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  We didn’t talk as we rode up to our floor. He had me at my door in less than two minutes and shoved a keycard into my hand. “This one’s yours. I’m down the hall and around the corner. 405.” He was still vibrating like a live wire, and he kept his body turned halfway away from me, his duffel clutched to his front.

  As soon as I took the key, he started to walk away, but I grabbed his arm. “What is wrong with you?”

  He yanked his arm out of my grip, avoiding my gaze. “The conduit’ll be here in a few hours. I’ll be back then. I have to get out of here.”

  Then it dawned on me. “Is it the relic that’s hurting you? You didn’t package it at the club.” Or in the alley, I realized. That’s what he’d been trying to do.

  “Didn’t have time at the club.” His fists were clenched; his teeth gritted. “I had to get out fast before they caught both of us. And then I had to find you.”

  “I’m sorry. That mercenary guy—”

  “We’ll talk later.” He was backtracking stiffly. His fingers were clenching and unclenching over the strap of his bag, sweat sliding in drops down his cheekbones.

  “Give that relic to me,” I pleaded. “Give it to me right now. You shouldn’t have it in your room.”

  It was Ekstazo magic, and he was more vulnerable to it than anyone.

  But as soon as my hands slid along the strap over his chest, his hands closed over my wrists. He crushed me against the wall and buried his face in my neck. I gasped as I felt his tongue, then his teeth. “Asa!”

  With a fierce, frantic tug, he ripped the duffel up and over his head and dropped it, but he didn’t let me go. Instead, his trembling hands slid down to my hips and wrenched my skirt up to the tops of my thighs. His fingers dug into my backside as he lifted me onto my tiptoes. I whimpered as I felt the hard insistence of his erection between my legs.

  “Oh fuck. Mattie.” He groaned, and then his mouth was on mine, his kiss ravenous.

  Now I knew what kind of Ekstazo magic we’d just stolen. And Asa was in its grip.

  My body was a stream of mixed signals as he thrust himself against me, only a few layers of fabric between us. A thousand postponed yeses, a million denied fantasies, countless whispers of finally. Finally. My fingers itched to unbuckle his belt, to reach inside, to close my hand around him. I was slick with the mere idea of it, with the scent of him, with craving built up over months of lying awake at night, knowing he was just on the other side of the wall.

  But alongside all that desire crowded a billion screaming nos. This wasn’t right. Not for him, not for me. Not this way.

  It was too important. My whole heart was at stake, and I knew it.

  I turned my face away and pried his hands from my hips, digging my fingernails into his skin and hoping the pain would help clear his head. “Asa, stop. Cut it out.”

  “Can’t stand it anymore,” he growled against my throat. His hand twisted free and was on my leg in an instant, skimming up between my thighs. I caught him just as his fingers brushed the center of me, sending a devastating shiver of want straight through my body. “God, Mattie. Why do you always smell so fucking good?” His fingers encircled my wrist and pinned it over my head again.

  “Asa. I don’t want this.”

  “Right, professional,” he murmured, nuzzling my ear. “Always so goddamn professional.” The fingertips of his other hand slid under the deep neckline of my dress, over the swell of my breast, my hard nipple.

  “Asa, stop! Please!”

  As my voice broke, he stumbled away from me, his back hitting the wall. “Fuck,” he snapped, running his hands through his hair, his eyes wild, his arousal tight and prominent against his zipper. “Goddammit.” He whirled around and punched the wall. I cried out, and a framed picture of a castle rattled. But when I surged forward to try to stop him from doing it again, he bucked me off. “Don’t fucking touch me!”

  His voice was so full of rage and horror that I leaped back. His knuckles were bleeding as he staggered away from me. He waved an uncoordinated hand toward the duffel. “Get that fucking thing into your room, package it right, and put it in the safe. Now.”

  “Okay,” I said, shaking. I sank to my knees next to the bag.

  Asa let out a ragged breath as he braced his palms on his thighs. “Dead-bolt your door. Do not let me in until I’ve got the conduit with me and we’re ready to upload. You understand?”

