The Druid Next Door Page 12

  “Let me in.”

  The broad head of Bryce’s cock stretched Mal’s hole, not meeting as much resistance as there should have been. Mal had an instant to wonder why before Bryce pushed.

  All. The. Way. Inside.

  Mal whimpered. “Bryce. Please.”

  An expression of surprised wonder flitted across Bryce’s face, followed by pure unadulterated lust. He thrust again, nailing Mal’s gland, and Mal nearly burst out of his skin. Bryce’s fingers closed on Mal’s shoulders—a welcome, grounding pressure. “Brace yourself.”

  Bryce pulled back nearly all the way and thrust home again. And again, his pace increasing until the rhythm matched Mal’s racing heartbeat.

  Goddess, it was too intense. He couldn’t stand it, yet he wanted it to go on forever.

  Above him, Bryce’s gaze skewered him, night and fire and steel. His thrusts slowed to a standstill, and Mal nearly came off the bed. “Now you can beg.”

  “Goddess, Bryce, please.”

  “For you, anything.” With a glint of a smile, Bryce hammered home, where he belonged.

  Mal’s balls drew up, lightning gathering in his spine, and his vision whited out as he came on a howl, his spend painting his belly, his chest, his chin.

  “So beautiful.” Bryce’s hands clenched tighter, his back arching, shouting wordlessly as he came.

  Goddess, is it always like this? Mal’s breath hitched on a near-sob as he was filled with tender fire, a blessed heat more welcome than his heart’s blood.

  Bryce kissed him again, softer this time, but to Mal it felt like another brand of possession.

  “I’ll be right back.” Bryce got up and padded to the en suite, then returned with a warm washcloth while Mal was still blinking in the aftermath. “Good thing the sink is in range, eh?”

  He wiped Mal down from face to groin, trailing kisses in the wake of the cloth, while Mal trembled and tried to realign his thoughts.

  What just happened to me? I never bottom. But submitting had stroked his pleasure centers with unholy intensity until he would have done anything, abased himself in any way, to please Bryce—as if he’d suddenly taken on the personality of a lesser fae.

  Maybe I should have tried bottoming before after all.

  Because Goddess, it had felt so fecking good—as if he’d finally found what he’d been searching for his whole eons-long life.

  He rolled over onto his side in a fetal curl, causing Bryce’s hand to trail over his hip in a way that made him want to tuck himself under the man’s arm and snuggle, for shite’s sake.

  Bryce chuckled and kissed the back of his neck. “Tired? Rest, then. You earned it.”

  Why did that praise make Mal want to turn over and spread himself again? Flaming abyss, he was a high lord of the Sidhe. Could this be a throwback to before the Unification? Was the ceremony that had elevated the greater of y Tylwyth Teg to the status of the Daoine Sidhe wearing off?

  He’d never felt this way until after his visit to the Unseelie sphere. Maybe that’s what this was—a side effect. It would wear off like that unexplained weakness. It has to. Because this wasn’t who he was, and he’d have wagered his other hand that this wasn’t who Bryce was either.

  So who the fuck were they, and how had they put on someone else’s skin?

  A minuscule shift in the mattress and an almost impossible silence from the other side of the bed clued him in that Bryce was awake and trying his best to pretend to be asleep.

  Was he as mortified by what had happened as Mal? How could he be? He wasn’t the one who’d begged to be fucked—hells, begged to be fecking subjugated.

  Wrong. So wrong. Mal had no idea how he’d let it happen, but it wouldn’t happen again, no matter how talented Bryce’s mouth. Shite, if his kiss could make Mal abandon every sane thought he’d ever had about sex, he shuddered to think what he’d be willing to offer if the man ever got his mouth on Mal’s cock.

  He shivered at the thought and stopped himself when he realized he’d edged closer to Bryce’s seductive heat.

  Fuck this shite.

  Mal forced himself to roll up and sit on the edge of the mattress, his back to Bryce. The bedclothes rustled, signaling Bryce had finally decided to stop pretending to be asleep just as Mal had.

  “So . . . um . . . sex.”

  “Yeah,” Mal growled.

