Page 34 of The Little Shop of Curiosities Cursed Object 1, The Music Box

I’m pulled from my wandering thoughts by the sound of the car door opening and Harrison climbing out.

“Hey,” I call out. A strange kind of panicky feeling churns in my stomach at the thought of him leaving, which is ridiculous. We’re practically complete strangers. But I can’t stop the words tumbling from my lips, painfully aware both Tristan and Danny are watching me. “Are you going to give me your number so I can call and check on you in the morning?”

“No,” he replies, his expression guarded.

“What if you end up with pneumonia?”

“Then I’ll call a doctor.”

“Come on, Harrison.” I smile. There’s a rather contrary side of me that kind of enjoys his waspish attitude and cool expression. It makes me want to say and do things to see him blush again.

He rolls his eyes and sighs loudly in annoyance. “I’ll text Tristan with proof of life in the morning.”

“I’m sorry about how this evening turned out.” Tristan pokes his head out of the passenger window, but Harrison gives a noncommittal grunt.

“Are you seriously not going to let me call you?” I ask with a grin.

“No,” he says finally, and shuts the car door in my face. I watch as he turns and marches to his door, giving me a spectacular view of his arse in those wet, clinging trousers.

I wait until he’s safely inside and the light goes on before dropping back in my seat, only to find both Danny and Tristan have twisted to stare at me through the gap between their seats.

“What?” I ask innocently.

Danny grins. “You like him.”

“Shut up.” I turn to gaze out of the window. After a moment, Danny pulls away, but the further away from Harrison we get, the more I find my mind returning to him and replaying every moment of our disastrous evening.

I’m interested, there’s no denying that, but there’s something more bothering me. I just can’t quite figure out what it is.

I slam the door behind me and lock it, then fall against it and take a deep breath. My heart is still hammering. I don’t know if it’s from the storm, the vision, my near miss with that car or…or…

I close my eyes and drag in another breath. My skin’s tingling, and I really hope it’s some sort of side effect from temporarily losing control of my magic and not because of the sexy and mysterious dark-haired man who just saved my life. And has apparently woken up a libido that was previously as dead as disco.

“What the hell happened tonight?” I lift my hands and rub my face, trying to scrub some sense back into my brain through my skull.

I shiver hard and sigh. I need to change out of these wet clothes before I catch a chill. I double-check the door behind me even though I know I’ve just locked it, but a little voice in my head says you can’t be too careful. Curiously, that voice sounds a lot like my dad.

Since I came through the back entrance of the building, avoiding the shop itself and the back storerooms, I can go straight up to my flat. Flicking on the lights as I head up the staircase, I’m grateful that the power outage doesn’t seem to have affected my part of Islington. It looks to have spread quite far though; I saw many dark streets and houses on the drive back as I stared out of the window, trying desperately not to inhale the delicious scent of the man next to me and all crowded up in my personal bubble.

Not that he’d done it on purpose. Sam just seems to have a presence that fills the space all around him. Shaking my head, I try to push him from my mind. After I slip off my jacket and hang it over the corner of my lounge door so it can dry, I head into the bedroom. Making sure to set my phone on the dresser, I then strip off and shiver as I put my clothes into the wash basket and head into the bathroom completely naked.

Thankfully, the water doesn’t take long to heat, and soon enough I can step under the spray. My body immediately stops shaking and begins to warm up. I don’t know how it’s possible to feel both exhausted and energised at the same time. Every inch of my skin prickles and magic thrums through my veins in time to my heartbeat. It’s almost as if the storm is feeding my power.

My cock aches and throbs, and when I look down, I’m surprised to see I have an erection. A rather persistent one. It’s not like it’s never happened to me before. I had them during the course of puberty, but as I settled into my twenties, I just didn’t have that rampant sexual drive others my age had—or any sexual drive at all. I’ve long since accepted that maybe I just wasn’t built that way.

A flush of heat runs over my skin and a need forms deep inside me. This isn’t just an automatic bodily reaction, I’m⁠—

Bloody hell. I’m really horny.

Reaching down, I squeeze my cock and moan. Fuck, I haven’t felt this way in nearly a decade. Guess I’m not exactly ace then. Not really demi either. I don’t even know what that makes me, other than an awkward virgin. All I do know is that my dick’s hard and my mind’s filled with images of a dark-haired man with a sexy smile and a scarred face.

I’m going to hate myself for this, but the need is almost painful. Pouring a little of my body wash into my hand, I grip my cock and groan loudly as I stroke. The sound echoes off the tiles in the small, confined space, but I pay no attention. I grip tighter and set an unforgiving pace. There’s no slow teasing, there’s no savouring the moment, there’s only a desperate desire to come as quickly and as hard as I can.

I try to focus on the act and the pleasure itself, but memories of that smile, those eyes, that laser attention and the feel of his hard body beneath me as we tumbled to the ground are burned into my mind. I stagger forward a small step, bracing one hand on the tiled wall while my other hand shuttles my aching cock through my tight grip. Ungodly noises slip from my lips, and I don’t even try to keep quiet. There’s no one to hear me anyway.

My balls tighten and I can’t quite catch my breath when my orgasm rips from me. I cry out, stripes of my cum streaking the wall as I unload pulse after pulse.

Holy shit, that was intense.