Sinfully Spellbound (Spells That Bind Book 1)

by Lawson, Cassandra

  “That’s it,” Dylan said through gritted teeth. “Tell me I’m the only man who can give you this much pleasure.”

  “Only you,” I agreed, because it was true. No one made me feel like Dylan did. His body could be addictive, and it should definitely come with a warning label.

  My words were the catalyst for his orgasm, and he groaned as he jerked inside of me.

  For a long time, the only sound in the room was our panting as we both tried to catch our breaths.

  Finally, Dylan pulled out of me and fixed his clothing before going to the small door marked on the wall for condom disposal. I dressed and waited for Dylan to speak.

  “You may not believe this, but I’ve never had sex in a room at a sex club,” Dylan admitted, looking around. “Before tonight, that is.”

  “Me neither,” I said, not looking at him.

  “Guess that means we were virgins together,” he mused, and when I looked up, I found an almost boyish grin on his face.

  “What am I going to do with you?” I asked with a shake of my head.

  “I’ve got some ideas I could run by you later,” he said.

  “Are you only chasing after me because I’m a challenge?” I finally met his eyes. “I mean, you don’t usually have to put this kind of effort into getting women.”

  Dylan’s lips twitched. “I’m only chasing you because you keep running away.”

  Even though that’s what I’d already believed, hearing him admit to it kind of hurt.

  That’s when he leaned forward to brush his lips against mine. “Stop running so I can just enjoy spending time with you.”

  “Then the challenge will be gone,” I told him.

  He laughed again. “Something tells me that even if you stop running, you’ll still be a challenge.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dylan

  “Will you have lunch with me tomorrow?” I asked, feeling, of all things, nervous asking her out. “I mean, since you ran out on me when I wanted to take you to lunch, you kind of owe me.”

  “Yes,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.

  I finally relaxed some, and I figured since she was being so agreeable, I might as well try for more. “Maybe I could stick around until the end of your shift so we can have a late dinner. We both have to eat, right?”

  This time, she hesitated longer, and I decided to back off before she ran scared again. “I’m pushing my luck, right?” I asked.

  Her cheeks flushed, and damn if she wasn’t adorable when she was embarrassed. “If you hang around here, I’ll probably have trouble focusing. I’ll get your number from Trevor later and call you tomorrow to talk about lunch,” she promised.

  “I could just give you my number now,” I offered, suddenly worried that I’d read things wrong. Was she just saying whatever it took to get rid of me?

  She shook her head. “My phone is in the employee break room,” she explained before gesturing to her attire, and I knew firsthand she didn’t have a phone under there.

  I almost laughed at the image of her trying to stash her phone on her person. “Get my number from Trevor as soon as you leave and call when you get home,” I said. When she looked like she was going to argue, I decided to explain myself better. “I’m a little worried about you walking around alone at night. Please, just call me when you get home so I don’t spend the night worrying about you.”

  She nodded, and I gave her a quick kiss. “You know, I don’t have to go just yet. I’ve got this room for three hours.”

  “I think it might be nice if I could walk for the rest of my shift,” she said

  “We could just talk,” I suggested.

  “In this room?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Right,” I agreed. “Proximity to a bed seems to make it hard for us to talk.”

  “Yes, it does seem to make things hard for you,” she said with a playful smile. “I suppose that wouldn’t be such a problem if my brain didn’t turn to mush when you’re having a hard time.”

  I laughed at her ridiculous pun, relieved that she was joking around like this.

  “All right, we’ll talk later,” I reluctantly agreed.

  “You go out first. I’ll need to clean up the room,” she said, and I kissed her one last time.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” I said before forcing myself to leave. My mood was pretty damn good when I left Allie. While we hadn’t solved all our problems, she’d agreed to stop avoiding me, and we were having lunch tomorrow. That counted as a date. I waited for panic to hit, but it didn’t come. Huh. This was definitely new territory for me.

  “I take it by the smile on your face that my girl took good care of you.”

  That asshole, Marcos, turned my mood sour immediately with his sleazy smirk and his assumption that Allie was some kind of whore.

  “What exactly are you implying about Allie?” I asked in a deadly tone as my power grew, ready to strike out. The palms of my hands heated with my rage. My family was powerful for reasons other than money. Yes, we were wealthy, but we were also feared among the preternatural community for our control over certain elements—fire being the most powerful.

  Marcos either had no clue who I was, or he was too stupid to be afraid. “You paid me to have Allie all to yourself in a playroom, and you paid extra to have the security cameras turned off. Now, you want to get an attitude with me for thinking you bought her pussy for three hours? Funny thing is that you haven’t used your three hours. Just so you know, I don’t offer refunds.”

  That’s when I realized my biggest mistake of the evening. While I’d been able to convince Allie I didn’t think she was a whore, how was I going to do that with the others working at SpellBinders? I needed to make sure Marcos understood the danger of fucking with Allie. Allowing my power to surface just a little, I held the ball of fire in my palm, staring down at it before looking at Marcos.

  “Why don’t we have a little talk about my girl?” I said.

