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It was a dirty piece of work.
A glass of water spilled on his lap while he ate. The moisture wicked through his slacks and got to his skin.
The waitress - 5’3”, late twenties, civilian build, dazed eyes - apologized profusely. Marcone mopped at his lap with his napkin. The effects had already begun. Namshiel dampened them while Marcone flicked a glance to Gard. She began a fresh look over of the restaurant and its patrons.
The water - clear, tasteless, scentless, and ice cold - a luxury for most Chicagoans in this first summer since the Battle - had been a carrier for an enchantment. The waitress’s mind, examined through Namshiel’s gaze, had distinct damage. The enchantment itself was complicated.
Marcone finished his meal while Namshiel examined the effects trying to work their way through his body. There was no taste in his mouth as he chewed. Thinking. He had no shortage of enemies. It was a matter of matching the means to the motive. The use of a civilian - the term vanilla one that grated still - narrowed the list to an extent.
The wizard Dresden, Namshiel said after several minutes.
Unlikely. Even if Marcone was currently at odds with Dresden, and as far as he was aware they were not, this sort of attack contained far too much subtlety for Dresden, as well as too much collateral damage. The waitress’s earlier struggle to recall the details of his and Gard’s order suggested the damage done to her mind to influence her behavior was significant.
The wizard Dresden is required to resolve the needs of the spell, Namshiel clarified. The Fallen sorcerer’s voice was a dry indent against Marcone’s own thoughts. Namshiel was not prone to hysterics, leaps of fancy, or bouts of humility. Marcone took a long drink from Gard’s water. His throat ached drily even through Namshiel’s dampening effect.
“The check, please.” Marcone prompted the waitress, who startled before walking away from their table with careful steps, as though they required effort and thought.
Namshiel explained in further detail in the car.
Marcone shrugged off his suit coat. The heat under his skin was an increasing annoyance. Gard murmured a word to the driver and the ambient noise of the air conditioner churned louder as the flow of cool air increased.
This is magic that cannot be undone, only delayed or fulfilled.
Not many could work something like that. But everyone had their price.
“Why is Dresden needed?” Marcone asked. The wizard’s name spoken from his mouth triggered an unexpected effect. A sharp sense of memory that crowded out every other detail. Fierce eyes, power so profound it was a near visible haze, the sound of shared, fractured laughter at the water’s edge.
When Marcone’s awareness returned to the car he was sweating through his shirt and his hands had clamped tightly onto his knees. Want filled him so completely that his teeth ached with it.
Marcone allowed himself the luxury of anger while Namshiel explained the nature of the spell. Sex magic, tied to a specific recipient. Madness and then death for the inflicted if the spell’s compulsions were not satisfied within an unknowable, but no doubt limited, amount of time.
Tricky, dirty work. The list of potential enemies expanded to include some of Dresden’s.
“We’ll need to arrange a meeting.” Marcone said to Gard. Namshiel was a whisper in the folds of his mind. Suggestions on how to bypass Dresden’s expected guards. Ingredients needed for potions to make the wizard receptive. Charms to make him forgetful.
Marcone let Namshiel’s plotting fade away into near silence while Gard pulled out her phone.
They arranged to meet across the street from one of his construction sites. It was a local diner that had survived the destruction caused by Balor’s Eye. Its owners, whose residence was a few blocks South, were not so fortunate. Marcone intended to purchase the diner, along with every other business on the block, but the technical abandonment of the property created enough complications for the bank and lawyers that there were continual delays.
A rare spark of good fortune, for his current needs.
Gard was displeased and wary. More so when Marcone forbade any additional protection from joining them.
No threshold, no wards, no supplemental Valkyrie. Putting off Dresden was more dangerous at this moment than anything else. Marcone unbuttoned his cuffs but resisted rolling up his sleeves. Tension and fear wavered at the edges of his perception and he had no patience for either.
“The wizard is used to you having two points of security,” Gard argued. “This is an unnecessary risk.” She pressed another bottle of water at him. He drank while sweat gathered between his shoulder blades.
