30. Hot For It

Hot For It

C ass whimpered. There was no denying it. That was a straight-up whimper of pleasure, out of the throat of the Merciful King.

The whole palace thrummed, objects on shelves shivering across the surface from the vibration. The pastel flowers on the wall went crimson. The fucking sconces started blooming, silver arms putting out silver flowers that furled open to reveal glowing stamens.

"Stop controlling all your physical reactions," I said, smirking a little, and well aware that the moment Cass stopped forcing our bodies to be sexless, it was going to be arousal central. "Let yourself feel whatever you're feeling."

"This is supposed to be platonic," he said in a falsely-calm voice. He lowered his arm around me until his hand was planted on the sheets, carefully not touching my bare chest or stomach.

"That's right." I picked up his hand and maneuvered it so he was holding my shoulder, his powerful forearm across my chest.

Another tiny noise.

"It will very rapidly be about sex if I stop controlling my physical response to having your bare back against my bare chest, my arm across your bare breasts, and your ass tucked against my hips," Cass said in a measured cadence.

"Uh-huh." I reached back and patted his tense thigh. "Take a look around, splendor. The walls are blooming, and the ceiling paintings are turning into some sort of mythological version of the Kama Sutra. You're not fooling anyone."

My cheeks went hot with his embarrassment for less than a heartbeat before Cass exerted his control. His focus struck the palace like a sledgehammer, wiping out the ceiling paintings with white and blanking the wallpaper.

With my bare skin against his, my mind rushed into the palace alongside him. Arousal turned to anger and frustration as the reflection of his emotions flooded out from his nexus of control to escape his grip. Dogs snarled and cats hissed. The fires in the ovens and forges roared into infernos, driving startled workers back. Lightning cracked down from a cloudless sky and sent stone thundering down the steep cliff.

"Cass," I gasped out, pressing my back against his chest. "Stop it. Stop, it was fine—"

He shoved himself up, breaking the physical contact and holding himself over me on all fours as he panted, black hair hanging down and eyes unfocused. "This was— This was a mistake," he rasped out. "Can't— Shouldn't— I'll hurt someone if I—"

I took a deep breath, then rolled onto my back and put my hands on his face.

Cass groaned deep in his chest, wings falling to either side of us and lashes fluttering. Desire twined down my arms like vines, raw need that had nothing to do with sex, leaving glittering trails of mica on my skin.

"Look at me ," I said, my voice intense. "Focus on me . You're not going to hurt me, Cass. You're not going to scare me. Just fucking look in my eyes and be here ."

He shuddered. Dark lashes parted. His eyes focused slowly on my face, the clusters of golden flecks near his pupils catching the light.

My breath caught in my throat, chest going tight. Fuck, he's so gorgeous.

"There you go," I whispered.

His eyes slid down to my mouth. Rested there. Slipped further down, following the lines of my collarbone before settling on my breasts.

He tilted his head, birdlike. One of his ears cocked forward.

"Cass?" I asked, uncertainty coloring the word.

His gaze lifted to mine again, not with unknowingness, but with the distance of a sleepwalker. Cass tilted his face and rested his mouth against my palm with a sound of pleasure. His warm breath filled my hand.

He's not here , I realized with a sudden sense of dislocation. He's—

Overwhelmed , some other part of my mind supplied. Lost . But he couldn't get unmoored from me. All I had to do was to close my eyes to follow him. Courting ravens dancing on the wind, wingtip-to-wingtip, her throaty call his favorite song—river otters curled up together in their den in a heap, family and lovers and children all together—the roots of a tree buried deep in the embrace of stone—a stag in rut, the scent of his doe's musk heavy in his nostrils, blind to anything but her—

Come back , I thought, or said, my eyes opening but my mind still caught up in the Court. "Come back, Cassie," I said with more force, focusing on the black and gold of his eyes. "I told you to be here ."

