Cantrips: Volume #2: Minor Magics Crafted to Amuse and Entertain

by Joey W. Hill

  “Hands in front of you. Hold them together like a prayer fold, fingers pointed level toward me.”

  Those dark eyes watching him, made his flesh warm across his cheeks, but Daegan did it. With enough of a weighted pause that, when he finally complied, Gideon’s dick hardened further. He ignored the cramping in his jeans, instead focusing on how those long fingers aligned, hands palm to palm. He looped the nylon around the vampire’s wrists, a triple wrap, then knotted the line between them. He hooked Daegan’s thumbs into the binding, another wrap, which immobilized the fingers that did most of the work when it came to getting free of restraints. Again, he had no doubt Daegan could still do it. The point was what being restrained like this could do to a guy’s psyche.

  Gideon tossed the two rope ends up over the beam. He caught Daegan’s shoulder, a convenient prop to give himself an extra couple inches to snag the dangling lines as they came down on the other side. It underscored how casual a thing it had become to touch him. Tonight, when they’d wandered through a few stores with Anwyn, Gideon had noticed the two of them touched each other almost as much as they touched her. Daegan’s body would brush his hip, his hand lingering on Gideon’s back, a thumb resting on the skin side of Gideon’s belt as the two men studied amusing T-shirt logos up on the wall.

  They had taken him to a burger diner for dinner, Anwyn in the booth at his side, Daegan across from them both, but when Gideon stretched out his booted feet, he didn’t question how comfortably his calf rested against Daegan’s beneath the table. Anwyn slipped her feet out of her shoes and put a bare foot over Gideon’s, so that he could feel the pressure of that light feminine weight through the leather. In her mind, he’d seen that she was teasing Daegan’s ankle under the cuff of his jeans with the toes of her other foot. Their three-way connection made everything else in the world feel right, and knowing he wasn’t alone in that feeling made it all the better.

  Gideon brought himself back to the present as he pulled the lines down, so that the two ends brushed the floor behind Daegan. “Raise your hands over your head,” he instructed the vampire.

  “You chose rope, not chain.”

  “Yeah. No need for overkill.” But that wasn’t why he’d chosen rope. He’d seen Daegan in chains. He never wanted to see that reality again, since it haunted his memories often enough.

  Daegan might not be in his head, but for certain things, it wasn’t needed. When he lifted his hands to comply with Gideon’s directive, Daegan briefly hooked his fingers in Gideon’s belt, a tacit acknowledgment. One that connected them to that memory, that understanding. “You worry too much about me, vampire hunter.”

  Gideon shrugged. “Rope is way more versatile than chain. Which makes it twice as effective, if you know what you’re doing. There’s a reason a spider web can hold something way bigger and stronger than it seems like it should be able to do.”

  Daegan gave him a look, but lifted his arms. The movement arched his upper body in an altogether distracting way. The vampire was sex in motion pretty much 24/7, clothed or unclothed. Gideon tried to conceal his reaction to it, then stopped himself, snagged by an intriguing realization. He didn’t have to, did he?

  He’s yours tonight, Gideon. That’s what Anwyn had said. They made no bones about ogling him like a hot rod pin up whenever they wanted. They considered him theirs to enjoy, however, whenever, they wanted. Which in turn made him hot as hell and kept his cock in a practically constant erect state. Would it have the same effect on Daegan, even if his makeup was a bit different than Gideon’s in that regard? He was about to find out, because just that one motion, lifting his arms above his head, was revving Gideon’s engines. Full horsepower. He was ready to slam down on the gas pedal, not hide a single damn thing about how he felt. He was the one in control.

  But he’d use that control to both their advantage. Reining himself back with effort, he shifted behind Daegan. Gideon had studied Anwyn’s rope tying books as well as reflecting on the techniques she’d used on him, diabolical twists and modifications that his being a more resilient third mark had allowed. He’d learned the knots in his spare time. When Daegan was off on his solo hunts, he’d tie up the practice dummy in the weapons room, learning how to do it smooth and fast, without hesitation.

