Race of Thieves

by S. M. Reine

  “No problem.” Vision zoomed back the way they’d come, and Cage got a weird sizzle down his spine knowing that he wasn’t being watched anymore. Not by Vex.

  He found the bathrooms down a hallway with mahogany wainscoting and red velvet wallpaper. The bathrooms were non-gendered here. Each stall was like a small, private room, with a mirror, toilet, and sink.

  Cage almost made it into the first one before Brigid grabbed him by the back of the neck and shoved him inside.

  She slammed the door behind them.

  “Wow, Brigid,” Cage said, drinking in the sight of her. “You…”

  She rocked that slinky dress like a fitness model, but there was a hint of classical beauty that made Cage remember a Vermeer he’d stolen. He sure missed the money he had gotten from fencing that painting.

  He’d still have rather had Brigid than the prize.

  “Wow,” he finished.

  “You look great too,” Brigid said, eyes sweeping down his body. Her mouth tugged into a smile.

  “You’re not in drag,” he admonished.

  “I’m always in drag. The difference is that I don’t do drag for gender presentation. I do it for humanity. I dress up and act normal so that people will think that I am like them, with the ability to feel guilty for doing terrible things.” She was stalking closer, heels clicking against tiled floor, and Cage didn’t realize he was backing up until the boning of his corset hit the sink.

  “You’re one of the most human people I know,” Cage said. “You can’t even set fire to anything with your mind. That’s about as human as it gets.”

  She fisted his collar, shoving her face into his. “If you think that I won’t get revenge for the humiliation you made me suffer earlier—”

  “You mean the completely proportionate response to what you did to me?”

  “It’s not about who deserves what, Shatter,” she said in a silken purr. “It’s about who can take what. It’s about conquerors and people who are conquered. It’s about using weapons people can’t see to survive, because those weapons can never be taken away from you.” She banged a knuckle on his temple. “Your mind. If you’d used it, you’d know that I am not a woman that you want piss off.”

  “Hey,” he said, “right now, I am also a woman you do not want to piss off. Why can’t we just get along? The game of cat and mouse is how we flirt, it’s how we—”

  “I am not flirting anymore.” Her voice was dead. Her galaxy eyes were blank. “Where are the Underpants?”

  “Earth,” Cage said. “In the NAU.”

  “Even you aren’t disgusting enough to put those on,” she muttered, dropping her gaze to his outfit. He had paired the corset with leather pants, tailored to his size perfectly. They weren’t women’s clothes, but nobody needed to know that.

  She reached for his fly, and his breath quickened.

  Her gaze flicked back up to his. “This is not turning you on.”

  “Yeah, no, definitely not turning me on.” He was already halfway to erect. He unbuttoned his pants and let her see the fleshy color of the underpants underneath.

  “And here I thought that you weren’t as freaky as I am,” Brigid said, lifting her eyebrows.

  “Look, I’m in trouble. Deep trouble,” Cage said. “I took out a business loan from Gutterman and don’t have the money to repay him.” He reached into the underwear.

  “What are you doing?” Brigid asked, eyes fixed on his hand dipping behind the braided leather cords.

  Cage pulled out a wad of cash—the biggest wad of cash that he could summon. Stacks and stacks of thousand dollar bills. “This underwear generates money once an hour. I’m trying to clear my debt with Gutterman before he kills me, so…” He stuck the cash in his hip bag, along with the rest he’d gotten. He was getting close to one-point-five million. Vex would still have to flip an entire room of collectibles to cover the rest in northcoin.

  She trailed her fingertips along his collarbone, arched above the curves of his corset. “Is that all the money you need?”

  “Not even close. And it’s really awkward, but I have to take the pants off in between hourly withdrawals too. So if you don’t mind…” He eyed the bathroom door behind Brigid meaningfully.

  She grabbed the bathroom door handle.

  And she locked it.

  “Can I extract money too?” She pulled his face closer while her other hand crept to the waistband. Her fingernails slipped under it, tracing along the line of Cage’s abdominals, and the muscles tensed as if to escape her fingers. Heat blushed over his exposed chest and throat.

