There’s Fire

There’s Fire by glacis. Dresden Files (books) (Harry/Thomas, NC17) Once Thomas’ secret is out, Harry’s may as well be. Originally written for the Small Fandom Fest 06, Jan. 2010.

Notes/Warnings: Thomas is a White Court vampire, which means he’s an incubus. Harry is his half-brother but they didn’t meet until they were adults. This story contains incest and cursing. 6,990 words.

Thomas doesn’t show up in television series but is a strong presence in the books. He is described thusly in Dead Beat: “Thomas was a shade over six feet tall, and I guess now that I’d had time to get used to the idea, he looked something like me: stark cheekbones, a long face, a strong jaw… but Thomas looked like someone’s painting of the forgotten Greek god of body cologne. He had long hair so dark that light itself could not escape it, and even fresh from the shower it was starting to curl. His eyes were the color of thunderclouds, and he never did a single moment of exercise to earn the gratuitous amount of ripple in his musculature. He was wearing jeans and no shirt – his standard household uniform… Thomas [was] a vampire of the White Court. He was a psychic predator, feeding on the raw life force of human beings – usually easiest to gain through the intimate contact of sex… By the time he started feeding, they couldn’t even want to tell him no. He was killing them, just a little bit, but he had to do it to stay sane, and he never took it any further than a single feeding.”[i]

Throughout the books, much is made of Thomas’ beauty, his smile, his hair… oh, he’s also a slob who can’t keep a job because people keep hitting on him (even straight men) until he sets up his own… hair salon. Hair’s a bit of a theme here. So is Harry being mistaken for a gay man (often with his express participation). If you have read the books, you know all this. If you haven’t, ooooooh, read ‘em!

The story begins…

The first time I saw him in the flesh, he was attending a Vampire’s Ball. With a date… Michael Carpenter, the Fist of God.

Yeah, his date was a big scary bear in chainmail and a flowing cape. So there’s Harry, dressed up in the worst pastiche of a fictional Dracula possible (complete with cake makeup and plastic medallion), and right behind him is a Knight of the Cross who made even the vampires drool. That was even before they made a play for the holy sword… big sucker that made other edged phallic objects wilt in envy.

And he wonders why people think he’s gay?

Of course, I couldn’t say much. I was in full-force twinkie-mode, complete with skimpy loincloth showing off my gorgeous physique and fluttery opalescent butterfly wings on my back.[ii] Anything to minimize the potential threat none of them could ever see. My darling Justine at my side, dressed in flower petals and fuck-me heels, didn’t do much to ameliorate the impression of Flaming Gay on the Hoof I was giving… learnt under my dear Father at such an early age my balls hadn’t dropped, much less my True Love being found, but that’s a story for another age. Even if I had lied to Harry about it.

This was all about Harry. Justine actually thought he was gay, when she didn’t take him up on her offer (at my instigation – the offer, not the denial. Funny thing was, Lydia offered too, and she also thought he was gay because he said no. I sensed a trend from the beginning). Later a Red Court vamp nursing a grudge (and a bad tan – Harry nearly fried her earlier) brought it up again. Harry just said he liked his men big and strong… and he wonders.[iii] I had my doubts myself when I was distracting Lydia by seducing her just shy of actual intercourse so Harry could fight the demon/ghost/Nightmare. We were putting on quite a show, me in all my nude Hungry glory, and to this day I don’t know if he couldn’t tear his eyes off her or me.

Of course, that lovely adventure devolved into a fiasco featuring fire from the heavens, the decimation of the Red Court, (incorrectly) presumed betrayal, winning and losing the Holy Phallic Symbol, fighting the Sidhe in the Nevernever, and introducing Michael Carpenter to the wonders of an upscale gentlemen’s club (had him muttering about dens of iniquity for hours… made me wonder how he’d react to a real whorehouse). Still, from such inauspicious (if life-threatening, exhausting, frustrating and nerve-wracking) beginnings came something incredible.