He let out a heavy breath, face dropping closer to mine. His eyes rolled up for a moment, but he didn't pass out or collapse. He blinked, hard, starting to pant. "Quyen," he said, apologetic fear in my name. "I…"

"Come here," I said softly. I let go of his face and tugged him down towards me.

Cass went with a low moan, settling his weight to the side but leaning against me. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, hand cupping my head, and breathed.

His ragged breath warmed my skin. All my skin felt hypersensitive from the focus of his yearning, a man who hadn't had a drop to drink in decades finding a clear spring in the desert. He was inescapable, but I didn't want to escape. I was exactly where I wanted to be.

He kept shifting by fractions, leaning more of his weight onto me, until he was halfway on top of me, the weight of his heavy thigh across my legs and his upper arm resting on my breast. "I feel so crass next to you. Too big, too broken, too much," he whispered against my skin. "You deserve better than this."

I started stroking my fingers through his dark waves. "Is there even anything out there better than a soulmate?"

Cass let out a sharp exhale; almost a laugh. "You deserve better than me ." He rubbed his nose along my pulse, a caress that send heat skidding down my spine. "A better soulmate than the one you've been bound to."

"I like this one, though," I said in a pert tone. A smile started warming my face. "You're not about to start suggesting new and horrible ways to toss me back into the mortal world, are you?"

He breathed another laugh. "I wouldn't dare insult you like that." Cass gave me another little nuzzle. "For reasons that remain incomprehensible to me, you've chosen this, so here I am."

I ruffled his hair. "Maybe I'm trying to make up for my diminutive stature," I said, a smile warming my face. "Between the two of us, we've got all the body weight for two normal people. Balances out."

"That's not particularly comforting," he said, sounding wry. He shifted closer, lips brushing my throat in an accidental caress. A spike of desire shot through me—one that came from him as much as me. Cass went stiff, his fingers tightening in my hair. "Fuck," he said in a rough whisper. "I'd managed to forget you were half-naked."

My smile curled into a smirk. "Are you going to paint the walls with flowers again, splendor, or let yourself have a desire or two?"

"You're trying to help me, aren't you?" he said. "You—" He stopped, panting, his fingers digging into me. "You think it's because of my control?"

I nodded. Cass curled closer to me with a low groan. It put his hips up against my thigh, the line of his growing erection hot and his powerful body holding me down.

A sharp gasp escaped my throat, driven by the intensity of his want. Everything went swimmy, the world fading out in the face of Cass' aching need. His pulse beat in my chest and against my breasts and in the heavy throb of his cock where it was trapped between us. His ragged breathing warmed my skin and left my ribs aching with tension .

"Court's too big," I managed to say. "You can't be everywhere. Can't— Can't control everything." His cock twitched and my core closed down with a flash of bright pleasure.

He whined in protest, but he pressed closer. "I could try," he said, putting a lilt of humor on the words.

"Don't you fucking dare." I panted, fighting the overpowering urge to grind my thigh up against his erection. "I hate feeling you lock down your body. This is—way better. So just—" I let out another panting gasp. "Just feel it."

"Are you sure? I can't truly help—amplifying." Cass shuddered, the feathers of his wings chiming. "Feels too good—"

"Amplifying's not against the rules," I said. "It's—fair game." That sort of rules-lawyering made me feel like a teenager again, in a reckless, desperately horny sort of way. I wanted him under my skin—wanted to know where he was every second of every day—wanted to be able to rub myself against him and feel him turn into a panting wreck for me.

I did not writhe up against him, but only because I thought it would make him feel worse about the source of my attraction to him. It was a near thing, though.

Cass just nodded against my hair, breathing hard, and held me tighter.

We stayed like that for a while, breathing and feeling, my panties absolutely soaked and my soulmate all but engulfing me. His thumb slowly stroked across my bare shoulder, the two of us easing away from taut need. I let out a soft sigh, relaxing into my sense of his body and emotions. It was like sprawling into a hot bath at the end of a hard day. He was always there, solid and real , whether I was halfway across the continent or lying in his arms. I wasn't alone. I was never alone.

