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  All I could think was . . . want.

  Asa arched an eyebrow. “How we doing?” He looked amused but sounded a little breathless, like he’d just run up and down the stairs a few times.

  I tensed to keep from moaning. “Good to go,” I murmured.

  “God, you look like it,” said a voice from next to me. I turned to see Erik, his erection hard against the thin vinyl of his pants. I let out a shaky breath. My trembling hand reached out and stroked along his forearm, and the feel of his slick skin set fire to the glowing cinders inside me. His fingers curled around mine, and he tugged me up and out of the chair. My chest was pressed to his bare skin an instant later.

  “Mattie,” Asa said, right in my ear.

  Erik’s hands ran down my back and clasped my backside as I looked up at my business partner. As soon as I saw his face, another wave of desire washed over me. Erik was kneading my rear while his arousal poked at my belly, but suddenly all I wanted to do was have the taste of Asa in my mouth, his hands on my skin.

  “I’m not going to get in your way here if this is what you really want,” Asa said in a firm voice, ignoring Erik as the conduit slid his hand under my shirt. “But I don’t think it is.”

  “Shut the fuck up, dude,” Erik said, pulling the cup of my bra down and pinching my nipple.

  I bit my lip as my eyes fell closed.

  “Look at me,” Asa snapped.

  My eyes popped open at the authoritative edge in his voice. Sir’s voice was speaking, and the sound awakened an entirely new level of craving.

  “Say the word, and I’m leaving,” Asa said. “You can fuck Erik until neither of you can walk.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’ll halve my fee if you get the fuck out right now,” Erik said, his voice muffled as he sucked on my neck.

  Asa kept his eyes on me, his voice level. “But if you ask, I’ll get you out of here before you do something that you’ll regret.”

  I held his gaze. “Like screw a couple of strangers in my hotel room?” I said, smoothing my hand across Erik’s chest.

  For a moment, Asa looked like he’d been kicked in the balls. But then he let out that dark, dry chuckle I knew so well. “Aaand suddenly everything makes sense.” He grabbed my wrist and yanked me away from Erik. “Let’s go.”

  “Hey, asshole,” Erik barked. “I didn’t hear her complaining.”

  Asa held my wrist in a crushing grip. “You want to fuck him to get some kind of sad little payback, feel free. You want to fuck him because you’re horny as hell, then I’ve got rubbers in my bag.” He wrenched me close. “But be sure that’s what you want, Mattie. Be dead sure. Because you hate when magic controls you, and right now you’re its puppet. If you do this, you’ll hate yourself after.”

  “How about I just hate you now?” I whispered, my pain cooling my desire.

  “Whatever you want. But make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.”

  I blinked at him, then tore my gaze away as Erik started to pull on my other hand. Sorrow and frustration and want crashed over me all at once. “Erik, I shouldn’t,” I said miserably.

  Asa looped his arm around my waist and guided me toward the door. “Sorry, Erik. You heard the lady.”

  “Fuck you, Asa,” Erik said. “You can pay my full commission, and I’m adding a five percent blue-balls fee. I’ll be down on the dance floor whenever you want to do the transfer for Renata.” He pushed past us and loped down the stairs.

  Asa clamped his hand on my shoulder and steered me into the hallway after the conduit. The feel of his skin was intoxicating, so much hotter than Erik’s, so much more potent, awakening the need again.

  I squirmed beneath his grasp as we descended the steps, and the smell of sweat and sex and perfume and skin, so much skin, filled my nose, my lungs. My panties were slick, and the music thumped in my chest. The vibrations crept along my bones, landing right in the center of me. I reached the bottom of the stairs and paused, feeling Asa close behind me.

  I reached back and grabbed his hips, pure reflex. For the barest second, I felt him hard against my back, and I moaned. But then his hands were over mine, pulling them from his body. Needing to feel his heat, I pushed my hips back. “Stop it,” he said from between clenched teeth.

  “You wanted it earlier.”