  Brigid’s hand trailed along the line of his growing erection, just to the side of the velvety skin sheltering his testicles. Cage shuddered.

  Her hand withdrew. “No money?”

  “That’s not how the magic works,” he managed to growl out. “I have to take them off and wait a while.”

  “Maybe we can cut a deal.” Brigid pushed him hard enough that his butt hit the edge of the sink. “Keep the underwear for now. Make one more withdrawal, or two—I can stall Lucifer until you repay Gutterman.”

  “How do you know about Lucifer?”

  “My recruiter tipped me off,” she said. “After you repay Gutterman, you give me the underwear willingly. I’ll turn them over to Lucifer and get the job.”

  “That’s not much of a deal. I don’t need your help.”

  Brigid slid one of the straps off her shoulder, letting the dress fall away from her breasts. “Whoops,” she said, without any actual hint of being embarrassed.

  Cage wanted to capture that pert little nipple in his hungry mouth, lapping around its edge and sucking the tip between his teeth. His hand made it up to cup the breast before he realized what he was doing. “Nope,” he said. “Nope, nope, nope.”

  “Oh, Shatter.” Her hand tightened on his neck to lock him in place. She nibbled along the conch of his ear as her hand slid back down to his waist. “Nope isn’t the safe word, and you know it.”

  “And if I use the safe word, you’ll leave me alone?”

  She’d slid off the other strap. The bodice fell to her waist, letting him see the grooves of the rib muscles over her ribs. Her hips were almost narrow enough for the dress to drop completely. He caught a tantalizing glimpse of lace panties, and every fiber of Cage’s being wanted to know what the rest of the underwear looked like.

  “If you use the safe word, I’ll stop, of course,” she said. “But then I am stealing the artifact anyway, and you won’t get sex out of the situation.”

  Man, Brigid’s arguments were so compelling.

  Cage pulled her to his chest, her head against his shoulder, and peered down at her back. Healed. The cream was good.

  “Stop it,” she said.

  “I’m just making sure you’re okay before I touch you.”

  “I know,” she said, “and I told you to stop it. Stop taking care of me. Stop loving me. You’re humiliating yourself.”

  “I like being humiliated,” Cage murmured, his breath hot on her hair. He didn’t miss the tremor that rolled down her spine at his words.

  She pushed the outer pants off, letting them tangle around his knees. Now his body in the mirror was framed by the cloak, fair flesh against velvety black. Brigid sank in front of him. She drew eye level with the Death Underpants, and she bit her lip as she looked up at him, picking at the knots with her fingernails.

  He gripped her by the wrists. He could feel her pulse leaping against his fingers. “Brigid…”

  “These need to come off if you need more money,” she said.

  He released her wrists.

  Brigid never broke eye contact as she pulled the lacing on the Underpants so they could fall away. Not even when his dick sprung free. He sighed from the relief of not having to stuff it into long johns anymore. His erection did not like being squeezed against the inside of a dead man.

  Brigid sucked his cock into her mouth without warning, without asking. Cage was consumed by snug heat. Brigi
d had an amazing tongue and an amazing willingness to go without breathing for long periods of time. She was the only woman he’d ever met who left him at risk of embarrassing himself by coming too soon.

  She wasn’t so good at giving blow jobs that he didn’t notice when she reached for the Death Underpants.

  No blow job was good enough for Cage to lose this job.

  He slid out of her mouth with a disappointing pop.

  “Shatter,” Brigid began.

  Cage dragged her against his chest, crushing his mouth against hers. She tasted the way she did the morning after they spent nights together—like she had been so busy hunting an artifact that she hadn’t had time to stop and shower or brush her teeth. Even that didn’t disgust him. His inner animal didn’t care about weird smells, and his human side wanted to devour Brigid whole. The gross parts, the great parts, and everything in between.

