Page 14
14
MAX
I opened my eyes to soft, radiant gold. Low light, a warm bed, cool sheets. I stretched out my arms and legs, savoring the release in my muscles. So comfy. So restful. My bed. Our bed. The one that I shared with Leon.
Leon. Where the hell was Leon?
Panic ripped through my chest like a bolt of lightning. I sat up, throwing the covers off, my brain hastily reconstructing the events of the night. Was it still the night? The same night, even? My feet hit the floor before I realized: how the hell did I get into bed in the first place?
“It’s really cute that you’re stumbling all over yourself worried about me.” Leon’s voice spoke drowsily from the couch in the bedroom that we mostly used as a clothing rack. “Wait. You are worried about me , aren’t you?”
My hands flew to my face, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. I’d never been so disoriented in my damn life. Clarity returned, at least to my eyesight, and there among the draped T-shirts and hoodies on the couch was the young man responsible for dumping them there in the first place.
I couldn’t control myself. My feet went on autopilot, directing me toward the couch. I swept him up in my arms, kissed him on the mouth.
“Whoa,” Leon said, laughing, lifting his arm above our heads. “Watch the coffee. Okay, okay, big guy. I’m happy to see you, too.”
“Thank God you’re okay,” I breathed, kissing him again, catching the rich yet faint taste of coffee on his lips. Milky and sweet, just the way he liked it. “Wait. Where have you been? How long have you been here? How long have I been out?”
He peeled himself out of my arms and sat back down on the couch. “Chill out and I’ll let you know. No, seriously, sit down, don’t want you getting a heart attack. I’m not sure how long you’ve been asleep, but Brendan could have sent you back the way he did Guillotina.”
“By rewinding time. Is that why it feels like I haven’t slept at all?” I pinched a bit of my shirt, sniffed, and winced. “Is that why I smell like I took a nap in a gym bag?”
Leon wrinkled his nose and smiled. “You’re not that bad, Max. I like it when you get a little dirty. It’s kind of manly.”
I frowned, unsure of how to take the compliment. Then I sat up again, jolted by another flash of realization. “Tina. I gotta call Tina. See if she’s safe.”
She was, as it turned out, only stuck in the same bleary, bizarre state as Leon and me. I thought I heard her retching before she hung up. I felt queasy and completely out of sorts myself.
Time had ceased to matter, for one thing. My phone said it was only half past ten. How? We encountered Gustavo and the Mendez sisters after midnight. Did Brendan only send us back a few hours? Did he send us back an entire day? I pushed my face into my hands and groaned.
“Fresh pot of coffee waiting for you if you want it,” Leon said. He let out a sarcastic chuckle. “You’ll probably need it, honestly. My brain and my body are in two different time zones.”
Good idea about the coffee, at least. I poured some for myself, wincing at the bitterness as it went down my throat. “When this all started I never would have guessed this Quartz Spider guy would be so powerful. Is that where he took you? Another time zone?”
“Not just. Another reality, too. Talk about jet lag. I was in this weird crystal thing, like his own private pocket dimension. Remember Arachne’s space, the one she lends to her spiders? Like that, except we were inside a giant gemstone.”
“Frozen in time. A giant quartz crystal. You have to admit, the bastard has style. At least he’s consistent.”
He raised his hand in a fist, then spread his fingers out in all directions. “And then it exploded, and here I am. He wanted to talk to me, he said. He tried to gain my sympathy. Max, he killed his own brother, but not on purpose. Time magic, man. Shit’s fucked.”
Leon filled me in on the rest of it — this untimely abduction, the motive, the sob story. I was starting to see Leon’s side of it, but Brendan was still a problem for the arcane underground, for Dos Lunas. So maybe he wasn’t the evil genius we painted him to be. The man was still incredibly dangerous.
“And that was when the crystal exploded. I think he dismissed his pocket dimension to make sure I wouldn’t go nuclear in there with Tiamat trying to make a grab for my soul. But he helped me, Max.” Leon tapped the side of his head. “He trapped Tiamat up here. It’s like she’s in suspended animation.”
“Okay, but for how long?” I tossed back the last of my coffee, grimacing as it went down. “And you said so yourself. He might have helped you solely for self-preservation. I’ve seen what you can do with the dragons. In that enclosed space? You would have shredded him alive.”
Leon shook his head. “Who knows how it would have ended? He stopped it from happening. That’s my point. Maybe he isn’t evil after all.”
“And those thugs at Habibi? The Brillante guy with the gay brother. All of them just turned into dust. Compassionate Brendan just wiping those men off the face of the earth? It doesn’t hang together.”
He shrugged. “None of this does, Max. Look at your uncle. He knew we were coming, and even without Brendan’s intervention I have a feeling he would have let us escape. Maybe not without a couple of scrapes and bruises, but that wasn’t a serious trap. He’s nowhere near as dangerous as Divina.”
“Tío Gustavo has a soft spot for me, I guess, even after all this time. Maybe he still thinks he can lure me back to the family business. No chance. Not after everything that’s happened.”
Leon rose from the couch, stretching his arms out, groaning. His shirt lifted up, exposing only the littlest flash of his belly, but that was all it took. How the boy could load up on ice cream and still keep those killer abs, I would never know.
“Careful with that mug,” I said. “Don’t want you spilling all over the carpet.”
Instead he let it dangle from the hook of one finger. Very funny. Very cute. Apparently the mug was already empty. He paced forward slowly, a lazy smile drawing a naughty diagonal across his face. I knew that look.
“Maybe I want you spilling all over the carpet, Maximo.”