If the combined efforts of Namshiel and Gard would not be sufficient in the event of a direct attack then it was unlikely a single additional body from his security detail would tip the scales.
Besides, “Dresden was used to you and Mr. Hendricks. I’d rather not distract him with a new face.” And the matter at hand was not one eased with additional witnesses. A brief desire to break something, to shatter something, to make something hurt or die by his own hands, swelled in him, almost as strong as the unnatural ache settling into his gut. He replaced the cap on the water bottle and returned it to Gard.
Dresden arrived alone and armed. Gard opened the diner door for him, the bell chiming with discordant mundanity. Dresden glanced back at the door briefly as Gard stepped into her preferred position at Marcone’s shoulder.
It was not the first time Marcone had seen the wizard since the Battle of Chicago. His appearance had improved by some measures and worsened in others. Cleaner, certainly. The deepened hollows under Dresden’s eyes gave Marcone a flicker of unease.
Whatever Dresden saw in Marcone first caused his eyebrows to raise and then for a rigidity to set in his shoulders and through his grip on his staff. Dresden dragged the chair across from Marcone out in a jarring screech. He sat down and leaned back. His teeth showed briefly, white and stark.
“You both look like a barrel of laughs. Want to explain why you had Blondie run me out here?”
Marcone did.
Dresden’s face shuttered. The temperature in the diner dropped noticeably. The sounds of the construction outside suddenly distorted as ice sprouted into existence and coated the window panes.
“This an Accords matter?”
Did he have a choice, was what he meant.
“I’d rather it not come to that.”
Dresden’s jaw tightened. His hand clenched tight on top of the table. He inhaled, sharp, through his nose and then released it, slowly, through his mouth.
“Do you at least have a sample of the potion?”
Gard stepped forward. “It wasn’t a potion. The water was only a vessel for the spell.” Still, she placed a thermos in front of Dresden. He opened it and peered inside. Sniffed with open skepticism.
Time ticked.
“You really expect me to go along with this, on nothing more than your word and the opinion of your little passenger princess?”
Namshiel seethed. His distraction caused a spike in the effects of the spell.
Visions interwoven with an intense longing threatened to crowd out the diner. A shower of stars blinking out of the sky to surround Dresden. Dresden’s voice calling to him as a little girl lay suspended in the air, the sound a relief so stark that it would sink into Marcone’s dreams for months after. Dresden’s fist, raised in the air, a bright silver light emanating from the medallion he clutched, calling Marcone in.
It was brief. It left Marcone feeling shaky. He blinked once, twice, to recenter his focus. His orientation in the room.
“I’ve given you what I have, Mister Dresden.”
Dresden scoffed.
Marcone resisted the urge to continue speaking. To offer compensation. To bargain or threaten. Namshiel murmured suggestions on what to say. Possibilities for when Dresden proved unwilling. Each more violent than the last. It was a blur in Marcone’s own mind. A layer of distraction increasingly inconsequential as the spell’s compulsion seemed to seep into his bones. Through Namshiel’s suppressions the effects continued to manifest in a lessened manner, primarily through more heat.
Marcone rolled his sleeves to his elbows. A brief task to keep his fingers from twitching, or from dropping between his legs and pressing at his groin.
Slowly the room grew warmer. The ice had reduced to a thick layer of white frost on the windows, so it wasn’t merely Marcone’s influenced perspective.
Dresden sat in silence. He scanned the diner, occasional twitches in his face and body betraying thoughts but not their direction. Periodically he scowled at Marcone, or at Gard standing behind him, Dresden’s gaze increasingly intense.
Water pooled on the windowsills and dripped in sluggish streams down the walls.
“You got a plan or are we doing it here on the floor?” A blandness to Dresden’s voice that scratched unpleasantly on Marcone’s inner ear. But he wasn’t going to insult Dresden by questioning the unexpected compliance.
“I have a room prepared.” Marcone said. “At one of my properties. It’s nearby.”
“Groovy.” Dresden said. He stood up. He really was a rather tall man. Dresden straightened his duster. Those keen eyes of his darted around the room once more - before stopping again on Marcone. Dresden’s eyes flicked up and down. His face lacking much of the animation that typically made it easy to read him.
