24. All That Glitters is Probably Pyrite
Chapter twenty-four
All That Glitters is Probably Pyrite
Riot
Mine.
The word hit like a phosphorous grenade, obliterating every careful thing Riot had built in the last three hours.
The gentle touches. The blankets. The I’m going to do better this time.
All of it, gone, replaced by the singular, screaming certainty that the creature pinned beneath him on Lilac’s entryway floor was his, and he was never, ever letting go.
The Berserker didn’t see the world the way Brennan Loudon had.
Brennan had seen people as complex, interesting, worth understanding.
The Berserker saw targets and threats and, very rarely, something worth keeping.
Right now, everything was gold at the edges, and in the center of that molten frame was Cass.
And Christ, the way the gold made him look.
Every detail sharpened to something almost painful.
The wet tracks on Cass’s cheeks caught the low light like they’d been painted there.
His pupils were blown so wide his hazel eyes were almost black, and his pulse was visible in the hollow of his throat—fast, fast, fast, like a rabbit’s.
The black t-shirt rode up during the chase, bunched around his ribs, and beneath it was all that golden skin.
He yanked it the rest of the way off, his eyes fixating on the bruises his teeth left in Cass’s skin.
Mine. That mark is mine. Put more on him.
Cass’s chest was heaving. His whole body vibrated under Riot’s weight and Riot could feel his need in the way Cass’s spine arched, the way his fingers grabbed Riot’s forearms instead of pushing them away.
“Make it stop—” His voice broke on the plea. He swallowed and tried again. “Make it stop hurting.”
The sound Riot made was between a groan and a snarl that vibrated through both of them where their bodies pressed together, and he felt Cass’s hips stutter up against him.
Riot’s body knew what a rut felt like. The modifications had made them unpredictable and barely manageable, but this wasn’t a rut.
A rut was an inconvenience, like a bad flu that came with an erection and anger issues.
This had been building since the Neutral Zone, since the car, since the bathroom floor, and it lived in his bones.
His cock ached with it. His jaw ached. His hands ached, curled too tight around Cass’s wrists where he held them.
Ease up. You’re going to bruise him.
He didn’t ease up. Couldn’t. But he shifted his grip so the pressure was on the meat of Cass’s palms instead of the thin skin of his wrists, and some pathetic fragment of Brennan Loudon filed that away as progress.
Cass’s face crumpled. “Please…it hurts. It’s—they keep getting worse, and I can’t—” A full-body shudder racked through him, his stomach muscles visibly seizing, and the sound he made was raw enough to cut through even the gold.
The Berserker wanted to fuck the pain out of him. Brennan wanted to hold him and make soothing noises. Riot, the thing that existed between those two people, wanted to do something else entirely.
He released Cass’s wrists and moved down his body in one fluid motion, and the sound Cass made when Riot’s shoulders forced his thighs apart was something Riot was going to hear in his sleep for the rest of his life.
Taste him. Need to taste him. Need to be inside him somehow, any way, now.
“Riot?” Cass’s voice had gone high and uncertain. He tried to close his legs and Riot’s hands clamped on his thighs before the movement completed.
“Don’t,” Riot snapped. “I need to see you. All of you.”
Cass whimpered and covered his face with his hands as he slowly—so slowly it nearly killed Riot to wait—relaxed his legs. Riot pressed his mouth to the inside of Cass’s thigh, just above the bandage, and felt the muscle jump under his lips as he lapped at the slick and fever-warm skin.
Cass gasped. “What—that’s—”
Riot worked higher, pointed pressure tracing through the slick, following it to its source, and the sounds Cass was making kept climbing in pitch with every inch.
His thighs trembled around Riot’s head. When Riot’s tongue pressed flat against that tight, wet heat, Cass’s entire body arched off the floor.
His hands shot down, fingers yanking at Riot’s hair hard enough to sting, and the sound he made was something between a scream and a prayer, cracked down the middle with shock.
“Riot, you can’t—that’s not—”
That’s not clean. That’s not right. That’s not what that part of the body is for.
Riot could hear every Elysian platitude Cass was trying to form and he licked deeper to drown them out.
He pushed past the resistance, felt that tight ring of muscle give way against his tongue, and a low moan ripped out of Cass.
“Riot!” Cass was gasping, his hips twitching upward as he pulled harder on Riot’s hair. “Oh heavens, oh heavens…”
“I told you I was going to bury my face in this delicious cunt,” Riot growled, slowly stroking Cass’s cock as he lapped at his hole. He wanted to live here forever, right between Cass’s thighs, drinking him down. He sealed his mouth over his hole and sucked, and Cass screamed.