  “I’m pretty sure I’d have remembered if we’d done that before.” His voice was tentative, yet edged with teasing, and it pissed Mal off.

  “That’s because we didn’t. I lied.”

  “I know.”

  Mal grunted. “Humoring me?”

  “What? No. Just, you know, checking in.” The mattress dipped as if Bryce were moving toward him, and Mal froze, his left hand clutching his knee, his useless right hand dangling in front of his cock as if he could hide the way it responded to Bryce’s proximity.

  Bloody traitor.

  “Look.” Bryce touched his shoulder, but withdrew his hand when Mal flinched. “We need to talk.”

  “Fine. Talk. Nothing’s ever stopped you before.”

  “You seem . . . upset. Did I do something you didn’t like? If I did, I’m sorry. I’ve never— That is, I don’t have a lot of experience, but I’ve never imagined doing anything like that, and never in a million years with someone like you.”

  “Leave it, all right? It happened. But it won’t happen again.”

  “Oh.” Bryce swallowed audibly. “I see. Very well.” More rustling bedclothes, and his distracting heat retreated. “Do you think now that we have the Seat of Power, the wetlands will heal on its own, or do we need to do something else?”

  “About that.” Mal half turned so he could see Bryce’s face when he kicked him in the balls. A pissed-off Bryce would keep his distance, and Mal wouldn’t be tempted to do . . . whatever the hells he’d done. “That had nothing to do with the blight. I lied.”

  Bryce’s expressive face shut down completely. “You lied about that too? Why?”

  Mal shrugged, his gaze sliding away. “I needed to get into Faerie. I couldn’t go without you. Seemed like the best way.”

  “You could have tried asking.”

  No doubt about it—the man was royally pissed. Why did that make Mal’s chest feel so hollow? “Funny. David tells my brother that all the time. Must be a family failing.”

  “Don’t joke about this, Mal. We risked our necks with no plan and no backup—and we didn’t even do what we needed?”

  “We did what I needed.”

  “Fuck you.” Bryce stood up. “Except we’re not doing that again, are we?” He strode across the room. “I need to take a piss.” Instead of going into the en suite, though, he stormed off down the hall.

  “Wait! Use the— Augh!” The metaphysical hook in his midsection pulled Mal out of bed and onto the floor. He scrambled on all fours until he could stand and run down the hall with a very undignified bounce of his semi-erect cock.

  Just bloody brilliant. He leaned against the wall next to the bathroom door and slid down to sit on his arse, his arms draped over his knees. He closed his eyes, cursing both himself and Bryce as he clenched his fists.

  Wait—he clenched his fists? His eyes snapped open and he held his right hand up, inches from his face. Was it less crabbed? The fingers more extended? Could he feel a tingle in their tips? He frowned, concentrating fiercely. Clench, damn you, clench.

  His fingers twitched. Not much, but they definitely twitched, and he could bloody well feel it.

  He threw back his head and laughed. Even though he hadn’t gotten around to stowing the Seat of Power in the sodding box, Steve must have picked up anyway. Guess “close” is good enough for a mage with that kind of power. If this was the result of the geas brand’s spell—lessening the curse on Mal’s hand as he completed each task—then whatever Mal had gone through, whatever had come over him in the Unseelie sphere, was worth it. Whatever he needed to do, he’d do it, humiliation be damned.

  The toilet flushe
d in the bathroom.

  Oi. Right. He’d have to convince the pissed-off druid to get with the program too—not promising at the moment, but fuck it. If he had to suck Bryce off twice an hour, he’d do it, if it meant he’d recover the use of his hand.

  He refused to consider why the idea of sucking Bryce off twice an hour made him hard.

  “Listen. Bryce. You’re right, mate. We should talk.”

  No response. Fine. Mal probably deserved a little silent treatment after he’d played the arsehole card.

  “Look. I get that you’re pissed. I don’t blame you, but—”

  A massive thunk inside the bathroom cut him off, as if Bryce had kicked the side of the bathtub with one of those damn boots of his.

  Except he wasn’t wearing boots—or anything else, either.

  “Bryce?”

  Mal’s ears popped as a wind swept down the hallway. He scrambled to his feet, wishing he were wearing something other than original skin, because sure enough, Steve was looming in the doorway to the living room, the top of his hood brushing the lintel.