  Anwyn had also let him practice on Ella in the club public play room. Since she was a lush little thing, Gideon hadn’t objected to having a live subject, despite Anwyn’s amusement with, and planned retaliation for, the thoughts he couldn’t control as he worked on aligning the ropes around her submissive staff member’s very generous breasts. The petite submissive had enjoyed it all immensely, especially when James, Anwyn’s head of security, lingered to watch after his shift was over.

  When this day finally came, Gideon had wanted to be ready, so he’d even bitten the bullet and practiced on one of the male subs who had a similar build to Daegan. Though the man had been as aroused as Ella, Gideon had ignored that with stolid courtesy. He had no interest in getting it on with another guy except Daegan. While he still didn’t understand that side of himself, he’d stopped questioning it.

  He wouldn’t say he’d remained completely detached, however. Thanks to Anwyn, he received more than additional rope tying skills from the session. She’d been very intrigued, watching male hands touching male flesh, and he’d reaped the benefits of that later in their private apartments.

  Sometimes, he worked on the knots right in front of Daegan. When they were idle, watching sports or hanging out at night in one of the city spots, he’d have a bit of the rope in his pocket and he’d pull it out, work on the knots, counting out the fall measurements in his head, reminding himself of how much he’d need for what he wanted to do. When he felt Daegan’s attention on him, he’d focus all his interest on the technique, not the application, but Daegan knew why he was doing it. Truth be told, it had been a sweet kind of foreplay. A couple times it had resulted in Daegan initiating some pretty rough sex, the vampire reinforcing who was in charge. They both knew that wasn’t really what it was all about, though. Even if Gideon himself couldn’t say why the terms of the bet had become so important to him.

  He brought over a step ladder so he could pull the rope through the eyebolts, making the line taut enough that Daegan was a millimeter away from having to rise on the balls of his feet, his arms stretched even higher over his head. When Gideon dropped the tails of the rope, they brushed Daegan’s shoulders. His still clad shoulders. Nope. That had to change.

  Gideon came back to the floor and pulled out his knife. “Good thing it’s not the blue shirt,” he noted. Daegan had pulled the fitted charcoal gray shirt loose from his belt when he’d gone to check the perimeter. It was a very GQ look, and very irritating to someone wanting to eye his package, since the tails of the shirt hid it. Gideon wasn’t in the mood to be imaginative about that. He was getting in the mood for one single thing at this point. Whatever he wanted.

  “Do not—”

  Gideon hooked the blade under the top button and sliced it off. Daegan gave him an aggrieved look.

  “You could have just unbuttoned it.”

  “Yeah, my bad. And I nicked you. Clumsy of me.” Gideon rubbed a thumb over the small wound, capturing the blood and bringing it to his mouth to taste. The sweetness made the room spin some. “I guess I should feed, since I’m going to need my Wheaties to give you a proper workout, right?”

  With a twist of his wrist, he cut another button, made another shallow cut. To the three sets of enhanced senses in the room, blood was like the smell of popcorn, cotton candy and fried turkey legs at the fair, all rolled together in that irresistible call that made saliva pool and lips get licked.

  Daegan eyed him with pupils that were expanding, darkness taking over dark. That, and the expanse of skin the now half-open shirt revealed, made him look even more tempting. Anwyn’s desire for the vampire to keep his hair a little longer, so it fell over his brow and teased his neck, was a good look for him, Gideon had to admit. And Daegan was alre
ady way above ten in that department.

  “You owe me a shirt,” the vampire said.

  “I have a Team Edward one on order. Bright orange. Another color for your eclectic wardrobe.”

  Daegan showed his fangs, and Gideon made the final buttons a rush job, slicing right down to the tails and letting the buttons hit the floor, bouncing and rolling away from them. Using the blade to nudge the shirt fully open, he studied the terrain of hard, warrior-trained muscle, the smooth layers over ribs, pecs and abdomen. Supposedly, vampires didn’t ever get fat or flabby, but so many of them stayed in fighting shape, a survival requirement in the volatile vampire world, it was hard to say what a vampire couch potato would really look like. Definitely not like this. Daegan wasn’t just in fighting shape. His body was sculpted for what he deemed its primary purpose—assassin, hunter—but to Gideon’s eyes it had another purpose, and tonight it would serve his desires. The very thought…

  Normally he resisted handling himself in front of Daegan unless ordered, but then he thought of how often Daegan would take himself in hand, stroke his own cock while studying Gideon’s bound and contorted body. Wanting to touch his Master would become a howling need in Gideon’s gut, just watching him do that.