“I am engaged.” Dresden said. “That a problem?”
Marcone was familiar with Ms. Raith, and with Mab’s plans. “I have no intention for the details of our meeting to become common knowledge,” Marcone said.
The lightbulbs overhead burst with a loud pop. The shattered glass tinkled on the linoleum floor. The room noticeably darker. The hum of construction equipment outside died completely. Dresden hadn’t moved. He took another deep breath. Marcone could hear it. The slow exhale. It was rumored Dresden was a more capable master of the Winter Knight than previous men had been. The steady, deliberate gathering of calm was alien on Dresden. His perpetual fight for control of his own leash was not. Marcone watched until Dresden’s hands flexed at his sides.
“I’ll follow in my car.” Dresden said. He walked out. The bell chimed again.
Once the door had shut Marcone turned around to exchange a look with Gard.
“Thoughts?”
Gard grimaced. “We shouldn’t keep him waiting.”
Marcone’s head pulsed. He’d already run over the options with Namshiel. The solution before him was straightforward and possible. Little else spoke in its favor.
“No,” Marcone agreed, “ we shouldn’t.”
The car let him and Gard out at the hotel’s valet entrance. Dresden presumably parked somewhere down the street. He joined them in the lobby. His strides slowed from a jog into long steps and everything about him, from his expression to his garb to his runed staff, was distinctly out of place.
“What floor?” Dresden asked. His gaze continued to flicker between John’s face and Gard’s, although his eyes always slid a little to the side when he was looking at her face. It struck John that Harry wasn’t sure who was calling the shots right now. How incapacitated did he appear?
The wizard’s ego compels him to help the weak, Namshiel said.
Enough, John commanded. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face.
“7.” Gard said.
“And the stairwell?”
Gard gestured.
Dresden was waiting for them once the elevator doors opened onto the floor. He wasn’t out of breath and there wasn’t any shine of perspiration on him, despite the heavy leather he wore.
“I’m surprised you didn’t go with 9.” Dresden said as they walked down the halls. Gard in the front, Dresden taking the rear.
Gard shrugged. “It is not my belief that matters.”
John’s neck prickled.
The room they’d arranged for was a corner suite. Gard did a pass through of the room to make sure everything was as intended, a task that she’d absorbed into her own duties in recent months. Marcone nodded at her as she gave the all clear.
Gard shut the door behind him and Dresden.
Namshiel had insisted that no ritual was necessary to satisfy the spell beyond the obvious.
Still Dresden pulled a can of spray paint from one of the pockets of his duster. He dragged the heavy hotel bed frame away from the wall with one hand and seemingly no effort. He paced around the bed once before shaking the can and walking the circumference again, this time backwards as he sprayed a blue circle onto the carpet.
The smell was cloying in the confined space.
“Have you done this before?” Marcone asked. He’d settled with his back against the door, his arms folded across his chest.
“Don’t plan on hanging the bedsheets out the windows. You’re not my first.” Dresden said. He set his staff against the wall. Shrugged off his duster and draped that over the back of a chair. Even when folded over the duster was long enough that its collar brushed the floor.
Marcone accepted the deflection for the boundary it was and mused for a moment on what he knew of Dresden’s relationship history, rather than on the potentials and intricacies of sex magic as Namshiel was.
The White Court vampire, Thomas Raith, had certainly been at the heart of enough rumors surrounding Dresden during the last several years. Marcone had his doubts. He also suspected that any comments about the vampire would not help set Dresden at ease in this context. Particularly given the ongoing difficulties with the svartalves.
“Anyone I know?” Marcone asked instead. Because a silent Dresden was an unnerving one. Marcone worked at the buttons of his shirt. Dresden was wearing a t-shirt. White with black lowercase lettering across the chest: got wrecked?
Dresden pulled his shirt off, over his head. The medallion stayed on. Whatever strengthening capabilities the power of the Winter Knight bestowed, it did not seem to extend to the healing of injuries or scars. Evidence of Dresden’s lifestyle. A particularly severe looking burn sat starkly on Dresden’s arm.
