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mightymorphingayagenda · 4 years ago

Note

OH MY GOD I’m so excited I thought lethal combination was only going to be like 1 more chapter. I’m so happy you’re making this a longer story. It’s one of my favorites I’ve read so far on this app. Looking forward to part 6!

~~ RATED E & ALL PREVIOUS CHAPTERS HERE ~~

“Hey, have you seen my blow torch?”

Azriel let out a long-suffering sigh on the other end of the phone.

“If the date went that badly there are better ways to kill yourself.”

Cassian gave him a dry and sarcastic “ha ha”, rummaging through his cupboards. “No you dick, she’s still here she’s just in the bathroom. And I’ve made crème brulee but I can’t find the blow torch anywhere,” he explained.

“Crème brulee?” his brother repeated. Mild mannered and effortlessly amiable as usual. Cassian knew what he meant.

“Fuck off. It’s romantic.”

“Yes. It is.”

“Do you know where the torch is or not?” He growled, rifling through a draw of sheathed steak knives.

“Have you tried by the glasses? You made those smoking whiskeys at Christmas,” Azriel reminded him, amusement enriching that smooth voice.

“I could kiss you,” Cassian sighed triumphantly, finding the gun-like utensil exactly there.

“I’m hanging up on you now.”

Azriel did just that and Cassian whirled back to face the little dishes of thick, calorific sweetness on the counter. Dusting each with a glaze of sugar before simmering the crystallite seal with the torch.

“No apron this time?” he heard a voice like velvet hum from the doorway. And he looked up to find Nesta Archeron tucked against the hollow doorframe, arms and ankles crossed casually as she observed him with a lazy appreciation. “I guess I’ll just have to be here for breakfast then.”

Cassian chuckled, watching her from the corner of his eye as she reclaimed her seat at the table set for two. The slender gold hoops at her ears exposed thanks to her updo glinting in the candlelight.

Turning up an hour or so ago looking fifty shades of gorgeous had been enough to make him blush. But Cassian had been well and truly pink at the comment she’d made while watching him put the finishing touches on dinner. His white shirt pushed up his forearms and an apron fastened round his tapered waist she’d chased the wine on her bottom lip with her tongue and confided “that apron makes me want to do unspeakable things to you.”

His stomach flipped just remembering it.

“I was planning on you being my breakfast so that’s good to hear,” he smirked, bringing their food to the table.

Nesta laughed, the toe of an ankle boot he imagined was designer, no doubt like the sheer black tights she wore, brushing at his foot once he’d taken his seat.

It sent a bolt of electricity through him.

“Now, I’ve never made crème brulee before,” he admitted. Puncturing the crisp layer of caramelised sugar with his spoon and procuring a serving. “So you’re trying it before it gets anywhere near my tastebuds.”

Cassian leaned forward, holding the spoon out for her to taste and outraged she laughed again.

“Asshole,” she said.

“Sweetheart, you don’t get a figure like this eating substandard desserts. I need to know its worth it.”

“Well I don’t know why you’re trusting me to make that judgement,” she hummed. “I clearly have terrible taste.” She looked him up and down pointedly.

“Ouch. Now you have to, to make up for hurting my feelings.”

Nesta rolled those lovely eyes, leaning forward and parting her plush lips.

“Blow,” Cassian murmured deeply.

Her gaze flicked back up to him and a cushiony smirk tugged at the corner of her full mouth as she did as she was told.

“Good girl.”

Those eyes didn’t leave his as she took the dip of the spoon between her lips slowly. And moaned. Quiet and affected, Cassian’s cock stirring in his dark jeans beneath the table.

The damn thing had been over-eager all day. Hard and throbbing the minute he’d woken up from a dream about her he’d had to take care of himself before he’d even had breakfast. Then at work he’d endured more than one semi, the most embarrassing of which being inspired by a pair of thigh high boots he’d seen in a shop window. Helion hadn’t noticed thank god. The man was distracted more often than not these days, but the imminent threat of being murdered did that to a person.

Leaning back into her chair Nesta captured a lick of cream on her bottom lip with her tongue suggestively.

“Creamy,” she hummed.

Then started on her own dish, ignoring him entirely and the way he sat entirely still. As though she’d locked his every muscle with some spell.

“Did you make the custard from scratch,” she enquired, carefree.

Cassian only nodded. Thankful enough he’d managed to at least move and recognising that trying to speak would be asking too much.

She bit down on an evil smirk.

Eventually he cleared his throat. “I uh, I was going to make medovik,” he confided. With all the dishes Amira had taught him to cook in his youth they’d never approached any Russian cuisine. Honey cake had seemed simple enough though. Or so he’d thought. “Then I found out it takes like eight hours to prepare.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Nesta shrugged.

“Your mom didn’t bake much?”

“I’m not sure she even knew what the stove was for. We pretty much lived off whatever Elain cooked up once she learned how the microwave worked.”

Elain was cooking for the three of them even before their mother had died? Cassian didn’t know all the details but he knew Feyre and her sisters had all been shy of ten when she’d passed away.

“Were you close?” he asked. “With your mother.”

Nesta worked the cream in her mouth over more slowly than was necessary.

“Sorry, that was- we don’t have to-”

“No.”

Cassian faulted.

“No I wasn’t close with her,” she elaborated.

“I shouldn’t have-”

“It’s fine I’ve just sort of, forgotten, how to talk about her,” setting her spoon down Nesta paused for a second. “Feyre doesn’t really remember her and Elain doesn’t like to think about the past so, it’s sort of like she never existed. Which isn’t all that different to how things were when she was around honestly.”

“How do you mean?” he encouraged.

Nesta crinkled her nose as though dismissing the question, or maybe her answer.

“She was distant, not really the maternal type…I don’t think she ever actually wanted kids.”

“Hardly seems right she should end up with three of the best then.”

A dimple at the corner of her mouth gave away the smile she was trying to fight. Never one to let on when she was charmed.

“You’re what my mother would have called a babnik,” she informed him.

“Which presumably translates to ruggedly handsome and accomplished chef?”

“It means man whore.”

Cassian’s laugh was deep and loud.

“Womanizer if she was being nice,” Nesta smiled with him. “One look at you and an earful off that utter shit you talk and Angelina would have you down as a complete rake. I can only imagine what she’d have to say about me being seduced by your lines and smeshnyye volosy.”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what that last bit meant.

Still laughing slightly he asked, “so how come you never taught Feyre Russian?”

Nesta stopped smiling.

Shit.

He was a fucking idiot. She probably thought it was an attack on her- shit, why was he always putting his foot in it?

“What?” she said carefully.

Cassian ran a hand back through his hair. “I didn’t mean that as a criticism- I was just, wondering.”

“She never asked,” Nesta answered bluntly.

“She didn’t?”

Cassian was a little confused at that. His sister-in-law had always seemed quite hurt by Nesta’s never sharing the intricacies of their mother’s native tongue.

“No. She didn’t. Though she’s no doubt added my neglecting to teach her to my list of crimes against the crown,” Nesta theorised bitterly. “Honestly I’m surprised you agreed to that blind date with all you must have heard about me.”

She wasn’t looking at him anymore.

“Nesta,” he reached his hand across the table to take her’s, worried she might snatch it back but she didn’t. Just sat perfectly and preternaturally still as he rubbed his thumb over a pulse point on the back of her palm. Gentle and pulling her attention. Storm blue eyes on his fingers. “I wasn’t suggesting you did anything wrong. And I never took anything Feyre said without a pinch of salt. Why would I? She’s your sister. If someone asked me to describe Rhys I’d say a busybody with his head further up his ass than that golden spoon is down his throat.”