  Asa held my hands tight, but the pain only notched up my arousal, making me shiver. “Yeah, when I was out of my fucking mind with the magic, just like you are now.” He abruptly pushed me away from him.

  I whirled around. “And without it, you don’t want me?”

  He ran his hands over his face and through his hair, leaving it sticking up in clumps on his head. “This is not the time for that conversation. We need to get you out of here, but I have to make a little donation to Renata’s piggy bank first.”

  “Fine. I’ll dance while you do your business.”

  “Right. And then I’ll probably find you in a bathroom gang bang with some zit-faced wannabe goth boys. If you hit that floor you’re gonna start something you won’t want to finish, honey.”

  “Jealous?”

  “What the actual fuck, Mattie,” he shouted. “You’re not thinking straight.”

  I ran my hand up my body, over my breasts. He was breathing hard, only six feet away, and it was way too far. I was pissed that I needed him so badly, pissed that it wasn’t mutual.

  Then the main club door opened and a group of guys walked in, maybe college age, shoving each other. They smelled strongly of booze and cigarettes and male sweat. I took a deep breath as they came up the hall toward us. A few of them had bold gazes, stroking right over me, slipping up my skirt and down my shirt, and I smiled, wondering if they could see in my eyes how badly I needed someone between my legs. As they passed, I caressed the arm of a tall black-haired guy with a spiderweb tattooed on his forearm. He stopped so quickly that his buddy walked right into him. “Hey,” he said to me as his friend staggered backward. The others guffawed.

  “Hey.” I slid my hand up his chest, which was still cold from the winter air outside.

  “Hey,” said Asa, taking my upper arm and dragging me back toward the stairs.

  “Hey!” I tried to pull free but Asa held me tight, and the guys moved on up the hallway, forgetting me in an instant. I slapped Asa’s chest as he wrenched me under the stairs, into a little alcove where the shadows were deep. He pinned my wrists against the wall. “What the hell are you doing?” I said, angrily turning my face away from his.

  “My job,” he said roughly.

  “I don’t want to be your job!” But my body arched toward his as he ran his hand down my side and grasped my hip. My mind was a storm of conflict, but my body was desperate. Starving for release. The burning truth seared its way into my consciousness—there was no one else I wanted, not really.

  “Right now you don’t get to decide.” Asa grasped my chin and firmly turned my face back to his. “Right now you’re going to do exactly what I say, or there will be consequences. Got it?”

  “Let me go.”

  “Not a fucking chance.”

  “I hate you.”

  He smiled. “Sometimes I hate you, too, baby. Now hold on to this.” He guided my hands to a water pipe that ran along the wall over my head. As soon as I grasped it, I heard a click. I looked up and realized he’d handcuffed one of my wrists to the pipe.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, shrill and breathless. Okay, and really turned on.

  “Honestly?” He leaned down, letting his lips trail down the side of my face and along my throat. “Something I’ve been wanting to do ever since that night in the camper.”

  He sank to his knees in front of me, and then his hands slid up under my skirt, his fingers finding the strip of my underwear that traversed my hip. With a jerk, he ripped them at the seam, and the scrap of fabric slid down my other leg. “You’ve only got one choice now. You make yourself come, or I’m going to do it for you.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I moaned.
“Asa!”

  “I’m not fucking around, Mattie. Choose.” His fingers dug into my thigh.

  I rattled the cuff above my head, defiant tears starting in my eyes, even as my body throbbed for him. It knew what it wanted. I knew what I wanted.

  Asa stared up at me, his eyes black in the darkness. His thumb stroked down my inner thigh, and I whimpered. “Give in to it. No shame. You’re safe with me and you know it.”

  “Safe?” I laughed bitterly. Did he have any idea how dangerous he was to my heart?

  “Mattie.” His voice was full of warning.

  “No,” I whispered.

  He pushed my skirt up, and I felt his hot breath on my skin. My legs parted, and his tongue followed the path of his thumb. I moaned again, the sensation exquisite and overwhelming and so much less than I needed.

  “Just say it, baby. You know I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.” He gently bit my soft flesh.

