Chapter 20

Raven standing in my own apartment, my den , all battered and sobbing, pushed every button I had and a few I hadn't even been aware of.

Maybe I should've expected this, what with his months of playing mind games and being used by a total fucking asshole like Cunningham, plus the stress of sneaking around and trying to escape, plus whatever Cunningham had done to him over the last few days, plus escaping and getting shot at and falling twenty stories, seeing me broken and nearly dead, driving the getaway car and making the deal with Louie and watching me and Cunningham fight…

Yeah, it actually showed his remarkable resilience that he hadn't cracked long before this. But the breaking of tension could be a real bitch, and honestly, I might've been having my own freakout if I hadn't already burned that out healing every single part of my body in the most agonizing possible way.

He might not want mine and Cunningham's blood all over him, but no power on Earth could've kept me from wrapping my arms around him, pressing his head to my chest, and holding him tight.

Raven huddled there, shaking violently enough that I was afraid he might've shattered into pieces all over the floor if I hadn't been keeping him together, enclosing him in my big body, kissing his hair, not saying a damn thing—because the only words that came to mind were I love you , and that didn't seem likely to comfort him much.

But at last, as he started to wind down, I felt like I had to break the silence. "I know my apartment's a mess, but I didn't think it was that bad," I tried.

A weak, watery, choking laugh that ended on a sob was probably all I deserved for that joke.

"Come on," I tried again. "Let's get in the shower. I can't match whatever amenities they have at Endless Sky, but there's always lots of hot water in this place, at least."

He stumbled as I started to move, so I slipped an arm under his knees and carried him. When had I last scrubbed the shower? Shit. It got pretty clean from all the hot water and soap running down over it all the time, yeah? Although there might be traces of glitter.

Fuck it, he wouldn't care. I didn't think.

Raven leaned his head on my shoulder in a way that pressed literally every button in the universe that a protective alpha who'd recently realized he was hopelessly in love could have, and then I was setting him down gently in the bathroom, flipping on the shower, and helping him undress.

The massive erection I'd grown in those couple of minutes couldn't possibly have escaped his notice; my breath came fast and shallow, and my hands shook as I gently unbuttoned his shirt, tugged down the zipper on his trousers, knelt to ease one strappy sandal and then the other off of his bruised feet. But he didn't remark on it, and when I set the second shoe aside and knelt up to tug his trousers down off his hips, his cock hadn't stirred. I took a hint and didn't touch it, but I did press a kiss to the mark on his thigh where he'd been grazed by flying concrete in the stairwell.

Steam billowed up around us, the heat of it already starting to soothe the last of my aches.

That was nothing to how deeply it soothed my most instinctive nature to slide Raven's shirt off his shoulders, leaving him bare to me, and help him into the shower's warmth and comfort.

Mine. Really mine, now that I'd disposed of that fucking bastard who'd tried to own him, and had never shown a shred of worthiness of the honor.

Of course, I'd only done the easy part, hadn't I? Made a fool of myself on a stage, taken some severe physical damage, and knocked Cunningham on his bleeding ass. Any dumb beast could've pulled that shit off.

"You were the real MVP tonight," I said, the words coming out softly, mingled with the rush of the shower. I'd put Raven under the hot water, and he'd closed his eyes and tipped his head back to let it pour down through the mess of his hair. The water swirling down the drain was running brownish, mostly from where it hit me around his smaller body. Gross. Hopefully he'd think the shower was gross only because of tonight's shenanigans, and not suspect the preexisting condition. "Getting away from him to come and find me was genius. And getting us out of there when I was incapacitated. And taking care of Louie. You think fast on your feet. Thank you for trusting me."

He opened his eyes and blinked at me.

"You earned it," he said simply, and sucked in a shuddering breath. Psyching himself up for something?

I tried to brace myself for what came next. Letting me down easy, possibly. Except that it wouldn't be easy. If he tried to let me down now, it'd hurt worse than that fall in the stairwell. That, I'd healed from.