“Silver spoon,” Nesta corrected, finally looking up at him.

“He owns an island, Nesta, the spoon is gold.”

Her laugh was short as it was lovely, and she gave his hand a lingering squeeze before pulling it back to tuck a strand of the hair that fell from her updo and framed her face behind her ear. The black sleeve of her dress which licked up her wrist such a contrast to her complexion .

“I should have offered,” she said, twirling her spoon with the tip pressed to the bottom of her half empty dish. “I didn’t think to, she never really knew mom, doesn’t even talk about her I didn’t think she cared.”

“Sweetheart one time I drove Azriel’s Maz into a fountain-“

“What the hell kind of reality tv show did you grow up on?”

Cassian chuckled wholeheartedly.

“I was learning Russian by rereading War and Peace seventeen-million times, meanwhile you were probably snorting cocaine off a Russian supermodel’s-”

“Hang on,” he cut her off. “You taught yourself?”

Nesta hummed in confirmation. “I was nine when my mom died and our father didn’t speak a word so my vocab was a little lacking. Not to mention I had no real grasp of the grammar. I just read pretty much everything in the library’s Russian lit section over and over and sort of pieced it together.”

Cassian shook his head, grinning.

“Don’t get all impressed,” she drawled, gesturing vaguely. “I was honour roll, it wasn’t even that hard,” she smirked.

“Say something to me in Russian then,” he begged, “unless you’re going to call me a man whore again.”

“You love it when I call you names.”

“No I love it when you call my name, there’s a difference.”

Rolling her eyes Nesta conceded. “I’m only doing this because I know how whiny you get when you don’t get your way.”

“I resent that but won’t argue because I really wanna get my way.”

She chuckled softly, shaking her head before taking a moment to think about what she wanted to say.

Then she tucked her forearms and palms flat against the table slowly, leaning forward.

The black dress she wore reached just above her collar bone, meaning he didn’t have to avoid looking at any cleavage, but the way it licked up her slim figure from well above her knee meant the curves of her body were on full display.

“Ya khochu, chtoby ty vo mne tak plokho” she purred. Low and smokey and completely arousing.

He’d heard of eye-candy, but this was a whole other tooth ache entirely, like liquor for his ears. Smooth and burning and delicious.

Nesta didn’t drop his stare as she brought a delicate hand forward, and fit two fingers beneath his chin. Guiding his jaw shut.

Cassian swallowed.

“You can wipe the drool up yourself,” she said, sinking back into her seat.

“I have no idea what you just said but oh my god you sounded like a sexy Bond villain,” he praised with a delighted growl.

Nesta laughed even as he kept going.

“I’m serious, can I be your Bond girl?”

“Hang on, why are you my Bond Girl and not James Bond?”

“Because the Bond girls are always sexier.”

Her laughter only increased, a wetness glimmering silver in the candlelight along the row of her bottom lashes.

“Fine but if you’re the Bond girl no way I’m going to be the villain and watch some tea-sipping twat have his way with you,” she quipped. Then added with a remarkably good English accent, “I’ll be Bond, and we’ll both be undercovers.”

She winked but Cassian felt like he’d been punched in the stomach.

That voice.

“Well if I have to explain the joke it was clearly even worse than I thought,” Nesta said.

He wasn’t really listening though. Occupied with thoughts of blonde curls and baby blue eyes. Of a stranger with no name and no face who’d spoken in that same accent.

Except of course she had had a face and what he’d seen of it had been so fucking similar to the woman sat across from him.

Her mouth and throat, her body and her tongue in his mouth-

“Cassian?”

Nesta had arched one of those neat brows in concern.

Her slender hands on the table in front of him, just as pale and delicate, just as perfectly manicured.

“The night I came over,” he said, and it was almost an out of body experience. Like he was hearing himself say the words but not actually saying them himself “before you called, there-there was a woman.”

Nesta went so still it was terrifying. Utterly unmoving. Predatory and unnaturally graceful, as though even her pulse dared not alert her to its presence.

“Nothing happened,” he assured her, panicked.

Please don’t dump me please don’t dump me please don’t dump me.

Fuck why hadn’t he told her this sooner?

“We just kissed, well, made out I guess would be a more accurate description, but it was nothing more. And I never would have done it if I’d believed for a second you were going to call me back; it was you I wanted,” he tried desperately to explain.

Nesta blinked.

“That’s it?”

Cassian faltered.

“That’s- yeah that’s it, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you at the time. Honestly I completely forgot it’d even happened, it was a stupid blip and-“

She shrugged, picking up her wine. “Was she hot?” His date enquired over the rim of her glass before taking a sip.

He couldn’t have heard that right.

“What?”

“Was she hot?” Nesta asked again, indifferent, setting down her drink. “This woman, you, made out with.” Her finger tip traced the circular lip and her neat manicure might as well have been talons. “Was she hot?”

Was this a trap?

“Honestly?” He asked incredulously.

“Honestly,” she confirmed.

There wasn’t really a delicate way of putting it so he just went ahead and said it.

“She looked like you.”

Nesta’s finger like a blade on ice stilled.

“Oh. So she was smoking hot.”

Cassian burst into laughter and she smiled with him.

“I don’t care about some lookalike you kissed, we’d had one date and like you said I hadn’t even called you back.”

He breathed a sigh of relief.

He’d been sure he’d stumbled into another colossal screw up that would be her final straw with him.

“Whatsmore…” she added. “We’ve never actually even discussed this being exclusive.”

Oh.

He searched her face for any indication of what he was meant to do with that.

“Well, no, but…” he stalled, trying to glean if she liked the direction he was headed in. “If that’s something you’d be comfortable with, then I’d like to have that discussion,” he divulged. “Even if it’s not where you’re at I know I’m not going to be seeing anyone else.”

Nesta raised a brow. “Even if sometimes I take to long too long to call you back?”

Wicked woman.

“I’ve waited thirty years to meet you,” he said frankly. “I can wait however long it takes for you to call me back.”

He swore that she was blushing. Not that perfectly ripe pink that bruised her high cheekbones when he was inside her, but something closer to cinnamon and rose.

“Fine then. No seeing other people,” she confirmed.

Cassian had to stand up before he flipped the table out of sheer fucking happiness. It was like he’d licked a battery or something.

Picking up his empty dessert dish and spoon he went to do the same with her’s but she was already standing to follow suit.

“Sit down,” he smiled, kissing her cheek. “Let me take care of you.”

Nesta pursed her lips as she watched him head to the sink from her chair.

“Picked up on those daddy issues real fast,” she joked. Because she’d never say something as amiable as “thank you”.

“Takes one to know one, gorgeous,” he replied.

“Oh do tell.” Her elbow on the back of her chair, fist curled to a pale pillow on which she rested her cheek, Nesta reminded him, “you know all about my familial history now, what about you?”

Cassian shrugged, rolling the sleeves of his shirt back up above his elbows so he could wash up. “Not much to tell really. I was in foster care for around, nine years? Before Amira adopted me.”

“How old were you?”

“Thirteen,” he smiled. “Year older than Rhys.”

“And what about Azriel?”

“He came along a year or so after, same age as Rhys, fucking weird kid- quiet you know, he had it tough before Amira.”

“Sounds like you did too,” Nesta suggested. “Nine years in foster care, couldn’t have been easy.”