  The top button of his own jeans was still open from when Anwyn had touched him. He pushed his fingers down below the denim. As Daegan’s gaze latched onto the movement, Gideon gave himself a nice squeeze and stroke, the vampire’s features tightening as he did it again. God, was this how it felt to them, to see that fleeting savage hunger cross his face as it did Daegan’s now? Perhaps there was even a different, more intense benefit to Gideon, standing in their shoes tonight, because he knew Daegan could make him pay for this later. Like how he’d fucked him after watching Gideon play with the rope, as if he knew part of it was a taunt from his servant. This was the mother of all invitations to reassert his claim in wicked, overwhelming ways that could make Gideon sore for a month afterward.

  He was ready to take this to the next level. He wanted the damn shirt gone, nothing but skin covering Daegan’s upper body. Shifting behind the vampire, he grasped the bottom hem to hold the fabric taut and sliced up the back with his blade. Though he’d claimed clumsiness, he showed his skill now, bisecting the cloth with one smooth stroke, then ripping it all the way up with a satisfying tear of cloth. Another two cuts at the sleeves, and he pulled the thing completely free, letting it flutter away to the ground. Picking up another coil of rope, he moved back to Daegan’s front.

  The vampire had stopped breathing, that particular stillness he did so well when he was hunting. Gideon slid a fingertip down his sternum, over the cut he’d made. It was already healing, but he dug his nail into it a little bit, experiencing what Anwyn felt when she used her far longer and sharper nails on some of the wounds she inflicted upon him. Often she’d soothe them with her tongue. Daegan drew in a breath at the slight pain, eyes flickering up to meet Gideon’s.

  “Yeah, keep breathing. Don’t want you to turn blue and pass out on me. Want you conscious for every minute of this.”

  Daegan’s gaze sparked. Gideon looped the line around his throat, eye to eye with the vampire for a tense, provocative moment before he turned his attention to creating the harness. The knots and diamonds, down the breastbone and upper abdomen, the loops around the waist and shoulders, were all elements that forced straight posture in an arms-down position. When the arms were stretched above the head, the design only exaggerated the arch to his body.

  Gideon sensed Anwyn’s interested study when he integrated a double twist loop around Daegan’s throat, an X pattern he knotted at the back. He took the remaining fall of rope down, tying it off at the rope around Daegan’s waist. It pulled Daegan’s head back some, kept his back in that crescent shape unless he wanted to choke himself. It was a tie Gideon couldn’t have done to a human without serious danger if that human started straining against the rope, causing pressure against the windpipe. However, in Daegan’s case, it would be a reminder to keep his head still unless he wanted the choking sensation that could be unpleasant but not fatal to a vampire.

  The line inside himself was pulled to near-breaking. Gideon circled Daegan slowly, gaze coursing over the arms, stretched up over his head, the wraps of rope binding his wrists and thumbs, his fingers curled in the knot between them. From personal experience, Gideon knew such a stretched position would turn his back into one plane of muscle and make his ass muscles tight. Now he saw it in Daegan’s elongated, powerful body. Fuck, he wanted to be two people. One devouring Daegan like a ravenous animal, one standing back like a sadistic inquisitor, drawing out every powerful minute.

  His attention slid back down Daegan’s upper torso again, to the taper of waist and hip. With the shirt gone, he could see Daegan’s reaction beneath the jeans, delineated further by the belt holding the jeans at his waist. Gideon wasn’t the only one getting stirred up. And he was no longer going to deny himself the pleasure of checking out that response up close and personal.

  Gideon shifted closer, putting his hand on the vampire’s stiffening cock. The warning sound that came from Daegan at the aggressive move was violent music to Gideon’s ears. Leaning forward, he covered the healing cut at Daegan’s breastbone with his mouth, his fingers tightening over the guy’s dick, as much of it as he could hold with the denim in the way. Daegan’s cock jerked beneath his heated palm when Gideon used the tip of his tongue to tease that little bit of blood away.