I think that’s when it really began, my little fetish for my little brother. I knew, of course, from the time I was a child, that my mother had given birth to another son after she escaped from my father. The fact that my father killed her on her childbirth bed was something of a surprise, and that my mother cursed my father to starve in with her Death Curse, as well, but that, too, is a story for another age. My interest was in Harry. It mattered not at all that we shared blood, when it came to the Hunger. I am of the House of Raith, and the Hunger couldn’t care less about blood… it wants life energy, the more the better, and given my family, feeding off one another was norm – all the better to exert power over one another, of course.

One thing it did teach me, at an early age, was stealth and cunning (I could be a serpent, if this were the story of that other wizard Harry). I had to be more overt in protecting Harry once the war began between the Red Court Vampires and the Wizards, even going so far as to second a Red Court assassin[iv], but don’t think I didn’t notice the way he looked at me in my white leather and black mesh. Regardless of his calling me an Elvis wannabe, he couldn’t keep his eyes off my chest (at least the second time he saw me, he could blame it on my Buffy tee shirt). I made it a point to brush up against him several times in the ensuing wild fight for our lives. I did have to tip my hand, a little, beginning to chip away at my wild child harmless façade, during the fight. Once Harry got past his disgust for vampires of any sort, and his unexpected fascination with my chest, that made things a little easier.

Still, I knew he’d get tangled up in White Court politics one day, too soon, and he did. My own fault, for bringing him in on a case, but Arturo, the porn producer I was trying to protect, was a good man. My older sister Lara nearly killed me, my youngest sister Inari tried (and failed) to drain Harry, Arturo’s ex-wives nearly sacrificed me to a demon, I realized I’d found true love and nearly drained her at the same time, Lara ended up twisting my father’s perversity back on him and taking control of the court, and I ended up banished[v]… but I got to show Harry Mom’s portrait. We shared a soul-gaze. He finally accepted me, and I ended up sharing his apartment, along with his huge cat Mister and his tiny dog that would grow up to be huge, Mouse.

More to the point, given my fetish, is… the day Harry discovered we shared a mother, is the first day I fed off my brother.

Father had nearly cut my heart out, one of his bitches had staked me to a ritual circle and between the two of them, they’d beaten nearly every square inch of my body.[vi] This was after Lara had shot me, twice, and I’d nearly killed Justine feeding off her, then myself, wrenching away trying not to kill her, and before the battle royale to escape the Outsider brought in with the ritual. Then I was disowned. In the aftermath of all the excitement, I was in physical agony and psychic shock.

Or at least that’s what I tell myself.

Not that an incubus really needs much self-justification, even when it comes to a family member. I was starving, my wounds were getting to me, if I’d held off any longer I would have lost control and eaten every human that got in my path… it all boils down to Harry, burnt and beaten up and exhausted, lying on his couch, nearly unconscious, buzzing with magical energy from channeling Hellfire, and me, draped over the end of the couch like a starving man at a buffet.

I was just going to rub against him, a little. A touch of frottage. Keep it light. Bathe in some of that wild energy flickering over his skin, black and ancient and warm and deep, a weird mix of Harry and a Fallen Angel, Lasciel, he only thought he’d buried. But hey, I’m a sex vampire who’d had the crap kicked out of him for a week running, so I did what came naturally.

I slid my hands through his hair, then down over his face, and peppered little hungry kisses all over every sliver of bare skin I could find. Then I stripped off his clothes, a lot faster than I would have liked, because I was HUNGRY, and moaning like a two-bit hooker with a virgin, I proceeded to ravish the man.

He woke up, pretty much, when I stuck my tongue in his mouth, so it wasn’t quite narcophilia. He was moaning along too, as I ran my fingers through his chest hair (I love chest hair. I don’t have any, and I think it’s sexy) to play with his nipples. He didn’t arch much, because I was lying flat on top of him, all the better to soak up that glorious life energy thrumming between us. By the time I got to his dick, which was showing more life than I expected, even with the kick-start from White Court sexual allure, he was completely under the influence. He could have been fucking a hole in a tree, for all he knew, instead of my mouth, but he wasn’t.

I was in a lot better control than I had been with Justine, so it was easier to pull back after I’d taken what I needed. Not until I gave Harry the orgasm of his life, though. He nearly bucked me off when he came, made a noise like a dying elephant trumpeting, and damn if that wasn’t sexy too. It took some real will to disengage, but I did. I slid back up along his body, soaking in a little satiation along with the magic, and kissed him, running my fingers along his scalp, playing with his hair as I kissed him.

