Love, Laugh, Lich (Claws & Cubicles Book 1)

There’s flowers on my desk when I arrive the next morning.

I sit down, marveling at the size of the bouquet. It takes up perhaps three-fourths of my desk. It’s hundreds of lily of the valley stems, slender curved hooks of bell-like flowers, mixed with sprigs of rosemary. It perfumes the whole office. 

‘For your efforts’, the card reads in Soven’s handwriting, and I’m sure my face turns scarlet.

That’s one way to refer to the fact I totally mistimed the kiss.

“Secret admirer?” Randall from Accounting asks, noting the flowers. He’s the first to arrive in the accounting department this morning, after me. He waggles his eyebrows teasingly. He’s nice, and he’s been helpful the last couple days I’ve been working next to him.

“No. No, um, just a thank-you, from uh, a client,” I lie badly, and hope Randall doesn’t realize I don’t have any of my own clients, I just make spreadsheets and take office inventory.

“Oh. Well, that’s nice of them,” he nods, and settles into his cubicle across from me. “Hey, um, have you ever thought about switching to accounting? Or, uh, some other department. It doesn’t have to be this one.”

“Stay in accounting?” I ask, confused. I raise an eyebrow at Randall. “But I like my job the way it is.”

Randall backpedals instantly.

“I mean, it’s nice being able to talk to you, instead of just waving through the waiting room window,’ he says, cheeks turning red as he starts to ramble himself into a corner. I let the conversation peter out.

I try to stick the massive mound of flowers under my borrowed desk, it only partially works. I can’t really get any work done with it on top, though.

The flowers bother me in a weird way. Not that Soven sent them. The fact that he did makes my heart do weird fluttery things, and my brain leads down a trail of thoughts that ends with me pressing my knees harder together. I kind of wish I’d let myself grind fully against him, thinking that a little more friction would have satisfied my curiosity. He was so gentle to kiss, so careful in how he held me, I feel like he would have let me do almost anything.

The thing that bothers me is the card. It sort of strikes through all the fluttery feelings, like they’re meant to be a get-well-soon bouquet and not a thanks-for-the-very-hot-kiss gift.

Besides, I’m the personal assistant. Who else would he have told to order the flowers? Does he have a second personal assistant somewhere? I don’t believe he knows how to locate a florist by himself.

All this thinking about my weird little crush and that kiss is distracting me from my work though. All I’ve done in the last five minutes is doodle hearts and ‘Mrs. Lich’ on my post-its.

I’m going to shove down the want to see him out of his cloak again. There will be no more offering shivers or first kisses to his rituals.

“Uh, Lily?”

I whirl around and maybe glare a little too much at the intern, who shrinks back instantly.

“Um, yes?” I shake myself, trying to show a kinder face to him.

The intern’s shoulders loosen a touch. “Um, Mr. Dark Lord told me I was to– um. Help you out. With your workload?”

My brow furrows and I frown reflexively. “Why would I need help?”

The intern makes a helpless face and shrugs at me. “It’s what I was told. I can uh, do the spreadsheets and inventory stuff? I did that at my old job.”

I stare at the intern, uncomprehending. That’s my work. The stuff I do. With the exceptionally neat lines and color-coded charts that make me feel at peace with the world. And I’m supposed to what, delegate it?

“You can sort through incoming mail and prioritize it,” I say, instead of ‘No, go back to whatever department you’re actually interning in’.

Half of my irritated mood is fueled by the fact I’m sharing half of my work with the intern and the other half is that I suddenly have all the time in the world to let my mind wander. What, one flubbed kiss and suddenly Soven thinks I can’t do my job?

An hour later, I’m not thinking about whether he needs to send out to an agency for another first kiss, one he can actually use for his spells. I’m not snapping my quills in half in jealousy at the thought of some stranger getting to see him without his cloak, seeing the real Soven, kissing the real Soven—

The sound of a snap turns three of the nearest heads in neighboring cubicles towards me, including Randall. He gives me a slightly concerned look.

I look down and see that I have broken another quill, and ripped through the paper with it.

Ok, maybe I have been snapping quills in some kind of mood, but it’s not a jealous one. 

Eventually, mostly to get away from my new desk buddy, I bring in the daily tea, and find Soven sitting at his desk. I do glance around, making sure there isn’t some secondary personal assistant, or worse, a personal assistant that I’m secondary to. When there isn’t one, I cross the Sanctum and round the desk to his side, setting the tea down.

“I got your flowers,” I say, not letting my frustration color my tone. “They’re lovely.”

He gives me a curt nod. I itch to touch him, to try to rekindle that brief connection from yesterday. I can’t stand the little space between us, the way I can’t discern the feelings under his reactions.

I chew my tongue and try to think how I’m going to bring up my issue with suddenly being saddled with the intern. I can’t tell how receptive he’ll be.

He’s not in the cloak. Something about that makes me warm. He’s got the loincloth wrapped around his middle, though. I craned my neck a little because of the way he’s sitting, knees spread far apart, leaning far back. The stack of papers in his inbox never seems to decrease as he plucks one off the top, makes a notation or signature, and puts it in one of the outgoing boxes.

After a moment, he notices the cup of tea I’ve brought in for him, and he puts aside his quill.

“I don’t know what I would do without you,” he sighs, leaning back in his chair. “Probably the whole Dark Reign would fall apart.”

Like that, all my frustration is extinguished with the sheer validation and appreciation in those words. My heart feels all wobbly and softened, possibly dizzy from the whiplash of my own emotions.