  He heard Anwyn step from the wall. She was out of his mind, but he wasn’t out of hers. It was a tacit agreement, where he didn’t pry too deep, but stayed in the surface layers so he could feel if one of her seizures was sneaking up on her. He’d felt her own hunger mounting, so even as she stepped forward, he anticipated her. He saw himself through her eyes as he turned his upper body toward her, just enough to show her one glittering eye beneath the strands of hair across his brow.

  “He’s mine right now, Mistress. You said so.”

  Crimson light flared in the blue-green irises, telling him the Dominant and vampire in her would only be pushed so far. Daegan had an even shorter fuse in that regard, which was why the terms of tonight’s bet were such a sweet victory. Gideon wondered how much farther the guy’s overdeveloped sense of honor would let it go. He hoped quite far, since for his own part, he was getting into the flow of it, the art of seductive challenge. “You’ll get your turn,” he said, low. “But he’s mine first.”

  That sinful mouth curved in feral response. Acknowledgement, not necessarily concession. He was moving into the territory of being the only human in a room full of tigers, but the hunter in him liked the danger. Craved it.

  Daegan let out a low snarl, a reaction to his challenge to Anwyn. That was all it took for the starving side to break loose. Maybe it was the blood hunger Gideon had right now, the need to restore strength. Or maybe it was knowing he could have it all, do it all, not just once, but over and over. Tonight, only he or the dawn would call it to an end.

  He slid around behind Daegan, though he kept his hand anchored on the other male’s response, squeezing and stroking it exactly because he could do any damn thing he wanted to it. Once he had Daegan completely stripped, he might just tie it up, too. It took a lot of painstaking knot work to completely encase a cock in a sheath of thin rope, especially a nice-sized dick like that. He’d have to handle Daegan’s cock for quite some time, adjusting and stroking…

  To keep his grip on the subject of his imaginings, he had to stay pretty close, which was no hardship. He put himself full up against Daegan’s back and pressed his own sizeable response against Daegan’s ass. Pushed hard. The beam creaked alarmingly, but Gideon knew his Master would exercise control. Control was everything in his life. Gideon looked forward to putting a dent in that, whatever consequences he paid for it. If Daegan broke the beam, Gideon would tell Lyssa it was all the vampire’s fault. That he was out on the beach, completely not there when it happened.

  Gripping Daegan�
�s jaw with his free hand, Gideon turned his head away from him. He rubbed his nose against the warm flesh of his neck, inhaling him, felt the thrum of tension through Daegan’s muscles, the quiver in that fine, fine ass. Dropping the choke hold he had on his own restraint, Gideon sank his teeth into the side of the vampire’s throat, like a wolf jumping a stag to take him down.

  No hesitation. He knew the force needed to break through skin, and he doubled it, not holding back. He wanted Daegan to feel it all the way to the balls Gideon had firmly in his hand.

  Human food would restore him, but too slow. He needed his Master’s blood. If Daegan had been in his head, Gideon could well imagine the silky flow of his thoughts. It’s yours for the taking, Gideon.

  Tonight, it was all his for the taking.

  Part Three

  That first gush of blood brought more than one sensation. He’d waited too long to feed. However, as Gideon swayed, unable to stave off the dizziness, Anwyn moved. Pressing against his back, she stroked his sides, his hips. Her body, soft yet so strong, provided him support. When her hand covered his over Daegan’s cock, he fanned out his fingers, giving her the opportunity to stroke him between those openings. It earned a quiet noise from Daegan, a tilt of his head, so it pressed briefly against the side of Gideon’s.

  That type of gesture could mess with Gideon’s head, derail him, but he wouldn’t think about the possibility of fucking this up. He’d planned his strategy, yes, but at a certain point during a hunt, instinct had to take over. The hunter could no longer think about failing or winning; else the prize would disappear. He just followed the flow of energy to its final conclusion.

  Gideon curled his fingers over Anwyn’s and removed their touch from that volatile area. He put her hand back on his hip, leaving both of his free so that he could curve one arm around Daegan’s chest, hook his fingers into the rope crossed over his sternum as he drank that rich blood. Heated, filled with potent life. Gideon was all too aware how few had ever had the privilege of the willing gift of Daegan’s blood. The number of people Daegan had allowed to tie him up had an even smaller membership. A club of one.