Cassian shrugged again. “Could have been worse. Thought I’d never get out, no one in their right mind would have wanted a kid like me. Always in fights and shit. But Amira,” he swallowed, trying to soothe the tightness in his throat that had flared up without warning.

He kept his eyes on his hands as he finished. “She listened to her heart more than her mind, I think.”

He heard the quiet creak of Nesta’s chair against the floor as she stood and made her way behind the counter. Keeping a respectful distance from him, but close enough that he could smell her perfume.

He couldn’t work out if it was comforting or all the more incensing.

“She sounds lovely,” she said.

Cassian smiled sadly, but no less genuine. “She was,” he looked to Nesta. “She’s the one that taught me to cook actually. Always said I ate like it was going out of fashion,” a nice way of saying like he was terrified someone was going to take the meal from him. “So she decided she was going to teach me that food wasn’t just about survival. It’s not just functional, you know? You’re feeding your soul as much as you’re feeding you body.”

“Well she was clearly a very good teacher,” Nesta said, stroking a hand up his arm absently.

It made his chest swell a little with pride.

“What about your dad, then?” She asked, standing behind him and linking her arms round his waist as he began work on cleaning the dishes from their first course. Her head tucked round his side, chin on his bicep because even in her heels she couldn’t have reached his shoulder.

“Dante was never really my dad. Wasn’t even all that close with Rhys,” he told her. “As for my biological father, never knew the guy.”

“Hence the daddy issues,” she hummed.

“Yep,” he confirmed. “I did that gene mapping thing most adopted kids have but the most I found out was that he was probably Turkish.”

“And your birth mother?” Nesta enquired.

Cassian smiled down at her.

“Júlia,” he told her. “She was from Salvador, but uh she was moreno so my roots are a little unclear there too.”

Awkwardly Nesta repeated, “Moreno?”

It was odd seeing her on the back foot. Clearly uncomfortable not knowing something despite all those books in her apartment. Despite the intellect that was so obvious in everything from the confidence she’d earned every drop off to just the way she spoke.

“It means brown but it’s sort of the same as pardo,” he tried to clarify. “Mixed.”

“Right,” she nodded, that ease slipping back through her posture as something like pure appreciation for learning something new entered her eyes. Those wide eyes always hungry for more. To know and see and take more more more.

“Amira made sure I kept up Portuguese but, I think I always felt a bit like a mutt. Never knowing where I came from.”

He didn’t know why he’d told her that. Something about those eyes. He just wanted so badly to feed the flame inside her, throw everything he had into the glow as kindling even if it rendered him ash.

Besides, there were so many things he couldn’t tell her. Holding back any other kernels of truth as ugly as they were felt like an unnecessary betrayal.

“It’s probably why I joined the military. That sense of identity.”

Nesta slipped herself between him and the sink, a hand snaking up his arm to his shoulder, thumb brushing at his cheek.

She must have sensed the resentment for his naivety in his voice because she said, “there are far worse things to identify with, than wanting to keep people safe.”

Cassian pressed his mouth to her thumb in a brief but tender kiss. Unable to articulate what that meant coming from her.

That she’d recognised something admirable in him rather than something to despise or judge; that he’d only ever wanted to look after people…it was more than he could do justice with words.

“Amira would have liked you,” he said anyway.

“She seems like the kind of person who found something to like in everyone but I take that as a very high compliment.”

Cassian smiled. “Mariella might have been a bit harder on you at first. She was very protective.”

But then most seven year olds were. Inherently selfish, and so greedy when it came to love, it was enchanting.

His sister would have been eighteen this year. A woman. Maybe a woman as brilliant as Nesta

“Cassian…” she breathed. “I can’t- I don’t even want to imagine, if anything ever happened to Feyre or Elain…” words failed her.

And Cassian felt a pain in his chest like he’d swallowed the stone at the centre of some fruit.

Because it could. Feyre could end up just like his sister and mother. She was just like his mother, wife to the Don of Cosa Nostra, and far more involved than her predecessor had ever been.

Something traditionalists had to add to there ever growing list of grievances with Rhys. And their motivations to act out against him.

Dante, as patriarch of the most powerful of the Five Families in Cosa Nostra, had subjugated the other four throughout his career. Insult enough without his marrying a woman of non-Italian descent and naming his “half breed” son heir to the newly monopolised mafia. His adopted sons with no Italian heritage to speak of at all also assuming positions upon his death, beneath Rhys and his consigliere. Amren.

In fact the only full-blooded Italian in their ranks was Mor. Which might have appeased dissenters, what with her being the eldest child of the Biancardi family, one of the mafia’s oldest and most brutal clans. Except they’d all but disowned her, and she’d had the audacity to be born a woman. Her being appointed as Underboss to Rhys had only been a further slap in the face.

Amira and Mariella’s murders had been the work of a small but vicious rival gang. One Dante and Rhys had slaughtered personally one by one. The enemies that currently threatened his family were far more powerful, and far closer to home.

In short: they’d never been in more danger.

Cassian had tried throwing himself back into the family business when he’d gotten back from Iraq. But he’d been all but a liability.

None of them had quite used the word “unstable” but it was accurate enough.

Eventually he’d pulled back, started his firm, pursued a normal life. Which wasn’t to say he found it easy in the slightest. But he was learning to see the benefits despite the guilt that hounded him.

Like being able to meet a woman and not worry she was going to end up with her throat slit in a back alley.

“That was insensitive,” Nesta assumed. “I just meant, it must be-”

“It wasn’t insensitive,” Cassian interrupted. “Sorry I was just, in my thoughts.”

“How about we stop with the questions for the night. Or questions that aren’t: more wine?” She slipped from where he had her caged between him and the sink.

He caught her hand before she could make it back round the counter.

“Nesta,” he didn’t back down from those eyes of deep aegean. “I’d never let anything happen to you or your sisters.”

She watched him for a long moment like she might just stay there all evening, her hand in his, soaking in the warmth of his touch and gaze and the candlelight.

“I believe you,” she said at last, and pulled away almost reluctantly, heading to the table and refilling his empty wine glass and then her own.

He’d returned the various plates and cutlery to their respective cupboards by the time she made it back to him, passing him his drink. Raising her own.

“To family,” she said.

“To family,” he concurred, “and my smeshnyye volosy.”

The melodic cuffing of their glasses struck a harmony to her laughter and Cassian was grinning as he took a lengthy sip.

One he nearly choked on as a pale hand snaked up his chest and Nesta took a prowling final step into him.

“Ya obozhayu tvoyu ulibku,” she hummed, looking up at him through a fan of thick black lashes and setting her glass down on the counter blindly.

“What does that mean?” he swallowed, setting aside his own glass and letting his hand come to the small of her back.

She smirked. lifting up onto her tiptoes to murmur against his mouth: “I thought we’d agreed no more questions.” Then kissed him.

Slow and hot and sweet.

In the way that alcohol could be sweet and also somehow entirely destructive. Her arms winding round his neck, fingers slipping through his hair and while he always seemed to haemorrhage heat, she was heat. Sensual and captivating, the way she moved promising she’d be so lovely to touch if only it wouldn’t kill you.

Her nose grazed his and he smiled, their mouths parting for a moment before meeting again, breaking apart quietly every so often until the motions became hungrier, heavier.

Her hands on his face, at his shoulder blades and arms. Cassian’s sliding to her ass . Palming each round cheek, his finger curling into the supple flesh through her dress and lifting her off her feet .