"I always assumed my way was the best way," he said after a moment. "My people's way. That everyone fends for himself, takes the consequences of bad decisions alone. We don't—" His chest heaved with another convulsive deep breath. "We don't love." The words came out so quietly I almost didn't understand what I'd heard. "That's not something we do."

Then it sank in.

And the tightening, twisting pain in my chest did, in fact, hurt worse than the fall. Yep. This was the fairy version of "it's not you, it's me."

My arms shook with the need to pull him close and never let him go. I might lose my mind if I never kissed him again.

But Raven had just gotten away from one greedy, possessive alpha who didn't care about what he wanted.

"You don't need to explain," I said, and I sounded like a robot, because if I let the slightest emotion seep into my voice, I'd lose my fragile grip on my self-control. "You don't owe me anything. You own me, actually."

"For the sake of your mortal sensibilities, I'd like to say I don't really own you, but in order for the magic to work, it had to be real." He went all shifty, gazing over my shoulder. "I don't suppose you can feel it?"

"I can feel it. I'm always going to know where you are. Do you feel it too?"

His eyes snapped back to me. "And that doesn't bother you? That you—that we're—you'll never be free of me!"

Maybe I hadn't collapsed in tears, but that didn't mean I was running on a long fuse, either. What I had left of my patience abruptly exploded.

"Okay, your kind doesn't love," I snapped, leaning forward into his space, wishing I could keep all the hurt and heartbreak inside, but knowing I'd lost that battle. "You won't ever feel about me the way I feel about you. Fine. I fucking get it. And it's all right, because I did everything because I love you, not because I expect you to love me. But do you not understand what it even means? In the abstract? Raven. I love you. Of course I don't want to be fucking free of you! I want to mate you, and keep you, and never let you go, and I want you to want that too, except you can't. Okay? It's not complicated!"

He gazed up at me, long lashes glittering with water, lips parted. Like something out of a story, one of those water spirits that were so beautiful actual gods fell on their knees.

"Tony, ah. We don't love, but we—that is, I mean, I—oh—"

One kiss, just one, bending my neck down so I could nip at his lower lip.

"Mmm. It's not that, it's not that I don't know what love is, but I'm trying to—"

I didn't want to hear it. He could toss me the rest of the way off the metaphorical cliff in a few minutes.

Another kiss, and he melted against me, tipped back over the arm that went around him without my conscious volition. When I pushed a thigh between his legs, he moaned, and now his cock had joined the party. Mine hadn't ever gone down, and it stabbed him in the stomach without shame.

Raven pulled his mouth away, thrust against my leg, and bit the side of my neck, teeth sharper than a human's, stinging, fucking perfect.

"That's what you do, isn't it?" he gasped, and nipped me again, and now it was my turn to tip my head back and groan, that bite zinging all the way down to my balls, weakening my knees. "Bite. To mate. To show how you feel. I can't tell you the way you'd want, but I can show you, too, if you let me."

Oh, hell, I'd knot him against the wall of the shower, and then we'd be screwed, still not washed up and exhausted and stumbling around pulling the shower curtain down.

Instead, I gave in to gravity and knelt down in front of him, grabbing him by the hips.

"Oh!" He caught at my shoulders for balance, but I solved that problem by pinning him against the wall. "I was going to do that for you," he said breathlessly, as I nuzzled into his abdomen. "That is, assuming you're intending to—oh, you are," because I couldn't wait one more moment, and I wrapped my mouth around his cock and sucked him down.

His hands flew up to my head, burying in my hair, and I didn't resist him, going where he pushed me more willingly than any tiger owned by a fairy had probably ever gone. The shower beat down on my shoulders, surrounding me in noise and heat, and Raven writhed all slippery and smooth under my hands, only for me.

The cries he let out as I sucked and swallowed echoed off the ceiling and his scent enveloped me, sweet and lemony and suffused with sex, his pleasure filling all my senses.

Gods, I wanted to feel him come. And I did, as he clenched his fingers and nearly tugged my hair out by the roots, thrust into me, and wailed, shooting into my eager mouth and down my throat.