  “Your girl?” Marcos asked, obviously confused.

  “My girl,” I repeated. “Perhaps we should talk in your office.”

  Looking around, Marcos was obviously trying to decide how to handle the situation while still saving face in front of the people in the club. It was all about image with this asshole, something made obvious by his fancy silk shirt with the cufflinks that had intricate spells woven into them. That spell was designed to increase the lust of those around him, but the witch who’d made it had woven in protection for other witches. I had to wonder if Marcos knew about that, or if he’d been tricked.

  We walked into Marcos’ office, which was small and cluttered. I got the impression this wasn’t really his office, but I didn’t give a fuck. He could take me to the broom closet for all I cared. “So, what did you want to talk about?” Marcos asked. His eyes drifting briefly to the flame I was still holding. That was the only sign he gave of his unease at being alone with me.

  “I paid for that time with Allie to cement things between us. I want her, and I don’t want to share her with anyone.” Keeping a straight face was hard, as I suddenly found myself picturing how Allie would react if she were in the room. This macho posturing would not go over well with her.

  Leaning against the desk, Marcos crossed his arms in front of his chest. “That’s all very nice, but Al works for me. I have a business to run, and I’m not about to pay one of my employees to sit around twiddling her thumbs because some warlock doesn’t like to share. Since I didn’t hear Al resign, I’m assuming she’s still my girl while she’s at my club.”

  “She will never be your girl,” I ground out. “I’ve got no problem with Allie doing her job,” I said. “My issue is with you trying to pressure her into doing things that are outside of her job description.”

  “Let me get this straight. You come into my club and want to tell me how to run my business,” Marcos sneered with barely suppressed rage. “Is that what you’re trying to do, warlock?”

  The flame in my hand grew, re
flecting my temper. “Perhaps I’m not making this clear enough,” I said, advancing on Marcos and enjoying the way he moved to put the desk between us. “I’m trying to be nice about all of this, but if you treat Allie like a whore again, I will destroy you.”

  I watched Marcos’ throat work as he swallowed hard, and I knew damn well he wanted to tell me to go fuck myself. Scratch that. What he really wanted to do was make Allie’s life hell because I’d threatened him. Marcos might be an asshole, but he seemed like a smart asshole, so he knew I’d follow through on my promise to destroy him.

  “You won’t have a fucking club if you treat Allie like a prostitute again,” I said. “You’ll be lucky if I don’t set you on fire and watch you burn.”

  That was an exaggeration, because having accidentally set a classmate on fire once, I knew how bad burning flesh smelled, and it was something I wanted to avoid. Marcos wouldn’t know that. He’d assume I was just as heartless as he was.

  “Fine,” Marcos snapped. “Get the fuck out of my office and my club. I don’t want to see you in here again.”

  “Unless I’m going to pay you for the time?” I asked.

  Marcos’ sleazy smirk reappeared, and I could see he was already back in slimy schemer mode. “What kind of businessman would I be if I turned down your money?”

  My hand closed around the flame, extinguishing it. I didn’t say another word, just walked out of his office and out of SpellBinders. As the cool night air hit my face, I had a moment of panic. I’d never done anything like this before. Not the threat—that I’d done, but never to protect a woman I was interested in.

  What the hell had I gotten myself into? One thing I knew for sure; it was too late to turn back now.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Allie

  The rest of my night was surprisingly uneventful, which was a relief since I was more than a little distracted after my encounter with Dylan. In my personal opinion, I should have been free for the remainder of the three hours Dylan had paid for, but Marcos didn’t see it that way and had me clean up one of the messier rooms. Marcos might run a sleazy sex club, but it was a clean, sleazy sex club.

  When Marcos insisted I get right back to work, I hadn’t been surprised, but I was surprised when he didn’t give me a hard time about Dylan. He didn’t mention him at all, which was just plain weird. At the very least, I’d expected him to ask questions, since I’d noticed the security cameras in the room were off while Dylan was in there with me—a major security breech on Marcos’ part but no real surprise. That meant Marcos had no idea if Dylan had gotten what he wanted and left, or if I’d refused. Dylan didn’t seem like the type to share that information with Marcos. Based on the pissed off looks my boss had shot me all night, I was assuming he thought I’d turned Dylan down. It was hard to say since I’d thoroughly cleaned up after us, including replacing the bedding and releasing the special air fresheners Marcos had to mask the smell of sex in the rooms.

  My closing chores were also a big clue that Marcos believed I hadn’t followed through with Dylan. I was the last person at SpellBinders, and was pretty sure I’d need to burn this dress after handling some of the worst clean-ups I’d ever seen. Seriously, I did not want to know all the fluids I had on my shoes—which were going in the trash as soon as I got home. It was nearly three in the morning when I was walking to my car, and the streets were practically deserted. I was exhausted after my lack of sleep the previous night, and regretted my decision to send Dylan home. While I knew he would have distracted me at work, my nerves were on edge after hearing about Marissa’s murder, and it would have been nice to have someone walk me to my car. According to Marcos, the police were convinced the murder had nothing to do with her job at SpellBinders, so I probably shouldn’t be freaking out, but I couldn’t help but wonder how they’d know if it was related to the club or not. Marissa’s customers from that night all had alibis, but there is no way the police had questioned everyone who’d been at SpellBinders, or every customer she’d had in the month she’d worked there.