Those long legs wrapped round him and she slipped her tongue into his mouth as he walked her back against the door of the fridge. Humming an almost silent moan at the pressure. Fingers curling through his hair and tugging lazily, her mouth moving dirty against his.

“I’ve been waiting for you to do this all night,” she moaned, breathless and heady. Capturing his bottom lip and chewing.

He groaned huskily and she tilted her head back a little, heavy lidded gaze fluttering open as she released it with a wet pop and Cassian rolled his hips up into her.

Nesta made a sound that was a concoction of surprise and pleasure, the back of her head making relatively harsh contact with the silver door. Exposing her throat to him and he couldn’t have resisted with a gun to his head.

Lilac and cherry marks bloomed beneath his teeth as he worked the sensitive flesh, blemished with beauty marks which he nipped at and laved with his tongue.

“Cassian,” she praised. Low and hot. A hand snaking down to his upper back, nails clawing softly at the muscle there. Flexed with the effort of holding her up.

A loud bark sounded.

Then another.

Followed by the urgent patter of paws against the floor.

“Shit,” Cassian laughed. Pressing his forehead to his date’s, who laughed with him.

Devlon’s tail wagged energetically as he ran behind the counter and promptly sat down at Cassian’s feet. Tail still swishing on the floor, and tongue hanging from his mouth which almost appeared to be split in a wide and anticipating smile.

Cassian let Nesta down, her hand coming to his bicep for balance as she readjusted her dress.

“Is he jealous?” she asked, before skirting around him to the dog, crouching down to fuss over him. “Huh? Are you jealous? Are you? Am I taking up all your daddy time?” she cooed, scratching beneath his chin and stroking his head.

“I think he just wants to go in the backyard,” Cassian said. “Sorry, do you mind? I’ll be like two minutes tops, he just needs to go out before bed.”

“Not at all,” she smiled, standing and kissing him on the cheek. Purring, “I’ll just make myself comfortable,” before turning to wonder through to his living room. Swiping up her wine glass as she went, a sway in her hips that had Cassian staring at that perfect ass and mildly concerned he was drooling.

Dev barked at him from the floor.

“Come on then,” he said, walking the dog round to the back door and sliding it open for him, following him out into the cold.

As promised, it didn’t take long. Running back and forth after a mangled tennis ball a few times wiped Devlon out entirely after the walk Mor had taken him on at lunch. He padded off to bed as soon as Cassian let him back in. Though not before zealously rubbing his head against his owner’s stomach as he crouched down to give his ears a good-night ruffle.

“God it’s cold out there,” Cassian said, rubbing his calloused hands together as he went through to the living room.

He could think of a few places he wanted to put those hands to warm them up as he took Nesta in. Reclined into the corner of his couch across from the fire she’d turned on, long legs crossed casually and the stem of her wine glass tucked between those talented fingers.

“You are fucking beautiful, you know that?” He praised deeply, throwing an arm across the back of the sofa behind her as he sat. Ankle propped up on his knee and his whole body leaning into her’s.

“Are you asking if I own a mirror?” Nesta teased dryly, setting her drink down on the coffee table behind her.

“I’m asking,” he put a hand on her thigh, sliding it up slowly as he tucked himself against the silhouette of her face. “Where were we?”

Her velvet smirk was devastating.

“Well I was pushed up against a fridge, which I have to admit wasn’t exactly comfortable.”

"We’ll then let me make sure you’re comfortable now.” Cassian rubbed his thumb against her inner thigh and leaned in to press kiss to her neck. Then another, and another. Until he was nibbling and sucking at her pulse point, her hand coming to his shoulder while the other wound through his hair and her long legs uncrossEd as she sank back.

All he could think was that it meant easier access.

His cock growing stiff within the denim sheath of his jeans, pushing against the increasingly snug fit, mouth watering at just the thought of her tight, dripping cunt.

“I won’t say no to a massage,” she breathed ruthlessly. Shaky. Eyes closed and head rolling back to afford him an improved angle as she hummed: “I’ve been feeling so…tight lately.”

He groaned

Captured her mouth in a firm and heavy kiss, slipping his tongue inside to taste her soft moan as he wound his fingers through her hair, cupping the back of her skull.

Nesta‘s own hands came to his throat, his chest and shoulders and arms, and she took him with her as she reclined back into the cushions. Arching underneath him as he dragged his tough up her taught stomach to her full breast. Palming her, the soft and pert pillow filling his large hand so perfectly and the nipple pebbling beneath the grazing motions of his thumb.

“You are so beautiful,” he purred deeply, squeezing and massaging. Her delicious and burning body arching into him. Breasts pushing into his hand as though she were begging him to keep feeling her up. “So fucking beautiful.”

She rolled her hips up into him with lazy desire as he returned to her throat. Breath catching. Nails pressing into his back while her other hand cupped the back of his neck. Fingertips teasing at the nape.

He let his hand slide up under her dress and-

She wasn’t wearing tights like he’d thought. The translucent-black burnish of fabric hemming at her upper thighs, and seemingly fastened to her panties by a garter strap.

“Are you wearing stockings?” He enquired, husky.

“Hopefully not for long.”

He grinned, kissing her hot and slow and thorough. His fingers teasing up the bare flesh of her thigh, making her shiver again and stroking at the cotton which concealed her gorgeous cunt.

He tucked the it aside and dragged the pad of his finger up her glossy slit.

“Cassian”

She was so wet it was all he could do not to burry his face between her thighs and lick her out till she was screaming.

”

“Can I-”

“Please”

He pushed his thick digit inside her.

Nesta moaned quietly and he cupped her cunt in his hand as he worked his finger in and out of her tight centre, hitting a deep spot he knew for fact she’d never reach on her own.

In fact she wasn’t so much moaning as she was breathing the sweetest and most perverse melody of breathy sounds. A harmony to Cassian’s rumbling expletives and dirty sentiments.

“I’ve been thinking about this all night,” he admitted huskily. And slipped a second finger in on the next pump. “Getting under your dress to this gorgeous cunt.”

“Don’t stop,” she breathed. Moaned. Pleaded

“The second I saw you I wanted to drop on my knees and lick you out- right there in the doorway. To have you dripping down my face."

Nesta’s soft sound went straight to his cock.

“To have you making noises like that.”

She ran her nails down the nape of his skull and brought the other hand to his bicep. The muscle flexing beneath his shirt as he brought her closer and closer to the edge.

“Uuh,” she keened quietly when his thumb came to brush up her clit. “Uh-hu.”

”Mmmm, good girl,” he purred, her sticky arousal now dribbling down his knuckles.

She was close. Her quiet breaths shallow and uneven, and even his own breathing was a little guttural with how fucking turned on he was.

He might cum in his jeans if he didn’t finish her off soon.

“Ouhrightthere…right there…right there,” Nesta moaned as he began curling both fingers inside her. Stroking at the swollen, soft walls of her tight sex. Arching tightly, unable to keep still as he brought her to that sweet edge.

”That’s it, tell me how you like it, baby ” he praised huskily.

“Just like that- fuck don’t stop,” she whined.

“Fucking love it when you boss me aro-”

“Shut up, oh my god just shut up and make me cum.”

Cassian picked up the pace, the entirely obscene sound leaving no question as to what his hand was getting up to underneath her dress.

And Nesta bared her throat to him as she came.

Head rolling back into the pillow even further, her pussy flexed around his fingers, pulsing with wave after wave of pleasure.

Silent as usual, that lovely blush did all the talking for her. And he fucked her through the orgasm. Digits curling softer and his thumb rolling her clit with slower circles until she came back down.