Raven's come tasted like a lemon drop cocktail, lemon sugar on the edge and then the bite of vodka on the back of my palate, only salty, and more intoxicating than any bartender could craft. For a moment, the tether between us went blindingly bright, the magic of Raven's ownership of me strengthening and pulsing. I moaned around his cock, the sensation that washed through me akin to an orgasm, only in some nonphysical part of me I didn't even have a word for.

He gave a full-body shudder too, and then after a few more convulsive twitches of his fingers, he went limp against the wall.

I pulled off and leaned my forehead against his hip, catching my breath and savoring the lingering heat of him on my tongue.

But I wasn't done with him. My cock throbbed painfully, the shower's attenuated spray a horrible tease, but that could wait. I'd been waiting a lot longer than it had for a certain type of satisfaction. Besides, Raven deserved the full service package, now that he wasn't trying talk me out of using my mouth anymore.

And if I wrecked Raven completely, reducing him to a whimpering mess that I'd have to carry to bed and fuck all night, while he cried with pleasure instead of sorrow and fear and strain, I could live with that too.

When I slid a hand under his thigh and put it over my shoulder, he just let out a soft moan. When I lifted the second, forcing him to brace his back against the wall, he yelped. Pushing his pretty balls and softened cock up and out of my way got a, "Tony, what—oh," followed by a drawn-out, filthy moan as I fastened my mouth over his tight, pink hole and sucked as hard as I'd sucked his cock.

Oh, I'd known he'd be even sweeter, here between his legs at the center of him, and I'd been right. I teased my raspy tongue around in a circle, tracing his rim, forcing him to spread himself wider by getting my head between his inner thighs. The angle gave me a crick in my neck, but I wouldn't have cared if it killed me. So soft, so delicate, stretching around my tongue as I fucked it into him, and how the hell had my enormous cock and knot fit in him, much less pounded into him…

Raven's hips juddered as he tried to ride my face, spreading his legs, moaning, grinding his hole against my lapping tongue.

Gods, I was so hard too, hard enough that I might be willing to try knotting the bathtub's overflow drain if I didn't get inside him soon, but he was reaching a crescendo, letting out high-pitched, helpless wails as he bounced up and down and tilted his body to seek out more friction, more of anything I could give him.

When I thought he might explode if I didn't, I pulled back, slipped my hand between his legs, and shoved two fingers into his wet, loosened hole, crooked at just the right angle.

Raven collapsed, red-faced and shaking, his still-limp cock dripping another spurt of come. I licked it off the tip, kissed the side of his shaft, nuzzled his balls.

"Tony," he murmured. "Tony, oh." As if he'd forgotten any other words.

Good.

"I love you," I said, because I'd forgotten any other words, too. The sound he made at that was something I knew I'd replay in my mind late at night for years.

Getting to my feet, keeping him upright, and then turning us around a bit—with him draped against my side half-conscious—so I could finally wash myself off with some soap took a lot of concentration, and some fumbling. But I got us there eventually, managed to rub us both down with a towel, and then swung him up in my arms again, carrying him out of the bathroom and tumbling us both into my bed still dripping but mostly clean.

He sprawled where I'd tossed him, wet hair spread out enough to get both of my pillows all damp. Half-lidded eyes regarded me lazily, gleaming like obsidian. His gaze snagged on my erection, which stood out purplish and rock-hard and eager, finding his direction as unerringly as our magical tie.

I surveyed him too, from the top of his silky, messy head down to his still-perfect-when-bruised toes, pausing in between at small pink nipples and the elegant lines of ribs and the slight jut of his hipbones. Maybe I should kiss his toes and make it better. But there was so much else I wanted to kiss. Paralyzed with indecision, I leaned down over him, breathing him in. Clean, safe, satisfied, and in my bed. This moment could last forever, as far as I was concerned, with or without ever actually having an orgasm of my own.

"Are you going to listen to me now?" Raven asked, voice a little slurred. "Or do you need to fuck me first before you'll be calm enough?"

Oh, he always had the best ideas, one of the biggest reasons why I loved him. I rolled on top, nudging his legs open with my knees, and reached over to dig around in the drawer of my nightstand. I didn't bring people home very often, but I knew I had to have a tube of something back there.