As I blurred his memory, until all he would remember was darkness, and rest.

It was better that way. Better to work on this weird new connection we had. You see, White Council vamps don’t just siphon off life energy like taking a straw and sticking it into a milkshake. We exude energy as well, mix it with the energy coming from our food, er, lovers, then take it all back into ourselves, leaving a little less life in our victims. It’s how the monster lives. Over time, if it’s done right and not just sloppily glomming on to a mortal and sucking them dry, an affinity develops between the incubus and his… ah, fuck it, the food. Yes, they’re people, but that’s to the LeFay[vii] side of me. To the Raith side, people are food.

Harry was more than food, for years, before we actually met.

He believed that the affinity growing between us was that of two newly-found brothers, family where before there had been none (on his side. On my side? The less said, the better, really). That was part of it. I am fiercely devoted to my siblings, strangely, even the ones that try to kill me.

It took him a while to realize that my definition of brotherly love was a quite a bit broader than his, though not as long as I thought.

Shortly after he found out we were family, due to circumstances beyond my control (the whole botched ritual and power shift alluded to above), he let me move in with him. Considering I’m a world class slob, he has a tiny apartment, I couldn’t keep a mortal job for more than two weeks without being fired (after being nearly raped by coworkers and managers. Every. Single. Time), I had a tendency to pick up shapely chicks, bring them home and feed from them in his bed, and I had become rather addicted to running my hands through Harry’s hair any chance I could sneak (wizard energy. Yum. Harry energy. Double-yum) without him being aware of it, I’m astonished we lasted a year as roomies without him going Cain on my Abel (and able) ass.

And it wasn’t just the hair on his head. My brother is a furry beast. Chest hair, treasure trail, the curls at the nape of his neck – anything I could get to. Every time, I got a little zing. It kept me from going postal as I slowly starved to death snacking on mortals.

I missed Justine more than I could say, and not just because I was in love with her. Until my father tricked me into nearly draining her dead I had been feeding gently off Justine for almost six years. I wasn’t used to catching-as-catch-can.

There were entertaining moments. Harry was a freakin’ celibate, took me months to figure out it was because he was actually shy around women… Shy. Still cracks me up. Anyway, everyone from the pretty jogger I picked up who couldn’t figure out how he and I managed on such a small bed, to his friendly cowardly mortician, was convinced Harry was gay.[viii] Not once did he break into the standard straight-guy panicked denial. I even managed to sneak a smooch on Harry’s head right in front of the mortician, sipping up what little energy Harry had to spare at that moment, the perfect compliment to the pancakes I’d made us for breakfast.

My brother’s adorable.

But I kept it light with Harry, for as long as I could. Even with the zombies and the necromancers and the destruction of ¾ of the Wardens and the hounding of the White Council, with Harry hobbled by Lasciel and still managing to call up (and nearly bind) the Erlking. Until the necromanced dinosaur fell apart, and the last of the supercharged ghosts went away, and Chicago was nearly destroyed on Halloween night. Happy birthday, Harry.

I didn’t tell him that I’d joined the hunt for a year or so. I let him down, a lot, even if he doesn’t see it that way. It’s complicated, between us. Always has been, even before he knew there was an ‘us’.

On the night before the apocalypse he nearly killed himself to prevent, as he lay on Murphy’s guest bed, exhausted and wounded, hopped out of his mind on the painkillers I snuck in his tea, with Mouse guarding the door, I took some time for both of us. Harry couldn’t do much more than lay there, but after a few days of fighting the vicious undead, I was Hungry, and Harry was… not unwilling. A little unconscious, and maybe it was closer to necrophilia than I usually enjoy, but I didn’t jostle him too much. None of his stitches were popped, but his cherry was, I’m pretty sure. He didn’t have enough oomph in him to get hard, but I spooned up behind him and worked my way into him, smoothing my hands over his chest, bracing his legs with mine, massaging his skin with my hands and his prostate with my dick.

