Prince of Tricks Read online

  “Why?”

  “Why can’t I take facets from angels if they want to spend them on me?” He brushed at the velvet coat a bit proudly. The gesture reminded Belphagor of a fine gray velvet frock coat he’d received from a patron on his first fall. He ignored the long-buried ache in his chest.

  “What did you do to get it?”

  Vasily eyed him warily. New-falling snow had begun to dust his broad shoulders. “Same as always.”

  Belphagor took a step closer. “When I took you off the street, you weren’t making enough to keep your belly full. Now you’re earning expensive gifts.”

  Vasily’s cheeks reddened. “You don’t think I’m good enough to earn expensive gifts?”

  Belphagor’s fierce mien slipped a little. “Of course you’re good enough. It’s the angels who aren’t. I’ve never met one who wasn’t five times as tight with his purse as a demon worth a tenth of him in facets.” Stepping even closer, he grabbed the satin-backed lapel. “What did you do?”

  Vasily glared. “The duke wanted to show off for his friends. I let them all watch.”

  Belphagor took several slow breaths without showing it outwardly, willing down the anger licking over him like his own seraphic fire. “Did he keep you well fed?” He realized as soon as the words left his mouth that this could be taken in more than one way, but Vasily didn’t seem to recognize the potential double entendre.

  The younger demon shrugged. “There’s a whole staff of demons at the place—the duke keeps a villa on the Left Bank for parties—and there’s a buffet constantly filled for his guests. He let me have as much as I liked.”

  “I see.” The scene sounded all too familiar, though the parties at which Belphagor had been the star attraction had been in Petrograd more than half a century ago. “This duke can obviously offer you finer dress and fare than I can. Maybe you’re better off with him.”

  Vasily’s stunned expression made his heart ache. “You’re throwing me out?”

  “You left, Vasya.”

  The normally gruff, burly demon looked as though he was about to break down in tears. “I was mad at you. I wasn’t going to…” His gravelly voice trailed off, and he glanced down the dimly lit street. “I beat them all up,” he said, as if just realizing he’d blown his only meal ticket. He took a step back into the lamplight, standing in the snow that was now falling steadily. A group of revelers being kept warm by the spirits they were drinking to excess spilled out of the tavern across the street.

  “Malchik.” The sharp, quiet utterance got Vasily’s bewildered attention. Belphagor moved in and took hold of his lapel once more. “If you intend to be mine, get your ass back in that room.” He yanked on the fancy coat and shoved Vasily toward the door of the familiar den of iniquity. The demon went without a word.

  Inside their room, however, the firespirit defiance showed once more. “So I can’t sell my favors to angels, but you can have whoever you desire.”

  Belphagor allowed himself a little smile. “That is precisely whom I have.” He leaned back against the door in a casual pose, arms folded across his chest. “Give me the coat.”

  Vasily’s eyes flared, and after a moment’s hesitation, he jerked the buttons from the holes, yanked his arms from the sleeves and threw the garment at Belphagor.

  Belphagor caught it smoothly, an eyebrow raised at the insolent attitude. He pulled on the coat, though it hung on his smaller frame, and busied himself with rolling up the cuffs. “Take off the shirt. I want your back bared.”

  Vasily stiffened at the implication that a flogging was in order but silently did as he was told, taking the time to fold the shirt and set it aside, though his demeanor was far from compliant.

  Observing Vasily wearing nothing but the formal slacks, Belphagor shook his head in disapproval. “Get rid of the pants. They’re dreadful. What did you do with your blue jeans?”

  “They’re at the villa,” Vasily snapped as he dropped the pants and worked them angrily over the boots he still wore. Still commando, Belphagor noted—and properly saluting. He stroked himself through his leather pants at the answering salute.

  “That’s unfortunate, as those are going in the trash.” Belphagor frowned. “Do you have any idea what I had to do to get those jeans for you? They’re fairly common in the world of Man, except in the land of our mother tongue, where they go for a pretty kopek. There’s been another revolution, you see—much like the ones the Fallen are constantly threatening and never following through on. The jeans are a symbol of the freedom enjoyed in the lands beyond the wall that has recently been torn down, and everyone your age wants to wear them.

