t worried about Leo, necessarily—not with the skirt left somewhere on the stairs or the way he ran the thumb of his free hand along the edge of my scar—but he made me nervous in more ways than one. Because I liked him.
“If you’re expecting a cock down there, you aren’t going to find one.” The words were blunt, but I couldn’t think of another way to get them out. Leo raised his eyebrows, running his fingernail along the edge of my scar. “No offense, babe, but I kinda figured that?
I guess you could have had bottom surgery. Or, I don’t know, maybe magic people have some way of growing dicks that I don’t know about.”
“Don’t really care what you have down there, if I’m being honest. As long as you keep making ...
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“But I was talking more along the lines of gendered terms you don’t like, or things I shouldn’t do.” “Oh.” I blinked, processing the question and shaking my head. “No, no, I’m fine with whatever.” I tapped the Queen Anne’s Lace tattooed into my hip. “Can’t get pregnant either, if you’re worried about that.”
“Thank god, because your thighs are masterpieces and I want to eat you out until they crush my skull.”
It was ridiculous, all consuming, the fire I felt for him. Like his magic reached out for me and clung to whatever it could reach, digging into my pores, threading through the fibers of my bones until it felt like I was made from him. I wasn’t a religious person, but I ached for him the way the devil ached for God.
His lips pressed prayers into my skin, trailing rivers of hot, holy water down the valley of my throat and into the cradle of my collar. He scraped his teeth across the scars on my chest and dug his fingers into the meat of my thighs, prying me open like a bible in a preacher’s hands.
“Shh, I’ve got you. You just sit pretty and let me do all the work.” Before I could argue, he dropped down to the floor and yanked me to the edge of the bed, tossing my thighs over his shoulders. He sank his fingers back into me, his tongue running a fat stripe over my clit, and a moan rumbled out of me like the trumpets of war. He devoured me like I was his last meal on death row. Consumed me like Holy Communion on a sinner’s tongue.
“Take a deep breath for me, handsome, I’m about to rock your world.” I only had a moment to take in his words before he dug into me with his teeth and sucked, pressing his fingers so far into my cunt I could feel them in my throat.
It wasn’t until the quakes stopped rolling through me that he pulled away, his lips glistening with my spend and eyes glittering like amber in the sunlight. He looked a bit like an angel drenched in fresh ambrosia. I wanted to consume him.
I rocked into him again, my legs still shaking and my core still dripping. I’d be happy enough with him inside me instead, but I wanted to know what he looked like writhing on my cock, if he’d let me.
I wanted to drape him in gold chiffon and red silk, wanted to decorate him with jewels and pearls. A god of my own spread out in my bed to have whenever I pleased.
As much as I wanted to suck him down like a righteous whore, he was already hot and writhing with need. He wouldn’t last long, and I was impatient to have him falling apart beneath me.
I couldn’t feel him through the synthetic cock at first, but when I brushed my fingers over the spelled stitching in the harness, the sensations crashed into me all at once.
Leo wrapped his arms around my shoulders and all but demanded me to move, digging his fingers in with every sharp thrust until he left scores of scripture across my skin. He tossed his head back, and I took the opportunity to sink my teeth into the long line of his throat, painting it with swaths of purple and red oil paint.
He cried out a song of absolution and trapped me between his legs as if he couldn’t bear the thought of me leaving. I wouldn’t, of course I wouldn’t. Where would I go when everything I needed was right here before me?
“Beautiful.” I kissed him like a peasant might kiss the ring of an emperor, subservient and unworthy. “But loud. Are you the singer in your little rock group?”
“Oh shut up, you dick. You were just as loud—” “Mm, I don’t think so.” I grinned, pressing teasing kisses to his jaw to distract him as I pulled out. “You were singing my name.”
“My old man was a piece of shit,” Leo said when I took his wrist in my hand, thumbing one of the scars just below his palm. “I protected Lori as well as I could from him, but neither of us really got out of that house without issues. When I was thirteen, he broke two of my ribs, my nose, and all the fingers on my right hand, because I told him I wanted to learn how to play piano, wanted to be a singer.
“Thank you.” “Hm?” Leo shifted, resting his chin on my chest and staring up at me with a look I didn’t really know what to do with—soft and wet, a smile gracing his lips like a morning sunrise.
It was safe to say at this point that Leo was more than just a job, even if I wasn’t quite sure what that meant. Infatuation, maybe? Curiosity? It felt like so much more, like my magic was reaching out for him, even now. I hesitated to call it love. Had I ever loved someone before? Did I know what that felt like?
And yet even now I could feel my nier, my shadows, puttering under my skin like a contented cat. Kneading biscuits into my heart in the shape of Leo’s smile.
“But the money—” I squeezed his hand and rolled my eyes. “For the record, I could pay for it if I had to, but that wasn’t really the plan. You may have noticed, but I’m not exactly on the right side of the law. When people hire me for jobs like this, they usually expect me to get their items by… other means.” Leo’s eyes sparkled and he gripped both of my hands in his, still ever so gentle with my injured one. “You’re going to steal it?” “I’m going to steal it.”
“I’m confused. Are you upset that I have the money, or that I’m willing to spend it on you?” “Oh my sweet baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the donkey,” Leo muttered under his breath.
“Mael. Sweetheart. I have so many questions, I don’t even know where to start. Like, how do you have millions of dollars and the suit you wore tonight looked like you bought it from a JC Penny’s?” I frowned. “Because I did buy it from a JC Penny’s?” “Oh my god, Mael!”
“I don’t pay rent because the Belamour is my patron and my home. I live comfortably, but not to excess. I mostly keep the money around so I can spend it on books and interesting things at auctions or estate sales. Like dragon eggs, hypothetically.”
I watched him as he trotted back into the living room—or well… I watched his freckled ass, amused to find a small tattoo on the globe of it. I couldn’t tell what it was when he disappeared quickly through the door, but I wanted to sink my teeth into it. “Oh, for fucks sake.” I dropped back down on the bed and glared at the square cufflink hanging above me, trying to rationalize this weird giddy feeling building up in my throat. It made me want to snap my fingers and wiggle my feet. Made me want to open my mouth as wide as I could and scream. I wanted to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him,
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How offensive is it to crash a memorial without an invite?” I raised an eyebrow at him, amusement twitching at my lips. “Extremely, but you technically wouldn’t be crashing it at all. By our laws, the council’s Right of Inclusion is invitation enough.” Leo’s lips parted in a salacious grin, sending my stomach tumbling and my heart purring loudly in my chest. “How do you feel about crashing it anyway?”
“And here I thought I wouldn’t be meeting you until the wedding.” Leo choked beside me and launched himself at the girl. “You twat! Why the fuck would you say that?”
“I’m not the one bringing a guy home to meet the family after the first date, you dick!” “Watch your fucking language, there’s children here!” “The only child I see is you!”
door. A larger man, even larger than Leo, stood off to the side in a small kitchen, watching Leo and Mercy duke it out between the couches with a fond, unbothered smile on his face. “They’re always like this,” the other man said, smiling with sharp teeth. He held up a coffee pot, poking a tongue against one of his fangs. “I’m Lugnut, I belong to the tiny one.