Going by his heart rate and the warmth of his skin, not to mention the little moans I kept smothering with my fingers as they escaped him, he still enjoyed it.

When he came to in the morning, Murphy was there, Butters was more convinced than ever Harry was gay, and Harry was clueless, on his way to mending, and more refreshed than he should have been. He chalked it up to being a wizard.

I kept my mouth shut.

Still, it got me to thinking. Not about the risks, per se, as I was used to risk… I’d played courier boy to Wardens who would have killed me on sight at my brother’s behest… but on the fact that, in the middle of a mess that could have ended the world as we know it and left behind hell on earth, I was desperate enough to drug Harry into unconsciousness and fuck him. Yeah, part of it was that I was starving, there was more ‘fun’ to come (where ‘fun’ is defined in terms of levels of lethality), and he wouldn’t remember it, so he wouldn’t kill me for it, but I had to do something. My fetish was getting out of hand.

His hair gave me the idea, really.

It was so damned stereotypically cliché I didn’t dare tell him. Especially when everyone and their brother were already convinced he was gay. I started disappearing as I began to get my life together. I couldn’t keep feeding on my brother… eventually, he’d notice. I couldn’t work for anyone else… they kept tearing my clothes off and getting me fired. I couldn’t keep snacking on joggers… I was starving half to death, and pretty soon I’d start feeding more off Harry, and eventually he’d notice.

So. I became a hairdresser.

Shut up.

It worked, anyway. Slipping my fingers through all those happy, healthy, vibrant women (and a few men), sipping away as they got a thrilling encounter with a gorgeous man and I got lunch a nibble at a time. It was ridiculously successful.

Of course, Harry, along with being a wizard, is an investigator. After tripping over me all year, my sudden absence, the sudden cleanliness of his apartment, and the unusual fact that there was beer in the fridge for a change, roused his curiosity. When he caught me moving out one day, almost two years after I’d moved in, his curiosity nearly killed him.[ix]

But he trusted me.

Harry’s always been a little odd.

Still, he was missing me even before I’d left. Not that I went too far. Seems I couldn’t, really.

It didn’t dawn on me for awhile that he might subconsciously be missing my feeding on him, just as I would miss it. I’m beautiful, and like to pretend that I’m not all that bright. Sometimes pretense is a little too close to reality to be comfortable. It didn’t hit me that I was setting up withdrawal pangs until I’d already withdrawn.

So I shadowed him. I told myself it was just to make sure he stayed safe. He worried about me, you see, and I worried about him. We’d even admitted it, a couple times, before suddenly realizing we were turning into women in the course of a single conversation and getting all brusque and manly about it (translating to adamantly NOT talking about it). I’d avoided him since the Halloween of the Erlking’s hunt, but it was like some weird courtship dance. He’d not ask, I’d not answer, he’d not see me, I’d stalk him.

As usual, this pattern was disrupted by his annual anarchy-gasm. This one was even bigger than normal, and considering our ‘normal’ was Red Court (and Black Court) vamps vs. White Council wizards (and the Sidhe) in a global war, calling old gods and fighting zombies, that’s saying something. This glorious debauchery of violence and pain included Michael Carpenter’s wife (scary, scary lady. When she met me, the only thing she said was, “You’re the White Court vampire who took my husband to that strip bar.”[x] Gulp.), the Knight’s accidentally-black-magic-working daughter, double-crosses wound up in triple-crosses, movie monsters coming to life… oh, and taking the Fire of Summer right to the wellspring of Winter, storming Queen Mab’s fortress at Arctis Tor… and getting away with it.

I still don’t believe we did it, but we did. Even if I did end up swathed in chain mail and covered in ice and fetch guts. Eating a sandwich. In a church. Even my newly-honed instincts for magic and mayhem, gained whilst losing my mind on the Wild Hunt, hadn’t prepared me for that.

Happily, for me, anyway, Harry ended up taking his new apprentice back to her house, and went home alone. I called him to make sure. Then I went around to see if I could seduce him as soon as he fell asleep.

Only to find his old mentor, McCoy, taking him out to dinner.