  “Before the revolution, they were much more scarce, but the demand has outpaced the new availability. You wouldn’t think a simple workingman’s garment would be such an important status symbol, but there it is. I gambled for them with the equivalent of a rather large sum of crystal facets, won them, and then had to physically fight the loser who decided he didn’t want to part with them after all.”

  He’d been coming closer to Vasily while he spoke, his expression stone hard to match his cock, though the words seemed trivial. He wrapped his hand around the back of Vasily’s neck and bore down on his shoulders.

  “Show me exactly what it was you did for your pretty duke and his audience of angels.”

  Vasily resisted the pressure on his shoulders but allowed Belphagor to push him onto his knees nonetheless. Red eyes heavy with humiliation and harsh with angry, unshed tears at the injustice of seeing Belphagor in the fine coat he’d earned, Vasily opened his mouth without question when Belphagor unbuttoned and released himself.

  Belphagor kept his hand at the back of Vasily’s neck, letting his breath out in a soft hiss of pleasure as Vasily’s warm tongue extended and stroked the underside of his rigid cock from the base to the head before he swallowed him. Vasily’s celestial ability with his element was superbly controlled. He could vary his internal temperature, and he used this skill now to mind-numbing effect. Belphagor clutched Vasily’s locks at his nape to steady himself, groaning as the demon took him in deep and worked his tongue and throat in tandem around the cock he’d swallowed without the slightest sign of discomfort.

  The deep answering moans to Belphagor’s groans of pleasure nearly did him in, and he had to take control, using Vasily’s mouth like a passive vessel as he thrust into him while pushing the eager demon forward with a fist in the red tangled locks. Belphagor closed his eyes a moment, a shiver building in his spine as he contemplated letting go and spilling into the hot throat. But when he opened his eyes again, Vasily’s were leaking tears.

  He stopped and pulled himself out in alarm. “What is it? What’s wrong?” He cursed himself mentally, realizing they hadn’t established a safe word. He’d let himself get carried away at Vasily’s expense. “I’m sorry, malchik—”

  “No.” Vasily shook his head forcefully, his hazel eyes no longer full of heat as he looked up at Belphagor. “Mne zhal. I disappointed you. Prostite menya.”

  “Sweet boy,” Belphagor whispered, cupping the bearded cheek. “No. Why do you think you’ve disappointed me?”

  “I let the angels have me. I lost the jeans—”

  “Malchik.” Belphagor slipped out of the velvet coat. “Stand up.”

  Vasily obeyed, his tearstained face bewildered as Belphagor put the garment on him.

  “You could never disappoint me.” He straightened the collar and drew Vasily’s head down gently to kiss him, the heat of the firespirit mouth making Belphagor’s cock twitch as his tongue usurped its place. “Everything you do,” he said when he’d let him go at last, “every scowl, every burst of temper, every act of defiance against me—it gives me pleasure, do you understand that?”

  Vasily shook his head, his expression baffled.

  “You give me an excuse to punish you,” he admitted with a wry smile. “The only way you could truly disappoint me would be to behave. I’d absolutely hate it if you didn’t constantly infuriate m
e.”

  Vasily laughed reluctantly. “But the jeans. I cost you crystal.”

  “The jeans, you silly boy, were an evening’s winnings. You do realize I’m rather good at this game.” He winked and then pushed Vasily swiftly backward onto the cot, taking him by surprise as he climbed over him. He bit his lip at the picture of Vasily beneath him wearing nothing but the fancy coat. “I’m afraid your pretty coat may end up a bit the worse for wear, my dear malchik, because I’m about to give you what-for.”

  With his knees on either side of him pinning Vasily’s arms close to his body, Belphagor lowered his cock before Vasily’s mouth. Vasily moaned with pleasure as he took it in, and Belphagor teased the eager mouth until his cock was slick and dripping with spit before withdrawing and sitting back with his leather-clad thighs resting over Vasily’s bare ones. Just enough room to slide his damp cock beneath Vasily’s, stroke it along the cleft of the firm buttocks, and open him. Vasily arched up with a gasp as Belphagor stopped just inside the tight rim.