“Nobody still alive.” Dresden said. And he didn’t direct his wolfish grin at Marcone but it was nonetheless distinctly unpleasant to see. The room had grown briefly cold. Marcone suspected the effect was more exaggerated on him, given the fever-like heat that had been building under his skin.
“No love lost, it seems.”
“This how you sweet talk all your girls?” Dresden asked. A veneer of pleasantry. No real humor to his voice. And Marcone knew, gritting his teeth as he took off his pants, that Dresden was not alluding to past loves but of the women under his employ, and the ones that worked under the pimps that he employed.
Marcone also knew, with a surety as strong as anything, that if he responded by asking if Dresden would prefer his hourly rate up front, like many of his girls did, Dresden’s steady self control would abruptly shred. And there was a significant chance Marcone would need to have the building repaired for fire damage.
You would not live long enough to worry about the insurance claim. Namshiel, scathing after having all of his suggestions ignored.
“You don’t have to do this.” John said instead. Frustrated, even as the words came out of him, because he had no intention of dying and this was his only option. But this glacier, cold yet amenable Dresden was displeasing, an affront in every way. Evidence of a great many wrongs that Marcone had no wish to be part of.
Dresden shot Marcone a savage look. “Shut the fuck up.” And he stepped out of his jeans and kicked them against the wall. Dresden bent over and picked up his foot to peel off a mundane white tube sock.
A moment later they both stood naked and took each other’s measure.
Dresden snorted. “How do you square away that?” He asked, with a gesture to the cross around Marcone’s neck. The last item on his body, other than Namshiel’s coin, also strung around his neck. It hung an inch below the Savior’s cross. Dresden had taken off his medallion, set it in a pocket of his duster. His bracelet of shield charms remained, as did the eight rings he wore divided between his two hands. The years had been forgiving to his formerly ruined hand, although the scarring was still significant.
“Don’t you know?” Marcone asked, exasperated. Because this got tiring, on occasion. Dresden’s continued pretense that he didn’t understand Marcone as clearly, as completely, as Marcone understood him. The spell made Marcone’s patience a limited thing. The burn under his skin an increasing irritation. An ache building in the pit of his gut stronger than any hunger he’d known.
Dresden rolled his eyes.
Marcone crossed the line, Dresden joined him. A soft murmur later and the ring of protection snapped into force with a pop in Marcone’s ears.
Despite having studied the theory and practice of much more complicated workings under Namshiel in the last several years Marcone experienced a flash of panic as the sensation of Dresden’s magic settled over him like the hum of electrical wires overhead. He wanted to reach for something real and tangible. A knife. A gun. A fucking brick.
The fingers of his gun hand flexed at his side. He could leave the circle if he wanted to. Dresden wasn’t keeping him here. If he left the circle he was going to die. And he hadn’t finished his work yet.
“It’s showtime.” Dresden said. And he sprawled out on the bed.
“You’ve got to fucking talk to me, man.” Dresden said, minutes later, while Marcone twisted a finger in him.
Dresden was on his knees, folded over and resting his weight on his forearms. His head so low Marcone couldn’t see Dresden’s facial expression even if he tried to look. His increasingly long hair covered everything.
The heat that had steadily been building under his skin had seemed to finally reach a breaching point. Marcone’s gut felt hot, liquid and odd. He kept his jaw clenched and tried to avoid rutting his erection against Dresden’s ass. He was likely holding Dresden’s hip too firmly but he’d not received a complaint yet.
“I’m not going to start crooning sweet nothings.” Marcone gritted out. Dresden’s asshole was tight around his finger. Wiry hair dusted between the wizard’s ass cheeks, and the hair got thicker on the back of Dresden’s thighs. Marcone released his hold on Dresden’s hip long enough to dribble more lube on Dresden’s ass, and on his own hand. He pressed a second finger in and Dresden grunted. His long hair moved as Dresden shook his head.
The inside of Harry felt soft and terribly warm.