Hungry I might have been (okay, was, and particularly for Harry), but I wasn’t suicidal enough to take on the Blackstaff. Anyone mean enough to execute people on the word of the White Council, and morally unbending enough not to go dark from it, is not someone on whose radar I ever wanted to appear.

Which made for a pretty frustrating ending to that particular adventure.

I threw myself into my new work, then, picking up chicks irregularly (hot, lusty, brimming over with sexual energy and dying to share) and grazing regularly on my clients (a few hot, most of them lusty, ranging from legal to ancient, and none of whom I actually screwed). Sex was the espresso jolt, while all the happy hazy feelings I munched on when I was wrist-deep in my clients’ hair[xi] kept me better fed than I’d ever been in my life, even when regularly harvesting my darling Justine.

It wasn’t enough.

For either of us, really, but while Harry was fighting off Lasciel’s advances, he wasn’t getting any other action besides the Fallen Angel who was hot for his soul. His love Susan was off in Peru trying to retain her humanity and not give in to her vampiric urges (Red Court, so if she killed, she was going for the blood). He’d had a few hot ‘n’ heavy make-out sessions (including one with my oldest sister that left him scrubbing his mouth with Listerine for days… the things you do under imminent threat of death), but he hadn’t gotten laid in way too long.

Then there was me.

Getting laid often enough to chafe if it was physically possible for an incubus, and not getting the one I really wanted.

It was an untenable situation. Combined with Harry’s curiosity about my feeding habits, his worry for me, and my inability to stop stalking him, it was bound to come to a crashing halt when I least expected it.

I really didn’t think it would lead to a whole new contingent of ‘people convinced Harry is gay.’ It was pretty funny, though, and you can bet your ass I took advantage of the fact every chance I got. Especially when he showed up at my salon and convinced everyone there, workers and clientele alike, that we were lovers, with the simple fact of his presence.

Not that he wasn’t above using it himself. The security at my apartment building, most of the Chicago PD, and the SI unit are all convinced we’re lovers. Except Murphy, but she’s a special case, and she wouldn’t tell. She got him an autographed Julie Newmar photo for Christmas. All that, by his actions, not a word I said, but because he did such a sterling job playacting the part of the jealous lover.[xii]

My jealous lover.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Harry’s part in the latest debacle was my fault. Some of the nastier elements in the White Court (auntie Cesarina, cousin Madrigal, cousin Vitto, and the ugliest assortment of eight-foot tall ghouls it has ever been my displeasure to fight) made an aborted power play against my sister Lara and my father, her puppet. Once again, Harry brought a man as his date to a Vampire Court party. This time, it was a lovely young Wizard Warden named Ramirez, who according to Lara (still drooling days later) was a virgin. A powerful, magical, beautiful virgin MALE warrior… Harry’s date to the duel.

And he wonders why people wonder about him, and he can’t get a date. With a woman, anyway.

With the help of ‘Gentleman’ John Marcone (another one who keeps hauling Harry’s ass out of the fire… and yes, there have been some rumors about the two of them, but not anywhere Marcone could hear, not if the gossips wished to live) and his army of mercenaries, I stormed the Deeps hip-deep with ghouls, who were slaughtering my kindred wholesale, and got the shit kicked out of me (again) saving my brother. Only it didn’t quite work.

While we got most of the survivors out, vampires, humans, and fairies, Lara and Harry were trapped. In a cavern, surrounded by unkillable ghouls, packed with mortal explosives. Harry managed the unthinkable again, harnessing the power of the explosion that killed the power-seekers and their ghoulish tools, by allowing my sister to feed off him and adding the force of his lust to his magic, his Fallen Angel, and the explosives.

It’s a wonder they weren’t splattered all over the grounds.

But they made it. None of the villains left in the caverns did. All of us got through the NeverNever in one piece (well, Marcone had to shoot a few hungry incubi and succubi to get it through their heads that the humans were not just along for snacking purposes – my kin can be pretty single minded when they’re hungry – but nobody died). Eventually everyone was settled and I could slip away.

I checked at the Raith compound first, and found Lara, bitching about the damages and nursing a blistered mouth. That caught my attention.

