Not wanting to stay and watch Tulip take down her prey, Billy left the workshop and headed down to the experimentation room. It was empty, the ruined machine at the back of the room sitting like an ugly lump, the twisted metal mocking him.
It was back to the drawing board. Sitting down at his desk, Billy decided to go through the schematics for the machine from the ground up to see if he had missed anything that couldexplain why the magic went haywire.
There was no reason the machine shouldn’t channel magic just as well as the shaping rods or any of the tools that were used in the castle, so the flaw had to be in the design.
An hour passed, and Billy lost himself in the intense focus he only ever felt when he worked. Hours could pass while he was in the zone and feel like just seconds.
“There you are!”
The voice startled Billy, making him jump into the air and catapult off his seat like he’d been ejected from a fighter jet. Nick stood behind him, smirking and not looking the least bit sorry.
“Hello. You’re not taking the day off?” Nick asked, walking up to his desk and looking down at his drawings. Billy hurried to his feet and moved back into his chair. He resisted the urge to pull Nick’s hand back when the big alpha started touching the papers littering his desk, moving them around curiously.
“Billy?” Nick asked, looking down at Billy with a questioning lilt in his voice. Billy frowned, confused, but then he remembered that Nick had asked a question.
“Oh, no,” he said, blushing for no reason. “I figured I might as well get some work done.”
Billy reached down and hurriedly gathered his drawings and papers together, stacking them up and pushing them away from Nick’s curious fingers. “Pat said the magic will be fixed by tonight?”
The distraction worked. Nick grabbed his belt and stepped back, shrugging with faux nonchalance. “The magic was contaminated, somehow. The new Krampus is coming over to help me drain the castle. He should be here a little after noon.”
Billy blinked.Krampus—the antithesis of joy and good cheer—was going to be in the castle?
He did not like the sound of that.
“Krampus?” he asked, his voice strangled. Nick nodded, blithely unconcerned.
“His name is Damon. I know him, actually. We went to school together.”
Billy wondered if this Damon character was anything like Nick. Then again, there was probably a reason Damon was made Krampus and Nick was made Santa.
“That’s nice,” Billy said, not sure what he was supposed to say. Nick grinned and nodded.
“It is, but that isn’t why I wanted to talk to you. I was actually hoping you’d want to go up and have a little session in my playroom before I have to work.”
Billy froze. He held his breath for three seconds and slowly let it out. Nick was looking at him like he wanted to eat him, and the prospect of another round in the playroom had Billy feeling like he was standing in line for a rollercoaster.
“Right now?” he asked, voice cracking, not sure he’d understood. Nick took a step closer, moving right into Billy’s space, and reached down to wrap a hand around the back of Billy’s neck. The leather of Nick’s glove was smooth and warm, and Billy shuddered at the feel of it. When Nick started squeezing, massaging the space right under his ears, he thought his legs were going to give out.
Nick leaned down and pressed his lips to Billy’s temple. “I want to bend you over the bench in my playroom,” he said, his voice low and growly, the grip on Billy’s neck tightening. A spark of electricity ran down Billy’s spine. Nick slid his handup and grabbed him by the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling his head back so that they were eye to eye.
Nick’s eyes were dark and aroused, and Billy felt like he was going to drown in their inky black depths.
“I’m going to fucking spread your legs wide over the bench so that you’re showing me your pretty little hole,” Nick said, enunciating each word and maintaining eye contact. “Then I’m going to warm your cheeks with my flogger, and when you’re nice and sensitive, I’m going to fuck the cum out of you.”
Nick’s voice was low and heated, making Billy shudder and tremble. He felt hot and full of energy, like his skin was too tight and he needed something—what Nick was describing—to happen.
It didn’t escape Billy’s notice how Nick had gone fromI wanttoI’m going to.
Billy’s cock pressed against the front of his pants, painfully hard, pushing into Nick’s muscular thigh. Nick lifted his foot, pushing it between Billy’s legs, and gently brought his thigh up so that Billy was lifted off the ground. The pressure on his cock felt amazing.
“What do you say? Are you in?” Nick’s voice was cocky, like he already knew that Billy would say yes. He hugged Billy to his chest, letting Billy straddle his thigh and grind his cock into the hard muscle of his leg, squeezing him tight.
“I …yes.” Billy was breathing hard, and talking wasdifficult. Nick’s arms were like a vice.
“Good boy!” Nick praised him like he would an obedient puppy, happy and exuberant. The humiliation of being sincerely condescended to was strangely delicious.
The big alpha shifted his grip and held Billy under his arms, and—in a now familiar move—threw him over his shoulder and smacked his ass with a grunt.
