29. Touch

Touch

C ass stood quietly while I moved the chair to the other side of him and undid the rest of the clasps. When I finally had the whole thing undone and off of him, he groaned and dropped his head back.

I hopped down off the chair, turning away to find somewhere to put the armful of jeweled chains so that I wouldn't stare at the broad expanse of his bare chest. "Better?"

"Much," he said. Cass bit his lip – I felt him bite his lip, the impression of his canine on his mouth making me mirror the motion – and swallowed. "Did you truly think I looked alright?" His hands went up to his ears, starting to remove the earrings. "Not… ridiculous?"

When I set down the body-chains and turned towards him, he had his back to me, the long line of his spine tense and feathers slicked down. "You looked stunning, Cass."

He nodded, in the determined way of someone trying to reassure himself. "And you don't mind how entangled we are? What it's like to touch me?"

I crossed my arms and leaned back against the doorframe, regarding him. "I think it's fucking incredible," I said. My mouth kicked up. "There's a lot more mutually pleasurable touch we could be getting up to, you know. I like you, and I'm sure as hell attracted to you. If you want me, too, there's no real reason to keep our hands off each other."

The muscles on his back stood out, taut and tense. "It might not be you," he said miserably. "Or not only you. I can't not affect you. All those weeks… Quyen, everything you're feeling could be from me ."

I pursed my lips, skimming my eyes across his flared wings. While I didn't share the same angst about the source of my attraction to Cass, I could understand why he was worried. He was affecting everything around him, and that included me. Hell, maybe it was from him—but who cared? It was still real, and it wasn't like we were going to suddenly disentangle. Why not enjoy it?

He wanted to touch me. I knew he did. That yearning tugged at me like the tide, a force of gravity dragging at me. The little tastes would never be enough for either of us.

Dani seemed to think that his life being shattered would help the two of us figure out our soulmate bond. If that was true, maybe the best thing to do was finding the center of that breakage, and that was probably his certainty that he was out of control.

He'd wanted to bite me just from smelling me. So that was one thing I knew he wanted, and was forcing himself not to pursue. Maybe that was a place to start.

"So let's keep sex off the table," I said, keeping my voice casual.

Cass went fully rigid, not a single feather shifting. "Forever?" he asked, his deep voice thready.

"Until we decide otherwise while under full possession of our faculties, sure." I pushed myself up and sauntered over, a wicked hunger wetting my mouth. "You're breaking the palace into pieces trying to act like you're all calm and collected. Maybe most people think that's because you have too much power to keep control of it, but you're dumping your feelings into me, too. I know better."

"I don't intend to," Cass started.

I laughed softly. "Yeah, no shit. I get the impression you'd like to stop having feelings altogether, but that game never ends well. You need to learn how to relax, and I ," I said, settling my hands on his hips, "want to touch you."

He shuddered. The snakeskin leather between us did nothing to hold us separate. All his want flooded into me, hypersensitive yearning that went far beyond mere horniness. "Quyen," Cass said in a warning tone, halfway to a moan. The wilted flowers on the side table next to the wall started blooming, lifting their heads and going from yellow to vivid red and red-violet, petals fanning out into fanciful shapes and long vines spilling onto the table.

A smile tugged on the corner of my mouth at the showy display. "You gave me permission to touch you, splendor," I pointed out.

He only shuddered again, making a low sound of pleasure.

I kept one hand on his hip and used the other to write S-T-I-L-L-O-K-? across his feathers.

His wing spread in an invitation. Y-E-S , he wrote on his hand.

I smiled and dragged my fingers back across the cool metal of his feathers, then settled my hand back on his hip. "Here's my rules," I said, sliding my thumbs to the dimples of his hips, over his pants. "No kissing of any kind. No purposeful grinding or sexual touching. Underpants on. Even if we get turned on, this isn't about sex. It's about touching." I leaned to the side and exhaled across his feathers to make him shiver. "Be a good fae and tell me you'll respect my decision."

"Quyen, of course I will," he said in a rush. The vines on the table curled up like they'd been burned. "Gods, do you think— I know I forced you to feel my pleasure for those first weeks, but I didn't mean— I wouldn't have—"

I rested my head against his spine and huffed out another soft laugh. "You need to relax , Cass," I said again. "Give up a little bit of that iron control. Let the chips fall where they may."

