AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I finally made it to my office and sat at my desk to get some work done.
You’re going to sit here, check invoices, and not think about her.
After fifteen minutes, I hadn’t read a single file. I had focused my superhearing on her, Bash, and Ares carrying on at the dining table. Her laughter was a frenzied sound between a cackle and a goose honk. If that noise came from anyone else, it wouldn’t be attractive, but Diana made it sound musical. A knock at the door broke me out of my thoughts. I knew it was Mal, because he always knocked. He had only been a hellbound for about two centuries and still carried some of his mortal customs. “Come in.”
He sat in a chair on the other side of my desk, scowling at me. “I’m not sure how you expect her to learn anything. She doesn’t follow orders and runs her mouth like a train for Lucifer’s sake!”
His issues with Diana had to run deeper than not believing she was capable of learning. I reached across my desk and took his hand in mine, squeezing before he could pull away. My read on his feelings was jealousy, lust, anger, and a dash of injured pride.
“If you were at her test instead of galavanting around the city, you’d know she is more than capable of learning and following directions. She may only be able to levitate a tennis ball a few inches off the ground, but her combat skills are advanced for someone with her lack of knowledge and practice. She’s talented.” Mal’s jealousy trumped his other feelings, giving off an acrid, sharp smell.
“I don’t want to work with her–” he snapped.
“I know you don’t, but you have to. I need you to. We’ve gotten the ball rolling on eliminating Red. There’s no turning back now.” I stood up tall, letting go of his hand so I could put my palms down flat and lean over the desk toward him. “If you don’t want to end up in a fate worse than death, you’ll teach her everything she needs to know about telekinesis.”
“How do you even know she can master it? Not every witch or warlock can.”
“I know. If you stand her up for her lesson, you’ll regret it. Don’t make me deliver on that promise.You’re dismissed.” I sat back down and opened my Macbook.
I only had a few minutes until our lesson and was no closer to calming down than I was when I arrived in my office. My anger worked itself into a tempest, swelling inside my chest until it pressed against the insides. Everyday my resolve to avoid an entanglement with her got weaker. Sometimes I thought she teased me on purpose, and other times I wondered if it was just her. At The Fool, her magic screamed at my own when I touched her hand at the bar. It sizzled beneath her skin, desperate for a way out to collide with me. I had fucked hundreds of men and women in thousands of different ways over the centuries. Immortality lent itself to sexual hedonism because we had nothing but time, and most of us had a decent imagination. But no one had ever reacted to mine that way, as if they were two halves of the same whole finally coming together. How could I resist an attraction to someone compatible with me on that level?
But I had to ignore it. Bash and Ares didn’t have to lead our team on a near-impossible mission and weren’t in charge of catching her up on years of magical education. I was the one responsible for honing her into an assassin. If I fucked this up, we’d all be lucky to die, and more importantly, her safety would be at risk. It would be as if I handed her a life vest, then cut her arm and threw her into shark infested waters. The best thing I could do was to keep everything strictly professional with her. I may hurt her feelings, but she’d thank me once she was able to stop looking over her shoulder.
I faded into the conservatory and reinforced the shatter-proof security wards on the glass. The last thing I needed was for it to break mid-lesson. Bash escorted her in, his hand on her lower back as he followed her through the doorway. He gave her a beat to admire the grandness of the room. I’d designed it with the intention to impress, and enjoyed seeing people’s awe when they took it in. Bash pulled her in for a deep kiss before they parted ways. I could understand Mal’s jealousy better after witnessing her with someone else. Despite my fruitless attempts to avoid her, I wanted nothing more than to kiss her everywhere. I wanted to run my lips down her neck and nibble right where it met her collarbone. I yearned to hear her gasp from the pain of my teeth against her flesh and her mewling when I kissed it better.
Stop it, you have to focus.
“Today we’ll expand on your magical combat skills. I spelled the room so the glass is shatter-proof, perfect for magical deuling.” I tried to keep my voice even, with no hint of warmth. She needed to get the message that anything between us was strictly professional, a teacher-student relationship.