“Fuck you’re good at that,” she whined through a laugh, stretching a little like she’d just woken from a nap. Her delicious little body all wound up and arching beneath him in a manner that pushed her breasts out and rubbed her stomach against his straining erection.

Cassian groaned aloud. The sound short but embarrassing enough.

Chuckling again quietly she hooked her calf round his and drew him in for a wanton kiss, swiping her tongue into his mouth as his hand came to cup the side of her face. Glistening ichor smearing across her cheek from his fingers.

Nesta hummed into him. Leaning in to his touch and tilting her face so that his fingertips brushed her plump and parted lips. Her tongue slipping out to lick at the silky evidence of her orgasm.

Cassian fed her his fingers to the knuckle.

“You have the prettiest fucking mouth,” he hummed, thinking aloud. And pushing down a groan as he slowly withdrew the the length of his fingers from her pout with a sticky pop.

“I think it’s look a hell of a lot prettier around your clock” she added nonchalantly, licking at her glazed bottom lip.

Cassian was on his feet with her thrown over his shoulder before she could shriek.

“Calm down I bench at least twice your weight on a bad day, woman.”

Nesta huffed.

“The only reason I’m not kicking you in the balls right now is because I’m rather enjoying the view.”

Her long legs meant her feet were indeed almost level with his crotch as he carried her through the kitchen and up the stairs.

“Are you staring at my ass, Sweetheart?” He accused, pressing his mouth against her own peachy backside bent over his shoulder and biting benignly at a plump cheek through her dress.

“Cassian!” She exclaimed. Fist hammering at his lower back with little impact.

“Already screaming my name?” He set her down on the floor of his bedroom. “I haven’t even taken my shirt of ye-”

Nesta pushed him up against the closed door and shut him up with a hard, filthy kiss. Licking into his mouth and chewing on his bottom lip. Her fingers coming to the buttons of his shirt and unfastening each while he squeezed her ass.

She gasped loudly as a particularly shameless squeeze coaxed her stomach to rub up his thick and painfully hard erection through the rough denim of his jeans. Swallowing his own growl.

“Bed,” she demanded, lathering his powerful upper body with her touch. Burnished muscle jumping subtly underneath her fingers and the blood rushing from his brain to another sizeable organ.

A hand still gripping her ass he buried the other in her hair and hoisted her up onto his hips, battling with the various pins that held her updo in place. All the while walking her over to the bed.

He kissed up her throat as he laid her out on his mattress.

“Shirt. Off. Now,” she breathed, choked up on pleasure.

Cassian couldn’t help but chuckle, and rose up on his knees either side of her hips. Working the billowing shirt from his frame.

“And turn the light on,” she tucked her forearms beneath her as she watched him. Eyes all but glowing with pure hunger. “It’s a miracle you keep getting me into bed you should make the most of the view.”

“You just want a chance to stare at my ass again,” he winked, doing as he was told and jumping off the bed to back to flip the switch beside the door on.

Nesta didn’t bother with a verbal retort, just pulled her dress over her head.

She tossed it the floor, now in only her bra and panties. Both items simple and black but completely devastating. Balconette cups allowing her full breasts to spill out in merciless cleavage.

“Come here,” she curled her finger in an entitled gesture. And Cassian followed. Like a puppy on a leash.

Crawling up her body she sank back into his bed and bared her throat to him in a silent order.

“Mmmm,” she hummed unapologetically, a blissed out and snug smile pulling at her abused mouth as he licked up the column before suckling on her pulse point. Moaning low and hushed with every caress of his tongue and graze of his teeth, her hands running down his back possessively.

He’d never had her like this.

On her back. Her nails scratching raised evidence of how he’d fucked her from his sculpted shoulder blades to his hips. And just the thought had his hand winding through her hair and tugging. Exposing her throat to further exploitation.

She gasped, mouth falling open, arching up beneath him so that sweet body pushed into him without mercy. His hips rolling into her.

“Fuck,“ she moaned, a hand slipping into the back pocket of his jeans and squeezing his toned ass as he rocked. “This so high school,” she laughed.

“Well now I’m just picturing you in a cheerleading uniform,” he smirked.

Nesta pressed a hand into his chest and rolled them over so that she was straddling him.

“How many cheerleaders did you fuck?” She hummed, narrowing her eyes. Her hand splayed over his heart, poised to rip it right out.

Cassian swallowed.

“How many are in a team?”

Her jaw dropped.

“It couldn’t have been more than twelve!”

“Twelve?” she exclaimed. “What, we’re youre protein shakes fifty percent viagra?”

She could’ve been judging him but he knew her better than that. The molten heat like liquid silver in her eyes wasn’t the kind of ire which came with disgust or judgement. Nesta was jealous.

It gave him a high like he’d never felt.

“Relax sweetheart, there’s still more than a few miles left on this ride,” he smirked.

“Oh you are-“

“A babnik?”

Her expression dissolved to laughter and Cassian was grinning as he ran his hands up her calves and thighs.

“Call it what you want , I prefer well versed.” He came to her hips, and swept round slowly to caress the full globes of her ass. “Learned, even.”

Nesta‘s laughter lowered to a scoffed kind of chuckle and she rose one of those perfect brows. “Learned, really? How sweet,” she pouted mockingly. “Well why didn’t you just lay back and learn a thing or two about what raw talent looks like.”

He hissed in relief as Nesta pulled down the fly of his jeans and slipped a hand inside his boxers. Poised on all fours with a sensual dip of her spine that rendered her heavy and plump cleavage level with his crotch and her gorgeous ass in the air.

“Looks pretty fucking sensational,” he tried to grin cockily. But his gaze was going in and out of focus and he was more than a little breathless as she pulled him free and started tugging lazily.

“You’re such a teacher’s per,” She drawled, and pushed the length of him to his stomach so she could lick the sensitive strip between his balls. Eyes on his.

“Nesta,” he groaned, hips jumping so that his cock pushed up against her hand. The friction white hot and leaving him with colour blooming like fireworks behind his eyes.

“Mmmmm?,” she hummed, looking up at him as she continued licking his rigid shaft from base to tip. The vibration driving him insane.

His hips rocked up off the mattress subtly and Nesta allowed his cock to spring up so she could swirl her tongue round his head, the precum dribbling from the slit glistening.

His mouth hung open slightly like she might have truly fucked him stupid the other week. And if his eyes did end up rolling back, he wouldn’t be surprised if he saw an empty space where his brain should have been.

“Mmmmmmm,” Nesta hummed again but in perverse appreciation this time, capturing his head between her lips and sinking down a little only to bob back up again. Repeating the motions but taking him deeper and deeper each time.

“Fuuuuck,” Cassian groaned, head falling back against the pillow. “Oh fuck that’s it,” he purred gutturally from deep in his chest. Tucking his forearms behind his head as he felt himself arch off the bed slightly. Primal and every muscle in the vice of tension.

“Uhh that’s it, fuck Nesta, just like that, baby.”

His hips rolled up slightly and his cock filled her throat until she was contracting snuggly around his thick length. Obscene, wet sounds escaping with every perverse nod of her head, her tits bouncing and hair falling over her face.

Cassian freed a hand and worked his fingers through the thick mess, guiding her up and down.

She moaned but the sound was a wreck. Literally gagged, it was more a vibration than anything.

“Fuckyes… That’s a good girl suck it just like that.”

A few tears spilt over from her eyes but the glimmer was like that of a blade. Ruthless as the deep moan that caused his balls to twitch and his core to tremble briefly.

