Page 25 of A Cursed Heart

Malacoda

I got down to Freya’s height. “As lovely as that sounds, I am too grown up for you, princess.” She met my eyes, hers were filled with tears.

“You are so special to me. I hoped one day, if me and your daddy got married, you would call me Dad.” I heard Ryan’s sharp intake of breath.

Lydia stopped laughing to listen to us. “What do you think? Does that sound better?”

The little girl, the tiny owner of a piece of my heart, thought about it, her expression cycling through a few emotions before she spoke. “Okay,” she said with a determined nod. I loved her fire. “But I want a pretty dress for the wedding.” Perhaps I had been extorted.

“Of course,” I vowed. “Only the prettiest of dresses for our princess, isn’t that right, Daddy?

” I sent Ryan a sly grin. Here we were barely dating, and Freya had us married off!

Marriage was something for our future selves to think on.

It was likely it wasn’t something Ryan wanted to enter into again after his first attempt.

“That’s right. You can pick it out and everything when the time comes.” Ryan’s tone was firm enough to end the conversation but playful enough to not upset Freya.

“Alright,” his sister said, clearly picking up on the vibe. “We better get going, Frey. We’ve got a fun day ahead of us.”

“Can Daddy and Mal come?”

Lydia giggled. “Hon, we can’t have a girls’ day with Daddy and Mal, can we?” The little girl shook her head. “They’ll be waiting for you to come back.” To Ryan she said, “Around eight?” Ryan agreed.

There were rounds of hugs, promises that we would be at home waiting for her to return, then they left.

“Why don’t we take a shower together?” Ryan suggested in the silence once the door closed. He appeared nervous.

Sidling up close, I wrapped an arm around him. “Just what are you planning, Ryan?”

He rested his face on my shoulder with a sigh. Through the thin material of the t-shirt I was wearing, I could feel the heat on his cheeks. “I know there’s not a lot of room. It was… I liked sharing the shower with you yesterday.”

“With a little magic, I can make the stall bigger.”

Ryan twisted to face me. “You can do that?”

“After last night, I can do pretty much anything.” If I looked at my fingers, I wondered if I could see my magic sparking out.

The former boundaries of my magic were gone, blasted apart by the energy I had shared with Ryan the night before.

It was like our intimate connection had relaid the foundation of my magic, expanding it beyond anything I could comprehend.

True to my word, I had manipulated the space, making the stall incrementally larger, so it was more comfortable for two grown men to occupy at the same time.

Not that Ryan had any desire to use the extra space.

He crowded close, pressing me against the tiled wall, and took my mouth in a punishing kiss.

When he broke away, he murmured, “You’re driving me crazy. Is it normal to want you naked all the time? To want to be inside you right now?” He laid his head on my shoulder, taking heaving breaths and clasping my hips in a hold that would be bruising if I were human.

“Is that what you want?” I tipped up his chin so our eyes could meet.

“That can be arranged. We have the day to ourselves, after all.” I smirked, then kissed the corner of his mouth.

Rather than let me get away, Ryan grabbed my nape and took my lips once more.

His tongue thrust into my mouth at the same time his hard cock brushed mine, making me moan.

Was it always like this when you cared deeply for someone? To want to give them everything of yourself, even if that meant there was nothing left for yourself.

“Do you have any of that lube here?”

“Fuck, no. It’s—” Ryan didn’t get the words finished before I vanished away and returned with the bottle in hand.

“I could stretch myself, but I’d prefer if you did it.” My voice was low, sultry. I burned with need.

Ryan took me in then snatched the lube and made quick work of preparing me for his cock. His fingers were sure when he traced down my crack to my hole. They traced over my entrance and eased inside confidently, as if we had been doing this forever.

I sank into the feeling of his lips on me, his fingers deep inside, while I stroked us together.

“Close,” Ryan murmured. He slicked his cock while I turned around, bracing myself on the wall.

In this cramped space, because I’d returned it to normal to get Ryan closer to me, there was no room for my tail.

I was grateful for it in this position because it wasn’t in the way when Ryan thrust into me, his groin slapping my ass as he pumped in and out of me.

