Chapter Twenty-Two

I’m really proud of the fact that I make it through two songs.

But by the end of the second one, we’ve given up trying to emulate a waltz—and it is we, not just me pushing my body closer to his. He’s hanging onto me, breathing harder with every peal of music, formal dance moves deteriorating into his hips grinding against me and one of us groans, and that’s it.

I grab the back of his head as a new song starts up. “Hex—”

“Yes,” he answers, no, demands.

My breathy laugh billows his hair. “I didn’t even—”

He seizes my wrist, and the next thing I know is a coil of shadow, a brush of chill—

Then we’re in my suite.

I stand stricken for a moment, but Hex is in action. His teeth sink into my neck and his arms tether around my body with none of the propriety of being in public holding him back.

The sensation of having him against me, clawing at me, fogs my brain until I suck in a sharp breath and grab him by the shoulders.

“Hex.” I push him back enough to look at him. “Did you portal us to my suite?”

He fumbles at the buttons on my nutcracker suit. “Mm.”

“From the middle of a crowded ballroom?”

He’s halfway down my chest when his eyes lift to mine. His lips are parted, fingers twisted in the open edges of my jacket, and his brows form a triangle over his pause.

He cringes. “That was probably bad form, wasn’t it?”

I laugh. It turns pitchy and squeaks because this is categorically hysterical, but also the proof that he wants me this badly is rationality napalm. Like I honest to god should be concerned by how pliant I am for him at this moment. What does he want, anything, everything, it’s his, it always was.

Need ribbons through me, chasing away any humor, anything but his lips and his body and my attention on those two things. I cup his face in my hands and kiss him, a moan rippling up from my core as I rememorize his taste, his smell, a sensory siren song of that cinnamon bourbon old-fashioned but a thousand times warmer and more intoxicating.

He moves against me, his hands still gripping my suit jacket, and he breaks the kiss when he lowers down from where he’d risen up on his toes. His eyes are shut, his breathing still hard and fast.

“Coal,” he says, coarse, and it tugs at the base of my stomach. “You’re very good at that.”

I smile and lean in to kiss one of his shut eyelids, the skin paper-thin and so delicate. “Good at what?”

“Going—ah, going slow,” he stutters. I kiss his other eyelid. “Making me feel—”

He jolts and his eyes fly open, realization shining as he looks up at me.

The realization deepens to intention. “Loved,” he whispers.

My smile will never go away. I’m going to be an absolutely insufferable asshole for the foreseeable future.

Hex shakes himself and tightens his grip on my suit jacket. “But I—” He leans in and rests his forehead against my chin. “Can we go slow later?”

It takes me a beat to realize what he’s telling me. That he’s telling me something, asking me for it, and a new kind of heat sets every muscle on fire until I wonder if I’m glowing.

“What do you want?” I whisper, moving to press tiny kisses down his cheekbone.

Resolution descends over him in the way he squares his shoulders, still holding on to my coat, and he looks up at me with a level stare.

“Do not let what happens next undercut the meaning of my words,” he tells me.

I frown. “Okay?”

“We can go slow later,” he repeats. He licks his lips, rolls one in between his teeth. “But I believe the correct way to say this is, Right now, I need you to fuck me. ”

Magic sizzles around him and what looks like a wad of white fabric materializes over our heads.

Without missing a beat, Hex bats it aside, and it bounces across the floor before coming to a rest by the wall.

It’s some kind of ghost decoration.

A laugh gathers in my throat and is one millisecond from exploding out of me. All my thoughts go from him using his portal in the middle of the Christmas Eve Ball to now this when—

Holy shit.

Did he say—

I whip my gaze to him, wide-eyed.

He stares up at me like he asked me to place a food order and he’s just hanging out until I fork over my credit card.

“Are you all right up there?” he asks. “Need me to say it again?”

“No. Yes, but no. Oh my god.”

“Coal—”

“There’s a gauze ghost on my bedroom floor because you told me to fuck you.”

Hex looks caught between laughing and wincing and finally just drags his hands over his head with a self-deprecating moan. “I’m a bit off tonight. This is rather dangerous. I—”

He stops with a weighted exhale, one that trembles enough to make me step forward and touch his jaw. He looks up at me and shakes his head but there are tears at the edges of his eyes, I think I’ve experienced the full width of human emotion in the last forty minutes alone.

“Shit, sweetheart,” I say, then he’s in my arms and I couldn’t be holding him closer if he was actually a part of me. He shudders and I push my face into his neck, inhaling him, and I might be shaking too.