  “Oh God.” A tear streaked from my eye as I turned my face up to the ceiling, not wanting him to see. He was going to break me. He had no idea what it meant. And I couldn’t detach and focus on the sensation, because it was him.

  “Let me do this for you. I know you need it.”

  “And you?” I whispered, holding my breath.

  “Dying of thirst.” Then he pulled my hips forward and drew his tongue along the most sensitive part of me, and it was all over. I gasped at the hot invasion of his mouth, the rasp of his stubble against my inner thighs, the need coiling like a snake ready to strike, winding so tight that my heart could barely beat. He firmly lifted one of my legs and draped it over his shoulder, giving himself complete access. His fingers were bruising on my ass, but the pain only increased my frenzy. There was no hesitation in his grip, in the caress of his tongue, the flex of his jaw. He was in charge, in control. He owned me.

  My free hand released the pipe above my head and curled into his dark hair, desperate to have him closer, to feel him deeper, but he grabbed my wrist and pinned it to the wall. Then he slid two fingers inside me, sending me up on my tiptoes with an overwhelming intensity that nearly made me come on the spot.

  I didn’t consider that I was in a crowded club, barely out of view of the people walking by less than twenty feet away. I didn’t focus on the fact that I was cuffed to a water pipe, pinned against the wall, my legs spread while Asa left no part of me unexplored or untended. I didn’t care about the noise I was making, the pleas bursting from my mouth. All that mattered was the mounting pressure, the peak I had to climb.

  I came so hard, my body clenching, that I was hurled right over the edge of that mountain and into open air. I screamed with the ecstasy, unable to contain it.

  I screamed Asa’s name.

  He was holding me so tightly that even though I was standing on one leg, my wrists restrained, I knew I wouldn’t lose my footing. He wouldn’t allow it. The flicks of his tongue didn’t stop as I spiraled down, and each touch sent shocks of pleasure zinging up through my belly and down my legs.

  Finally, my muscles went slack, and the stars behind my eyes winked out. Asa gently lowered my leg to the ground and let go of my wrist. He rose to his feet in front of me. “I told you to hold on to that pipe,” he said quietly, glancing at my free hand.

  Drunk with pleasure and the sight of his shadowed face, I focused on his lips, wet with my desire. “Punish me, then,” I whispered.

  With a rough sound in his throat, Asa pressed himself against me, his mouth finding mine. My tongue thrust against his, seeking my own taste. His fingers coiled around the back of my neck. I could feel him now, hard and ready against my abdomen. My fingers dropped to his belt, then stroked over the rigid column of his cock.

  He caught my wrist and tore his mouth from mine. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He leaned back enough to look into my eyes. “Because I’m not gonna be your throwaway fuck.”

  Throwaway? “But you just—”

  “I just took care of you. End of story.”

  Confusion and anger clamped around my heart. “Right. Your job.”

  His jaw clenched. “Professional as always.”

  “But you weren’t willing to let me do the same thing for you?”

  “I don’t recall you offering. In fact, I recall you begging me to stop.”

  My cheeks went hot. “So I’m to blame for the fact that you ended up having a threesome in your room, because I didn’t drop to my knees and blow you in the hallway of a five-star hotel?”

  He shoved back from the wall. “We’re done talking about this.”

  “Whatever; it’s none of my business. And if you’re mad at me for not sucking you off, then—”

  “What the fuck, Mattie. That’s not—”

  “—why are you turning me down now?”

  “Are you fucking serious?” he snapped. “We’ve been together night and day for the last eight months, and you don’t know the answer to that?”

  “You’re the one who’s got the rubbers in his bag and the horny couple in his room. I didn’t think casual sex was an issue for you.”

