“So you hired a penumbra to fuck with me? No, this had nothing to do with all that and everything to do with you not wanting me to discover that you’ve been doctoring the books.”
William’s hands curled into fists at his sides. “Julien, you’re messing with things you have no hope of understanding. It’s not your world.”
“But it is mine,” Emory said quietly as he stepped closer to William, gray eyes narrowed.
William backed away from him. “I have no issue with you, angel.”
“You do when you’re behind the attacks on Julien.”
Julien didn’t miss the way he almost caressed his name and neither did William, who looked between the two. He just shook his head and stopped, his gaze on Julien. “I’m serious, Julien. You need to back off or you’ll regret it.”
Emory growled. “Are you daring to threaten him right in front of me?”
A brush of magic swept through the room, and Emory’s wings seemed to expand.
“I can tell you’re a wizard,” Emory said, voice low. “I can also sense that you’re not a very powerful one.”
William lifted his hands, but Emory shot forward, grabbed both his wrists, and twisted them around his back, shoving him into the wall.
“You’re going to regret trying magic on me, wizard.”
“Just get him to stop investigating.”
“You know who I work for, don’t you? You think he doesn’t know what’s going on?”
All the color washed from William’s face.
“How are you involved in this, William?” Julien asked. “Besides trying to get me ousted from my own damn company. If you’ve been stealing, that audit is going to show it, so all this has been for naught.”
“I’m not saying anything else.” William’s voice was muffled by the wall.
“It’s too late for you anyway,” Emory said, still using that soft, menacing tone that had Julien feeling things. The muscles in his arms were bulging with the force he was using to hold William to the wall, and some strands of his silky blond hair had come free of the bun.
He looked so hot, Julien wasn’t even thinking about the possible loss of his position. It didn’t matter anyway because the third-party investigation would clear his name and show William as the thief he was.
A rumbling rolled through the office, and the ground began to shake more violently than it had in the past. Emory let go of William and reached for Julien, yanking him into the doorway of the attached restroom and wrapping his arms around him. William took advantage of the earthquake and raced from his office.
“He’s getting away,” Julien bit out as file folders started falling from the shelves and the glass in the windows rattled.
“He won’t get far. Xavier will find him and learn everything he knows.” Emory tucked his face in Julien’s neck as the world shook around them.
When it finally stilled, Julien didn’t move right away because Emory just felt too good wrapped around him and he was enjoying his breath on his neck. “That was a bad one,” he murmured quietly. “There’s something magical happening isn’t there?”
“Yes. Xavier is investigating it, and it seems your CFO knows at least some of what’s going on. Did you notice he had a staff tattoo on his wrist when I had him against the wall?”
“No. What does it mean?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’ve seen the same one on someone else.”
Julien didn’t feel bad for William because he deserved whatever he had coming to him. Surprisingly, he was content to stand here and feel Emory against him while the sounds of frantic people outside the office told him it was utter chaos out there. He did smirk though. “You know you can let go now, right?”
“I don’t want to.” The words were breathed against his skin right before Emory pressed his lips to Julien’s neck.
Heat streaked through him, and he forced himself to step away before he ended up walking back to his office with an erection. He stared at this fucking beautiful man who wascompletely disrupting his world, and all he could think about was getting him alone somewhere.
They’d be alone a lot now, so he’d have plenty of chances. But Julien was still pissed. Pissed that someone—probably William—had hired that penumbra and actually videotaped that attack. Pissed that even with a third-party investigation, he had no way of explaining the video, and it made him look bad.
He’d worked too hard to have his own damn company yanked out from under him.