You see, if a White Court vamp tries to feed on a human who is truly in love, it burns and they can’t feed. This is why I can no longer feed on my darling Justine – when I nearly killed her, she gave herself freely, because she loved me. When I nearly killed myself pulling away before I killed her, it was because I loved her. Now, because she truly loves, I cannot touch her. Even though I am the object of her affections.

But Harry? The last time Harry felt the touch of his love Susan, the same love that kept him safe from being fed on by my youngest sister Inari, was almost five years ago.

Leaving aside the sad and pathetic fact that my brother hadn’t had sex with a woman in years (and he didn’t remember having it with me – I made damned sure of that), it was absolutely amazing that one bout of lovemaking could still leave that much protection on him, that it would blister Lara’s lips when she tried to feed… er, kiss… ah, to hell with it. When she tried to feed off him with her kiss.

Which begged the question: why hadn’t it blistered me?

Was it because I was in love with Justine, but only in lust with Harry? Or was it because my love for Harry was more complex than simple romantic love?

I was thinking about that as I left the Raith complex and headed over to check on Harry. Molly was asleep on the couch, all thirty pounds of Mister sprawled atop her in a cat-blanket from her knees to her ribs. Mouse looked up from his sentry position in the doorway to the bedroom, but he just gave me a happy wuff and licked me before collapsing back down with his back to the room.

Couldn’t have given me more explicit permission to ravish his master if he’d pushed me into the bed himself. Not being one to ignore an invitation, I slid into the room. Pulled off my clothes. Pulled off Harry’s clothes.

He was a mass of bruises and wrenched muscles. It made sex a challenge, but hey, he was mostly conscious, which was an improvement over our previous hookups. He was exhausted, physically and magically, but he was also starved for touch.

As starved as I was for him, he was for me.

Or maybe he was starved for Susan, but I’d take what I could get.

It was slow, with a lot of pauses and petting along the way. I spend some time giving him a scalp massage, something I’d used a lot since opening my salon, and Harry did a lot of happy groaning. Then I followed that up with a massage, of sorts, all down his front. Given the engine-revving he’d gotten already that night from Lara, my own natural talents (and Hunger – I was almost as exhausted as he was, and really needed to feed), and Harry’s natural sensuality, it was a good two hours of foreplay before I finally swallowed his cock. We moved slowly, languidly, and the sensation was all the more intense for it. I didn’t come, but I didn’t need to. Harry got what his body wanted, even as his mind drifted. I got what I needed.

Then I kissed him, deeply, as I always did, and made him forget what little he would have retained anyway.

I didn’t realize until later that I’d left him in such an awkward position that his apprentice Molly had to spend some quality time on him with the Tiger Balm before he could straighten out his back. Thankfully, he blamed Lara.

A couple days after the massacre, I felt him following me. I was frankly a little amazed that it had taken this long for his curiosity to nudge him into stalking me the way I stalked him. I gave strong thought to not going in to work, but I was still hungry (if not ravenous, as Harry had taken off the edge). So I gave a metaphorical shrug and let the chips fall where they might.

I didn’t expect him to actually come in, much less bull his way through the shop until he found me. Surrounded by clients, up to my elbows in one lovely woman’s locks, bobby pins in my mouth, which I then promptly dropped when my jaw fell open.

Suave, that’s me.

We went into the coffee shop section of the salon, and it all came out – the absences the last year I’d lived with him, as I worked as a night guard to put myself through cosmetology school. The salon I’d opened up, catering to wealthy women who for the most part wouldn’t be in danger of actually being in love, so I could feed off their positive energy without burning my fingers (a shampoo and set is the closest thing to sex for most women, and the intimate connection worked for assuaging my hunger pangs, too). They were pretty convinced I was gay anyway, and Harry, standing there in all his tall, dark, and broody glory, gave life to their romantic fantasies.

Didn’t hurt mine much, either, come to think of it.

Anyway, once we got past all the explanations and he stopped laughing his ass off, I surprised him by offering to cut his hair. Invited him over to my apartment, since the guards had his picture now and all.

When he stopped laughing again, he surprised me by agreeing.