Our groans and the sounds of our skin meeting were amplified in the stall, adding to my pleasure.

I loved Ryan letting loose on me. He was pounding into my ass, one hand on my stomach, the other on my throat while he took what he needed.

He reached for my cock and stroked it in time with his thrusts until they stuttered and stopped as he filled me with his come. He ground against me, wringing out the last of his orgasm.

“Ry—I need...”

“I’ve got you.” Ryan must have been oversensitive, but he kept pumping his hips until I came over his hand with a shout. “Fuck,” he panted against my ear. “So good.”

The rest of our shower was short, since there was barely enough hot water left for us to clean ourselves before it got too cold to continue.

It was tempting to use more magic to heat it, but Ryan wanted to check out the files and build something to delete old ones off Salvatore’s computer.

He wanted me to replace all of Salvatore’s files.

Long ago I would have just gone to Salvatore and killed him, perhaps destroyed the building to hide evidence, yet I was more rational these days.

Ryan had explained the need to erase all traces of his past in those files and how someone with tech experience could find them if he wasn’t smart about it.

Once Ryan was dressed, I caught up with some chores while he worked.

The desire to linger around him was almost impossible to ignore.

A few hours had passed with Ryan in his chair working diligently on his computer, when I was done for the day.

I lay on the sofa to relax, my feet on the end facing him.

“Could you—?” he began, then paused, a conflicted expression on his handsome face.

“What do you need?”

Ryan hesitated. “You are so distracting right now.” He spun his chair around to face me. I sat up, giving him my full attention.

“What do you mean?” I tried to play innocent.

“Those shorts are criminally tight on you. I can see everything. Why can’t you wear a shirt? And… fuck! I never thought thighs were sexy before, but those markings and the cut of the shorts are really doing something for me.”

“Is that right?” I got off the sofa and sauntered over to him. His gaze was fixed on my body, his pupils blown. I could see the line of his cock in the loose pants he wore. His nipples were hard through the thin material of his shirt.

When I got to him, I went to my knees. Ryan smoothed my hair back before dipping down to kiss me. When he pulled back, I reached for the waistband of his pants. “May I?”

“Since you asked so nicely,” he teased.

I released him and leaned forward to lick a stripe up his cock. There was a bead of moisture at the tip. I sucked on it, moaning at his taste before I took the head into my mouth.

Ryan let out a curse and sank his fingers into my hair.

He loved it when I left it loose, and I wanted to do anything to make him happy.

His grip was tight as I sank deeper onto him, taking him into my throat.

I swallowed around him while he tried desperately to restrain himself.

His need to pump up into my mouth was written in every line of his body.

He planted his feet wider, making space for me to take him to the root.

I licked and sucked on his length, laved his balls and teased his taint while stroking him.

My cock was straining the fabric of the shorts I’d picked to tease him. I used one hand to push them down so I could stroke myself while the other massaged his balls.

“Ah, fuck!” Ryan’s hips jerked, forcing his cock down my throat. I choked and recovered quickly. “Let your horns out. Your tail too.”

The tail I was so proud of gleamed in the late morning light. It snaked between us and wrapped around his wrist, directing it towards my horns.

“They’re sensitive, but my tail is not, though if you wanted to suck the tip, I could just imagine your lips around—”

“Shit, yeah. Fuck!” Ryan cursed when I returned to sucking him in earnest. His fingers stroked my horns, sending shivers down my spine. When his lips met the tip of my tail, I knew I would not last long.

I got lost in the feeling of his hands on my most sensitive area after my dick, and how the heat of his mouth felt around my tail. I took Ryan deeper into my throat until I could barely breathe. With a tug on his balls and a few swallows around him, he came.

When I looked up at him, wrecked, flushed, with my tail between those plush lips, I was done for. I came over my hand and the floor, groaning out his name.

We both took a minute to recover, putting our clothes to rights, then I stood, ready to return to the sofa. Ryan grasped my wrist and pulled me to sit on his lap. His kiss was sweet and full of something I hoped was love, because I knew then I was hopelessly in love with him.

“Alright,” Ryan said a couple of hours later. He had let me return to the sofa after we had cuddled for a while. I had nearly fallen asleep in his lap, even though the chair was not designed for two grown men. The movie I had been watching had just finished.