His body bucked up against Riot’s mouth with a strength that heat-wracked Omegas weren’t supposed to have. His cock was hard in Riot’s hand, leaking steadily, and every time Riot’s tongue pushed inside him his whole body pulsed and dribbled more slick down Riot’s chin.
More. Deeper. I could eat him alive and it wouldn’t be enough.
The only thing Riot could think about was getting as deep inside Cass’s body as physically possible with his tongue, about tasting him from the inside, about reducing him to sounds and shaking and the wet, desperate clench of muscle.
Riot let the gold take over enough to devour, let his hands grip Cass’s thigh and cock while his mouth worked with a focus that had nothing to do with altruism and everything to do with hunger.
Take it. Take what I’m giving you. Let me hear you.
“Riot, wait—” Cass’s voice had gone reedy, breaking on every other word. “It’s— happening—again—”
He worked his tongue harder, pressed deeper, devouring him like he would die if he didn’t taste every drop of slick directly from the source.
“Riot, I’m—I’m—fuck, fuck, fuck!“ Cass shattered with his hands pulling Riot’s hair, grinding up against his face with a sound that didn’t have consonants.
His whole body locked and pulsed. Riot felt it against his tongue, felt the rhythmic clenching that tried to pull him deeper, and he kept his mouth sealed against Cass through every shudder while Cass sobbed and shook above him.
Beautiful. Fucking beautiful. And still not enough.
Riot sat back on his heels, breathing hard, and looked at what he’d done.
Cass was spread on the hardwood floor like an offering, tears streaming down his bright red cheeks, his chest heaving. His cock was still twitching in Riot’s cum covered hand.
The gold flared brighter as he just looked at the wreckage of Cass. Riot was still fully clothed and painfully hard and the taste of Cass was in his mouth and the instincts in him kept screaming, Not enough. Not nearly enough. Need more. Need to be inside him.
He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper and used it the way he always did: like a leash made of blood and willpower.
Not inside him. You promised. Steps between. You told him steps between and you are going to keep that promise if it kills you.
“Cass,” Riot panted. “Look at me.”
Cass’s eyes drifted open, his gaze unfocused, like he was looking at Riot from very far away, and the trust in that expression hit Riot somewhere between his ribs.
“I didn’t—” his voice was dreamy and distant. “I didn’t know mouths could do that.”
Riot almost laughed. Almost. “Your body can do a lot of things you don’t know about yet.”
Cass reached for him. “How many more things?”
All of them. Every single one. I’m going to spend years cataloguing every sound you can make.
“Enough to keep us busy.” Riot caught Cass’s hand, pressed a kiss to his palm, then bit the heel of it and watched Cass’s pupils blow wide again, watched his cock twitch against his stomach.
Cass’s breath stuttered. “That shouldn’t feel good. Biting shouldn’t—”
“Should is an Elysian word.” Riot moved up his body, and the shift in position pressed his clothed erection against Cass’s bare thigh. He watched Cass register it, the flicker of recognition, the way his breath caught and his body went rigid for just a second before relaxing.
Cass swallowed. His hand trembled against Riot’s chest, but it didn’t pull away. “The steps…”
“Yeah?”
“Show me one.”
He’s asking. He’s choosing. The thought cut through the gold with something that felt, absurdly, like reverence.
“Sit up,” Riot ordered. Then, softer—because Cass’s eyes had gone wide at the command: “Come here. In my lap.”
It took Cass two tries to coordinate his shaking limbs.
The first time he got halfway up and a cramp seized his abdomen, doubling him over with a hiss.
He shouldn’t still be cramping this bad…
Riot’s hands found his hips, steadied him, and guided him through the second attempt until Cass was straddling his lap.
The position put them face to face, close enough that Riot could feel Cass’s breath on his mouth, could watch the gold light from his own eyes reflecting in Cass’s wet lashes.
Take them off. Get your clothes off. Skin against skin.
“Good,” Riot managed. “Good boy.”
The praise hit Cass the way it always did—visibly. His shoulders dropped, his breath came out shaky, and his whole body swayed forward.
“I’m going to—” Riot was trying to think through the haze, which was getting harder by the second. “I need my fingers inside you again. Like before. But this time, you’re going to move.”
Cass’s brow furrowed. “Move?”
“You’re going to ride my hand.” Brennan, somewhere far away, was trying to come up with a gentler phrasing and failing. “Set your own pace. Take what you need.”