Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
KAY
He doesn’t move as I explore him. Not when my fingers brush the curve of his horn. Not when I trace the jagged line of Embermark burning low across his cheekbone. Not even when I shift closer, until I can feel the heat of his skin. Not human warmth, but something deeper. Something forged.
“I told you,” I murmur. “I needed to see you.”
“And now that you have?” His voice is quieter than usual. Uncertain, but hopeful.
“Now I want you even more.” My answer is breathless, but it’s true. All of it.
“You cannot mean that.” He says, but there is a plea underneath the words. “I am not—”
“I read, Caz. A lot of interesting books.” I smile at the confusion on his handsome face, “humans routinely fall into different realms, and fall for the creatures they meet there. The parts aren’t all that important.”
“You are saying—”
“I’m not afraid of you. Not repulsed. In fact, if you play your cards right, I might even find a cute nickname for you, like Fire Daddy.”
He leans in slowly, likely giving me a chance to change my mind.
But I don’t need the out. I meet him halfway, fingers curling in the collar of his tunic just as his lips press to mine.
The kiss is slow. Searching. A quiet kind of hunger that builds by degrees.
His hands bracket my hips, steady and warm, but careful; like I might spook if he pushes too fast. I tilt my head, deepening the contact, and he groans low in his throat.
The sound makes something in me pull tight.
He breaks away first, panting. “Are you certain?”
“I’m not made of glass,” I whisper. “And I’m not going to break.”
His eyes flash. “No. But I might.”
That wrecks me a little. He bends to drag a kiss along my jaw, and I slide my hands over his shoulders; his real shoulders, broader and hotter than any human’s, marked with that same ember-bloom pattern that dances across his chest.
Caziel doesn’t move at first. His gaze flicks between my eyes, studying, waiting, but I’m not pulling back.
Not this time. I already did that once, let myself believe the lie that I wasn’t allowed to want him.
Now I’ve opened the floodgates on my crush, and I couldn’t want him more if I’d met him back home.
I need Caziel with every cell in my body.
Something behind me coils—something alive and surprisingly warm.
I jolt, twisting to look. His tail curls back on itself like it’s been caught red-handed.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, half a laugh in my throat. “It moves?”
“It has opinions,” he says, voice pained. “I do not control all of them.”
I glance down. The tail is curling lazily around my ankle like a cat, completely unbothered by propriety. Good thing I have a way with animals.
“Does it always do that?”
“It likes you.”
“Oh.” I bite my lip, heat rising in my cheeks. “Well. Thanks, I guess. I like it too.”
He looks pained. “It has a mind of its own. Just ignore it.”
“I noticed,” I say, teasing, and the tail flicks again as if in defiance. “Does it ever…is it…does it get… involved?”
His brow arches. “Involved.”
“You know,” I gesture vaguely between us, then immediately regret it. “Oh god, that’s not what I meant—”
“You did,” he says, entirely too pleased. His fangs flash in a smirk. “And for the record, no, not really. It’s more instinctive than intentional.
“Good to know,” I murmur, cheeks heating.
His hand slips to my hip, grounding me. “You could’ve asked about my horns or my skin or the mark. But you went straight for the tail.”
“It moved!” I protest. “And yeah, I don’t really have questions. You’re still you.”
His head drops forward on something that sounds like a growl.
I grin and kiss him again. There’s no plan to it, no clever angle or perfect moment.
Just the press of my mouth against his because I can’t keep pretending that I don’t want this.
Want him. Not the pretense he let me see.
Not the illusion I conjured. Him. The glamor wasn’t working right anyway. I knew he was hiding horns.
“You what?” He breaks the kiss, frowning down into my upturned face. I hadn’t realized I’d say that last part aloud.
“Your glamor,” I explain, looping my hands around the back of his neck, tangling my fingers in the soft hair curling against his nape. “It was fuzzing around the edges anyway. I guessed about the horns. The tail was a surprise, though.”
He exhales roughly, a sound halfway between a groan and a plea, and then he’s kissing me again.
His hands are tentative at first, like he’s still braced for rejection, for me to flinch or fade.
But I don’t. I tangle my fingers in the thick, dark hair at the back of his neck, drawing him in closer.