When I looked up from the screen to my boyfriend, I frowned. “Why are you dressed like that?” Ryan was wearing a pair of dark pants and a smart button-down shirt.

He glanced at himself. “Don’t you like it?”

I studied him. “Of course. You look very sexy like that.”

Ryan grinned. “Good, because I want to take you on a date.”

“A date?” I echoed.

“Yeah. Just lunch because Freya will be back too early for a dinner date, but I thought we could spend time together outside…” he trailed off, and I sensed this was important to him.

This was also a sign that Ryan truly wanted a relationship with me. Though the city he lived in wasn’t small, there was still a chance we could run into people he knew. From stories on the internet, I’d read horror stories of men hiding their partners while coming to terms with their sexuality.

“I would like that. Are you not worried about people seeing us?”

“Mal, people already know you’re my boyfriend. I don’t care what people think. I put something on the bed for you to wear.”

He had obviously planned this, I realized when I entered the bedroom to find pants, a shirt similar to Ryan’s and new shoes waiting for me. Using a touch of magic, I dressed quickly and braided my hair back.

“Do you think,” I asked as I walked into the living room while putting the finishing touches to my hair, “that I should cut my—“

“No, don’t cut your hair unless you really want to. I love it like it is.”

“Okay.” I shrugged. “People tend to stare at me.”

“Trust me, it’s not the hair. Everything about you is hot. The hair would still attract attention because of the color.”

“Then should I change—”

“Mal, just be you, okay? Now come on, we need to get lunch.”

“Wait! I need to set up some protections around the apartment. I don’t feel good about leaving it when it is clear we are being followed.”

Ryan sighed. “Fuck, yeah, I never thought about that. Will it take long?”

It took me only a few minutes to walk the apartment, sending magic into the walls, the door, the floor and ceiling. Anywhere that was vulnerable to attack was protected. “There,” I announced, “done.”

We left the apartment holding hands. I led Ryan to where I had left the car, and he drove us to a restaurant on the other side of the city.

“This place is great,” he told me as he led me by the hand into the small, well-kept building. It wasn’t all that far from Salvatore Holdings, which left me slightly uneasy. Still, I had plenty of magic to protect Ryan should I need it.

After only a moment, we were seated at a private table in the back. The tablecloth was starched white, the napkins folded into fan shapes, and the glassware gleamed in the sunlight filtering through the floor to ceiling windows near us. A small vase holding a pink rose sat between me and Ryan.

A look at the menu had my mouth watering. There were so many options!

“The food is great here. Order whatever you like.”

“It’s difficult to choose.”

“Right? Why don’t we order a bunch of appetizers and share them? We can always order a main course after, if you’re still hungry.”

“Yes, let’s do that.”

An hour later, I could not stomach the idea of more food. The servings had been generous, and we had ordered far too much. I shared a look with Ryan. “I don’t think—“”

“Nah, me neither. It was good, though, right?”

“Absolutely. The company was excellent, too.”

Ryan blushed. “I’m glad we could have this. I know with Freya around—”

“Don’t.” I had to stop him. Deep down, I knew he didn’t regret having his daughter in his life.

His other partners before me had made her an issue.

A mistake I would not make. I loved that little girl as much as I did her father.

“You wouldn’t be you without her. Ryan… I think that without Freya, I wouldn’t be… I’m falling in love with you.”

“Same.” He coughed, clearing his throat, looking awkward. “We wouldn’t have met if it wasn’t for Freya because I wouldn’t have been in Jasmine’s life. Mal… I… what we have is so fucking important to me. You’ve changed my life and made everything better. I dunno what I’d do without you.”

Baby steps. I could hardly expect a full love confession immediately. Ryan had only just admitted to being attracted to me. Deeper feelings would develop over time.

Our date was a perfect little escape from our lives for a moment, but I couldn’t help feeling relieved when we returned to the apartment and the gem. Its pull was still there, though it held less of a hold on me, perhaps because of my tight bond with Ryan.

I paused when we got to the door. The magic, it was… damaged.

“Someone tried to get in.”