  I didn’t want him to leave. I had no idea what he was going to do, but at the same time, I knew he couldn’t be with me. It might break us forever. “Yes,” I said softly.

  His face twisted into a grimace, then he turned and jogged up the hall and around the corner. A door slammed.

  Tears stinging my eyes, I grabbed the duffel that contained our stolen relic and slipped into my room, thankful that no guests had poked their heads out to witness our craziness. I tucked the relic, which was nothing more than a carved soapstone rabbit, into one of the special lead-lined pouches Asa carried to package his relics, and then into the safe. And then I collapsed onto the bed in a puddle of confusion and want and terror and sadness, and prayed for a conduit who couldn’t possibly arrive quickly enough.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I lasted all of two hours, and then I couldn’t take it anymore. Asa wasn’t responding to my texts or calls, and the phone in his room seemed to be on do not disturb. I was worried sick about him. He’d once told me how scared he was about being addicted to Ekstazo juice, how easy it would be to get hooked again, how vulnerable it made him to Knedas magic. It’s how they catch us and keep us, he’d told me, referring to the mob bosses who would do just about anything to have a magic sensor in their stable.

  I walked slowly down the hall, steeling myself against what I might find. Surely the lust that had overtaken him would have worn off by now. I turned the corner just as the door to his room opened.

  But it wasn’t Asa who stepped out.

  A guy about my age with wavy brown hair and a half-unbuttoned shirt backed into the hallway, grinning lazily. “—do this again, maybe,” he was saying. “We’re here until Tuesday.”

  I stopped breathing.

  The guy held out his hand, and he tugged a woman into the hallway with him, her curly blond hair disheveled, her strappy shoes dangling from her fingers. “Thanks for the experience,” she said over her shoulder, then reached back into the room and stroked her hand downward, all flirt. But then she gasped as another hand grabbed hers and pushed it back against her own body.

  For a moment, his bare arm and shoulder were visible, long enough for me to know it was his room, his body, his bandaged knuckles.

  I let out a choked whimper and clumsily ducked out of sight. I leaned against the wall and heard a man say, “God, that was fucking hot,” just before the pair sauntered around the corner.

  The woman tossed me a glance as they passed and giggled, then slapped the guy on the butt. He flinched and squeezed her. “Stop that. I’m going to be sore for a while,” he mumbled in a teasing voice as they disappeared into the elevator.

  My breath wheezed as my throat constricted. “No,” I said in a strained whisper. My hand trailed along the wall, along doors, as I trudged back to my room, entered, and threw the dead bolt. “It’s none of your business,” I said aloud. “Just business. Just business.” I covered my face with my hands. “You have no right to be feeling this way.” A sob garbled my words.

  Feeling sweaty and miserable and dirty, I tore off my clothes and stepped into the shower, where I let the hot water run down my body, let it redden my freckled skin and sting my cheeks.

  From the moment I’d announced that we were going to keep things professional, he’d respected the line. Sure, he joked about it. He was flirtatious in an effortlessly dirty way that made me laugh. But when it came to the boundaries, he hadn’t pushed, not even once. I still looked away whenever he had his shirt off, because damn. But he didn’t parade in front of me, either. We never shared a room or a bed. He gave me plenty of privac
y, and I offered the same. I never asked where he disappeared to when we weren’t together. I never poked through his stuff. I never held his clothes to my face and inhaled before tucking them in the laundry . . . okay, only a couple of times on that last one.

  But at the same time, he knew all my quirks and habits, and I knew his. We had a rhythm like nothing I’d ever shared with Ben, perhaps because there was more tension between us than I’d ever felt with anyone ever, and so each little gesture vibrated along the lines that connected us, thrumming through me, sensitizing me to every look and every touch.

  Before, in the hall, I had pushed him away because it was the only right thing to do. And he had gone off and had a little orgy with two strangers because . . . well, I guess he’d needed it. He’d needed to put his hands on another person’s skin. He’d needed to feel himself inside another person’s body. Two bodies, apparently.

  I covered my mouth and squeezed my eyes shut, breathing hard through my nose. He was free to do whatever he wanted. I had no claim on him. He hadn’t done it to hurt me. He hadn’t done anything wrong.

