Stephen stilled. He moved back a couple of steps so he could look up at Crane. “I’m not a child, Lucien. Rackham is as much my problem as yours. And I don’t need your protection.”
“No,” said Crane. “You need to eliminate a plague of giant killer rats, and find out if some murderous bastard called it up. So you concentrate on that, and I’ll take Rackham off your plate while you do it.”
Stephen stared up a minute longer, then his shoulders dropped slightly. “I see what you’re saying, but—”
Crane sighed. “It is actually possible to accept help without marking yourself as a weakling, you know.”
Stephen flushed. “I’m perfectly capable of accepting help. I asked you to come today, didn’t I? And look what happened.”
“What?” said Crane, injured.
“We discovered we may have two dead shamans and a rat-controlling maniac at large. Whereas if you hadn’t been there, I might have given up and gone home early.” Stephen moved into Crane’s arms again. “I’m sorry, Lucien. And I’m sorry about last night, too, I wasn’t very fair to you. I’m a bag of nerves at the moment. Do I need to dress up like a shop dummy for this club, then?”
“Not by normal human standards,” Crane replied. “Which is to say, yes, my sweet, you do. Why don’t you come back to the flat to get some decent clothes, and I’ll see if I can do something for your nerves while I’m at it?”
“Mmm. Tempting. Though…”
Stephen hopped backwards to sit on the desk and Crane moved between his legs to kiss him, felt him lean back invitingly, and grinned against his mouth. “Dear me, Mr. Day. You really do love to get fucked on desks, don’t you? Put you on a desk, and you’re begging for it. What is so particularly exciting about desks?”
“They’re not exciting, they’re boring.” Stephen quivered as Crane’s mouth moved to his sensitive earlobes. “You write on them and then you go home, and nothing horrible happens, nobody dies. Lovely dull surfaces. All the better to do interesting things on.” He slid his electric hands down Crane’s back, over his hips.
“There’s a perfectly good desk in the flat,” Crane said. “A lot stronger than this, and decidedly safer.”
“But, in the Strand,” Stephen argued, “whereas this desk is right here, and you could have me on it right now.”
“You’re feeling more yourself, I see.”
Stephen locked his arms round Crane’s neck, wrapped his legs round the other’s hips, and lifted himself clear off the desk to press his body against Crane’s. The taller man staggered at his weight and braced himself with his hands, laughing.
“I have wanted this since you called Esther a beautiful native sorceress.” Stephen started laughing too. “Her face, my God. You’re such a swine.”
“And you love it.”
Stephen grinned, then moved to meet Crane’s lips in a long, deep kiss that ended with him on his back on the desk and Crane half on top of him, painfully erect. “I need to lock the door,” Crane said throatily. “Unless you can do it from here.”
“Iron,” Stephen said concisely; Crane was well aware iron was unresponsive to his powers. “But I bet I can get naked before you can lock the door and get back.”
“Stakes?”
“Ooh. If I win we do it on the desk. If you win, you can have me against the wall.”
Crane’s cock leapt at that. He loved to screw against walls but the height difference made it necessary for Stephen to stand on something, and while he was normally unconcerned by his stature, that did annoy him. “You’re on.”
He lost, of course, since Stephen cheated ruthlessly by sending the keys flying from his hand and skidding across the floor, but as he buried himself in Stephen’s arse and felt those magic hands flare joyously against his back while Stephen’s teeth dug into his shoulder, he felt as if he had won a victory of another and much more important kind, though he would have been hard-pressed to say what it was.
Chapter Eight