He lifted her head and she took a short breath before sinking back down again. Without his guidance.

She certainly didn’t need it. Knew exactly how to ruin him, that clever tongue a weapon she seemed to be whetting against his shaft. So Cassian returned his hand behind his head and watched.

Bobbing up and down the length of him she was choking on his cock now. His head rubbing up the back of her throat intimately and her hands gliding up and down his inner thighs almost possessively. A stickiness dribbling down from her abused mouth and dripping over her cleavage. Plump tits pushed between her upper arms, the flesh like peaches and cream utterly delectable.

And was gagging softly again. The flutter of her throat felt like fucking heaven.

“Fuck baby, you’re gonna make me cum.”

His hips began rolling up in the hunt for completion. Keeping the tempo for his husky ramblings.

“I’m so close baby…oh yes, oh god…uh-hu just like that, just like that imma cum…Nesta, Nesta-”

He came hard.

His hips rolling with every hot wave of pleasure that rocked through him. Thick length filling her throat for as long as she could stand before her swollen pout slipped off his head with a sticky pop.

Both their breathing ragged and uneven.

Cassian didn’t remember fisting the sheets in his grip but his fingers were close to cramping by the time he noticed. Knuckles bleached white.

“Any of those cheerleaders make you cum like that?”

His laugh was more an exhausted and loud exhale. His powerful chest rising and falling like he’d just come out the other side of one hell of a work out.

“What cheerleaders?”

Nesta was smirking as she crawled back up his chiselled body. Cassian finding the strength to push himself up right and against the headboard.

Her hands wound through his hair immediately while his came to her hips and waist and their mouths met in the middle like it was the only thing in the world that made sense to do. Messy and deep. Tongues and bruised, sticky lips moving soft and obscene.

Cassian slid his hand the fasten of her bra and unclipped it. Neither of them breaking away even as the straps fell down her shoulders and her tits spilt from the cups.

“You tasted so good,” she said. Licking into his mouth with that same tongue she’d laved his cock with, a tongue that tastes like musk and salt. Her voice sultry- husky, from all her throat had endured.

“I’m gonna make you’re legs shake so fucking good you cant stand,” he growled.

Nesta moaned into him as her pebbled nipples brushed against his bare chest, removing her hands from him to take off her bra completely.

“This rack is gonna be the death of me,” he breathed, gravelly and slightly drunk against her cheek while she tossed the garment aside.

“Death by double Ds,” she murmured distractedly. Finding his mouth again and kissing him, cupping his face. “Honourable way to go.”

He brought his hands to her perky breasts between them and squeezed. Thumbs rolling over her nipples and fingers massaging the plump flesh that fit perfectly in his hands.

Her stuttered, tiny gasp was fucking perverted.

Cassian gave each an indulgent squeeze before smoothing his touch to her hips and playing with the fabric there. Her cotton thong the only thing between her wet cunt and the rugged v of his exposed hips.

Nesta rose up on her knees a little higher, still kissing him as he dragged her panties down her thighs. Her breasts just beneath his stubbled chin.

They managed to work each leg out until she was completely naked in his lap. Her flushed body pushed to his, lips and hands and breasts and stomach and the crease of her hips and thighs and her soft, glistening sex.

Calloused hands on her backside Cassian kneaded the plump flesh. Then lifted her hips with a handful of each cheek, and slipped down the mattress. Till he was flat on his back.

“Sit on my face before how fucking hot you look on top makes me beg you to ride me.”

Nesta let out a surprised laugh.

But it melted to an obnoxiously loud moan when he tilted his head back so that his jaw was buried between her thighs, and started licking out her dripping pussy.

“Ohmygod,” she whined lowly, and his eyes fluttered open. Looking up at her while he lavished her cunt with his tongue and mouth.

A hand had found its way to grip the headboard in front of her while the other wound through her thick hair, pushing it off her face. Brows hooked and eyes rolling back, her mouth caught open once again in the most delicious expression of pure pleasure.

Cassian groaned into her, eyes closing once again and his own large hands sliding to grip her thighs while he worked.

“Fuck- oh fuck, right there,” she instructed, his tongue rubbing at her clit while the tip teased at her entrance.

“Fucking… oh my god yes! Cassian, uhuuu yes yes, Cassian, use your tongue baby,” she babbled. Hips rolling now.

He could just picture her. The tight tuck of her waist flaring to the full curves of her hips and ass and those perfect tits swaying with the rolling motions of her body.

He felt her lean back, rocking her glistening sex against his eager mouth with the leverage of the headboard she gripped.

“Fuck yes, yes, yes, yes…” she chanted. And it was the hottest thing he’d ever heard.

Groaning again Cassian snaked his hands up her thighs and over her hips adoringly, cupping her waist and stoking his thumbs up the pains of her stomach, the muscles rolling beneath with her movements.

“Oh my god,” she moaned, and his touch smoothed to her plump tits. Cupping both greedily, squeezing and circling her pebbles nipples roughly.

“I’m gonna cum,” she gasped with whining sincerity. “Ohmygod…ohmygod…oh oh oh-”

Nesta cut herself off with a sound Cassian wanted etched into vinyl.

The snug walls of her sex twitching as the rest of her body seized up for him, tight and burning hot. Cushiony folds smearing sticky arousal across his jaw, the stuff dribbling down his neck.

He lapped up as much as he could, hands on her waist now, holding her up until she was whimpering for him to stop. Her body going limp as soon as he did. Falling into the mattress with his guidance.

“You…are the sexiest thing…on this fucking earth,” he murmured, kissing up her breasts and throat.

She mumbled something totally unintelligible.

“You’re right, maybe not the sexiest but a very close second to me.”

Nesta gave him an entirely exhausted and thus painless smack on the arm. Then whimpered lowly.

“Your arms,” she whined, squeezing at his bicep and Cassian chuckled

“Your voice,” she moaned, even more aroused.

“I didn’t even say any-”

“Shut up.”

“But I-”

“Shut your mouth and fuck me.”

He didn’t argue this time.

Sitting up on his knees while she displayed herself for him. She was the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen.

Long legs split open casually and her glistening pussy just begging for his attention, her hips swooned to the graceful tuck of her waist and her full tits blushing pearl in the lamplight were like heavy pillows, pert and peaked at her tight nipples.

“Scream if you want to go faster,” he smirked, sliding his hands up her thighs from her knees and tugging her closer.

“Just screw me, babnik,” she purred right back as he leaned down to kiss her.

His cock pushed inside her in once thrust.

Fucking mother of god.

The noise that escaped Nesta made Cassian’s teeth ache it was so sweet, and he exploited the fact she’d opened her mouth by slipping his tongue inside.

Groaning quietly into her he fucked her like that a little longer. Holding himself up on one forearm while his other hand gripped her thigh behind hip. His hips rolling in a persistent, unrushed, and brutal rhythm. His strokes deep.

“Fuck you feel good.”

Her tight core soft and tight around him, squeezing his sensitive cock deliciously with every pump. She was a tether to earth, grounding him in total pleasure while his mind threatened to ascend somewhere else.

“Cassian,” she moaned. Holding his bicep with bruising intimacy while that other hand came to his shoulder blade. Manicure dragging possessive and hot downwards until she reached the small of his back.

It was such a simple touch but it drove him fucking insane. Adrenaline and lust a destructive combination in his veins.

“Oh my god,” she whined, low and loud, her head craning back into the pillow as he fucked her harder.