  It shouldn’t feel as if he’d just punched me right in the heart.

  And there was no way I was going to be silly and stupid and small-town about this. I scrubbed my skin and washed my hair, then dried off and got dressed. Our conduit would arrive sometime soon, and we’d upload the magic into my body before catching our flight to London, free from the worry that the magic could be detected or traced until we downloaded it into a relic for the buyer Asa had found. I’d have a significant chunk of change to deposit, to add to my already surprisingly healthy nest egg. We’d go on like before, and I would put this behind me.

  I would put my ridiculous fantasies behind me, too. If it hadn’t been obvious before, what I’d just seen made it so clear that Asa’s tastes didn’t exactly run toward the conventional. If I’d ever dared hope I could figure out what would satisfy him, or that I could be enough, that illusion had been shattered.

  I should be grateful.

  The banging on my door jarred me out of my churning thoughts, and I scooted over and peeked through the peephole to see Asa, looking freshly showered. “Mattie! Get out here.” He was staring at the peephole. “I’m fine. Under control. It’s safe.”

  I sighed and opened the door. “Where’s the conduit?”

  He regarded me for a moment, studying my face. “Just got a text from him. We’re being hunted, and there are naturals in the old city. We’ve arranged another meetup. We need to get this thing uploaded pronto.”

  “Okay.” I went to the safe and pulled out the packaged relic while Asa backtracked into the hallway to wait. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “I know how to take care of me,” he said curtly.

  “Yeah, I guess you do,” I muttered as I shouldered the duffel.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  He stared at me for a second, then turned and headed for the stairs. We always took the stairs when we were afraid of being ambushed. I balled my free hand in my skirt as we descended, telling myself to get a grip and focus on getting through the night.

  We reached the street and caught a cab. Asa gave the driver the address, and we were off. I kept my eyes focused out the window. Asa poked me in the arm. “Hey. If this is about earlier—”

  “It’s not.”

  “I was totally out of line, and I—”

  “It’s fine. Wasn’t your fault.”

  “Okay,” he said, drawing out the word with skepticism. “You are gonna have to prepare yourself for this magic, though. We should talk about what happens after. Because this relic—”

  “I’ve handled originals, Asa. I think I can handle this.”

  “Didn’t say you couldn’t. I’m just worried that—”

  “I’m not you, okay?” I clamped my lips shut, hating the trembling in my voice.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Well aware.”

  We rode in silence the rest of the way, and it was a long ride. We finally reached a maze of warehouses rimmed by grimy roads with no sidewalks. I could see a rail depot behind the warehouses with a stretch of dingy, depressing commercial buildings on the other side of the tracks, gray brown under dim streetlamps. “This is where we’re meeting the guy?” I asked as we entered the warren of buildings and the driver pulled to the side. Asa paid him and we got out. “Seems pretty convenient for an ambush—no witnesses.”

  “Not exactly,” said Asa, whose face glittered under a streetlight, sweat beading across his forehead. He pointed up ahead to a warehouse with a few cars parked out front.

  “I’m unimpressed.”

  “Look.” He pointed to the rail depot just as a train pulled in and disgorged a small crowd of people. They were all wearing black, with spiky hair and buckles shining on their boots. They jogged across the tracks as the train pulled away, and clustered at the front door of the warehouse a moment later, entering one by one.

  “Oh, great. A club. A goth club.” I looked down at my skirt and flats.

  “I know the owner. She’s doing me a favor.”

  Oh, I bet she was. “Awesome,” I said drily.

  I followed him into the building. The bouncer at the door nodded at him and pointed down a hall to a flight of stairs. “Erik’s up there already.”

  Asa slipped the guy a few hundred euros and strode up the hall, me in his wake. We had done this so many times before. Asa was a chameleon—he was whatever I needed him to be during a transaction. He was my handler, my dom, my charming jokester, my quietly considerate companion, whatever he decided I needed to get through a magical exchange and walk out intact.