The security guard at the front desk gave us a knowing look, that Harry squashed with a glare (my brother can be intimidating even when he’s not channeling Hellfire, if he wants to be). He told me about the cop being figuratively disarmed by Mouse the other time he was here, and I was still laughing at the mental image of a hundred pounds of suspicious lady cop cooing over twice her body weight in Temple Dog, rolling around at her feet so she could scratch his tummy.

When the elevator hit the sixteenth floor, I bowed Harry out into the hall and he rolled his eyes. Then I bowed him into my apartment and he snickered.

“Hitting the Eurotrash thing a little hard here, aren’t you, Toe-moss?”

I had to laugh myself – setting myself up as a pseudo-Frenchman had worked wonders on my admittedly shallow clientele, but hearing it from Harry was hilarious.

“For toi, my darlink, aneezing.” I made sure to flutter my eyelashes at him.

He was too busy choking on laughter to notice when I chivvied him in the door and locked it. Now I had him, he wasn’t getting away.

A few of Mac’s special lagers later, I was down to my normal at-home attire (jeans and nothing else) and Harry had been convinced to release his death grip on his duster (I was still working on getting him to shed the rest of his clothes).

“You know, if you leave your shirt on, little bits of hair will get down your collar and itch like crazy. It’s really better if you just take it off. I’d recommend you take a shower afterward. It’s not like I’ve got a drape here to protect you from flying hair,” I snuck in. Slyly.

From the look he gave me, it wasn’t quite sly enough. “Still hungry?” he asked softly.

I raised my eyebrows at him and looked as innocent as an incubus could – not very, no matter how hard I try. “Nah, but I always enjoy a little nibble.” I grinned at him.

To my surprise, he actually grinned back. “And nibbles are better skin to skin?”

“God, yes,” I assured him fervidly, absently gathering supplies and arranging them by the kitchen sink.

He snickered again, stood up, and stripped off his shirt. I managed not to moan, barely. Pretty, pretty, pretty furry Harry.

“You’re drooling,” he snarked.

“Am not,” I automatically responded, but when I had him seated, standing behind him, I surreptitiously wiped my mouth.

“Just a little off the top,” he told me in a fake posh accent. I was still snickering as I leaned him back over the sink, carefully wetting his hair before massaging a handful of American Crew into his scalp. The scent of peppermint, ginseng and rosemary rose in the air, mixed with Harry’s unique scent, and I breathed in deeply.

There’s nothing (outside of sex) quite like working on hair to make an end-run around defenses and forge an intimate connection, no matter how momentary. It works on men just as well as women, it’s just usually harder to get a man in the chair. Harry gradually went boneless as I worked, the ambient energy around him gentling and lapping against me as if I were submerging myself in a warm pool of water.

The next half hour slipped by as I worked, as Harry relaxed, little snippets of curls falling around us. I think it was the first time in the two years I’d lived there that I’d used the kitchen for anything other than nuking dinner. Harry was nearly asleep, and I was grazing contentedly, until finally, sadly, I had to say, “That’s it, then.”

Sleepy hazy eyes blinked up at me, and I forced my eyes up from the bulge in his jeans to his face (Harry apparently liked getting hair cut, but honestly, it was probably me causing it). I must have been glowing a little, as I wasn’t holding myself back like I did in the salon. It didn’t scare him off, weirdly enough.

“I don’t have a mirror,” I murmured, a little unsteady on my feet. Harry’s life force was intoxicating, always had been. I shook my head a little to clear it, and smiled down at him. “Come in to the bathroom and check it out. You’ll need to wash anyway.”

He followed me like an overgrown but obedient puppy down the hall to the bathroom. He’s a guy, as I am, so we both ignored the disaster area of the counter, and I slipped over to his side to watch his face as he checked out his new style.

“Huh,” he finally said.

“That’s it?” My voice was a mix of indignation and laughter. “I labor over this creation, fighting the recalcitrance that is your hair, and all you can say is ‘huh’?”

Harry cracked up. I was still shaking my head and trying not to laugh when he stepped behind me and crowded me up against the counter. I froze, staring up at his face in the mirror. His eyes were much more knowing than they should be.

“So, still hungry?”