"I can multitask." My cockhead rubbed behind his balls, not quite slippery enough to push inside him, but wet and satiny, and my eyes rolled back in my head. Yeah, I might be lying about the multitasking. I found the lube and popped it open. "I'll listen while I fuck you. Stop telling me why you'll never love me, though. That's not going to put me in the mood."

The ensuing heavy beat of silence reminded me how tough an audience Raven could be when my jokes sucked.

"Fuck me, then," Raven said, and shifted his legs to give me more room. "After today. After, after everything." His voice shook. "I want you inside me, where I can feel you."

Prepping him didn't take long, even though part of me wanted to linger, in case I never got to stroke his hole again, watch him squirm, see the tightness of his rim stretching to accommodate my fingers, all pink and shiny. You never knew with fairies. Fae things tended to up and disappear.

But I needed him too badly to wait any longer, and once I'd slicked him up enough that he wouldn't get hurt I lined up and sank in deep.

As I bottomed out, the thickest part of my cock opening him up, Raven wrapped his arms around me, clutching my back, pulling me down almost frantically.

"I thought I'd watched you die," he said wildly, and his voice hitched. My chest tight, I clutched him close, braced my knee, and thrust into him, so deep I punched the air out of him in a gasp. "Tony, I thought you were, yes, that, please—you were willing to, to sacrifice everything for me, and no one of my own kind would ever have done it—Tony!"

Fucking Christ, so tight, so perfect around me, his nails gouging down my back, his panting breaths echoing in my ear as I buried my face in his hair, his magic lighting me up from the inside the way I was filling him to the limit, the grip of his thighs around my hips, urging me on.

There was that humming in my ears again, the way the coin had sounded, almost. Only this had a higher, more melodic timbre, and I knew it was him, his pleasure, his desire, his inherent magic, soaking through my skin and suffusing me.

I lost myself in him, shaking apart, my climax torn out of me by the whirlwind that was Raven. He cried out as I knotted him, forcing it as deep as it could go and pushing my come into him, and he pulled me even deeper than that, as if he wanted to consume me.

The world came back slowly, in fits and starts: the sweat cooling on my shoulders and legs, his still-damp hair stuck to my face, my breath stuttering as he shifted a bit under me, tugging on my knot—and on that point under my ribs where his magic had burrowed in and taken up residence.

Raven was petting me, soothing, up and down my spine. He sighed, turned his head, nuzzled my ear, kissed the side of my neck and made me shiver.

"Were you listening?" he asked, the words hushed but still startling in the quiet of the bedroom. "We don't love. We don't even trust. We hide our names, we make careful bargains, we form alliances, and we dally with those we find beautiful. But we never sacrifice."

He sighed and kissed me again. Was that all? Would a subtle fairy lover have understood what he meant? I didn't, although if I hadn't been so bone-weary and wrung out, maybe I'd have been able to make sense of it. To me, it mostly sounded like my old college buddy's descriptions of going to law school. He was grateful, I could tell that much. But I'd never wanted his gratitude.

But hang on, there was something tickling the edge of my brain…

I managed to push myself up on my elbows to see his face, and I stole a kiss along the way, lingering, soft and sweet.

When I pulled back, his eyes were troubled, a furrow between his arched brows.

"Tony, I—"

"You sacrificed yourself for me, though," I cut in abruptly. "Or you tried, anyway. When we were on the stairs. You tried to give yourself up so they'd let me go. And then you helped me get out of there when I couldn't move on my own, even though you could've died if my plan didn't work. Which you didn't think it would."

He laughed a little, shaking his head. "Be honest, if you were me, would you have immediately said, ‘Oh, what a well-thought-out idea, I have complete confidence'? You jumped through a flaming hoop on the command of a man with rhinestones on his jacket."

"Speaking of sacrificing for you," I grumbled, and raised my eyebrows at him. "And don't dodge the question."

