Page 22 of Love Spell (Witches of London #3)

At first, Noah thought he was mistaken: he couldn’t be seeing what he thought he was seeing. Was he seeing double? Was he looking in the wrong column?

His heart beat faster and faster, palms sweating as the reality of his screens beckoned, the zeros mounting up before his eyes.

Someone walked past behind Noah’s terminal, talking on a phone.

“Hey!” Noah waved a hand behind his back, not daring to take his eyes off the numbers on his master screen. “Hey, come here. Look at this.”

He didn’t even care that it happened to be Chandler who drifted in. Chandler tended to move his stick-figure frame at an amble. He didn’t bother to end his call. Just a lazy, “Hold on a minute. One of the juniors wants a word.” Then to Noah, “What?”

“Chandler, look. Am I seeing things? Because, if this is doing what I think it’s doing …” Noah finally broke his fixed gaze to look at Chandler as he leaned closer, one hand on the back of Noah’s chair so their heads were at the same level before the screen.

There was a pause in which Noah felt sure he could hear his own heart hammering in his ears.

Chandler blinked. “You bought those contracts?”

“Yes.”

“Oh … shit …” Chandler said so slowly and softly it sounded reverential. Then he murmured into his phone, “I’ll call you back,” and hung up.

* * *

Timo couldn’t get there at once when he started to hear shouting at the far end of the terminals. He had to focus on his open positions, but the noise grew and he itched to find out who’d struck gold today.

It wouldn’t be Ranveer, Haoyu, or Chandler. They were Timo’s current highest earners and no one would crow over them turning in new records. Probably Dave. Dave was unreliable, but quick and profitable when he was on form, and definitely a crower.

Timo should take the whole team out to dinner.

Besides, he actually felt good. He’d had a proper night’s sleep without nightmares and he’d been on fire all morning with his own trades.

Maybe taking the pressure off Noah with a celebratory Wolf Pack dinner, team bonding and all that, would be just right to keep things gently moving.

As soon as Timo could get his positions closed he’d head down the hall and offer congratulations. Dinner and a gift for the new hero? Depended on the amount. And who it was. Timo wasn’t sure he could bring himself to give Dave a new car even if Dave brought in a million a minute.

“Timo!” Haoyu grabbed Timo’s doorframe. “You’ve got to see what Noah’s done!” He dashed back down the hall.

Noah?

Timo flew out of his spinning desk chair, at the door before he whipped around to close everything, then ran after Haoyu.

Sure enough, a few of the pack were crowded around Noah’s desk, some of the other guys with active trades shouting from their seats, also watching the numbers.

“What’s going on?” Timo ran behind Haoyu.

But he could see it with his own eyes — Noah’s screen showed a list of short-dated derivatives contracts that must have been far out of the money, but now all showed juicy green. The return stood at 10,000%, and continued to tick up.

Timo didn’t particularly care what the underlying was, or what had kicked off their spike — might be a blip, might be a data release, might be a short seller going to war with a company, or might be a whale distorting the patterns as it plied its path, unaware of the small fish in the same waters momentarily scattering, struggling against the sudden currents.

This might be a freak thing, or Noah being lucky.

Whatever it was, the return was huge for a small risk.

“How did you find the trade?”

“Oh, I tweaked the code for Geri and Freki. I’ve been working to understand the algorithms, and they flagged it to me. And I thought, why not put my money where my mouth is? Well, your money.”

Chandler’s eyebrows jumped — Timo knew he used their algorithms, but Chandler was a contrarian with his own increasingly complex spreadsheets and systems. He’d never dig into the code itself, let alone change it.

“Seems that IT experience pays off again. Well done, great job. That’s what I like to see here — initiative, out-of-the-box thinking, and then taking a calculated risk.”

“I’ll … I’ll just close these positions now.

” Noah’s fingers flew over the keyboard.

Finally, he sat back in his desk chair, chest rising and falling on fast breaths.

“Damn,” he panted, “my hands are shaking. Sorry — I must look like an idiot. I know it’s not much money by your standards, but that’s a first for me. ”

Haoyu laughed before walking out. “Wait until you make your first million in a day.”

Noah blew out a breath, shaking his head.

Even Chandler grinned as he followed Haoyu. “Not bad for the new kid.”

“Come on.” Timo slapped Noah’s shoulder. “Have a drink; settle your nerves.”

