Chapter 40 #2
His fingers flexed against mine before he could stop them.
For a second, jealousy moved through him so clearly I could have named it from the doorway. Kieran. Hale. The other directions my Mark could go. The futures his father had spent years teaching him to erase.
Then Caspian put his hand over mine.
Steadying me.
“Then not only mine,” he said. “You don’t have to give them up to have this.”
It hurt him.
I heard the hurt in every word.
I touched his face.
“I know this isn’t easy for you.”
“No. It’s not. But I can do things that aren’t easy.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
His breath broke.
Mine did too.
After that, the room became smaller.
His mouth at my throat. My hands in his hair, ruining whatever order had survived the corridor.
His weight careful over mine until I pulled him closer and felt his control tear another thread.
The covered basin stayed dark in the corner.
The school stayed outside the door. For once, no one asked me to answer for what my body wanted before my mind could make a report of it.
Caspian asked with his hands, his mouth, the pause before every place he could have taken too much.
I answered until language became a thing we didn’t need anymore.
When he finally moved over me, I saw the strain in his face and understood that this was not the restraint he had been taught.
This was the restraint he had chosen.
“Astra?” he said.
“Yes?”
“Look at me.”
I did.
In the dim room, his eyes had gone mostly gray, with blue caught deep in them like light under ice.
“If this is too much…”
“Caspian.”
“Say it.”
“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to do whatever it is they’re afraid I can do to you.”
His hand tightened at my hip. His body trembled with the restraint. But still…
“If it becomes too much.”
“Caspian Ashford, I will fucking tell you.”
That convinced him.
He entered me.
So carefully I almost hated him for it, until the care became heat and the heat became pressure and my hands found his back because I needed him closer than I’d ever imagined another person could get to me.
His breath turned into a groan against my mouth.
Mine followed.
He stopped halfway, shaking.
I dug my fingers into his shoulder.
“Don’t stop because you are afraid of wanting me.”
His eyes closed for a heartbeat.
When he moved again, the careful became attention. Became his hand under my knee, opening me farther. Became his mouth at the sensitive place behind my ear and the low, ruined sound he made when I arched into him.
The Pull tightened with the next stroke, cool and sweet and merciless, dragging through my blood until his Mark burned darker and mine reached back.
I had been touched by the school for readings, for measurement, for correction.
This was not that.
This was my body and my Mark answering because I wanted it to.
Because I wanted him.
“Good boy,” I said against his mouth.
He lost the rhythm for one breath.
Then he found it again, rougher now. His hand slid between us. I gasped, and his mouth found the sound, took it, gave it back.
“Again,” he said.
I knew what he meant.
I should have made him ask properly.
I couldn’t.
“Good boy.”
His control broke in pieces.
Not all the way, he wasn’t capable of that yet, but enough that I felt the truth of him: the boy raised to be a wall, the man shaking apart because I had called him good and meant it.
My Mark flared.
His answered.
For one impossible second, it felt as if the two Marks had found the same breath.
For one beautiful second, cold marble flooded everything.
Then green apple cut through it.
Then leather and warm skin.
My body went rigid.
Caspian stopped so quickly it must have hurt.
“Astra.”
I gripped his shoulders.
“Wait.”
He waited.
No argument.
No question.
Only his breath uneven against my cheek, his body held above mine with the kind of discipline that made me want to both thank him and ruin him for it.
The pain didn’t sharpen.
It opened.
Three directions inside me, all awake, all refusing to disappear because Caspian was here. My Mark didn’t seal. It did not choose him. It reached for him and kept the others.
Impossible thing.
Mine.
I laughed.
Caspian’s eyes searched my face.
“What?”
“They are going to hate this.”
For a moment, he only stared.
Then the sound that left him was almost a laugh and almost not.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
This time, when I said it, he kissed me like the word had undone the last buttoned thing in him.
Afterward, the room was dark enough that the covered basin had become only a shape in the corner.
Caspian lay beside me, one hand on the bed between us, palm up.
I left it there for a moment.
The sheet was at my ribs. His shirt was somewhere on the floor with mine. My coat lay over the back of the chair, my mother’s brooch still pinned inside it, turned toward the wall.
My Mark had not settled.
Neither had his.
But the worst of the shaking had left me.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
“Don’t ruin this by mentioning tomorrow.”
“I need to.”
I turned my head toward him.
His face in the dark looked less stoic than I had ever seen it. Blond curls, sweaty and disheveled at his forehead. Mouth softer. Eyes still too serious for someone naked in his own bed.
“At the formal,” he said, “if you refuse me, I will not make it harder.”
“You said that before.”
“I mean it more now.”
“And if I accept you?”
His hand stayed open on the bed.
“Then I will spend the rest of my life making sure this was not the last choice that belonged to you.”
I looked at his hand for a long time.
Then I put mine in it.
The Pull answered softly this time.
Cold marble.
Burnt sugar.
No pain.
“This doesn’t belong to them,” I said.
“No.”
“Not tomorrow. Not ever.”
His fingers closed around mine.
“Not ever.”
The words were too large for the room.
For once, the room held them anyway.