“Fuck,” he breathed huskily somewhere between a groan and growl. “Fuck that’s my girl.”

“Harder,” Nesta demanded, the hand at his bicep winding through his hair, nails pressing into the small of his back insistently. “Harder.”

Cassian obliged, pulling back slightly to hold her waist as well as her thigh so her delicious body remained in place on the bed while he fucked her into the mattress.

“FuckinggodNesta-” he snarled between rumbling grunts. “You look so fucking good.”

Nesta moaned again, luxuriously genuine and raw, her hands gripping the upper corners of the pillow beneath her head, fingers wringing the fabric distractedly as she arched off the mattress. Tits bouncing and eyes rolling back with every thrust.

“God yes, oh my god, fuck, uh-hu, uh-hu fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” she moaned.

Even on her back she was in charge.

Cassian threw her legs over his thighs, corded with muscle and brutal sinew, and took her hips in his hands. Her body slanted so that her cunt was perfectly poised for his deep thrusts.

Though he was hardly thrusting now. Instead he was pulling her down on his large cock over and over. The thick girth stretching out her cushiony little centre, the walls of which hugged his every inch snug and hot.

“Fuck you’re so tight,” he winced, panting now. He shouldn’t have broken a sweat but something about her- he was burning up like a fucking furnace.

Nesta’s tits were swaying with every obscene moment of collision, her own body subtly slick with a sheen of salty heat he wanted to lick up until his tongue ached. And her eyes, they were like the molten core of flame itself, blue so bright is was almost silver.

She wrapped her legs round his waist, pulling him in closer and Cassian was on top of her again, growling dirty, continuous comments against her ear while she clawed at his back.

He didn’t know if it was the friction of the coarse hair that trailed down the v of his hips or his gravelly commentary but her cunt started squeezing his cock tighter on every thrust. Fluttering on the precipice of orgasm.

“Fuck that’s it gorgeous…so fucking tight for me…yeah moan my name baby, moan my fucking name,” he growled deeply, running his mouth while driving Nesta closer and closer to the edge.

“Cassian! Oh my god!”

He groaned pathetically as her pussy fluttered around him snugger than before, the fit so tight it was becoming an increasing effort to push inside her, his thrusts becoming more forceful but also sloppier.

“Fuck I’m gonna cum,” he moaned.

“Cum inside me,” Nesta demanded, keening and her voice trembling as much as her legs. “Oh my god fuck, cum inside me, oh fuck I’m gonna cum, fuck fuck, Cassian.”

She bit down on his sculpted shoulder as she came. Fingers buried in his hair and tearing crescent lipped ribbons down his back. The possessiveness and intensity of it and the pulsing of her tight walls taking Cassian down with her.

He came hard.

Starry vision, skull too heavy on his shoulders, jolting electricity enough to kill him then bring him back to life- hard.

“Cavalo,” he breathed, rolling onto his back beside her. Exhausted as he was satisfied.

He’d taken a shuddering and full breath before Nesta was able to muster her own comment.

“Ditto.”

He chuckled, his powerful chest rising and falling a little steadier now. Though he wouldn’t try moving for a while.

“Feyre’s taught you the curse words then,” he presumed aloud. Because of course she had. The girl swore like a sailor

“What?” Nesta hummed in entirely put on confusion. “I just assumed that meant, that was amazing and I want round two,” she smiled savagely, rolling onto her side to tuck her chin on her fist and run her other hand up his thigh.

“I should have known not to give you sugar before bed,” he groaned dramatically.

“Shut up, you promised me the engine was raring to go,” she grinned, straddling him.

Cassian’s laughter was all but booming.

“I’m serious! I wanna go again, pillow princess,” she whined or growled and it was so fucking lovely his stomach did a little flip even as she squeezed his shoulder. The muscle tense from holding himself up over her and the flesh actually bruised from her teeth.

“Oh that’s rich-”

“No, I’m rich, you’re sexy, fuck me like you never want me to leave this bed.”

“Once I’m through with you you won’t be able to leave this bed.”

“You’re all talk.”

“You like my talk.”

“I like a lot of things about you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“In fact I can think of fourteen.”

They’d ended up nose to nose, Nesta’s forearms on the pillow either side of his head.

“Fourteen?” Cassian repeated. “That’s very specific. You gonna share with the class?”

Nesta grinned.

“One, two, three, four, five, six,” she hummed, walking her fingers down each of his abs slowly. Adding to the count with every cobbled flare of muscle she tapped.

“And uh,” she bit her lip. Then cast her glance down suggestively.

Mental arithmetic wasn’t easy with Nesta Archeron flirting naked on top of him but he worked it out quick enough.

And her math was off.

“Sixteen,” he corrected with a vicious smirk.

“Nice try but I think you would’ve broken me-”

“No,” he chuckled. “Eight-pack, Sweetheart.”

He winked and she made him pay for it. Kissing him hard and dirty. Teeth and tongues and wondering hands.

It wasn’t long until he found himself sheathed inside her again, and again, and probably around another three rounds after that- not a single surface in his room un-desecrated by the time they called it quits.

“Oh my god time out,” Nesta pleaded breathlessly. Sticky with sweat and bent over his dressing table.

Cassian was so exhausted he almost went to collapse into the chair he’d kicked over in his hazy determination to fuck her for the millionth time that evening.

“What do you need a time out for?” He breathed, pushing his hair back off his face and pulling out of her with a wet sound. “I’m the one who did all the work here,” he smirked.

She swallowed a shaky breath, and he caught the roll of her eyes in the mirror even with such distracting sex hair demanding his attention. Seriously she looked like she’d fallen out of a tree.

“Faking all those orgasms really took it out of me though.”

Cassian wheezed a laugh as he collapsed back wards onto the bed.

“Performance of your career. Can I be your date to the Oscars?”

“Fine but Henry Cavill’s taking me to the Golden Globes,” she said.

He was chuckling as she fell back onto the bed to lie with him, flat on her back to his left as she waited for her heart rate to return to normal.

“Can you bring him here once you’re done with him then?”

“Shut up,” she warned without a trace of malice.

He took a few ragged breaths before confirming: “by time out you meant, for the love of god no more sex, right?”

“Oh yeah. You try to make me cum again I’ll castrate you.”

“Thank god because I really wanna take a shower but I couldn’t take you jumping my bones in there- like I’d probably just start crying.”

She cackled as energetically as was possible in her current state and Cassian couldn’t help but grin at the sound. Before sitting up slowly with a groan.

He was going to ache tomorrow.

“Carry me,” Nesta hummed with an entitled absence of any kind of please or pleading tone. Her eyes still closed in serene exhaustion.

He sighed. Then did as he was told. Walking them through to the shower in his en-suite and setting her down on her feet despite the protest from every muscle in his body.

She immediately slouched back against the tiled wall, and Cassian brought a hand to rest atop the vast, square shower head. Caging her in slightly, his head hanging low with fatigue.

She reached for the faucet to her left and turned it with a limp wrist. As though even the small task was asking far too much of her.

A hot spray of water erupted from above and they both groaned in unison.

“I’m never getting out of this shower,” Nesta vowed, head tipping back and her body loosening all over. Not with exhaustion, but a deep seated relaxation.

“My water bill might object to that but I certainly won’t,” Cassian assured her, following her lead and letting his head fall back. Running his hands through his sodden hair.

“Cassian.”

He opened his eyes.

“What is this?”

Nesta was holding the bottle of shampoo he kept in an alcove above the faucet.

Which was obnoxiously blue and had a cartoon pirate on it.