"I know," he said softly. "Believe me, I know. Also, those were statements, and you didn't ask a quest—oh, very well, there's no need to flash those eyes at me. Yes. I was willing to sacrifice for you. Because you earned my trust. I told you that. No one ever has before. You changed me," he added, sounding not all that pleased about it, "and I think, I think I belong to you as much as you do to me, actually."

Not without a mating bite, but I choked that comment down. Slowly. I needed to think before I acted, for once, and go slowly, because I suddenly realized, with a warm, joyous ballooning of hope, that Raven hadn't been trying to let me down easy—or at all. He'd been trying to understand something that had, for the entirety of his life, been not only totally beyond his comprehension but outside the fabric of his reality. When we'd met, his disregard for anything beyond his need to undo his magical fuck-up had left me baffled and angry and vengeful, beating my head against a brick wall of a completely different way of existing in the world.

But I'd made the effort. I'd pushed, and I'd tried, and I'd worked at it stubbornly (and sometimes suicidally) until I'd helped him to a solution that fit his parameters. Raven was worth it.

He seemed to be trying to do the same. For me. To act like he loved me the human way, even if he couldn't wrap his brain around the idea that he might be capable of feeling it, too.

Fairies. For fuck's sake.

I kissed him again, because I could.

"Answer me this, then," I said, after thinking about it for a second. I had to meet him halfway on this, try to put it in terms that would be common ground. "Would being with me make you happy? You know, the human way. Kind of human. Like me. Sharing a bed, meals, a life. Somewhere that's not Vegas, maybe? Not sleeping with anyone else, I can't do the free and easy, anyone who's beautiful thing."

"Yes," he answered without hesitation. His dawning smile lit him up from the inside, making him even more luminous than usual. " Yes ."

Another kiss seemed necessary, and then more kisses, and then I'd started to rock my hips again, lazily feeling out how much I'd stretched and owned him, how much more thoroughly I could do it again.

I took him like that, at my leisure. At our leisure. Free of anyone else, or any expectations. All mine, because I could make him happy in a way no one else in two realms could.

We didn't break my bed like we'd destroyed the ones at those two hotels, mainly because my one investment in decent furniture had been a steel-reinforced, alpha-proof bed frame, but it creaked ominously, and Raven laughed, high and unselfconscious, dissolving into giggles when I nipped at his throat and growled.

Somewhere near the end of the night, as the desert's pink sunrise started to filter through the half-open blinds, I tucked Raven closer against my chest, staring up at the shadowy ceiling. His head fit perfectly on my shoulder, and I only breathed in his hair and started to choke once in a while, something I'd need to get used to.

"There's one thing I want," I said, and Raven stirred and murmured something incoherent, mostly asleep and annoyed that I wouldn't shut up, if I had to guess. I squeezed his waist. "Seriously. One thing. Will you ever trust me enough to tell me your name, do you think?"

He didn't answer me for long enough that I thought he'd probably pretend he hadn't heard me.

And then he said, "I already did. Now will you let me sleep? You may have noticed, but I had a long day."

He already had. That second night, when he'd cried.

"Raven? Really?"

His head popped up, indignation in every line of his expression. "As if you have any room to talk, Tony the Tiger!"

"That wasn't what I—there's nothing wrong with being called Raven—"

"No, there certainly isn't!"

"—but you gave me your real name? When that's something you'd never do. With anyone. Right?"

His ferocious scowl lost some force in the context of his sex-fluffed hair and kiss-swollen lips.

"I already told you," he gritted out, "you're an exception. To everything. I couldn't resist you, and at this moment you're making me regret it. Now will you, please, for the love of all the spirits of earth and air, go. To. Sleep?"

He dropped back down onto my shoulder with more force than necessary, tugged the blanket up, grumbled, and squirmed around, settling himself like an angry cat.

I closed my eyes and held him tightly, safe and warm and—truly mine. Not because I'd claimed him, although I had, and not because I'd fought for him and jumped through hoops and nearly died for him.

Because he loved me, in not so many words. His exception. For a fairy, that had practically been hearts and flowers.

Without a care in the world, and with everything I cared most about in the world snuggled in my arms, I did as he told me, and I went to sleep. It really had been a seriously long fucking day.