"I hurt people when I do that." He shuddered. The darkness of the words scudded across me, heavy with sorrow and guilt. "I've hurt a lot of people just by existing. Including you."

"You haven't hurt me, and you're not going to," I said, stepping around his wing so I could take his hand. "Come on." I tugged him towards the bed in the consort's room, which was only marginally smaller than the main one and definitely bigger than the one he was using. "Let's cuddle."

His brow furrowed, but he followed me across the room, not making me fight for it. "Cuddle."

I laughed and hopped onto the bed. "Yes, cuddle. Don't tell me you've never snuggled up to someone else before."

Cass got onto the bed carefully, moving like he thought he was going to break it with his weight. "I haven't," he said quietly, not looking me in the eyes. "Not as an adult. After sex, sometimes, for a few minutes, but usually not. And not without that."

My heart cracked open. It felt worse than getting stabbed in the chest, a wrenching sensation that made me want to pant in pain. "You're five hundred years old," I said, horror seeping into the words.

"Five hundred twenty-nine," he said. His ears dropped down into a pose of self-consciousness, and he didn't look up at me. "I couldn't safely touch anyone in any… intimate way… for more than three hundred years. And after…" Cass swallowed. "You know how strongly I affect people I'm touching skin-to-skin when I'm emotional. None of my partners have sought that out. My control isn't good enough. I'm not sure my control will ever be good enough."

"How many?" I asked, trying to be gentle instead of angry. It was a losing battle. "And am I going to need to go read your Archangels the riot act?"

He breathed a laugh and finally looked over at me. "Vad is very sexual. It's not as if we didn't touch when we were together, but it was always… well, sexual." My cheeks warmed from his embarrassment for a moment, before he controlled his physical reaction. "With Dani and him, it was just the once, and it's not as if they abandoned me after. She and I don't have a romantic relationship. You don't need to yell at them on my behalf."

I flopped down onto my side with a grunt. "Alright, fine. They're off the hook. But what about the rest of them?"

"All six of them?" he asked, trying and failing to sound flippant. Cass sounded shy, instead, almost ashamed, as if he thought I'd mock him for his lack of experience. Eight people was hardly virginity—but spread over five hundred years? Even with three hundred years blacked out, that was a lot of time to be celibate.

"Yes, all six of them." I held up my hand and gave him a come-here gesture. "One would be bad enough. Six is borderline egregious."

Cass shifted closer, his weight sinking into the mattress. When it became obvious that he wasn't going to initiate the cuddling part of cuddling, I rolled onto my other side and stuck my back up against his warm chest, tugging his arm over me.

He shuddered with pleasure, his fingers tightening on mine. Physical sensation flooded into me from the contact: the tension in his spine, the careful pace of his breathing, the iron control keeping his desperate hunger for physical intimacy from showing in a hard line against my thigh or the pounding of his heart.

A flush of pale pink washed up along the wallpaper. Flowers bloomed from the stylized vines, opening like morning glories at dawn, slow and subtle.

"Tell me about them," I said, making myself relax against him despite the tension he kept radiating into me, watching the flowers. "The six people who wouldn't give you something as simple as this."

He dropped his face to my hair. His hot breath warmed my scalp as he breathed against me in that measured cadence, as if I wouldn't be able to tell anyway that what he wanted to do was wrap his entire body around me and never let me go.

"Issara was my first," he said, the words rough. "I was three hundred twenty-two. She liked deflowering men, but she liked what I could do to her more. It was only ever about the sex for her." He swallowed, his grip on me tightening. "Twelve years. I wanted…" Cass exhaled shakily. "I wanted it to be something other than what it was. I was a convenient source of excellent orgasms for her, and my presence was the price she paid. She had other men on the side. Ones she cared for. She brought two of them to our bed before I told her no more."

"What the fuck," I said without meaning to, aghast.

"It was what it was. I like to imagine that I'm wiser now." He paused, then sighed, his shoulders sagging. "The fourth was Dellaphine. I met her mere weeks after I graduated from the Asklepion Academy. Issara had often said…" His voice wavered. He had to take another shaky breath. "She often said that I ought to try mortal women, who might appreciate my… bulk. So I did."

I had to count to ten, and then twenty, before I was sure I could say something without sounding like I was about to go find and murder his ex. "That's a bit racist," I said, as calmly as I could.