  As I continued along the quiet street, I couldn’t shake the unnerving feeling that someone was following me. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I was jumping at every little sound.

  “Stop!” I told myself quietly. “There is no one following you. You are just being paranoid, probably because you’re overtired.”

  Except, then I heard footsteps approaching from behind and picked up my pace. Paranoia or not, I was getting to my car as fast as possible. As my feet moved quickly across the sidewalk, the footsteps behind me seemed to be moving faster, too, which made me suspect I wasn’t being paranoid.

  Someone was following me! Oh, Goddess, it might even be Marissa’s killer, and here I was alone. There weren’t even any drunken humans trying to make it home from a night of partying. Okay, there was still a chance it wasn’t the killer, but someone was definitely following me, and I’d pissed off at least one customer tonight. My phone buzzed in my hand, and I was tempted to ignore it, but I figured if I was being chased, it might be nice to have someone on the phone with me to call the police if anything happened.

  “Hello,” I said without looking at the Caller ID.

  “Hey, it’s Dylan. I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said. “I kind of expected you to be home by now.”

  “Someone is following me,” I blurted, not at all worried about sounding paranoid.

  “Where are you?” Dylan asked urgently, not even questioning my sanity for a minute.

  “On my way to my car,” I said. My car was only about a block away, but I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. Whoever was following me seemed to be toying with me for some reason.

  “Why aren’t you at home?” Dylan asked.

  “I got off work a little late,” I explained quietly and gave in to the temptation to look over my shoulder quickly. A man in a black hoodie was following me.

  “Where are you exactly?” Dylan repeated a little impatiently.

  “I’m turning the corner at 11th and Howard, heading toward 10th,” I said.

  “Which side of the street?” he asked, and I could hear his fingers working on the keyboard of a computer. I had no idea what he was doing, but I decided now wasn’t the time to ask.

  “Right side,” I said. “He’s moving faster, Dylan. I need to call the police.” Fear nearly made it impossible to move my feet forward. I was suddenly terrified that I was going to meet the same fate Marissa had.

  “Give me a second,” Dylan said, concentrating hard. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  There was a flash of light followed by guttural cursing behind me. Then I heard someone running in the opposite direction. It sounded like my pursuer was leaving, but I wasn’t taking any chances, I kept walking toward my car as fast as I could. If it weren’t for my shoes, I’d be running, but I was certain I’d fall if I tried to run in them. New rule: I was wearing running shoes to and from my car every night.

  “Are you okay?” Dylan asked.

  “Yes,” I said with a tremor in my voice. I didn’t stop moving until I was safely locked in with my key in the ignition, and then I put Dylan’s call on speaker and started driving toward the Bay Bridge. Getting out of this area was my top priority.

  “Talk to me, sweetheart,” Dylan coaxed gently. “I need to hear your voice. Tell me you’re still there.”

  “What did you do?” I asked, because I was pretty sure Dylan had been responsible for the flash of light behind me.

  “I hacked into the security cameras outside one of the clubs you passed so I could see the asshole following you,” he said.

  “No one could hack into the feed that fast,” I said because I’d met a hacker or two and knew it took longer than that.

  “Fine, another witch created a spell to give me access to the feeds for every security camera in San Francisco. Before you ask, it was for a very ugly case, and no, it’s not legal. I used the images on my computer screen to set
a small fire,” he explained as calmly as if he were describing what he was wearing, rather than remotely setting a fire.

  “A small fire?” I screeched, more from hysteria than anything else. This whole thing had me freaked out—the person chasing me, the fire, and even my time with Dylan earlier. My ability to act rationally was gone. Now, all I had was a serious case of the crazies. “Whoever was following me took off because you set a small fire?”

  Dylan chuckled. “He was the one who was on fire.”

  “Oh,” was all I could say. “Thank you. I’m not really sure how you got my number, but I’m glad you did.” I’d planned to give Dylan my number when I called him later, but for some reason, I’d wanted to be the one to call him. My reason was kind of stupid, but so far, I’d felt out of control with Dylan, and I needed to have control over one thing. Apparently, I’d have to find something else to control. “So, how did you get my number?” I asked, assuming Trevor had given it to him.

  “Marcos sold it to me for five-hundred dollars,” he explained.

  “That slimy little toad,” I muttered, wondering if I could find another job if I punched my current boss in the junk.

  “He may be a slimy little toad, but he also inadvertently saved your life,” he added. “If I had to guess, I’d say you just had a near run-in with the creature who’s killing succubi.”

  Succubi? Did he just say succubi, as in more than one?

  “Wait!” I said. “I thought it was just one of us. Marcos told me about Marissa, but he didn’t say anything about other killings.”

  “You don’t keep up on the news, do you?” he asked.