Chapter 17 Lyx
SEVENTEEN
Lyx
When Cav begins, he doesn’t look away from Lyx. He tosses a blue dart and lands it easily in the triple ring. The next dart sticks, and so does the final one, until there’s a perfect arc moving clockwise around the board.
Through it all, he’s still staring at her. “Normally, I’d give you a chance, but I really want this prize.”
The dip in his voice makes her stomach clench, but she does not waver, no matter how her confidence has nosedived. She can do this. She’s played this game in countless ports with Tidus breathing down her neck; she can handle a cocksure dragon with trick shots.
Her first dart lands next to his. Cav whistles, but Lyx keeps her focus and manages to match all of his throws.
For once, Cav has no commentary. He’s silent while he admires the board before he moves to collect the darts again.
When he returns, there’s a proud glint in his eye.
“I see you don’t like to be underestimated. ”
They keep throwing back and forth, Cav running around the board and Lyx following after. When he misses, she smirks. When she misses, he praises her anyway, and that makes her grit her teeth and fumble the rest of her turn.
When they’re nearly done, he leans against the high-top table and takes a drink. “What do you say, best two out of three?”
She wants to reject him. Surely she could catch him in time, but the promise of competition swirls inside her. Besides, she has a sneaking suspicion he’s letting her keep up as some excuse to keep this going. In any case, she agrees.
He wins the first round. Halfway through the second, it’s clear he’s pulling away, and that sets a smile on his face. “Probably a good time for you to start thinking about that fantasy.”
“You’re not going to win.”
“Humor me, then.” When she misses and curses, he takes the familiar path to the board and returns with the darts, but he doesn’t throw them. He turns back to her. “What do you dream about? What’s one thing you wish for?”
Mockingly, she tilts her head. “Killing you. What my life would be like if I had.”
He pricks the end of a dart against his finger. “Sounds like you should let me win so you can play that out.”
“Just take your turn.”
He takes his time instead, tipping back his ale and glancing toward her mug. It’s still full, the liquid warm from the evening. Surprised, he sets down his own drink. “You don’t like it?”
Surely this is an attempt at distraction, but Cav looks genuinely perturbed. Her skin prickles under the sudden attention. “It’s not to my taste.” She jerks her chin toward the board. “Now, throw.”
But the game is all but forgotten by Cav, his darts discarded on the table. “Why didn’t you say something? I’ll get you something else.”
Lyx eyes the lean-to bar. “They don’t have anything else.”
That doesn’t stop Cav. He moseys toward the bartender, a gnarled and sullen man who shakes his head before Cav finishes speaking. Cav leans against the bar, withdrawing more coins from his pouch and tilting his head knowingly.
After a moment, the bartender grumbles and crouches behind the bar. When he stands, he slides a bottle of yellow liquid into Cav’s hand. Grinning, Cav snags the bottle and returns to Lyx with a proud sway of his hips.
“He’s not a fan of ale either. I thought I remembered that.” With his teeth, Cav tugs the cork loose and presents the bottle to her. “From his personal stash.”
Lyx blinks. The smell of citrus makes her mouth water.
She isn’t sure what to do. The action is so small, but it hits her like an anchor.
No one else would have gotten her this; she wouldn’t have even done it for herself.
Depths know Tidus wouldn’t have even noticed, just happy she left more ale for him.
A word she’s never used springs to the end of her tongue, buzzing against her lips like a trapped bee.
Cav raises his brows at her silence. “You don’t like lemon?”
“Thanks,” she blurts.
It’s foreign and unfamiliar, a language she’s never spoken. Her emphasis is so off that it might as well be sarcasm, but Cav’s nose wrinkles when he grins. “Does it pain you to say that?”
Her entire body feels hot under his gaze. She busies herself grabbing the darts and shoving them back into his hands. “I won’t make a habit of it.”
His gold tooth glints. “No, we couldn’t have that.”
Once Cav lines up to throw, Lyx steals a drink from the bottle.
Her eyes slip shut as soon as she tastes it.
It’s fresh and crisp, so refreshing she drinks nearly a quarter of it before she realizes.
When she opens her eyes again, Cav is watching her.
She nearly chokes, dabbing at her mouth to disguise it.
“You know, you don’t smile much,” Cav notes. “It’s nice when you do.”
A sickly feeling swarms in her stomach. It’s oddly nauseating, but almost…
nice. She doesn’t know what to make of that.
All she knows is the feeling grows stronger every time he looks at her.