"I know," Cass said softly. "It's not uncommon for fae to see humans as brutish barbarians. And since I—" His breath hitched. "—since I look like a brute, fae often find it amusing to picture me with mortal lovers. "

The towering rage developing under my breastbone grew hotter. "Is that a problem for you?" I asked carefully. "That I'm mortal?"

"I have negative associations, shall we say, with being seen alongside a mortal mate," he said, as carefully as me. "Given how unattractive most fae find me, the assumption tends to be that I couldn't find a fae who could overlook my appearance, and that I'm…" He took a deep breath. "…resorting to mortal lovers because I can't do any better."

My cheek twitched. "Dellaphine," I said, because if we kept talking about this right now I was going to blow a fuse.

Cass let out a slow breath. "It wasn't her fault. I was thoroughly fucked up by the time I met her. She learned quickly that I didn't do casual touch, and it went on from there." He paused for a moment, then added quietly, "She stayed with me for fifteen years, until it grew too strange for her to age while I remained eternal. She left me flowers and a letter, and I couldn't find her. I tried for decades."

I closed my eyes, my skin prickling from his guilt and sorrow, and my own horror. It had been doomed from the start, but that doesn't make a tragedy any easier to bear. I could picture it: Cass, sweet and bright and desperate for love, pretending he didn't notice the way people sneered behind his back—and Dellaphine, a mortal woman unmoored from her world, being wooed by a gorgeous, powerful fae for reasons she didn't understand.

She wouldn't have missed the way people looked at them, or the way Cass reacted to it. It had been more than a century ago, and women back then were used to being valued only as ornaments and broodmares. As the years turned, and as her beauty faded, she must have asked herself— why ? Why her? Why did he stay? What did she have to offer someone like him?

And she'd left, because the only answers she could come up with must have been pity or misplaced loyalty. Maybe Dellaphine had even imagined she was setting him free.

"I'm sorry," I said softly. "That sounds really bad."

He sighed against my scalp, his warm breath ruffling my hair. "It was a long time ago."

I leaned back against his broad chest. "That doesn't make it less bad."

"I know." Cass nuzzled against me. His nose ran against my scalp, the gentle touch sending tingling pleasure down along the nape of my neck. "I spent a mortal lifetime alone after that. Another healer fell in love with me, even though he had a paramour. She eventually gave him permission to seduce me, but with a list of restrictions. I was lonely and foolish. I said yes." He huffed out a sorrowful laugh. "It didn't even last a month before she made him choose, and he didn't choose me."

"Sounds like they were shit at polyamory," I said, when I could say something without sounding as spitting mad as I felt.

"To be fair to them, so was I. I knew better, and did it anyway," Cass said. His lips turned up against my hair. "A little after that, I was in a brief relationship with a fae woman who appreciated my looks and was too ashamed of what others might think of her interest to be seen in public with me. I decided not to be someone's guilty secret." He relaxed slightly, fitting his warm body closer to mine. "And then the war, and Vad, and eighty years, and now here we are."

"And now here we are," I said, echoing his words.

The wallpaper had stopped changing once the flowers had bloomed, settling as his attention shifted from holding me to telling me about his past. I considered it, pursing my lips. Cass seemed to do a lot less damage with positive emotions than negative emotions. That made a certain sort of sense; even though he hadn't been able to touch anyone like this for most of his life, I imagined that the things a frightened or angry command healer might do to someone were a hell of a lot worse than one who was enjoying himself. I was willing to bet that he hadn't had much opportunity for pleasure in those early lessons, either, so maybe they weren't quite so deeply embedded.

What the hell , I decided. Might as well go all-in . With a little huff, I pushed myself up and tugged off my nightshirt.

Cass tensed. "What are you doing?"

"Taking off my shirt," I said, as if that wasn't obvious. I dumped it to the side. "We're cuddling, and I like skin-to-skin contact. I'm not trying to seduce you or anything. They're just tits."

"But—" he started.

I looked over my shoulder at him, raising my brows. "Yeah?"

He looked like he was at war with himself. I waited patiently, giving him a half-smile. Cass wet his lips and asked, "No sex?"

"Nope," I said, shaking my head. "Platonic only."

"Alright, then." He relaxed back down and held his arm up to let me cuddle back up against him.

I didn't give him a chance to change his mind. I dropped back into place and leaned back against his warm chest, loving the feel of his powerful body against mine.