“I’m the one doing you a solid,” Dresden said. A tightness to his voice that matched the tightness clenched around Marcone’s fingers. “Least you can do is — fuck—”
There weren’t a lot of safe topics with Dresden. He’d never trust Marcone to not use whatever information he got out of him, even now. Dresden was smart like that. It happened on occasion.
“The Sasquatch.” Marcone said. Because Harry was shaking, fine tremors under Marcone’s hands. “How’d you meet him?” It shouldn’t surprise Marcone the sort of allies Dresden managed to acquire, but Marcone hadn’t encountered any information that would suggest this particular relationship.
The tremors increased to actual shaking. It was unsteady laughter.
“I’m getting — railed by the mafioso of — Chicago —” Harry laughed. Marcone scissored his ring and middle finger, spreading their joints wide at Dresden’s rim. Still tight. Marcone rubbed his other hand in a circle over the small of Dresden’s back. He dragged his thumb over the ridge of Dresden’s spine. “—and you want to talk about — River Shoulders?”
“He signed the Accords because of you.” Marcone said. He wanted — the compulsion on his body wanted — him to be finished with this already. Wanted to sink into the body in front of him. Wanted to bite Harry’s skin until it split. Wanted to hold him down and rut into him until satisfaction was achieved.
Marcone kept his gaze fixed on the knot of scar tissue on Dresden’s shoulder — a bullet wound — and forced his hand through the motions of pressing in and out. The least he could do. It was the least he could do.
“You wanted me to talk.” Marcone said. “My business is still my own.”
Dresden wrenched away, an abrupt, too fast thing. And he was still on his knees but he’d twisted to look at Marcone and he had risen up tall, towering. His cock was half hard, sitting against his thigh, and Dresden’s eyes burned with anger.
“Try that again.” Dresden said. The words came out as a low snarl.
Gard was outside the room, on the other side of the door. Even she would be hard pressed to get in and between Dresden and him if Dresden’s temper had truly been pushed too far.
The statement on business had been intended as a quip. It had clearly not been received as such. Marcone’s hands flexed. The lube on his fingers going tacky in the suddenly frigidly cold air. Without thought Marcone wrapped his hand around his own cock, squeezing. He wanted. Need burned in his gut. Made his throat wet. Marcone resisted the urge to slide his hand up and down his cock.
Dresden’s anger wavered. Disgust made his mouth twist.
“It won’t serve either of us to talk about matters of confidence.” Marcone said.
“You’re a real piece of work John.” Harry said. He pinned Marcone with that intense glare for a moment longer - and then his eyes flicked back to Marcone’s lap. Marcone blinked, and Dresden was back on his knees and forearms.
Marcone breathed a shaky breath. And then another.
“His kid was getting picked on at school.” Dresden said. He’d sunk so low on his forearms that his face was nearly buried against the sheets. “River Shoulders. I helped out a little. He’s a good guy.”
Marcone wanted, abruptly, to stab something. Instead he popped the cap on the lube again. Dresden lifted one of his hands and clenched it in his own hair. The rest of his body tense.
“Still with me, Dresden?” Marcone asked.
“I’m peachy,” Dresden said. His voice just a little muffled. “What’s the thread count on these sheets? You got sensitive skin or what?”
Marcone dragged his thumb over the ring of Harry’s ass and watched, intent, the liquid heat in his gut burning bright, spreading like poison to his bones and his senses. Harry’s asshole clenched around nothing. Responding. To him.
The compulsion is growing stronger, Namshiel said.
Clearly, Marcone thought back. He slicked his cock with a thick drizzle of lube.
Marcone lined his cock up. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself steady. Sweat dripped into his eyes. Stinging. He just needed to press in. He just needed to fuck Dresden. The mechanics of sex had never felt so inherently aggressive before.
“You know the necessities of the compulsion I assume.” Marcone said. It was a wrestle to get the words out. He needed - he needed—
Every inch of Dresden’s body was tightly coiled, every muscle clenched.
“If you make me ask for you to get this over with already we’re going to have a serious disagreement.” Dresden said. His warning was punctuated by his carefully measured, steadying breaths.
Marcone pressed his cock against Dresden’s ass. Bearing down and gripping at Dresden’s narrow hips. Dresden gripped at his own hair. His knuckles white.