“Are you ready to work?” She asked me as she swayed her hips and snapped her finger. “Don’t you go easy on me now, hit me with your best shot, Pat.”
Her sassing me provoked my deep need to control her, to make her work in ways that were straight up wrong. A daydream of her kneeling on the floor before me while she worked her mouth up and down my shaft flitted through my mind, but I quickly shut that down. I refused to give her anything more than an empty stare.This is for the best.
I spent the next two hours drilling her on new combat techniques. Despite her request, I did take it easy on her. She was nowhere near ready for the level of magic I could unleash on her. She did well, keeping up with me easily until she missed an attack that sent her flying onto her ass. I had to hold myself back from helping her up and apologizing. For the entire lesson, I refrained from saying anything that remotely resembled praise. Shecravedit too. Every now and then she’d look at me for a shred of validation or a critique. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she could be dominated? She took direction well and thrived off of rewards. I would bet that she’d react well to punishments, too.
She caught me off guard and sent out a low-grade bolt of magical energy aimed right above my head. I tried to redirect it, only to be encompassed by a magical cage she made. It had arms that closed around me from my neck down to my feet. I felt my feet leave the floor, and I was so proud of her. Holding a trap and levitating the target was an outstanding use of magic. The more I struggled to free myself, the weaker the traphold got. She took a page out of my book, and somehow made magical binding cuffs wrap around my wrists. I felt myself rise again, looking down to see a wide clearance between my feet and the tile floor.
“Yes! I got you right where I want you now. Any last words?” she teased, obviously proud of herself. She should be. The magic she used should have been beyond the grasp of a new witch.
“Good job,” was all I could manage to say without betraying my own desire for her.
Her eyes narrowed on me, and a disgruntled frown marred her pretty doll face. That’s when the message sunk in. After that, she spent the rest of the lesson trying to outdo herself out of spite. When she met my eye, it wasn’t for recognition or approval, but to tell me tofuck offwithout words. Right before I ended the lesson, she made one last-ditch effort to make conversation with me by bringing up dinner. I couldn’t even remember what I said because looking at the anger and disappointment evident on her face made me feel like an asshole with the emotional range of a toothpick.
I abruptly dismissed myself, walking all the way down to the end of the hallway and fading back to my office.
* * *
I locked myself in my office and poured three fingers of whiskey to steady myself. I got no joy out of treating her that way and hated myself for how I made her feel. After draining half the glass, I was able to work on some paperwork for a club in Brooklyn that we ran, but my thoughts would eventually stray to Diana. When I honed my superhearing on her earlier, I heard her and Bash’s moaning. I wish I could say I disengaged and gave them their privacy, but I listened to the entire encounter.
“Yes, Bash, FUCK, I wanna squirt all over your face!”Her cries of passion and the way she groaned his name hit my cock like a lightning bolt.
I used every ounce of self control I had not to rub one out and failed. I grasped myself, using my own precum to ease my hand up and down my length roughly until I busted all over my hand. I felt pathetic. What I wanted was so close, yet so forbidden and out of reach. The apple was hanging from the tree, and all I had to do was pull an Eve and go for it. Pluck it off the tree and take a big, juicy bite of tart sweetness.
I made my way to the bar cart to wipe my hands on a dishtowel. Some hand sanitizer in my desk got that last bit of stickiness to disappear. By now Diana should be moving on to her meeting with Mal. Whether she had the full gift of telekinesis or not, Mal could teach her how to think outside the box, which was valuable in combat. He was sneaky, and used unexpected methods to bring down his opponents. Subtlety and creative combat were his specialty.
My phone rang. Of course it was the bordello in Queens. Another handsy customer trying to get services he didn’t pay for meant another dead body for us to hide. Luckily the manager detained him, so Bash could rifle through his mind to see if he had any loose ends to tie up before they disposed of him. Secrecy was a priority, after all.
Bash, Ares I need you both to meet me in my office,I linked them.