His voice was deeper than normal, and it sent a shiver through me. My eyes started to turn silver of their own accord. I tried to control it, but then he ran his hands down my hips and leaned into me. He was still hard.

“Did you really think you could make me forget?”

In a heartbeat, I was terrified. Not so much about what he could do to me, although he was seriously powerful and could hurt me if he cut loose with his magic (or even his fists). No, what really scared me was that I might have lost my brother in giving in to my needs. If he did remember, and it looked like he did, he could legitimately feel that I’d raped him. Something I’d never had to do, never wanted to do.

Not after what my father did to me.

“Breathe, Thomas,” Harry said in my ear, sliding his hands from my hips around my waist and drawing me into a hug up against his chest. “If I didn’t want you to do it, you wouldn’t have. I figured you didn’t want me to know, or didn’t want to know I knew, or something equally convoluted, so I waited until you felt you could be honest about it. Bringing me home and fucking with my hair was about the biggest clue you could give me that you wanted me to actively participate. After all, I’m not wounded or wiped out this time.”

I swallowed, then tentatively snuggled back up against him. He squeezed me, then moved his hips in an unmistakable thrust. I narrowed my eyes and glared at him.

He smirked at me.

Sneaky bastard. And here I thought it was the incubus who was supposed to be sneaky, and the wizard who was supposed to be oblivious. Looked like I had it backward.

Especially when he unzipped my jeans and pushed them down my thighs. I may have given a somewhat girly yelp at that, not that I’ll ever admit it, because sometime while I’d been lost in my thoughts trying to figure out how he’d played me, he’d pushed his jeans down as well, so it was skin on skin again.

Being what I am, such things as stretching and lubrication aren’t the obstacle they are for mortals, as the Hunger ensures I am literally always ready for anything. It still took some wiggling for Harry to enter me, in part because of the height difference, and in part because my brother is hung like a bull moose. By the time he was seated, balls to the bush, as it were, my feet had left the floor to curl around the back of his calves, my hands were clenching the marble counter hard enough to crack it, and my entire body was glowing.

Harry’s hands ended up wrapped around my hips again, lifting and steadying me, moving me as he thrust in and out. He was chanting something under his breath, but even with my enhanced hearing I couldn’t make it out over the thump of my heartbeat in my ears. I was drowning, in energy, in magic, in Harry, and for the first time in years I came without a touch to my dick.

That broke what control Harry had left, as he pushed into me and jerked a few times. I couldn’t do more than moan and shudder. Waves of energy flowed through me, and it took everything I had to stop drawing from him before I hurt him irrevocably.

“Chill out, Thomas,” he whispered, bending over me to blanket me with his body. He felt like fire against the skin of my back and legs. “You’d be surprised at what I can take.”

Maybe. Maybe not. I’d seen the damage he could survive, but that didn’t mean I wanted to cause any.

I shuddered again as he slipped from me, then turned me in his arms and went down to his knees. Even for a being who lived on sex, sensation was nearing the edge of pain by the time he finished cleaning me with his tongue. My hands clenched in his freshly-cut hair, ripples of energy running up my fingers and along my thighs and over my dick, from him to me and back again in a continuous circuit. When he slid back up, rubbing all the way along my body with his, to kiss me again, I was so satiated I nearly dissolved.

“So,” he asked brightly, “shower?”

I was still staring at him incredulously when he finished setting the taps and pulled me under the water. Where he proved, again, that wizards have staying power other mortals just can’t match.

Much later, when we finally made it to the bed and Harry crashed out, I lay there staring at his face. Relaxed, as I hadn’t ever seen it. Refreshed, as I intended to ensure it stayed. Faces flashed in my mind, Carlos the Warden, Michael the Knight, even Marcone the gangster.

Me.

I looked down at my hand, absently trailing through Harry’s chest hair.

My brother. The Wizard with the Mojo. Who can’t get a date. He thinks it’s bad luck with women. Strange how all his intimate relationships, friendly or not, are with men (except Murphy, and she’s already told him it won’t ever be). Including me, and my inability to keep my hands out of his hair.

All his hair.

Everywhere.

Bad luck? I don’t think so.

I think, where there’s smoke…

…there’s fire.

FIN