  Everything except her poison lipstick, anyway. Cage could feel it burning over his mouth. Luckily, he’d had hours to prepare, and he was protected against all kinds of poisons. “To tell you the truth, Brigid,” Cage growled, his tongue dragging along the lines of her throat, “I’d rather you take the Underpants without sex.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t always have to hook up when we’re fighting. Sometimes we can fight because we’re angry, and sometimes we can fuck because we want to, but they shouldn’t always overlap.”

  “I have no idea what you mean.” Brigid stepped back from him, eyes alight with suns gone supernova. She lowered herself to a fainting couch—probably not the first half-naked woman to sit there. She licked her fingers and circled her areolae, making them glisten with saliva.

  Good gods. Cage was not strong enough for this.

  He set the Underpants on the counter by the sink, on the opposite end of the room from Brigid.

  She showed no interest in the artifact anymore. Brigid rested one heel on the bench next to her and spread her knees so that he could see her soaked underwear. The perfume of her arousal flooded him, and when she hooked her thumbs in her panties to slide them down the creamy length of her thighs, he knew that he had reached his limit.

  “I need to get back to my recruiter,” Cage said.

  He hadn’t even taken a step when Brigid slid one finger inside of herself. She extracted it millimeter by slow millimeter before offering it to him. She glistened with her own juices.

  Cage couldn’t move, so she came to him, sliding her finger between his lips. He lapped at it with his tongue. He took every tiny bit of her taste off of her skin. Then he kissed down her wrist, up the inside of her arm, and to her breasts. He gathered her against him and kissed every millimeter of skin that he could reach. He inhaled her sweat. He wrinkled her dress in his fists.

  She was weightless, her body bowed over his head as he nipped at her delicate stomach skin.

  The sensory experience of Brigid was too much. From the way that she tasted, to the way that she had felt sucking on him, to the smell of her hair and her skin turned musky from travel.

  Cage hitched her up on the sink, pulled her knees under his arms, yanked the gusset of her panties aside. He stood poised at her entrance.

  The gasps escaping Brigid sounded real. Her attempts to wriggle closer felt real. She looked like she wanted to be impaled by him, to have her empty places filled by the thief who had dogged her at every turn.

  Cage dipped his head to her ear. Her fingers played over the strings of his corset hanging down his back, as if seeking a knot to untie it.

  “Tugboat,” he breathed into her ear.

  She jerked back in shock.

  Brigid’s eyebrows twisted with pain, the seas of her eyes swimming with dismay. “Really?”

  “Really.” The only way that he managed to smile was because of how satisfying he found Brigid’s disappointment. Physically, he felt like he might explode and die. He was gonna have to see a doctor about the thing between his legs at this rate.

  “That’s not…” She shook her head. “You can’t do that. You don’t mean it.”

  “Yes, I do.” Cage took the Underpants off the counter and wrapped them around himself again. He only felt safe once he was wearing them. He needed to wait another fifty minutes before he could get cash. If he stuck around Brigid any longer, he still might not be wearing anything in fifty minutes.

  She looked totally bereft when he started wiggling back into his outer pants and tugging his cape around him.

  “Stay out of my way,” he said.

  He reached for the door.

  “Wait,” Brigid said. “Please.” That word looked physically painful to utter.

  The intensity of her need was overwhelming. Cage could only bear to look at her in the mirror, like watching a solar eclipse through a pinhole. Brigid’s dress was all askew. Her underwear was wrenched aside. She was literally dripping down the inside of her right thigh with arousal, and it smelled like honey.

  He had promised that they would fuck each other’s brains out next time they met.

  Cage hated to break a promise.

  They fell together to the fainting couch, Cage ending up on his back beneath her. He hadn’t finished dressing all the way. Brigid had no trouble exposing him again, and before he could even think about cock-blocking tugboats, she sank her body over his.

  It felt like he was drawn inside her by the gravity of the collapsing stars in her irises. She was hot and all-encompassing. Not just those warm walls wrapping around his cock, but her smooth thighs braced against his, and her hair spilling over his corseted chest, and their mingled scents flooding his sinuses. Her clit grinded against his pelvic bone. She was so wet he could hear it.