In an apparent daze, Noah followed him past other terminals. “That was incredible.”

“You didn’t think we did this just to earn a living, did you?” Timo laughed as he gestured to let Noah step ahead of him into the office. Noah’s silly grin and his own giddiness made it impossible to remember hands off and he touched Noah’s arm when they moved into the room.

Just inside, Noah breathlessly faced him. “I didn’t even have a rush like that on those mountain trails.”

Grinning back, Timo stood very close. “Nothing else like it.”

Noah kissed him.

* * *

Noah’s whole body still tingled as he opened his mouth, the source of all this heat and blistering energy suddenly seeming to stem from his lips.

In almost the same instant as contact, Timo had kicked the door closed behind him without looking and grabbed Noah’s head in both hands.

Noah’s back hit the wall before he knew Timo was shoving him into it.

He would still have been laughing if he could breathe, instead lifting his hands in return to hold on to Timo, sharing pressure while Timo’s mouth and chest and hips ground into him.

His own high already left him lightheaded, walking on air, so these new layers merged, making it impossible to single out one thrill from the next, one euphoria from the next.

He ached for Timo’s hands all over him, even more now in this rush of emotion than last night after dinner, when pride had made him flee the couch, when he’d just accepted a challenge about falling in love with someone.

He couldn’t have turned right around and started making out on the couch two hours later.

Now, though, he was hard and didn’t care about spells or challenges, this man being his boss or appropriate workplace behaviour.

He cared about the praise Timo had given him and his own trading victory and about welcoming this gorgeous, magnetic, split personality to show Noah one more side of himself.

True to form, Timo wasn’t shy about going straight for the fly once Noah parted his lips.

How did one breathe? Noah wasn’t a newcomer to all this, but certainly a novice compared to the man flattening him against the paintwork.

He fought to catch air through his nose while Timo’s tongue burned a trail through his mouth, only to gasp violently, wrenching his face sideways in his own fight for breath.

Timo’s hand was already down Noah’s briefs, hot skin on skin, fingers around Noah’s cock with a force and urgency that should have been painful, but reached Noah’s brain as an all-consuming appetite for even more contact.

Timo didn’t bother trying to follow Noah’s mouth.

While Noah fumbled with one hand to open Timo’s fly in return, clumsy and awkward as a brick wall compared to Timo’s lightning reflexes and honed movements, Timo’s mouth found his neck.

He kissed into the hollow of Noah’s jaw, trailed his tongue along the curve of bone, and closed his mouth on Noah’s throat like a wolf trying to decide if this was the right place to bite down.

His left hand held Noah’s head; Noah’s left hand on the back of Timo’s neck, while all his focus went into his right hand.

With the last barrier of briefs surmounted, Timo thrust against him and Noah once more struggled to catch his breath. He scrambled to hold their rigid cocks together but Timo again beat him to it, every movement ten times more adept than Noah’s stumbling efforts.

Noah could have blissfully come with him like that, never mind stains on his suit. Instead, Timo’s pushing against him brought him back with a bump to wondering what Timo had in mind. Probably more than a quick hand job; and he probably wasn’t going to ask Noah’s opinion.

Not at all sure he was ready for much more, not here, in the middle of the day in the office with a thin door separating them from nearly a dozen colleagues, with a dozen blazing monitors in their faces, Noah rested a hand on Timo’s chest, trying for a few inches of space. What about lube? What about being safe?

“Timo —”

Timo moved with him, the pressure of his chest and mouth against Noah vanishing at a touch.

Startled, wishing it hadn’t been that easy, wanting the force, the heat, the heart-pounding rush just as much as the downhill ride with no switchback in sight, Noah instead leaned forwards, trying to follow him, only to discover Timo wasn’t stepping back from him at all.

Timo hit his knees, his own cock in one hand, Noah’s in the other.

Noah swore, almost choked, at the inferno-intensity of Timo’s tongue snaking around his tip before the whole length of his shaft seemed to be impossibly in Timo’s mouth.

Noah couldn’t forget for a second that there were people just on the other side of this wall, but knowing he had to shut up and grit his teeth and actually doing that were two different things.

He swore again, hissing out his breath, his body a mass of tight muscles to keep himself quiet as he gripped Timo’s head in both hands, fingers twisting into hair, toes curling in his shoes.

How the hell could he do that?