  “First off, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and second, nothing with you is casual,” he shouted, slamming his palms against the wall on either side of me, making me flinch. “You can get on with whatever stupid little game you want to play, Mattie,” he continued, his voice dropping low. “Go ahead and twist yourself up over things you don’t understand. Make me your bad guy if it lets you run from the things that scare you without feeling shitty. But I’m not gonna play the hangdog here. I’m done playing, period.” The flat, cold edge in his voice drew my eyes to his. “Because I can’t do this anymore.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small key, which he used to unlock the handcuffs. My arm fell limp to my side as Asa swiped his sleeve across his mouth, picked up his duffel, and headed for the main hallway. I pulled my torn panties off my heel and left them crumpled in a corner before staggering after him.

  I’d lost count of the number of times I’d fantasized about a relationship with Asa. As we worked together as a team, traveled together, ran for our lives together, shared a bathroom and a kitchen, shopped in farmers’ markets, dealt with each other’s headaches and chest colds, it became about so much more than our sexual attraction, though that was ever present and distracting. But I’d never forgotten one very important piece of knowledge: Asa hated cages. He’d kill or die before allowing himself to be kept in one.

  I could still recall the look on Keenan’s face when Asa had whispered that truth into the darkness of a grimy Bangkok alley. It was just another cage. Like so many things, his past with Keenan was something Asa didn’t like to talk about. I knew only that they had once been close, that Asa had nearly become a Headsman himself at one point, that he’d run without leaving so much as a note—and that he’d broken Keenan’s heart. The pain in Keenan’s blue eyes had made that abundantly clear, as had the hope in his voice when Asa fooled him into thinking he was going to leave that alley with him and not me.

  The last thing I wanted to be to Asa was a cage.

  Was Asa about to break free? He’d said that he was done. I was terrified to ask what he’d meant for fear the answer would destroy me.

  We flew out of Prague at four in the morning on a charter jet headed for London. The buyer for our relic was the boss of the UK, apparently, a woman named Elizabeth Botwright. Asa had just told me we were going to meet with one of her agents first, a guy named Myron Forester.

  It was Christmas Eve. We’d caught a few hours of sleep during the day and were leaving a fairly desolate hotel bar after a near-silent dinner. “Do you know him?” I asked.

  “I know of him. Botwright likes to surround herself with mindfuckers. It’s why I made you wear the inserts.” Asa had made sure I had wire bristles affixed in the toes of my shoes before we went down to dinner.

  “Where are we meeting Myron?”

  “Harrods. They close at nine. Lots of peop
le around.”

  “You don’t trust him.”

  “I don’t trust anyone. I just want him to give us the details and the plan. After what happened with Erik, I want to vet the conduit ahead of time.”

  I bowed my head as my face flushed. “What’s Botwright going to do with this thing?”

  “Don’t really care, as long as she does it far away from me,” he muttered. “Sooner we off-load it, the better.” He pulled his collar up against the cold.

  I did the same, feeling the tiny vial of sand dangling between my breasts, beneath my clothes, where I’d tucked it away. I’d wanted to wear it without Asa seeing, given how off things were between us.

  “But you can’t feel this Ekstazo magic inside me. Can you?” I couldn’t. Now that I had recovered from the initial effects of it coursing through my body, it was like it wasn’t there at all.

  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “No. I’d have to be touching you.”

  “Listen, last night, after you . . .” I cleared my throat and spoke slowly, trying to keep my voice steady. “You said you couldn’t do this anymore. Um . . .” I pressed my lips together as the tremor became obvious. “What did you mean?”

  He was quiet for a few strides, and then he sighed.

  “When we get this done, I think I’m gonna head out on my own for a while.”

  I stopped dead in the street. “What?”

  He walked a few more steps and paused, still facing toward the lights of Harrods a few blocks up. “It couldn’t last forever. And it’s not working for me anymore.”

  I folded my arms over the sharp pain in my chest. “I . . . Okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for the way I acted. I’m sorry for—”

  He turned around. “That was just the last straw, Mattie. I was headed that way already.”

  “Headed that way? B-b-but . . . you gave me a present,” I said, my voice breaking. “You made it seem like everything was good. You . . .” A tear streaked down my face, and Asa’s eyes closed. “Please. Tell me what I can do.”