I think about lifting him and walking us to my bed and letting us both lie together; I think about making jokes over the ghost that I am definitely going to keep.

But an energy emanates from him, an unspoken request that I consent to immediately. So I just stand there, holding him, and I think we need this simple act as much as fulfilling the desire that’s sparking at the back of my mind.

He stirs, putting his face to the side of mine. “I didn’t know if I’d see you again. It was only a few days, but I missed you so much, and I— Coal ,” he whines, and it ignites that desire down my spine, “what have you done to me?”

“Nothing yet,” I say. It’s a question. An offer. Everything all in one.

But when I go to kiss him again, he pushes me back against the closed door of my suite, his hand flat on the bare part of my chest that he uncovered.

“Let me,” he whispers. His eyes flick up to mine, the lashes wet, his pupils gleaming.

I go slack against the door, compelled by his gaze on me, by his presence. It isn’t until he drops to his knees that I choke out a startled noise and lean forward like I’m going to stop him.

“Hex.” It rushes out, panicked, pleading.

He looks up at me, and holy fuck, the sight alone. Him reddened and disheveled from our frantic making out and all the emotion, lips puffy and eyes glistening. He reaches up and hooks his fingers in my belt. I rock back against the door and throw my eyes to the ceiling and breathe, slowly, in through my nose, out.

“Hex,” I say again to the white panels above us. “I—uh, believe you told me to do something. This is not that. This is—”

“This is me realizing that, in all our time together”—he undoes my belt; it tugs my attention down and his eyes lock mine in place—“I haven’t gotten to taste you.” The button slides out of my pants, the zipper rattles with metallic clicks as it lowers. “This is me getting us back to a place where you can do what I told you to do.” He curls his fingers in the edge of my pants and boxers and lowers both, eyes still on mine, wrenching my heart. “Because if I let you take me to bed right now, I know you would worship me, and I don’t want that. Yet. I want you to ravage me first.”

Holy fuck —

Then that mouth, that intentional, careful, quiet, exasperating, magical, sexy fucking mouth is on me, and I slam back with a heavy thud, one hand scrabbling at the door above my head as if there’s something to hold on to that’s capable of keeping me from going buoyant and floating away. My other hand gropes blindly, briefly grabbing his head before retreating, and he does this thing with his tongue and hums and I—

Hex pulls back, looks up at me, and says only, simply, “Grab my hair, please,” then he’s on me again.

Please. Fucking please.

I comply, fingers knotting in the strands until the whole tangle of it comes loose from its tie. He hums again, a needy little moan, and the laugh that ripples out of me is dark and heady.

Oh, he’s good. He’s very, very good. Perhaps too good because my god, if we’re just getting started and he’s already able to play me this succinctly?

Though, who are we kidding. He can play me with a single look. I think he just knows he can now, and this really is the end of me.

I tighten my grip in his hair and his moan sharpens into something desperate, enhanced by the way he sucks harder and my vision goes to starry space. I think I see a meteor, cuts of orange and glowing scarlet.

I pull again, harder, and he repeats his own form of torture until a champagne-like tingle starts in the base of my spine.

Before it rises too high, I shove him away with a gasp, a growl, and yank him to his feet. His face flashes with a smug grin that I smother in my mouth, eating at his lips and tasting myself on him as I kick off my shoes and pants then chase him backwards until we topple in a heap on my bed.

My clothes are already mostly off and the rest fall away easily; his come apart in starts and stops until I hear a jagged rip and realize I’ve torn his shirt off him. It thrusts me into a transitory moment where I can’t remember ever ripping someone’s clothes off before, not even at my neediest, not with anyone. But I also remember what he said once, how he was surprised when I didn’t kick things off between us by having us do just this.

The memory hazes my desire, lets me pause for a breath so I see him beneath me, half naked, looking all kinds of crushingly decadent with his hair in shadowy tendrils across my pillow and his eyelashes fanned against his pale cheekbones, arms out by his sides, chest heaving and sweat-sheened already. There is an almost jarring difference between the Hex who’d told me he was surprised I took things slow, who seemed to expect me to use him and shove him out the door, and this one, who senses my pause and looks up at me with a predatory grin.

He asked me what I’ve done to him.

But he was always this. I just get to see it now, and he’s letting me have him here, in my bed.

Fuck. He’s in my bed again.