  He leaned close. “If you want a proper lubricant, lovely boy, tell me now.”

  “Fuck me,” Vasily begged, and Belphagor obliged.

  Buried deep inside him, he took Vasily’s temporarily flagging cock in his hand and stroked it like it was his own, fucking him slowly, until it was at full mast. While it bobbed between them, Belphagor slipped his belt from its loops and fastened the leather around Vasily’s wrists, stretching them back over his head and threading the belt through the frame of the cot to buckle it in place.

  “Are you mine?” he asked as he began to fuck him in time with the stroke of his hand around the base of Vasily’s stiff cock.

  “Da, ser,” Vasily moaned. “Pozhaluista.” Please. This was better than obedience. He wanted to be Belphagor’s.

  Belphagor worked his hand faster over the generous shaft, groaning with pleasure as he pumped his hips, almost forgetting the cock in his hand wasn’t his own. Vasily tilted his head back, bearing a striking resemblance—except for the velvet-enrobed arms—to a painting of the martyred St. Sebastian with his eyes on the divine. The mental image of Vasily’s torso pierced with arrows like the saint nearly pushed Belphagor over the edge, but he wanted to watch Vasily’s climax before he had his own.

  He didn’t have long to wait. The muscles in Vasily’s thighs tightened and he moaned loudly, and then let out a deep, guttural groan and jerked against the belt at his wrists and shot straight up into the air like a geyser. And like a geyser, the fluid bursting out of him was hot. Belphagor hissed in a breath in surprise, having pointed the cock at himself to keep from soiling the handsome coat. The semen spilled down his shirt to his exposed lower abs and into his groin like hot wax.

  “Mne zhal!” Vasily gasped. “I’m sorry!” Though another groan of pleasure followed this exclamation of regret. He could hardly be expected to stop mid-eruption.

  “No matter,” Belphagor growled. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t take a little pain with his sex.

  “You promised to punish me,” Vasily reminded him breathlessly.

  “So I did,” said Belphagor. “For my mistakes as well as your own.” He braced his hands against the cot on either side of Vasily’s upstretched arms and dug his knees into the mattress. “In that case, we need a word for you to say if the punishment exceeds what you can bear. A word that won’t be difficult for you to think of even if you’re a bit dazed, but one you’re not likely to say on accident either.”

  Vasily squirmed beneath him and let out a soft groan as Belphagor reminded him of his vulnerable position with a sharp thrust.

  The heat inside the young demon gave him an idea. “How about Seraphim?”

  Vasily nodded, looking up at him with a mixture of anticipation and misgiving on his face.

  “Say it, so you’ll remember.”

  “Seraphim,” said Vasily and then let out a yelp as Belphagor yanked his head back by the hair at his forehead.

  “Good boy.” Belphagor gave him one more slow but sharp thrust. “You can make as much noise as you like. You can swear at me or plead for mercy or resist if you wish to. I will only stop if you use the word.”

  “Da, ser,” Vasily gasped and then groaned as Belphagor let go of all restraint and fucked him like a battering ram.

  Belphagor tested his limits, holding nothing back, and Vasily in turn held nothing back in his vocalizations, yet the agreed-upon safe word never passed his lips. No one had ever taken this much from Belphagor. There had been negotiations with many over the years who’d chosen to be Belphagor’s “boys”, some true masochists among them who had reveled in punishment, but they’d been nothing like Vasily, who took what Belphagor dished out like the brutality it was, and yet desired it even as he railed against it. He would have to be careful not to push Vasily too far. At some point in the near future he’d have to test him to make sure Vasily would use the safe word. But not today.

  Belphagor roared out his release, his final thrust drawing a loud cry from Vasily. He watched Vasily’s face as the last of his ecstatic pleasure shuddered through him, hoping Vasily hadn’t already let Belphagor exceed his comfort level out of some misguided notion that he actually deserved punishment.

  Just as he was about to open his mouth to ask if Vasily was all right, Vasily gasped out, “I love you, Beli.”