He nudged his knee up between my legs, grazing my crotch with his thigh. I bit back a moan, swallowing it down instead. Why was I so aroused? Why was he, for that matter? I placed my hand flat against his chest, calling for a suspension in the seduction.
“Leon. Serious question. Are you as turned on as I am right now? We should be fucking exhausted.”
He pressed his brow against mine, one of his hands trailing up under my shirt, pinching down on my nipple. This time I couldn’t help moaning out loud.
“We should be fucking . It’s probably got something to do with this time magic jet lag bullshit. I’m as hard as a rock right now.”
I gulped again, taking one step back. “Maybe it’s like how our circadian rhythms are suddenly so messed up. Your morning wood is just kicking in now at, um, ten thirty in the evening. Ten thirty-five?”
Leon’s hand rubbed against my bulge, open handed, kneading with his whole palm. This time I groaned. Fuck. What was it about being groped through a handful of denim? I clenched my teeth, afraid of busting right in my pants.
“Looks like your morning wood’s kicking in too, Maximo.”
Something clinked against the floor. The mug. The little asshole let it fall onto the carpet.
“Oops,” he said, barely holding back his smirk. “Let me just get that.”
His one hand still on my bulge, he slowly slithered into a crouch, his other hand leaving my nipple, but tracing, massaging a wide line down my torso. Knees on the carpet, both hands on my crotch, Leon’s eyes never left mine.
I gasped, panted, my entire body burning with anticipation. There was no way I was going to survive this for more than five minutes.
His fingers worked fast, unbuckling, unzipping me. He pulled my jeans down to my thighs, his nose nuzzling at the obscene shape in my briefs, teeth grazing and nipping, tracing at its outline.
Not even three minutes. Not even two. Leon pulled down my waistband, the elastic slipping over, then under my swollen head, my full, heavy balls. Then, with the practiced ease of someone who had every inch of my cock committed to memory, he took me into his mouth.
Not even a minute. His warm tongue, his worshipful lips, the masterful tug and glide of both his hands — I couldn’t even last long enough to start thrusting into his mouth.
I came enormously, powerfully, my thighs quaking as I held onto his shoulder, the crown of his head to stay upright. Leon held onto the backs of my knees, my thighs, rubbing and pulling me in closer, taking me down his throat to the root.
Ten thirty, ten thirty-five was maybe too late in the evening to scream my head off. Good thing I’d gasped myself breathless, shivering and shaking with every greedy, hungry sweep of Leon’s tongue.
“Sorry,” I blurted out, finally catching enough breath to speak. “So sorry. That never — you know that never happens.”
My cock left his mouth with a pop, wet and slick. He smiled up at me sloppily, eyes misted over with want. “Fucking time magic, man. But I don’t mind. I know you. I know you can go again.”
The back of my hand over my mouth, I gave him a teasing little whine, pretending I didn’t want it, pretending I was too tired. But Leon definitely knew me well. We did go again just minutes later in the shower, me returning the favor, him wrenching a second, somehow even more incredible orgasm out of me.
I finished rinsing off first, knowing I would never make it out alive if I let him have a third go at my cock. I headed to the kitchen counter, so sure I was going to die if I didn’t replenish my body’s supply of water and protein. I wolfed down an energy bar, then a huge handful of trail mix.
Chocolate and dried fruit and nuts probably weren’t ideal so late, but neither was coffee. Besides, I could feel in my bones that the night wasn’t over. Too many loose ends left untied. Too much left unfinished. And I had this strange, nagging feeling that I was forgetting something.
I looked down at my hand, clenching and unclenching my fingers around air. Something was supposed to be there. Huh. What was it? My hand squeezed into a fist, trying to reconstruct the sensation of that missing something with the help of my still sluggish brain. Smooth. Hard.
But no. Lovely as it was to think about, it definitely wasn’t Leon’s cock. I shrugged, reaching for a bottle of water from the counter. Hydration was important — rehydration, in this case, because Leon’s particular brand of lovemaking tended to squeeze a pleasurably enormous amount of fluids from my body.
I picked up the bottle, twisted off the cap, lifted it to my lips. And then I froze. This thing in my hand — wasn’t it the approximate size and shape? I scowled, then yelled toward the bathroom.
“Hey, Leon? Where’s the statuette?”
A moment’s pause before the shower door slid open. “What? I thought you had it.”
I scanned the apartment, the bedside tables in particular. I had the damn thing in my clutches when we were running from Tío Gustavo and his goons. Where the hell did I put it?
The shower knob squeaked. Not a minute later Leon was dripping on the carpet. He never did towel himself off in time, but I wasn’t about to scold him for it. He looked just as concerned as I felt.
“Did you find it?” he asked, toweling off his chest, rubbing at his hair.
I stretched my arms, fingers splayed, hands side by side. “It was right here. Right in the palm of my big, stupid hand. Where did it go?”
My phone went off, blaring from the inside of my pocket. I spilled water on myself, cursed, and picked it up to answer.
“Hello? Vera? Sorry, but now’s not a great time.”
“Preposterous,” she huffed. “Now is the perfect time. Your client proposed a bonus on the condition that you deliver the statuette today. As your loving spider — someone who also receives a generous cut of the proceeds — I graciously accepted. Naturally.”
“Naturally,” I answered through gritted teeth.
“Wonderful. I’ll text you the coordinates for the drop. Ta-ta for now.”
I hung up, cringed, and bit deep into the back of my hand, stifling a frustrated scream. Leon draped his towel across his shoulders.
“So. We’re fucked, aren’t we?”