She needs to turn his attention elsewhere, or the thoughts in her head will continue to spin.
Stepping beside him, she keeps her eyes on the dartboard. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
She shouldn’t ask. She doesn’t care, but it’s better to know her enemy. It’ll make all of this easier. “What’s your fantasy?” With a fingernail, she traces the rim of her bottle. “It must be rather shocking if you’ve dedicated an entire experiment to it.”
Cav finishes his turn in contemplation. Only then does he speak. “What isn’t my fantasy?”
She hates to imagine that. Hates picturing Cav in a thousand positions, a thousand scenarios, a thousand kinks. It makes her knees weak. She throws a dart that completely misses the board.
Cav doesn’t taunt her. “I like the thought of being useful. Being bossed around. Acting up, driving someone mad, testing the limits.”
Lyx finishes her lackluster turn. “No surprise there.”
Cav’s lip twitches as he retrieves the darts from the board. “Truth be told, I enjoy most things. I like giving other people what they need.” He lines himself up, but his eyes slide to hers. “I like intensity.”
Thud. She’s not sure if the sound is the dart or her pulse. His bicep flexes when he throws. Hunger stretches within her. She wants to hear more, to know why, to dig her teeth into his muscle until he continues.
“I like to be consumed by the experience.” Thud. “To be consumed by someone else.” Thud. “But my biggest fantasy is the most boring thing you can imagine.”
It’s so hard to breathe with him next to her, but it’s worse when she realizes he missed all three of his shots.
He returns from the board with the darts in hand. “You’ll laugh if I tell you.”
She swallows roughly. “From the sound of things, you’d get off on that.”
His lips twitch upward. He keeps her in suspense when he steps away for her to play her turn.
She hadn’t realized the game is almost over.
It takes all her focus to land her throws, but she manages to catch up to him.
It hardly feels like a victory. Cav retrieves the darts without complaint, and she wonders if there’s more than one game going on here.
Twilight settles around them. Creatures whir and call in the trees, surrounding them in a dull hum that seems to preempt something. It vibrates through her toes and the tips of her fingers, a reminder of the secret Cav still hasn’t shared.
She can’t ask again. She can’t show him how curious it’s made her, how desperately she wants to know the singular, dullest fantasy that occupies his mind.
It’s as if he knows it, lifting his tankard and taking a long drink.
His throat bobs when he swallows, and then, he licks his lips, like he’s waiting to see how long she’ll wait.
Did he take his turn already? She can’t be sure.
Perhaps he’s taking mercy on her. Perhaps that’s why he finally speaks. “I dream about things you don’t believe in.”
Her body buzzes like she’s strung up over the Great Abyss, preparing to take the deepest plunge. Cav is still, like watching her is enough to sate him. Anticipation coils inside her, a screaming need that threatens to shriek out of her. She wants to know more, she wants to hear it, she wants —
“I dream about love.”
The word jolts through her. She doesn’t speak. It’s too risky when her throat is this tight, like a pitiful sound might slip through if she opens her mouth.
Cav presses her darts into her palm with a heavy look in his eyes that drag her in deeper. “I dream about knowing someone fully. Every intricacy. Every secret. Every regret. I dream about giving myself to someone, and trusting what they’ll do with me.”
His palm is hot over hers, warming the metal between them.
“I dream about fucking like that. Slow. Deep. Languid. Staring into each other’s eyes so that we see everything.”
The word is little more than a breath. His face is so close that she can see the wound still healing on his mouth from the indentation of her teeth. By her feet, his tail flicks back and forth, never quite brushing her ankle.
His gaze trails over her face. “Learning every inch of each other. Every fluttering eyelash, every trembling lip, every hitching breath.”
Only then does she realize her lips are parted, her heart thrumming in her throat. Everything around them fades as the light begins to glow through the cracks of Cav’s scales.
“We don’t stop when we come.”
A white-hot image ignites in Lyx’s mind. We. You and me. Like the two of them are as connected as she’s always hoped and feared, her obsession roiling inside her and mirrored in him.
“We keep going,” he murmurs. “We fuck through the mess. Ruin the sheets. Work ourselves past the point of breaking. We can’t take any more, but we don’t want to stop, so we just go so…fucking…slow.”
A sound blooms in the back of her throat. She clamps her mouth to keep it from escaping, legs shaking as her fingers curl into fists. The darts are trapped between them, stabbing into both of their hands in a reminder she doesn’t want to let go of.
Then Cav retracts, leaving her body searing under his eyes. “That’s what I dream about.”