Page 10 of Code Mages & Empty Pages (Frostfire #2)

Dawn

I finished washing up after fixing myself a grazing platter and went upstairs to ask Luc if he wanted a cup of tea.

His door was mostly closed, but I could hear the faint tap-tap of his keyboard and that low, rumbling laugh I’d started to anticipate.

I hesitated, not wanting to interrupt him but also wanting that connection again.

He’d been so distraught in the lift, and yes, I had promised him that it stayed in the lift. But that had been a white lie. I knew he liked me, and I wanted under his shell.

I knocked, but if he heard it, he didn’t answer.

I pushed the door open and had barely set foot inside Luc’s room, intending to ask if he wanted tea, when I saw him lean back in his chair with a low groan.

Then I caught sight of him : bare-chested, with his headset on, and sprawled across his chair wearing nothing .

“Oh my God!” I spun and bolted, heart pounding as I nearly tripped over my own feet in my rush to escape. I made it to the kitchen and busied myself with the kettle, pretending very hard to care about tea and not about the image burned into my retinas.

“Dawn, wait!” Luc called after me.

He tracked me down when I was still hunched over my mug.

“Hey,” he said, his voice suddenly uncertain, softer than usual.

“Hey,” I managed, focusing on the steam rising from my cup.

Look at anything but his eyes. Or his cock.

My cheeks were on fire.

He lingered in the doorway, awkward and too close. “Listen, I’m sorry. It was hot in my room and—”

“Oh God, Luc, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have just walked in.” I chanced a glance at him, then immediately looked away, mortified. “I didn’t want to interrupt you when you were—“ I waved a hand and tried my best not to spiral. What if he kicked me out for overstepping?

He cleared his throat, sounding as embarrassed as I felt. “No, it’s fine. I—”

“No, it’s not.” My face burned. “Crap, I didn’t mean to walk in on you…um…” The thought alone made me want to crawl into the cupboard with the tea bags.

“Dawn?” I forced myself to meet his eyes. It felt like peeling off a plaster in slow motion.

“What do you think I was doing?” His voice was low, rougher than usual.

My face went nuclear. “You were clearly pleasuring yourself,” I forced out.

If the floor could please open up and swallow me whole?

He huffed a laugh. “I was gaming . Not with myself. Video games. Riddles & Guilt, if you’re curious.”

“Gaming?” I echoed, stunned, my mortification giving way to a weird sort of relief. “Oh my God. I thought—”

“I don’t even want to know.” One corner of his mouth quivered. “Yeah. Hip, Dante, and I were on a mission. I probably blew it now.”

I busied myself with my tea, hands trembling.

“Sorry. I just, yeah, sorry.” He leaned back against the counter, arms crossed, looking completely unbothered except for the faint thumping of his tail against the cabinet door.

I tried not to look at his shorts and failed.

I tore my eyes away quickly and focused on the bergamot-scented steam instead.

“I’ve never really played video games,” I confessed, just to fill the awkward silence.

He raised an eyebrow, as if I’d confessed to never having eaten bread. “Never? I didn’t know people like you existed.”

I finally managed a laugh, soft and a little shaky. The tension eased, just a bit. But I knew I’d never look at those shorts the same way again.

“If you want, I can show you how to play. It’s fun.” I heard the smirk in his voice. “Mm, I think I’d enjoy playing with you.”

Holy fucking shit. My smut writer brain was fine tuned to innuendo and latched onto every single word it might have use for in a book.

This moment is so ending up in my next story, Lucien.

“Okay?” I had no idea what got into me but…what did I have to lose? “I’ll probably suck, though.”

“Come along, Dawn. I’ll introduce you to my guild.”

“Now?” Panic laced my voice.

“I’ll even put on a shirt for the occasion,” Luc teased. “Come on, they will be nice to you.”

I followed him into his room and waited until he had put on one of his hilarious shirts. I snorted. The shirt read “I WENT OUTSIDE ONCE” in large letters and below it in smaller font it said, “The graphics weren’t great”.

I’d never hung out with nerds before. My ex-partner had been so serious in his career at a bank in Broomshire. There had been no nerds to be around.

I liked it, and I was already sure I had more in common with his guild than with the stuck-up cunts at Morgan’s job. God, I’d hated those people.

“Okay, take this. We’ll tell them we’re back, then we’ll make you a character,” he explained, handing me a black and neon green controller.

“What do I have to do?”

“Breathe, Dawn.” Luc gave me a tiny wink. “And don’t let Dante scare you away. She can be a cunt, but she’s a fucking great Arcani.”

I understood fuck all of what he said, but before I could enquire what on earth an Arcani was, he woke his enormous screen.

A fantastic world came into view. Three characters, a tall guy in green and brown clothes, a magician in swirling black robes, and a bipedal wolf with an impressive assortment of weapons strapped to his hips and back stood in the middle of a forest clearing.

“The headset is off. They can’t hear you right now, okay?”

A line of chat bubbles popped up at the bottom of the screen.

Dante: You got some nerve, asshole

Comte: Back

Dante: Fuck you

Hippocampus: lol

Comte: sorry, I brought a guest

Hippocampus: hello guest (they’re reading along, right?)