This is what he’s done to me too, because he’s right, I absolutely would be going slow and savoring him and edging him to the limits of both our sanities—and I will. Later. But he’s the first and only person I’ve ever wanted this badly, this all-consumingly, and the reciprocal want I see in the goose bumps that walk up his long torso, the shiver that quakes the skin across his collarbone, gives me permission to meet him there.

His grin softens when I stay arched over him. “Coal?”

“I missed you too,” I say in a rush. All that sentimental poetry he inspires in me starts to bubble up, and I think I let some of it slip out as I devour him again, kisses becoming catechisms of promises and plans and apologies. But now, now, he rises up to meet me at each one, and says some of his own to me, and it’s a trade, an exchange, no secrets or worries or hesitation.

Just us.

Light turns my eyelids golden and I rise up out of sleep slowly at first, then in a jarring torrent of memory.

Hex.

Coming back to my suite last night.

God, my room is trashed again, but for a different and way superior reason. Among the discarded clothing, there are, if I remember correctly, at least two more magically generated ghosts and three rather creepy fake spiders, all courtesy of the delirious, blissed-out curse words I got out of him last night. In Spanish and English, because I’m an overachiever in this area.

I grin wickedly and roll over—

The bed is empty.

I flare up, feeling the sheets, eyes snapping around the room. “Hex?”

No response.

He didn’t—no, not again. Just, flat-out no, he’s here, somewhere, he has to be—

I scramble to grab my phone, drop it, pick it back up, and swipe it open to a missed text from him.

HEX

Don’t worry—I did not leave. I’m in Iris’s room for breakfast. Join us when you’re awake.

The absolute tidal wave that is relief surging through my chest cavity flattens me back on the bed. My body actually vibrates a little.

I laugh pitifully to the empty room.

Okay. So I might have some attachment issues.

I’ll work on that.

I tug on pajama pants, pocket my phone, and try not to race out of my room too desperately.

Thankfully, there are no staff in the hall just yet as I hurry, shirtless and hair gone wild, to Iris’s room.

Her door is cracked open. “Iris—Iris, do you know where—”

Hex is sitting on the couch in her suite, legs folded, a cup of tea in his hands. He’s wearing one of my Yale hoodies, my boxers. His eyeliner is smeared and his hair is swept over one shoulder and he looks up at me, all gleaming joy.

He lowers the cup from his lips. “You’re up,” he says brightly.

I cross the room, vault the back of the couch, drop to my knees on the cushions, and kiss him quite senseless.

“Coal!” Iris chirps. “You made him spill tea all over my—”

“You were gone,” I say into Hex’s mouth.

He pushes back, startled. “You didn’t see my text? You were sleeping so deeply. I didn’t—”

I drag him back and capture his mouth again. “I saw it. But you were still gone .”

“You needed sleep.”

“I need you .”

“You have me.”

“Not enough, not—”

Iris clears her throat.

Oh. Yeah. This is her suite.

I drop onto the couch next to Hex and gather him into my arms. My chest unwinds, the feel of his weight pushing down on my anxiety.

“You stole him,” I accuse her.

She grabs a napkin from the tray of breakfast food and dabs at the tea spot on the carpet. “Yes. That has been my master plan all along.”

Hex sets his now empty cup of tea onto the coffee table and settles back against me, head twisted so he can look at me.

A smile glides across him. The same one echoes on me, and I bump my forehead to him, burying my hand under the edge of the hoodie, palm flush against his warm stomach.

But I do, this time, remember Iris, and I pull back. “Sorry. I’ll try to be less obnoxious. Maybe in a few days. Eh, months. Need to get it out of my system.”

Iris tosses the napkin onto the tray and grabs her coffee cup. She’s in her pajamas, purple, of course, flannel and cozy, which is massive for her. The only time I’ve ever seen her this improper is on Christmas morning.

“You guys are cute,” she says. “Don’t hold back because of me. I’ll get my shit figured out.”

I frown. “It’s shit now?”

Iris’s jaw works.

Her eyes go to her suite’s door as Kris enters.

He looks… a mess, honestly. His hair is clearly unbrushed and in a frizzy bun, pajama pants and T-shirt wrinkled, deep sleepless bruises under his eyes.

I lurch forward instantly. “Are you—”

The smile he gives is forced, exhausted, but he drops onto the couch next to me and slams a gift-wrapped box into my stomach.

I cough, and he goes, “For you to give to Hex.”

I hold his gaze. “Kris.”

He shakes his head, and a hundred things are in that shake. Drop it. For the love of god don’t ask me now.

Something happened. Something—

Iris won’t look at me, and is pointedly not looking at Kris.