There’s something about standing so near him, the ease between us. Looking upon him however, makes my body stir, my heart beat faster, heat move low in my stomach.

He looks over to me and gives me a smile, and suddenly my chest aches with feeling.

It’s never going to go back to how it was before, I realize with a swallow. We’ve broken a boundary that can’t be rebuilt, whether it was that kiss, that glimpse, or that shiver. Maybe all of them together. I’ve wandered too far into the way his presence affects me, and I can’t imagine pretending to be satisfied with less of it than I’ve managed to steal so far.

I’m staring at the altar in the center of the ritual floor, thinking about how it made me feel to sit there. A hazy thought comes to mind, and before I can consider all its faults, I voice it.

“Is there any other way you can… trap the essence of vulnerability, or whatever?”

My question pauses the Dark Lord in his work.

“Any other true act of vulnerability,” he shrugs after a moment, the answer like a component to an alchemical equation.

“I’m sorry I messed up, and wasted the first kiss yesterday,” I say, feeling that wholeheartedly. I hadn’t realized what I’d been feeling then, and I’d blundered on through because I couldn’t make sense of it. But I understand myself better now. I know what I’m craving, and I know it won’t end on its own. “Would you let me try again?”

My declaration is met with hesitation. Soven turns his eyes on me, assessing me as his gaze sweeps up and down.

“I value the loyalty you’ve shown me,” he murmurs at long last, his answer one of utmost diplomacy. “But I would not ask to overstay your generosity.”

The formality of his words nearly bruises me, but I catch the interest in his eye, the patient waiting in his expression.

He knows he can’t ask anything more of me. He knows anything he asks of anyone will always be met with resounding choruses of ‘Yes, my lord’, bowing and scraping included.

Anything to do with me, it has to be given freely. I chew my bottom lip, my determination setting in.

“My Dark Lord,” I say, holding his golden gaze. “I always fix my mistakes.”

He gazes back at me, curiosity setting in.

With a flick of his fingers, the ritual floor lights anew, ready for me.

I cross the sanctum to sit on the altar, but unlike before, I don’t lay back. My skin feels tingly just being here, and I know it’s the magic of the circle, mixing with my own nerves. If I hesitate at all, I’ll lose my nerve.

My fingers go to buttons on my blouse, undoing them with the practice of habit. Once all the buttons are open, I slip my blouse and skirt off, leaving me in only my underwear.

There’s the scratch of his chair against the floor as he pushes out from his desk, standing. He crosses to the edge of the ritual floor, but stays outside the boundaries of it.

The way he moves is lined with caution, but he doesn’t disguise the hunger in his eyes.

When I shrug off my last layers, standing naked before the altar, I watch him pace the outer edge of the circle, feeling his stare, the way it strips me down beyond bare, the palpable want. 

I see the way the runes don’t change. They don’t react the way they did when I gave Soven that shiver, and I know it’s because this isn’t true vulnerability. The act of standing naked doesn’t put enough on the line, but what I’m about to do will.

“I have a confession,” I say, swallowing. The thoughts I don’t bring to work with me, the ones I tuck under my tongue when I’m in the office. The ones that have been piling up in my mind, demanding to be let out.

“Don’t tell me you’re another assassin,” he says, though amusement curls his lip.

I’d smile back if I wasn’t so nervous.

I sit down on the stone altar, leaning back on one arm. I try not to make eye contact with the giant mirror above me. If I look at it, I feel like it’ll show me the things I don’t want to see. I can’t think about any of the ways this could be a mistake, or I’ll stop.

I draw a finger up my breast, toying with the hardened nipple. “Ever since that shiver, I’ve been having dreams about you.”

I lick my lips, watching the twitch of his cocks under his loincloth give away his interest. Even with his hand casually draped over the knot of the sheet, concealing part of himself, the evidence of his arousal is plain.

“Dreams?” he near growls, the sound sending a pulse of want between my legs. I nod, unable to look at him.

“Dreams that leave me aching and craving you when I wake up,” I continue. I can feel the magic swelling around me as I confess each word. “Dreams where that kiss didn’t stop.”

I hesitate a moment, before I lay back against the altar, spreading my knees far apart enough that my hands can go between my legs that I can touch myself before him.

I pause, my eyes on the way his gaze falls to my cunt. I trace the slick wetness up the outer edges of my folds. I feel almost powerful, the way his stare is trained on my hand, even when I take my hand up to taste myself off my fingertips. The guttural noise he makes in response makes my hips twitch.

I bite back my smile, before passing my fingers down over my clit. There’s a shock of pleasure when I finally rub myself, a prickling on my skin from the magic. I’ve never been watched like this before, never so openly and brazenly.

“I want you to use me,” I gasp, stroking my clit with one hand. I look at his arousal still covered by the towel, the way he palms his cocks through it. Looking at it, I know the fingers I’m curling into myself can’t possibly compare. It doesn’t do nearly enough to sate the aching want of my cunt. 

“Need me,” I beg, knowing I’m giving too much of myself away with those words. “Need more of me. Use me, to whatever end.”

It’s far too soon when the magic takes what it needs, stealing the essence it needs. The candles blaze a moment, and burn themselves out.

The runes go dark, and then it’s only me and Soven, our gazes locked.

He holds me in his stare for a long, calculating moment. His loincloth falls aside, revealing his hard, leaking cocks. “I shall.”