  “Gwydion’s bollocks, man. Did you just knock him out again?”

  “It seemed prudent.”

  “‘Prudent’? It sounds like you nearly dashed his brains out on the edge of the bloody bathtub.” Mal rattled the door handle. “Can you at least unlock this so I can be sure he’s all right?”

  Steve raised one gloved finger, and the lock snicked open. Goddess, what Mal wouldn’t give to have his powers back. He pushed open the door until it lodged against Bryce’s legs. Sure enough, he was splayed on the bathroom floor, a clear lump forming on his forehead.

  Mal fought an almost overwhelming compulsion to drop to his knees and cradle Bryce’s head in his lap. “If you expect me to finish your gods-be-damned tasks, you’d best make sure my unwilling partner stays ambulatory.”

  Steve rumbled. “A point. I shall make the spell less potent in future. And check for nearby obstacles.”

  “A real gentleman, you are.” Mal took the opportunity to snatch a towel off the rack and wrap it around his waist. “So. First task accomplished. I’m guessing you’re here to give me the next assignment.”

  Steve inclined his head. “As you say.”

  “Before we get into that, I need to know something.” Mal licked his lips, glancing down at Bryce, gorgeously naked even if he was unconscious. “Something happened.”

  “Several things, I imagine, since you returned with the Seat.”

  “Yeah, well, some of those things were damned unsettling. If you expect me to finish this out, you need to share a little more with me.”

  “What I can share is limited by my own curse, but nothing prevents you from asking.”

  “So when I touched the Seat of Power—”

  “Ah.” Steve stilled for a second. “Of course you did.”

  “What? It’s not like I could retrieve it without handling it. Is that a problem?”

  “Not as such, although it was careless of me not to consider the ramifications. Exposure may make you sensitive to certain . . . conditions . . . but it is not of itself a danger.”

  “‘Sensitive.’ That’s putting it mildly. After that, your talisman heated up so much it nearly branded my arse through a layer of leather.”

  Steve waved a negligent hand, the jewels in his cuff glinting in the uncertain light. “That was merely a failsafe. A warning, if you will, that your time was drawing short.”

  “We still had hours to go.”

  Steve rumbled. “Were you beset?”

  Mal thought back to the throne room. The talisman had misbehaved right before Rodric and his goons had shown up. “Yeah.”

  “Time is measured by circumstance as well as the clock.”

  “You could have told me.”

  Steve rumbled and inclined his head again.

  Not exactly a promise to mend his behavior, was it? “When we were nearly at the gate, I came over weak. Bryce had to practically carry me across the threshold.”

  “Did you still hold the talisman?”

  “Shite no. The bloody thing nearly seared my arse off.”

  “That is why. It wasn’t only a token of passage; it temporarily made you a part of the Unseelie sphere. The realm has its own ways of protecting itself from outside threats such as—” he inclined his head “—Seelie incursions. It was attempting to neutralize you.”

  “It nearly neutralized us both to death.”

  “Noted. Should you need to traverse the barrier again, I’ll alter the warning spell to make it . . .”

  “What? More precise? Less potent? Seems you’ve got a bit of a problem with overkill. Compensating for something, are you?”

  “I forget how fragile others can be. My form deadens me to certain sensations, and everything else is so . . . small. Forgive me. I must remember to scale the spell to fit the target.”

  “Can’t say your lack of finesse fills me with confidence.” Unfortunately, the bloody tynged ensured that Mal had no other option for assistance or advice—and he was in dire need of both. Swallowing, he glanced down at Bryce again. Could he admit this? Sod it, he had to know if the Seat of Power and the damned Unseelie neutralization had affected him in other ways. And when it would wear off. Might as well ask. Couldn’t be any more humiliating than what he’d done with Bryce, after all.

  “There’s another thing. When we got back, I . . . ah . . . acted in a . . . well . . . uncharacteristic way.” He pointed to Bryce. “With him.”

  Steve studied them—or at least Mal assumed he did, since his hood was pointed first at him, and then at Bryce. “Did you lie with him?”