Oh, shit.

“Um.” I fiddle with the gift box.

Kris gives me a pleading stare, a talk about literally anything else stare.

Weakly, I spin on Hex. “I… did not get you a Christmas gift.”

His eyebrows go up. “I did not get you one either.”

“No, you did. You came back. Slap a bow on your forehead, that’s all I need.”

He smiles. “Well, likewise.”

“We don’t get anyone gifts,” Kris adds. He rests his chin in his hand, eyes drifting out.

“Well… yeah. But that should change too, right?” I fiddle with the edge of the wrapping paper and say to Hex, “The whole thing became as poisoned and performative as every other aspect of Christmas. Like later today, we’ll open prearranged gifts the staff got for us to give to Dad and vice versa, and it’ll be fake, weird stuff that’ll look good for the cameras. But I should’ve thought ahead and planned to change that and… shit.”

“There’s always next year,” Hex tries. His eyes flash between Kris and Iris too, picking up on that weird energy. But he doesn’t seem surprised by it.

He knows. Whatever happened. She must have told him.

Kris elbows me. Hard. Enough that I grunt.

“Give him the gift,” he says, and I relent.

“Fine, fine, upstaging me.” I hand the box to Hex. “Here. Merry Christmas. Unless it’s terrible, then this is all Kris’s fault.”

Hex takes it and begins to peel at the tape on the paper.

Both Kris and I moan in harmony. We bust up laughing, and it momentarily dispels the weirdness.

“What?” Hex holds, fingers splayed over the box.

“Rip the paper,” I say.

“You don’t save it?”

“It’s recyclable. Rip the paper. It’s part of the fun.”

“Christmas barbarism.” Hex shakes his head, but complies, working his fingers under the edge and ripping a long strip off the box. He flips open the lid, and I can’t see whatever’s in it, but his face breaks out in a big, cheesy grin.

He throws that grin at Kris. “Where did you get this?”

Kris is beaming. “I have connections.”

“Ah, yes, the infamous Christmas black markets.” Hex pulls it out of the box and twists it around for Iris and me to see.

I crack a laugh. Even Iris finally smiles up from the floor.

It’s a black, long-sleeve shirt that has a stocking on it under the words I Deserve Coal in My Stocking.

“I am marked by Christmas yet again.” Hex drapes the shirt against his chest. “Should I wear this today, or is it perhaps too tongue-in-cheek?”

I have so many comebacks to that, starting with some quip about my tongue being in his cheek and ending with wear nothing so I really can put Coal in Your Stocking, but I settle for rocking into him and grazing my teeth on his neck.

Kris bumps his knee against mine. “Wren set up meetings with the winter Holidays, the heads of our noble Houses, and—” He falters, gaze flicking in the general direction of Iris before refixing on me. “And King Neo. First one’s with the winter Holidays in an hour, before all our Christmas Day duties.” He pauses. “Dad said he’ll be there.”

I watch Iris. “How involved in these meetings do you want to be?”

Her eyes pop up to mine. “I haven’t talked to my father yet. But I’d like to listen to what you have to say. As your friend, and as—” Her breath is level and resolved. “And as an Easter representative.”

She misses my proud grin when her gaze drops to stare fixatedly into her coffee.

“Well. Good,” I say slowly, eyes darting between Kris and Iris one more time.

Neither of them look at me now.

Huh.

“Good,” I say again with even more hesitation. “I guess I should go get ready and let you—”

Kris leaps to his feet. Absolutely rockets off the couch. “Me too. I’ll see you there. Merry Christmas and shit.”

He rushes from the room before I can so much as get the first letter of his name out of my mouth.

I drop another look at Iris. Who is still staring down into her coffee like it’ll tell her the secrets of the universe.

Oh no.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.

“We can talk after all these meetings,” she says. Then cuts a pointed look at my bare chest. “Preferably then you’ll have clothes on.”

I follow her gaze.

To see a bruise-like spot on my right pec and another almost directly above my belly button.

Heat pools low in my stomach and I fight a self-satisfied smirk.

My eyes slide to Hex, who looks up at the ceiling in unrepentant faux-innocence.

“Later,” I growl at him and the corners of his lips pulse upwards.

Turning back, I shift to the edge of the couch. “Love-bites or not—”

“Ew.” Iris’s nose curls.

“—you can talk to me.” I sober. “I know he’s my brother, but you’re—”

“Coal, I will egg you if you don’t leave.” She spreads her fingers and a decorated egg appears in her palm. Daisies on a pink shell.