  Belphagor laid his head against Vasily’s heaving chest, wondering what he’d done to get so lucky. Whether he deserved such love and devotion or not, it was terrifying how much he’d begun to need this demon. He’d let himself become more vulnerable with Vasily than he’d been with anyone in his life. They both had similar backgrounds, growing up on the streets of Raqia, on their own since early childhood, and neither with any qualms about selling what they had. But Belphagor had built a careful wall around himself brick by brick to ensure that no one could hurt him, while Vasily was raw and full of need, eager to lay himself bare for the love he craved.

  “Don’t ever leave me,” Belphagor whispered.

  What he hadn’t counted on was someone taking him.

  Vtoraya

  Belphagor’s feet were like ice. He’d peeled out of his clothes and taken off both their boots before falling asleep with his arms wrapped around Vasily. It might have been just to absorb his firespirit heat—and it might have been wholly unavoidable given the size of the bed—but Vasily didn’t mind. It made him feel safe and desired, no matter the reason. He’d never experienced the feeling before, and he reveled in it. But the blanket on Belphagor’s cot was inadequate coverage for two grown men, and Belphagor was no firespirit, and his circulation could stand to be improved.

  Vasily quietly extricated himself in the early morning dark and slipped out of the velvet coat, laying it over Belphagor’s sleeping form to replace the warmth he’d withdrawn from the bed. Belphagor was always doing nice things for him, incongruous with his fierce reputation—and his fierce possession of Vasily—and it was Vasily’s turn to treat Belphagor. In addition to the fine threads the duke had dressed him in, he’d paid Vasily handsomely. Despite Belphagor’s overprotective fears, Vasily hadn’t been taken advantage of by the angels. No one had forced him to do anything, and the duke had been very appreciative of Vasily’s willingness to indulge his fancies.

  Careful not to wake Belphagor, he pulled on the other clothes the duke had given him since he had nothing else, made sure the purse of crystal facets was still in his pocket, and let himself out into the hallway. It had been foolish to leave his regular clothes at the angel’s villa—foolish and faithless to go off on his own in his fit of pique and not let Belphagor know where he was in the first place or even whether he was all right.

  Vasily used a few facets on the way through the market to buy Belphagor’s breakfast and pick up a dearer bottle of spirits than what he could get at The Brimstone, paying extra to have them delivered before heading for the bridge. He might end up forfeiting the rest of his earnings to the duke after last night’s thrashing in the street, but he was going to get b
ack those jeans.

  The Acheron’s Left Bank was technically in Elysium proper, on the other side of the river from the Demon District, but so named because the area attracted the bohemian faction of the current generation of angels. What had once been a district of abandoned warehouses and dilapidated factories had been taken over by artists and revolutionaries. Recent angelic graduates—or dropouts—from the Universities at Zevul took up residence here to sow their wild oats and debate philosophy and politics, imagining they were a better breed of angel than their forebears.

  It was, however, still Elysium, and Vasily could be mistaken for nothing other than a demon. Walking about here on his own in daylight without his angelic benefactor was perhaps not the smartest idea he’d ever had. The fact that it was winter might be his saving grace, since otherwise the street cafés would be open to the sidewalks with angels drinking their morning tea—the black, sweetened peasant version they’d adopted here in the Left Bank from their demonic neighbors across the bridge—and reading the morning paper. Instead, they watched him with unfriendly scowls of disapproval through the windows.

  The disapproval of angels mattered little to Vasily. He ignored it as he ignored the slurs shouted at him from those who happened to be out on the street about business at such an early hour for the bohemian set. It was the Ophanim Guard he had to watch out for. They were pure firespirits of the angelic Second Choir, not diluted by other cardinal elements in their blood like Vasily’s kind; it was the mixed elements that marked the Fallen as less than angels and made them the peasant class.

  The Ophanim served the supernal House of Arkhangel’sk that ruled the Heavens. Nominally the Palace Guard, they were also the local gendarmes, and with the recent proliferation of revolutionary groups, they patrolled the less savory streets of Elysium to keep an eye out for trouble. Or a dozen eyes out, as the case might be. Ophanim either had eyes on all sides of their heads or were able to pivot their heads on their shoulders a full 360 degrees and do it so swiftly that one could never be certain whether a single unnerving pair had simply moved.