“Are you charmed by me, Daddy?” I teased as I cupped my aching crotch. He looked like a Daddy with his leather and muscles and hirsute body. And as he stared at me, stone-faced and suspicious, I wondered what type of Daddy he might be—tough and demanding or soft and cuddly? It’d be foolish to get my hopes up either way, but if he wanted to be my Daddy for the night, Goddess knows, I’d be averygood boy.
“You’re a thief,” he said plainly. “Though a very pretty one. You’ll cause trouble where it need not be, so I’m banning you from Church. You may not return here for any reason, fae. I’ll make my staff aware of it.”
I frowned, partly from the flat-out rejection but also the loss of income. I’d identified this den of sin as my best hunting grounds. The minotaur, for I’d decided by this point to consider him as such, lifted one hand, and I braced myself to be struck, but he only held it out for me to take. Placing my hand in his, an electric zing shot through my arm, widening my eyes and sharpening my senses. Surely, he felt it too? Drunk on elixir and carnal lust, I managed to say to him, “You think I’m pretty?”
“Devastatingly so.”
“A dead-sexy brute who is also a gentleman?” I bowed, camping it up. “Please, my gallant sir, won’t you at least tell me your name?”
A flash of something like reluctance crossed his face. “Hierophant Wolfsbane. Around here I’m known as Hiero.”
“Skylar Larkspur,” I said and drew his hand to my lips so that I might kiss his knuckles. There was a thick gold band on one finger, and I resisted the urge to take it.
He drew his hand away slowly, came nearer as if to kiss me, then nodded to a man who emerged from the shadows. The minotaur then said with an authority that made my knees weak, “This is Fridolf, my cousin. He’ll see to it that you get home safely.”
He spun me around to his equally broad-shouldered cousin, though that was where the resemblance ended. I called to him over one shoulder, “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wolfsbane. I do hope our paths cross again.”
He only grunted in response, but his eyes remained fixed on mine as if a binding spell had been cast. Blame it on the alcohol, but I liked to think he might feel the same.
Chapter four
Hiero
Ikicked the fetchingfae out of my bar, but I couldn’t seem to scrub him from my mind.
Visions of Skylar Larkspur invaded my dreams that night, naked in all his glory with his pale limbs spread in unlikely contortions, long hair disheveled from being tumbled, and pink lips parted to reveal the edges of his pointed teeth. From there, I fell even deeper, into the sanguine red of a hot, wet mouth.
I fucked the fae in my dreams, his mouth and his hole. His body molded to my will while his deep voice urged me on with his every little whimper and moan. Phantoms of his bruised and creamy thighs, elegant cock and balls, and wet, swollen hole swam in my head as the dream sex transformed from a fiery need to something slower and sweeter. A sticky heat poured over me like molasses as I was finally roused to wakefulness by the late morning sun.
My body ached with a bone-deep yearning, my cock painfully tight in its velvet sheath and dribbling at the tip. A minute more and I might have come in my sleep like a sex-starved youth. I took myself in hand, appreciating the slide of my sheath and the steady drip of fluid, as I jerked myself roughly, attempting to imagine anyonebuthim. Impossible. Skylar Larkspur, naked again, was climbing onto my lap and seating his tight little body on my cock, using me like a toy to get himself off. His pretty tattoos shimmered as he bounced with enthusiasm, holding onto my neck and shouting, “Harder, Daddy,” until his voice broke in a wail of ecstasy. That was the moment my dick unloaded, spitting its seed like a venomous cobra all over my hairy chest.
May the Lord have mercy on my soul.
It was one of the best orgasms of my life, and I’d achieved it with only my hand. Well, that and fantasies of the fae, who I was becoming more and more convinced had bewitched me. Hadn’t he been muttering in a foreign tongue while we danced? Some sort of sexual incantation perhaps?
He’d called meDaddyin the alleyway, and my subconscious had repeated it in my dream, surely the product of a repressed desire on my part, to have a boy of my own. The few boys I’d had in the past hadn’t stuck around for very long, which had caused such a crisis of confidence that I’d stopped trying to satisfy that part of me, but there was no harm in pretending.
Except that Skylar Larkspur had trouble written all over him. The exact definition of averybad idea.
After a hot shower and stern talking to in front of the fogged mirror of my bathroom, I went downstairs to my office to review the bar’s monthly income and expense report, then took inventory in the wine cellar. It was early still, but I made myself a kale salad and poured a glass of iced tea only to find that our ice maker was on the fritz again, as evidenced by the empty bin and the suspicious sputtering noise coming from the compressor. I called on my cousin O’Rien who dabbled in mechanical sorcery, but he was out on a job on the other side of the mountain and wouldn’t get to it until tomorrow.
Nobody liked lukewarm drinks.
After hitting up the local diner and one of the nearby lodges only to find them having the same trouble as me, I suspected something more nefarious was afoot. I tried not to make too many assumptions about a person’s character, but there were only two newcomers in town as of late, the fae and the mysterious Owner of The Magic Shop down the street. Since I didn’t know where the fae was staying, and I’d rather cut out my own tongue than ask Frito (he’d tease me relentlessly), I decided to pay The Owner a visit.
There were no hours posted outside the shop, but the glass door gave way easily when I pushed it open, and a bell attached to the inside announced my arrival. The inside was dimly lit compared to the brightness outside, and it smelled of herbs and old copper pots. The Owner himself was stationed behind the counter, tall and thin with a slight hunch to his back, which might explain the cane he was carrying. His short blackhair was arranged in an artful pompadour and his face was freshly shaven. His eyes were dark–nearly black–and his pupils were rimmed with a flickering red ring. Despite his slightly stooped posture and old-fashioned clothing, his appearance seemed somewhat ageless. Human, and yet… not. Was he a vampire? Demon? It was considered impolite to ask, and besides, if I tried to classify every type of creature who resided in the Arcane Isles, I’d never get anything done.
“May I help you?” he asked in a strangely accented voice. I set my two empty buckets on the floor, which was covered, somewhat haphazardly, in ornate area rugs.
“It seems the ice machines around town are all broken,” I said.
“Is that so?” He motioned with an elegant turn of his wrist to a stainless-steel appliance humming with industry. “Mine seems to be working just fine.”
Why a magic shop would even have an ice maker was a head-scratcher, but perhaps it was to chill the many potions and elixirs he sold. I went over and slotted one bucket under the spout. I checked out the price, which was handily listed on the machine, and raised my brow.
“That’s a lot of coin for ice,” I remarked.
“I should warn you, that’s not your average ice. It’s enchanted.”