I narrow my eyes at her. She has the same look on her face that Kris had, that silent, pleading do not make me talk about it.

I hold up my hands, surrender. “Fine. But this isn’t over.”

The egg vanishes.

“I swear, I’m okay.” She takes a sip of her coffee and gives a forced smile. “Go. You have a lot of shit to do. You’re a very important person now, Prince Nicholas.”

I hold her gaze. “Not that important.”

She softens. Then glares at Hex. “You’ve made him sappy. Gross.”

“I’ll do my best to turn him cynical again, but no promises.” Hex winks at her and pulls me to my feet. We leave, but the moment we’re in the hall and Iris’s door is shut, I spin on him.

“You know what happened? Did she tell you? What did—”

He pushes up onto his toes and kisses me. “Go talk to your brother.”

“What?” I grip my fingers in the neck of his hoodie. “Wait.”

Back to my room to make out with Hex.

Or to my brother’s room to talk about his heartache.

I grab for my phone.

KRIS

what the fuck happened

KRIS

Nothing

The kitchen’s out of Nutella

That’s it

I’m all torn up about it

kris

don’t try to be funny, that’s not your thing

KRIS

Really, Coal. It isn’t important right now. We can talk later.

Getting tired of that deflection from people.

I grimace. “He confessed his feelings for her, didn’t he?”

Hex sighs. “Possibly.”

“Possibly?”

“It is not my secret to tell, as you once said.”

“Ugh, my honor is infecting you.”

“I like to think I possessed my own deeply set honor system before your involvement. Now,” he hooks the shirt over his shoulder and glances in the direction Kris would have gone, “go. And I don’t want you back in your room until you need to get dressed.”

I sigh. “Dressed. Boo.”

“I am morally opposed to the idea as well.” He puts the barest tip of one finger just next to the hickey on my pec, and as he looks at it, the heat and hunger that intensify his expression fucking do things to me.

I back up from him, shaking my head, fervidly ignoring the fact that I’m wearing loose pajama pants and nothing else, but the hall’s still empty except for us. “You’re trouble, Prince Hex. I think I’ve created some kind of sex monster.”

He laughs, and I can’t imagine that ever not being one of my favorite sounds. “Are you complaining?”

“Fuck no. I’m ruthlessly taking credit.”

“Well, then this monster is now entirely your responsibility.”

Entirely mine.

The teasing dips to a steady simmer as I stare at him for a second, watching those big eyes. “Yeah, you are,” I say with a cockeyed grin.

He flushes.

I get one more step away but swing back as he’s turning to my suite, and I catch his waist and spin him into me and kiss him in the hall, because I can now, because I will never, ever get tired of it.

“After Christmas wraps”—I pull up the hood of his sweatshirt—my sweatshirt—so it boxes us in—“I believe a diplomatic mission to Halloween is in order.”

His nose scrunches in the most innocent, delighted smile. “I think I can arrange that.”

“Good. I have a list of requirements. I’ll have my people send them to your people.”

“I expect nothing less. Christmas is rather demanding.”

“One, I won’t have—wait, we’re demanding, huh?” I lurch in and bite his ear and he yelps.

“Go talk to your brother!” Hex shoves me away, and I let him, stumbling back with my dumb grin and my chest is flushed and god, I’m so in love I might faint.

“And then?” I ask, walking backwards up the hall.

“And then,” he says. He leaves it at that, heavy with insinuation, and I spin away with an exaggerated moan of defeat.

“My boyfriend is insanely sexy!” I shout over my shoulder as I jog up the hall.

Hex’s gasping laugh follows. “And my boyfriend has no sense of decency!”

I whirl to him again, and all I can manage is to let him see how deliriously happy he’s made me. But he’s gonna have to get used to me embarrassing the hell out of him.

We don’t have to hide anymore. We don’t have to lie. I can shout all kinds of romantic nonsense from the rooftops, and I will, I’ll scream it to anyone within earshot, creating all the tabloid headlines myself.

Former human disaster has been thoroughly whipped by a walking contradiction of darkness and sunlight and morbidity and joy.

Eh, too wordy, but he makes me want to be poetic. Maybe:

Christmas Prince admits to having risked war crimes all because of corset vests, black eyeliner, and the things that the Halloween Prince can do with his tongue.

No, it’ll have to be simple. Sometimes simplicity is all we need. Something like:

Prince Coal of Christmas is inexhaustibly in love with Prince Hex of Halloween.

Yeah. I think that fits best of all.