Comte: yup

“Uhm, can you tell him I say hi?”

“What do you want to be called?” He tilted his head at me.

“I have no idea. Why are you called ‘Comte’?”

“Lucien is a character in the ‘Comte de Monte-Cristo’. I’m half French. It fit my Varg.”

Half French?

Omg. So hot.

I made a mental note to make the male main character in my next book French.

“How about ‘Roe’?” Luc suggested.

Did he come up with this on the spot, or is it a nod to my pen name?

“Yeah, okay, I like that.” I really did.

Comte: Roe says hi

Dante: don’t pull shit like that you cunt

Dante: Hi Roe

“Wow, Dante is…”

“Our leader and she likes to tell us off, ‘How do you dare have a life outside the game!’” He snorted.

Comte: We’ll set Roe’s OC up

Comte: brB

Comte: @Dante unless you have a problem with that

Dante: piss off, Comte

Comte: see you soon

He exited his game, then inched nearer on the couch.

“Let’s get you a pretty new body, Roe. Although…” His eyes travelled down the length of my body, and he had the audacity to lick his lips. I huffed.

Who are you and what have you done with Luc?

With a tiny wink he placed his finger on mine and pressed a button. It took me a while to decide on a class, until I landed on the Rogue.

“Roe the Rogue.” Luc snorted. “Okay, Captain Obvious, what species would you like to be?” And he was off, explaining the different races I could play in this world.

“I like that Demoness. Can you change back to the female? She looks cool.”

“She’s pretty hot,” the wolf agreed with a sideways glance at me. “She fits you.”

He pressed a few more buttons and we were back, before I could even start to think about a reply, with the Varg warrior with his arsenal of weapons and a curvy blue-haired and skinned woman with a sexy leather corset, a long, curved knife at the hip, and tight leather trousers.

Comte: Roe and I will explode the area for a bit

We’ll do what?

Comte: explore lol

Hippocampus: LOL hf

“What? Help! What do I have to do now?” I was already panicking. I knew I’d make a fool of myself!

“Dawn?” Luc drew my attention to him.

“Yeah?” I wiped a sweaty palm on my shorts.

“It’s all good. Nothing can happen to you. I’m here, okay”

I sank into his eyes, bright like molten silver.

“Okay,” I breathed.

My brain was still stuck on what he had said. ‘She fits you.’

Because you think I’m hot?

After we finished setting up “Roe”, Luc spent another hour walking me through the basics of my character.

A training game, he called it, so I could get a feel for the mechanics.

My coordination was shit and I was terrified to break anything, but Luc was endlessly patient, even when I forgot which key was which.

He made it feel less like homework and more like a private joke just for us.

The next morning, Saturday, the house was oddly quiet.

I spent a while in my room, cracked open my laptop, and managed to put down a few hundred words.

It wasn’t much, but enough to feel like I was making progress.

I called Owen, caught up on family stuff, then found myself just…

sitting, letting everything from last night sink in.

Luc’s steady presence, the way he’d looked at me as he said she fit me kept circling in my mind.

After lunch, which was a quick snack plate with crackers, cheese, and a few slices of apple, I settled onto the couch with my laptop balanced on my knees.

The house was quiet except for the low hum of the fridge and the occasional click of my keyboard as I scrolled through the local animal shelter’s website.

The fairy cat I’d found there weeks ago was still listed.

My heart squeezed a little every time I saw his picture.

I must’ve been staring too long, because Luc’s voice startled me out of my daze. “Want a cidre?” he called from the kitchen.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, barely looking up from the shelter website.

A minute later, he came back with two bottles of that quince cidre I’d grown to love and settled next to me like he belonged there.

“Cheers.” Our bottles clinked, and the fizz was tart and sweet at the back of my tongue. I was achingly aware of his warmth, the casual closeness, the way this could so easily feel like home if I let it.

For a moment, the silence between us felt easy. When did being around him become comforting instead of awkward?

Did something shift between us last night?

“So?” he nudged, tipping his chin toward my laptop. “What are you up to? Writing?”

I hesitated, smile tugging at my lips. “Uh… not exactly. It’s a little embarrassing, actually.”

Luc smirked. “Now you’ve got me curious.”

“Curiosity kills the wolf, or so they say.” I grinned and turned my laptop so he could see. “I’ve been looking at a shelter Cat-Sìth.”

“A what?”

“Here.” I pointed at the screen. “This is Ruffles. Just look at him, isn’t he adorable?” The picture showed a glossy black cat with a star-shaped white spot on his chest and the most alert, hopeful eyes I’d ever seen.

Luc studied the screen, then shot me a crooked smile. “Okay, I’m not a cat person, but he’s really cute.”

“Right?” I sighed, shoulders dropping a little. “I found him a while back and was about to enquire about him when I discovered the fungus in my hallway cupboard. I was just checking out the page because I wanted to see what Carson’s husband was up to…” My voice trailed off.

“You wanted to adopt him?” He glanced at the photo and then back at me.

“I guess I would have, yeah. I can’t stop checking if he’s found a new home. He’s bound to, soon.”

Luc was quiet for a heartbeat, watching me. I didn’t feel the urge to chatter outwardly to cover my insecurities. Being silent with Luc didn’t terrify me anymore.