  “Of course I lied to him. I can’t tell him the truth, thanks to your geas.”

  “I don’t mean did you prevaricate. Did you exchange fluids of the body?”

  Mal’s face heated at the memory of exactly how many and in what way the fluids were exchanged. “You mean like blood?”

  Steve rumbled. “Blood. Saliva. Semen.”

  “Ah. Yeah.” Two out of three anyway.

  He nodded. “And did you copulate?”

  Heat washed up Mal’s chest, and shite, he started to get hard under the towel. “We did.”

  “That’s why. Now, as to the next task—”

  Mal took a step forward. “Hold on there, mate. You haven’t answered the question. What do you mean, ‘That’s why’?”

  “He is a druid. Now, the next task—”

  “That doesn’t answer the question either.” He took another step forward, perversely gratified when Steve retreated into the living room. “What does him being a druid have to do with anything?”

  “You know nothing of our origins, then?”

  “The elder gods constructed Faerie. Blah, blah, blah.”

  “They also constructed Faerie’s inhabitants. Such as yourself, Lord Maldwyn.”

  “And such as you?”

  “More or less. But the druids came before. Their relationship to the elder gods predates Faerie. Just as the lesser fae were constructed to serve the greater, the greater fae were constructed to serve the druids.”

  “You mean what I did”—what he still wanted to do, damn it to all Arawn’s hells—“is because of fecking fae genetics?”

  “As you say. If a druid forces a fae to accept bonds of the body, that fae is essentially the druid’s slave.”

  Mal spun and punched the wall. “Bloody druids! There’s always a catch and this one beats them all.” But had Bryce actually forced him? Not physically, perhaps, but with some mental juju? Would he be second-guessing his motivations from now until he was uncursed or Cassie relented and released their magical shackles?

  “In these latter days, with druids dispersed and without central power, they’re more civilized about it. Most of them feel as you do—that subjugating another race is wrong. I believe they have spells and potions to prevent the condition.” Steve pointed his cowl at Bryce, and his rumble took on a definite note of disapproval. “In fact, I belie
ve they censure those who practice the art.”

  “It wasn’t his fault. He just found out about his heritage yesterday. The old biddy who apprenticed him hasn’t told him squat yet.” Mal turned away so he couldn’t see Bryce sprawled in all his naked glory, and had an uncontrollable urge to block him from Steve’s sight. “In fact . . .” Shame coiled in Mal’s belly. “I’m supposed to be educating him on the ways of the supernatural worlds.”

  “Then you’d best get to that. Although,” Steve’s rumble turned sly, “all he need do now is ask, and you’ll scramble to do his will and more.”

  “Yeah. Going to take care of that.” He’d be placing a call to David as soon as Steve departed for whatever realm he lurked in between visits to Hillsboro. “So. The next task.”

  Mal tried to be subtle about closing the bathroom door, but by Steve’s rumble, he wasn’t fooling anyone, including himself. Definitely calling David ASAP.

  “For the next task, you must acquire a scale from a molting dragon shifter.”

  Mal barked out a laugh. “You’re joking.”

  “No. You see my dilemma? Adults would never part with something that will eventually increase their treasure. And as for children, who have not yet learned to hoard them, there’ve been none born this fifty years or more.”

  Mal blinked. There had been a dragon child born. Furthermore, Mal knew who it was. How can Steve not know that? Apparently Steve’s unpredictable magical powers weren’t his only limitation. Not as omnipotent as you’d like me to believe, are you, boyo? That knowledge was a bit of a double-edged blade. On one hand, Steve might have exaggerated his ability to lift Mal’s curse. Not that I can demand references from previous satisfied customers. On the other hand, any weakness in an opponent—even if they were supposed to be an ally—was worth exploiting, and Mal needed all the advantages he could squeeze out of this predicament. “If this task is so impossible, why do you think I can handle it?”

  “Not completely impossible, else I would lose hope. As you well know, the man without hope is a dangerous—and unpredictable—thing. Far better to give him a quest, be it ever so arduous.” The sound emanating from Steve’s chest could have been a mournful chuckle or a cheerful sob. Hard to tell. “It gives him something to occupy his time.”