"Look at that. I'm still here," he said in low voice, relaxing with me. "The walls are even still white." Minute by minute, the heat of sexual desire burned down, leaving glowing embers behind, a banked-fire emotion that felt like coming home. The screaming need he'd kept chained had been heard, and it was changing into weary satisfaction, like finally sitting down on your couch at home after a double shift on your feet. The total relief of it.

I suspected the next feeling would be the throbbing pain of feet that hadn't been meant to stand for sixteen hours straight – that five hundred twenty-nine years of almost no affectionate platonic touch would make its agony known – but we could handle that when it came. Right now, Cass was melting against me like a popsicle in the summer sun, and I was happy to luxuriate in that.

I hummed my pleasure. "It's not so bad to be here, is it, splendor?"

Cass chuckled, the sound low and rich. He rolled onto his side, then tucked me back against his strong body, left arm across my chest and right arm across my belly and hips. "Why do you call me that?" he asked, nuzzling my hair with the affection of a cat. "You know I don't like it."

I opened my mouth to answer, then paused, considering. "You're important," I said, my brows pulling together. "Magical, too. Powerful. It's a sign of respect."

He made another low sound. "I don't want your first instinct towards me to be respect," he said softly. "You're my soulmate. Everything of mine is yours. The importance, the magic, the power. My Court and my throne are yours as much as my body and breath."

An anticipatory chill skimmed across my skin, one that was all mine, raising goosebumps on my arms and sharpening my attention. My body and breath . I wanted to put that to the test; to wrap my fingers around his throat and hold that breath in my hand, watching him surrender everything to me because I asked for it.

"What do you want from me, then?" I asked, my throat thick with desire.

"Would it frighten you off to hear that I want you to love me?" he asked, with the cadence of a joke and the adrenaline-edge anxiety of a man who couldn't bear to hear the answer if it was "yes."

I wasn't ready to love him—to commit to an eternity of loving him. I knew I could, and I thought that I probably would… but not today. Not when it was a struggle for him to touch me, and not while he felt guilty for the way his existence affected mine. But I still traced my fingers up along his forearm, and leaned my cheek against his warm skin, and said, "It doesn't scare me, Cass. You don't scare me at all."

He let out a panting breath, almost a sob, but he nodded against my hair, his fingers digging into me. The edges of his control clawed for purchase, my spine prickling from the need to hide, to keep from being vulnerable, to stop being so pitifully needy . The palace answered him, lights dimming and walls darkening.

I reached up and squeezed his forearm. "Do you need some space?"

"No," he said, the word guttural. Cass shuddered. "Yes. I don't—It's complicated. This is a lot."

His grip loosened enough as he spoke that I was able to wiggle out of his arms. I snagged my shirt and tugged it back on, trying not to react to the sense of rejection that sank into my bones.

"It's fine," I said, the words coming out harsher than I intended. "You can have your distance, splendor. It's fine."

I knew it was ridiculous to feel wounded over Cass having a hard time with something I already knew he found difficult. That was the whole point of pushing him into doing it. But, fuck, I really wanted him to like this. To like me ; to want to have me badly enough that the lessons of his long life didn't matter to him.

They did. Of course they did.

But it still sucked to experience.

"Quyen," he said, sounding hurt.

I clenched my jaw. "Don't 'Quyen' me," I said in a tight voice. "Be grumpy about me naming you with respect all you want, but you're just as bad as I am. Don't think I haven't noticed how I'm the only one who doesn't rate a pet name from you."

Cass rocked back, the metallic song of his wings ringing through the room. "Quyen—"

I didn't stay to hear what he had to say. It wasn't fair of me to be pissy at him for having a hard time being vulnerable, not when I was just as bad, but I had my hackles up. I was only making things worse. I needed the space. With a sharp exhale, I leaned into the magic of the palace, magic I only had because of him, and stepped through the trapdoor it made for me, dropping into the darkness without hesitation.