The head of Marcone’s cock pressed in. Tight heat clutched at him. Marcone’s body physically ached for more. The compulsion practically leaned forward, like a predator towards the scent of blood. Marcone wanted to stay still. Wanted to grow used to the sensation, needed to master his response to it before he took on more.
Stop testing Dresden’s patience, Marcone thought to himself.
He pressed harder, a forcefully smooth motion, until he was fully sheathed in Dresden.
Namshiel was tracking the outpouring of energy in the room. The magical fluctuations. Marcone’s hands clenched around Harry’s hips. The wizard had always been lean but there was a gauntness to his frame now, a tightness to his skin that John found himself caught in. He rode backseat to Namshiel’s intellect for a moment, the strands of magic not quite visible but still clearly pressed against his mind. Did Dresden still run? Stronger than before, more dense with strained muscle. Lean. Always too lean.
Marcone squeezed his eyes shut. God, what was he doing?
“Enough admiring the view,” Dresden hissed. “Come on, keep it moving.”
“Be quiet,” Marcone snapped. The words maybe came out more frayed than he’d ever like it to be known.
The compulsion of the spell had roared into a dizzying, riotous thing. Marcone was kneeling on the bed, magic hummed in the air, his hair was damp and flat against his hair with sweat, and the only thing he could really feel at all was the call to snap hard into Dresden. To fuck into him until the boundaries of their bodies dissolved and they were just. Just.
Marcone tried to think through the step by step process of stripping and cleaning a Glock until his thoughts were more acceptably ordered. Every joint in his body ached. The sort of ache that a day without food left in the belly. He twitched forward, an almost helpless rock of his hips, Dresden’s body firm under him, and Marcone hesitated. Everything felt good. He was going to fuck Dresden and he was going to want it and that—
“I’ve weathered worse storms,” Harry said, his voice a sudden shock in the room. A baptism of clarifying ice. “You’re not going to be the dick that breaks me, John. I can take you.” He’d shifted by fractions and his cheek was now pressed flat against the mattress. One eye visible above his hawkish nose. John trembled with the sudden urge to lean forward and trace the scar that cut through Dresden’s eye.
It was obscene, Dresden reassuring John right now.
John dragged out of Harry and Harry’s thighs quivered. His face turned back into the mattress.
Marcone squeezed more lube, smeared it with cold fingers around Dresden’s asshole, around his own cock. Marcone thrust back in. His gut clenched. Molten heat.
Marcone wanted to flatten himself over Dresden’s back. Wanted to work a hand under Dresden and touch the wizard’s cock. Wanted to make him hard, wanted to make him ache for Marcone, wanted Dresden to want something, anything, from him.
The compulsion. That was the compulsion. Marcone thrust in and out with a steady rhythm he clung to with a tight focus. The room was quiet except for their breathing, quiet except for the friction of their bodies.
Harry had wanted John to talk. Fine.
Marcone reached for something that had been needling at him.
“Where does your guard think you are right now?” Marcone asked. If his teeth were clenched that was his own concern. Dresden’s quiet, other than his increasingly ragged breathing, was everyone’s problem. Dresden’s friends were supposed to be keeping an eye on him. Didn’t they know how close they’d all come to losing in the Battle of Chicago? How Dresden’s endurance had finally frayed so thoroughly that their survival could be credited to a few stray unbroken strands? Why had he been allowed out of sight?
Why had he been allowed here?
“Old Thornhead not enough of a witness to the consummation for you?” Dresden grunted out. His scarred hand was clenched and trembling in the bed sheets. The other had inched back to his own hair. “Don’t worry, no one’s coming to kick down the doors.”
Foolish, mismanaged.
Marcone thrust hard. Anger mixed so thoroughly into the sensation of want that both feelings were lost in each other. There was only need, only Dresden stretched out beneath him.
Marcone dragged in and out of Dresden and Dresden’s breath stuttered, a huff of air pushed out of him with a particularly deep thrust. It was a good sound. Something honest and tempting under the static hum of magic.
