I put my hands on his shoulders from behind and find a pair of knots at the base of his neck with my thumbs. Rune startles.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Giving you a massage to relax you.”
He looks over his shoulder at me with a skeptical look. “No one has ever massaged me before.”
I quirk one side of my lips up in a half smile. “Good, because I’ve never massaged anyone before, so at least you’ll have no way of knowing if I’m terrible at it.”
He huffs a laugh. “Be gentle with me.”
Heat flutters in my gut and my cock twitches eagerly, swinging heavily against my thigh. I bend down close to his ear and whisper, “I promise.”
Rune’s eyelids flutter, and I swear I feel a physical pulse of heat radiate through that spot in the middle of my chest that feels like him.
“Come here,” I coax, moving to sit on the cot and spreading my legs wide to make space for him. Then, I gesture to the floor right in front of me.
I know he can see the shape of my erection snaking down my thigh, bulging inside the prison of my pants, but he doesn’t say a word about it, even if his eyes do linger for a few seconds. I wish I had somewhere more comfortable for him to sit—like my lap—but this will have to do for right now.
“Oh, one second.” He closes his eyes and a faint glow emanates from his tattoos again, much duller than when we were kissing. He murmurs the same words he said before when he set the white noise spell, and a slight whooshing noise fills my ears.
“You still have your magic.” My words come out flatter than I meant them to. That’s agoodthing. If he still has some magic, then maybe we don’t need to domoreafter all. Maybe it will just continue to build inside of him and soon he’ll be strong enough to get us out of here all on his own.
He shakes his head as he gathers his long hair up and ties it into a messy knot so it’s out of the way.
“That was the last of it. It’s gone again.” He lowers himself onto the hard, dirty floor, making himself as comfortable as possible between my thighs with his back towards me. “It’s so damn frustrating. Usually, my magic feels like a river inside me, flowing without end, easily fed by the energy I can pull from the air all around me. But now it’s like a puddle, shallow and useless.” I can feel his frustration pulsing and writhing like a living creature. “And it’s bothering me that I can’t put my finger on where I’ve felt that magic before,” he mutters as I put my hands back on his shoulders and find those tense knots again with my thumbs.
I grunt, sinking my thumbs right into the tight spots.
Rune lets out a gasp that sounds like pure sex, and his shoulders slump with the release of tension.
“Fuck, Gargoyle,” he groans. “You’re pretty damn good for your first time.”
I chuckle and another wave of heat rushes through me.
“Maybe you shouldn’ttryto think about it so hard.” I find another knot to work on, a little lower down and right near his shoulder blade.
“What? Your magic hands?” he asks before he moans again.
“No, I mean who that person is, the one who’s holding us hostage. Any time I’m trying to remember something, the harder I try, the further away the information feels. If you stop trying, sooner or later your unconscious mind will put the pieces together and suddenly you’ll just know.”
“That’s… actually really smart.” He tilts his head to one side to give me better access as I work my way up, kneading all of the tight spots I come across along the way.
“You don’t have to sound so surprised,” I tease. “I might not be a brilliant, powerful mage, but I do have a useful thought from time to time.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he says, a little more softly than I’m expecting. “To be fair, getting yourself trapped in here with me wasn’t the most genius thing you could have done, but outside of that, you seem reasonably intelligent.”
“I don’t think it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” I murmur as my eyes roam over the slope of his neck and the hard edge of his jaw, taking in the few loose strands of his hair breaking free from the knot he tied them in. His tattoos shimmer with a muted glow when I slip my hands underneath his shirt to work on the knots in his lower back. He’s breathtaking. Even if itisthe wrong time and all of his interest in me is practical rather than romantic, I can’t deny my attraction to him.
He laughs. “Fair enough. And I suppose I’m grateful for it.”
“So, that ‘more’you mentioned…”
He shifts away from me, ending the massage, and swivels in his spot so he’s still seated on the floor between my thighs, but facing me now. He leans against one of my legs and tilts his head as he looks up at me with an uncharacteristically coy smile on his lips.
“I don’t know exactly how far we’ll need to take it. Skin contact seems to be the key, so perhaps if we got completely naked together, it might give me enough access to my power to pull the bars down.”
I clear my throat to hide the hitch in my breathing, and I nod.