  She bit his earlobe. “Grab my ass.”

  Cage took a couple handfuls. His grip made her shift her weight, drawing her along him. He yanked her back down again. Slapped their hips together. And he did it again, and again, while she snarled commands into his ear about exactly how she wanted it.

  At no point did he forget about the Death Underpants twisted around his thighs, and at no point did he care enough to stop. Not when he sucked on her nipple while fingering her asshole so that she started to make whimpering sounds. Not when he felt the orgasm gathering in his balls. Not even when he shot himself inside of her, flooding Brigid’s womb, and she seized with a climax of her own.

  She was still collapsed against his chest, sweaty and panting, when he reached down to feel for the Death Underpants. They were still there.

  Brigid gave a weak laugh, biting his neck gently. “Did you think I was going to switch them out while we fucked?”

  “Knowing you?” he asked. “Yes.”

  Neither of them said a word after that.

  Brigid took longer to get dressed, so Cage left first, still buttoning his pants over the Death Underpants.

  He was looking down at his zipper, so he didn’t notice someone waiting outside the door until he ran into them.

  “Oops, sorry,” Cage said.

  “Watch where you’re going.” The chilly voice made Cage look up.

  His eyes met the blood-red gaze of a vampire’s.

  It was Lucifer.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cage had known a few vampires in his time. Most were so weak on the preternatural power scale that they didn’t register in his preternatural senses as a threat. The instant he met Lucifer, he knew who and what he was based on how much his inner squirrel freaked the fuck out.

  Despite being a prey animal, Cage seldom dealt with prey fear—the sense of a shadow blocking the sun, the rustle of feathers in the wind, and the shriek of a predator’s cry as she descended to kill. A squirrel who could decapitate enemies was simply not as vulnerable as a squirrel who hung out in trees playing with his nuts.

  He felt like the tiniest, most useless rodent when he met Lucifer.

  The vampire cast a shadow over Cage’s entire soul.

  His desiccated skin was ashen gray, rather than the luminous moonlight of similarly pale demo
ns. His eyes were redder than a heart freshly ripped from a man’s chest. His black hair was knotted on the top of his head, keeping all but a few strands out of his sculpted features. His cheeks and eyes were hollow. He wore all black and managed to make it look scary instead of like a self-parody.

  The only nod to the drag requirements of the club was the scooping neckline of his shirt, exposing the upper curve of his pectorals, along with makeup that brought out the death in his features.

  “That’s clever actually,” Cage said, squirming uncomfortably inside of his corset. “Going subtle femme? Not all women dress the same, so going in drag doesn’t have to be flashy. Honestly, I feel silly for not taking a subtle route, but maybe that’s just the kind of lady I am! Maybe I like all the eyes on me!”

  Lucifer watched him babble in silence.

  The corner of his mouth tugged after a moment. “Then you are Shatter Cage.” His voice held the weights of centuries even though there was no way he could be centuries old, since vampires had been extinct before Genesis. Only a few people had been Rebirthed as the bloodless. They’d had fifty years to breed the way the vampires were wont to do, with all the fangy necky action. Even so, at best this dude could be three-quarters of a century.

  He looked fantastic, though. Way better than most guys at retirement home age.

  “Come with me.” Lucifer tugged Cage into the club again. His fingers were icy.

  Once they were in the same room again, Cage’s Link to Vex reactivated. He didn’t need to see Vision for communications to open.

  “Are you okay?” Vex asked instantly.

  Cage couldn’t respond verbally without tipping off Lucifer, so he nodded and hoped that Vision could see him. He was more than okay. He felt a deep, languid satiation that almost made him worry less about Gutterman.

  There was no sign of the nightmare yet. Lucifer had shown up early.

  “Gutterman is en route,” Vex said over the Link. “Nod again if you managed to get your last two withdrawals on time.” Cage nodded subtly, and his roommate continued. “Great. I’ve sold everything I need to sell, so you’ve only got to hang on to do one more withdrawal. You must still have at least a half hour, right?”