  But now the line of his shoulders was stiff and unyielding as he marched up the stairs. I didn’t know whether he was focused on resisting the magic in the relic I was carrying in the duffel or whether he had picked up on my resentful vibes. I didn’t have the time to ask him, either, because as soon as we hit the top of the stairs, Asa strode into the arms of a woman with killer curves and long, straight blond hair. She rubbed his shoulders and then drew back and took his face in her hands. Then she slapped him.

  “You were going to leave my city without even coming to visit!” she said in accented English.

  Asa rubbed his cheek. “Nice to see you again, too, Renata.” He jerked his thumb back at me. “That’s Mattie. She’s the reliquary.”

  Renata cocked her hip and looked me over. She was wearing thigh-high boots, fishnets, a dazzlingly short skirt, and a corset. Her eyes were heavily lined, her over-the-top lashes thick and curving. I must have looked like a Sunday-school teacher to her. She let out an unimpressed grunt and pointed to a room down the hall. “Erik is ready. When you’re done, you’ll deliver my payment. We’ll make sure to keep all the beasts at bay. You felt my relic coming in. And I could feel you, too.” She pulled a pendant out of her neckline and held it up.

  Asa nodded. “I’ll recharge it for you soon as I’m done here.”

  “Good boy.” She winked at him and headed down the steps.

  “You’re going to give her some of your magic?” I asked as I trailed him down the hall.

  “Wow, nothing gets by you.”

  “I just didn’t know you did that kind of thing,” I said, trying to keep the hurt and irritation out of my tone. “You never have before.”

  “I do what’s necessary to get us out alive.”

  He stalked into the room Renata had pointed to. I saw two soft chairs, side by side. In one of them sat a guy wearing vinyl pants and no shirt. His chest was hairless, his skin tanned and oiled. Sandalwood, by the smell of it. Asa stopped short a few steps inside the room. His chuckle was dry as dust. “Hey, Erik. Looking slick.”

  Erik smiled as he leaned around Asa to look at me. “Ready to go. And hello there.”

  “Hey,” I said curtly. I walked over to the other squashy chair and plopped down, then handed Asa the duffel. “Let’s get this done.” I offered Erik my hand.

  Transactions were alm
ost easy for me now, and I’d come a long way from needing to be horizontal for every one. I asked Asa to secure me only for heavy Strikon magic or intense-emotion Sensilo magic, but for the rest I was able to remain aware and in control at this point.

  Still, Asa looked concerned by my nonchalance. “Mattie, you might want to think about—”

  “Let’s. Do. This,” I snapped, staring him down. Asa muttered under his breath and shook his head, then pulled a pair of gloves out of his thigh pocket and slipped them on. He looked down at the duffel as if it were a cornered wolverine.

  Erik turned to me. “Asa said this is really good shit. I told him if it’s half as good as he promises, I’ll give him a ten percent discount.”

  “That doesn’t seem like a sound business decision,” I said.

  Erik snorted. “You’re no fun. But I bet you will be.”

  Before I could respond, Asa came up holding the soapstone rabbit in its lead wrapper, the top of the pouch peeled open. “I need you to do this now,” he said in a tight voice.

  I forced myself not to look at his pants. I didn’t want to know if he was hard.

  Erik stuck his hand out. “You don’t have to tell me twice, mister.”

  Asa’s jaw clenched. His eyes met mine for a moment, and I glared mulishly back. Then he tilted the pouch, and the rabbit slid onto Erik’s palm.

  Have you ever wanted something so badly that you knew you would die if you didn’t have it? I’m talking about anything. Water. Food. Oxygen. Sexual desire is like that, too. One of our primal appetites. Instinctual. Necessary. As the magic rocketed through Erik and into me, that hit me, bone deep. It was like a stiff wind, knocking my head back, parting my lips. Then the warmth swelled up along my arm and into my chest, hardening my nipples and tensing all my muscles with need. It flooded me, and my body moved on its own, undulating, seeking relief it couldn’t find. The hunger swirled into the center of me, twisting me so tight that I cried out, arching, begging for a touch that wasn’t there.

  And then, just as suddenly, the magic flowed into my vault, and the door closed. I sank down in the chair, panting, my ears and lips buzzing. I heard the low murmur of male voices, and my eyes blinked open. I stared into Asa’s honey-brown gaze.