Marcone chased that sound. He dug his fingers into Dresden and fucked a few more of those little sounds out as roughly as he could. They weren’t gentle, soft men. Why pretend?
Need built. Namshiel was in the distant corners of his mind, silent but there, silent but still measuring, watching. Through Namshiel Marcone felt a haze of the magic that had taken hold of him. A greedy, feverish thing.
He wanted this to be over. He needed this to be done. For the boiling in his blood to end. He needed, he needed —
Namshiel’s influence over the spell gave way. John felt Harry underneath his hands, felt his tight heat and fluttering tension — but the room disappeared entirely.
Long legs folded in his car, a canvas duster. The soul gaze not so much lingering or finishing so much as being. It never left, never faded. The cleanest, crispest knowing John had and would ever have. The sharpest part of him. More enduring than the Beckitt’s broken picnic, more unalterable than the Fallen angel he’d one day bind to himself. Harry Dresden’s soul existed in a persistent, eternal way within John himself, something John could examine and pour over without interruption or end.
John came with a bitten off grunt and a stuttered grasping at Dresden’s sides. He sucked in ragged breaths through the after shocks. Momentarily hazy.
The room returned to him.
Dresden still underneath him. An abrupt chill settled over John. The absence of all that consuming heat. John pulled out of Dresden. His thoughts blanking.
The compulsion was out of him. John wanted to. Fuck. He wanted to rub his face. Take a shower. He wanted to talk to Nathan. He’d have had something to say about this whole mess. He’d always been wary of John’s interactions with the wizard.
Dresden’s a dog that’s going to finally bite someday, Nathan had warned once. And we don’t want to be there when it happens.
Lacking a path forward, John defaulted to action. He swung his legs off the side of the bed. Opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out the hand towels folded inside. He tossed one blindly over his shoulder in Dresden’s direction, used the other to wipe at the remnants of come and lube that clung stickily to his cock. He made a pass around his balls for good measure.
Namshiel prodded at him, concerned about the amount of useable magical material Dresden now possessed that could be used against them.
Marcone relegated the soiled hand towel to the foot of the bed and set Namshiel’s fears equally aside. The Denarian was a powerful asset but it did not know Dresden like Marcone did. Few did. And there was a greater chance of Marcone killing a child with his bare hands than there was of Harry Dresden harvesting the sperm Marcone had fucked into him for any purpose, let alone magical retribution.
The thought settled some of the tension that had been rising in Marcone through the continued silence.
“Summer hasn’t been happy with me for a while.” Dresden said finally.
Marcone glanced over his shoulder. Dresden had rolled onto his back. He’d yanked the sheets over his waist. He didn’t look anywhere other than at the ceiling. An unfathomable weariness dragged at his face. “This sort of enchantment - how it manifested - it’s in their wheelhouse. I’m sorry you got caught in the crosshairs.”
For fuck’s sake.
Marcone rolled his eyes. “Spare me the self flagellation.”
That sent a spark through Dresden. He bared his teeth at Marcone in a mimicry of a smile.
“I was warned about men like you. You promise the world and can’t even manage some pillow talk once you’ve got yours.” Dresden said. Snide.
Marcone wished abruptly for a cigarette. He walked across the room for his boxers instead.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Marcone demanded, when he looked up after pulling them on and Dresden was still lying there, only watching him now.
“What, this one of your places you only rent out by the hour? You’ve gotta start taking me someplace nice Johnny or I’m going to question if you’re really a gentleman.”
Marcone leveled a hard look at Dresden. He’d folded the clothes he’d been wearing previously but the thought of slipping the sweat damp shirt and the slacks back on made his jaw clench tight enough to threaten the integrity of the fillings in his molars.
He stalked to the closet. Blessedly fresh clothes. Jeans and solid T shirts, rather than a suit.
“Please stay,” Marcone said. Saccharine sweet. “We’ll order in.” He checked the tags at the neck collars.
Dresden barked a laugh. Behind him Marcone could hear Dresden finally moving. The creak of the mattress as Dresden hefted himself up. The pad of his bare feet.
“Sorry toots.” Dresden said. “But we’ll always have Paris.”