He tastes like embers and something older, something aching.
One hand cups my cheek. The other slides down to my waist and pauses.
“I need to know you want this,” he breathes against my lips. “Not because you’re hurting. Not because you feel like you owe me something. Because you want me.”
“I do,” I say, chest trembling with the force of it. “I want you.”
Still, he hesitates. His thumb drifts over the hollow of my hip, reverent. “This is real, Kay.”
“I know,” I say. “That’s why I need it.”
And maybe it’s the honesty in my words, how raw and ugly I feel, how desperate I am to experience something real in a world that keeps shifting under my feet, but something in him breaks open.
His mouth crashes back to mine, and this time, there is no hesitation.
There’s heat. Crimson heat—not fire, not violence—the kind that sinks beneath skin and leaves a delicious burn.
Caziel moves like he’s memorizing me. Like he’s waited lifetimes and doesn’t want to miss a second.
Every brush of his hands, every scrape of fangs along my neck is a question and a worship and a vow.
It feels nothing like the trial. Nothing like the forest. This is real.
I can’t stop touching him. The lines of his Embermark pulse brighter when I skim my nails over them.
His horns are smooth, warm to the touch, and when I drag my fingers along his side, just above the band of muscle that’s always, maddeningly visible between the waist of his pants and his shirts, he hisses between his teeth.
His hands are everywhere and nowhere all at once.
Hesitant, like he doesn’t know where to start.
I guide one to my waist, then up under my shirt.
He groans again when he feels the skin beneath, his fingers splaying along the fabric I bound across my chest. I shiver at the warmth of his palm.
“You can touch me,” I whisper. “I want you to.”
“I am touching you.”
I roll my eyes. “You know what I mean.”
His fingers trace the line of stars inked along my hip bone.
“I like these,” he follows each of the points like he’s drawing them on himself.
“My tattoo?” His other hand slides up the skin of my stomach, dipping under the bands of fabric I use to bind my chest. “I have others.” The paw prints along my arm, the sunflower on my shoulder, the special semi-colon tucked into my elbow. “I didn’t know you noticed them.”
“I wanted to ask about them. About how you earned them. Branded them into your skin without flame.”
It takes me a moment to understand what he means.
“You thought they were an Embermark?” He presses his lips over my shoulder, kissing my tattoo even through my tunic.
“Of a sort.” The hand tracing my ink drops from my skin before wrapping around mine.
He draws my fingers up to trace the deep red lines along his chest. His throat.
And when his mouth finds mine again, there’s nothing careful about it.
It’s heat and hunger and the ache of two people who’ve waited too long and don’t want to waste another second.
But even with the urgency, there’s a reverence to the way he moves; like this is holy.
Like I am holy. And maybe I am. Maybe we both are. Just for tonight. Just for this.
“Will you bite me?” I ask suddenly and instantly regret it. “Shit, sorry, that came out wrong—”
He leans forward slowly, the corner of his mouth brushing mine in a smile.
“I’m not a vampire, sal,” he murmurs, lips grazing my cheek. “But if you’re asking whether I’d mark you,” His teeth drag gently across my neck. Not hard, just a scrape, a tease. “I already have.”
I make a sound, something helpless and too warm, and tug him closer. We kiss again, deeper now, bodies shifting, hearts pounding. His tail curls around my thigh like it’s staking its claim. I gasp against his mouth.
“Hey.”
“What?”
“Your tail.” Not that I mind.
“I told you. It has opinions.”
I snort, and he kisses the sound right out of me.
There’s still so much heat between us, so much we haven’t explored, but we’re taking our time.
Hands wander. Clothes shift as he turns us and pushes me down onto the soft mattress of his bed.
My shirt is somewhere behind me. His teeth graze my shoulder as his claws cut through my bindings.
We keep getting lost in each other and laughing about it, only to fall back together with soft, desperate sighs.
We’re learning each other in layers. Teaching with sighs and touch and heat.
The way my skin responds to his claws when they barely scratch.
The way he pauses to watch my expression, like it matters more than anything.
The way he touches me like I’m something sacred, something he didn’t know he was allowed to have until now.
I thought this would feel surreal, but it doesn’t.