Harold leans closer to the crate. "That one is crooked."
"Harold, if you say one more word about lavender placement, I'm going to find your obituary and fact-check your surviving relatives."
The pressure behind the library doors changes.
It happens so quickly that I almost miss the first warning. One second, I'm irritated, dusty, and publicly pretending not to be in an argument with a dead man. The next, the air pulls tight around me, all the small sounds in the shop stretching thin. Ira's pen stops moving. The customer's bottle clinks softly against the shelf. Harold's mouth keeps moving, but his voice cuts out as if someone has put a hand over the whole world.
Then the bond opens.
Not gently. Not like a door. Like something under pressure finally finds the crack.
Heat rushes through me so fast my hand locks around the shelf. It starts low, deep enough that I don't understand it as pleasure for the first half second. My body only knows thatsomething has entered the bond too hard, too clean, and found every vulnerable place before my mind can put a name to it. Soren's magic hits first, frantic and bright, sparking against my nerves. Cain's follows beneath it, heavier, colder, not soft but certain, and the two of them fuse in a way that makes my hips jerk forward before I can stop them.
My breath leaves me.
The lavender falls from my hand and hits the floor.
"Aven?" Ira says.
I can't answer. I can't look at him. I can't move without making the thing worse, and standing still doesn't help either because the spell is already inside the bond, already moving through places no one has permission to touch in the middle of the damn shop.
It rolls through me again.
This time I know what it is.
Pleasure blooms hard and low, shockingly physical, a pulse so intimate my stomach drops with panic before the sensation even finishes spreading. My cock fills against my jeans, fast and humiliating, my body responding as if hands are on me, as if Cain is behind me with his mouth at my neck and Soren is in front of me laughing into a kiss, as if I'm somewhere private and wanted and allowed to fall apart.
I'm not.
I'm in aisle three.
There's a customer six feet away holding protection oil.
Harold is watching me with the judgmental expression of a man who once wrote letters to the editor.
I clamp my teeth together so hard pain flashes along my jaw. My fingers dig into the wooden shelf, dried dust grinding under my nails. The first clear wave should have been the worst because surprise has teeth, but the second is worse because I understand exactly what's happening and still can't stop it. Thebond isn't asking. My body isn't asking. Something in the library has locked too cleanly between Soren and Cain, and the overflow is using me as the place to finish the circuit.
"Sir?" the customer asks carefully. "Are you all right?"
No. No, I'm absolutely not all right. I'm having what may be the first recorded supernatural workplace incident involving lavender, public indecency, and the involuntary betrayal of every organ below my waist. I'd like to say all of that. I'd like to say anything. Instead, I make a small, strangled sound and press my forehead against the shelf because the pleasure is building again, rhythmic now, awful because it's good, awful because my body keeps chasing the next pulse while my mind is trying to climb out of my skin.
The shame arrives in layers.
First, the customer. Her confusion, the careful little inhale she takes when she realizes something is wrong but not what kind of wrong. Then Ira, already moving toward me, already seeing too much because Ira sees everything. Then Soren and Cain behind the doors, their magic locked together without warning, not touching me with hands but reaching me anyway. The bond has turned my own body into a room no one knocked before entering.
I hate that part the most.
Not the pleasure. The pleasure is simple, stupid, biological. It has no manners and no shame. It's heat and pressure and the slick, urgent throb of my cock trapped hard in my jeans. What hurts is the way I can't separate myself from it. There's no place inside me where I can stand back and say that's only magic, only the bond, only an accident. My body is there. My breath is there. The needy, helpless hitch in my throat is mine.
"Aven," Ira says again, closer now.
The sound of my name almost breaks me. I shake my head once because if he touches me right now, if any solid, livinghand lands on me while the bond is dragging pleasure through my nerves, I'm going to come in front of God, retail, and Harold from 1973.
The spell surges.
My knees buckle. One hand slips on the shelf, and a crate of rosemary tumbles sideways, bundles scattering across the floor. The scent bursts sharp and green, filling my nose as my hips jerk once, uselessly, helplessly. I bite down on the inside of my cheek. Copper floods my mouth. It doesn't stop the sound that tears out of me, half-sob, half-moan, too raw to disguise as a cough or a ghost-related customer service issue.
The release hits like my body has been thrown off a ledge.