“Shampoo,” he tried.

“Oh my god-”

“It smells like summer!”

“I cannot believe I rode a grown man who uses children’s shampoo.”

“Look it was the shampoo Amira first bought me and I liked it so she just kinda never stopped getting it and then when I moved out- I mean why mess with perfection,” he stopped talking because it was actually rather hard to hear himself over Nesta’s laughter.

“You do have great hair,” she complimented through her grin, rising on her tip toes to push a wet lock back off his forehead.

“And not a single grey,” he boasted. “Plus the conditioner makes it super shiny and I mean, have you seen how volumous it is?”

Cassian took the bottle from her hand, snaking an arm around her and guiding her to turn so that she was stood with her back to him- pressed against him actually.

She was still laughing as she looked up at him. Water cascading down her body and droplets caught between her thick lashes like stars in the night sky.

“Trust me,” he promised, squeezing a measure into his hand. “Come morning, your hair is going to be so glossy.”

He put the bottle back and started massaging the shampoo into her hair. Fingers caressing and rubbing at her scalp, her eyes closing with a drawn out and content hum he felt bloom in her body and burn through his softly.

He took his sweet time.

Indulged in it.

The intimacy and the warmth and the hushed sounds of water spraying down on them and Nesta’s breathing.

Took just as long rinsing the product from her hair and then applying conditioner.

“You’re gonna need to get me a step ladder if you want me to return the favour,’ she sighed, completely at ease in his arms. So much so that a lazy smile pulled at her full mouth and her eyelids didn’t so much as flutter. She could have been dozing right there, having some lovely dream. Talking in her sleep.

“You can repay me another way.”

“Mmmmm?”

“I have a family dinner at your sister’s on Sunday. Come with me.”

She turned round in his arms.

“I don’t think Feyre would be too pleased to have me. Or Rhysand for that matter”

“He asked me to invite you actually,” Cassian flicked her nose which she’d crinkled in distaste saying his brother’s name. “Because he knows how bad Feyre wants you there-“

“Feyre only thinks she wants me there, Cassian. She’ll change her mind as soon as Rhys implies I think I’m better than him for not touching the carrots his private chef put too much butter on and I call him a hedonistic asshole who loitered round playgrounds looking for a wife before meeting Feyre.”

“Maybe don’t do that then?”

“Look, you know what my sister actually wants? She wants to have invited me only for me to decline so she can point to it as another example of me being a bitch-“

“Wow wow wow, you are not a bitch and your sister is not that conniving. She just wants to see you.”

Nesta just rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to refute him, but he cut her off before she could get going again.

“Okay fine let’s pretend that for some reason Feyre genuinely doesn’t want her crazy smart, witty, awesome sister over for dinner, and that’s it’s not just you being self depreciating. Don’t interrupt. If you honestly believe she wants you to reject the offer, then don’t give her the satisfaction. Come. With me.”

She didn’t say anything. Just narrowed her eyes. Like she was weighing up his argument and didn’t like that the scales of logic were tipping in his favour.

‘Please,” he tried, cupping her face in both his hands and tilting so that he could brush a soft peck to her lips. “Pweeeease-“

“Oh god, fine, just never do that every again,” she begged in disgust, pushing him of her.

Cassian’s grin wiped the pout off his face.

“Thank you,” he smiled, kissing her again. Lingering.

“You’re welcome,” she whispered.

They stayed in the shower until the hot water ran out. Talking about everything and nothing, kissing lazily and with no intent, holding off sleep to drink in as much of each other as they could.

Once they’d gotten out Cassian had had to sprint across the landing to the spare room Mor used whenever she stayed over to grab the spare towel. Dripping wet and buck-ass naked much to Nesta’s amusement. Who he’d bundled up in his own towel, the vast expanse of fluffy white engulfing her.

“Can I borrow something to sleep in!” She called from his bedroom once he’d emerged back into the hallway. The towel meant for Morrigan’s considerably smaller frame just enough to sash his hips and upper thighs. Concealing the essentials and nothing much else.

“Sure,” he called back, finding her a shirt and a pair of his boxers as soon as he re-entered his room.

It wasn’t entirely selfless. Exhaustion aside he was only a man, and spending all night with a naked Nesta in his bed would only result in his having to sneak into the bathroom to pump himself dry while she slept.

“You’re being the little spoon by the way,” she hummed from the doorway to the bathroom, his toothbrush in her mouth.

Cassian gave her the clothes and kissed her on the head. Her hair still slightly damp like his own.

“I was praying I wouldn’t have to ask.”

He brushed his own teeth when she was done and put on a pair of boxers identical to the ones he’d given her.

The boxers of his that he’d given Nesta Archeron to sleep in. Nesta Archeron who was tucked under his covers. Waiting for him. Half asleep already because they’d been at it that hard.

Cassian hadn’t a clue how he’d gotten this lucky.

What he did know was that he was going to sleep better than he had in a long time. That as he slipped under the sheets and Nesta threw her leg over his hip, it was only a matter of minutes until he’d succumb to the soft darkness.

And he did.

Slept so soundly he could have been mistaken for dead.

Until the screaming woke him up.

@featherymalignancy

@sleeping-and-books

@my-fan-side

@hearts-of-persephone

@witchling13

@theoverlyenthusiasticwriter

@typicalmidnightsoul

@sezkins79

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@monstrousloves-explodinggalaxies

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@dayanna-hatter

@anishake

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@carebear1339

@keshavomit

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@bookstantrash

@illyrianshadowhunter

@superspiritfestival

@jungtaekwoonie-is-life

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mightymorphingayagenda · 5 years ago

Note

cant wait for lethal combination chapter 5! and loved the holiday nessian fic you wrote!

then you shan’t have to wait! and thank you so much, nonnie. the fic they’re talking about and all previous chapters of lethal combo can be found here, x

“Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.”

Nesta kept her gaze on the wall of oak opposite her.

“Is this the part where I tell you to get on your knees for me?” She asked.

Humourless.

And she could practically feel the feral rage radiating from him. Bleeding through the grate to her left like he were trying to smoke her out.

“This is the part where you-“

“Shhh.”

A lean shadow, a head of auburn hair, muted in the darkness like the decayed verdure of autumn, barely distinguishable through the latticed window no bigger than her hand.

She’d made Eris wait almost a day.

In Nesta’s experience teenage girls understood psychological warfare better than any CIA types she’d met. And rule one in the handbook was never call him back right away.

Eris might as well have been a cute boy from home room, the advice stood fast.

She’d also chosen the time and place for their meeting, giving no concessions in authority. Picking the church as unlike her he’d inherited both the egregious wealth of his family and their faith. Irish Catholic. Meaning he’d find himself here every Sunday evening regardless, and providing not only the guise of normality, but the cosy anonymity of a confessional.

The only people who did secrecy better than assassins, were the Catholics.

It was perfect really, the perfect plan. Undistracted Nesta had been able to work it out pretty quickly after Cassian had left. Leaving her all those hours between four in the morning and her meeting the following evening with nothing to do but hate him.

Avoiding returning to the bed he’d screwed her in. Glaring at his jacket which still hung beside her front door over a bottle of vodka.

It was a blow to her pride to be sure. The closest thing to rejection she’d ever received from a man. Whatsmore, some gooey part of her she’d pushed down had been upset.

Too worked up to sleep she’d spent hours tucked into her armchair and entertaining plucking his teeth from his mouth like the petals of a rose. He loves me, he loves me not. Because worse than revealing himself to be a complete ass as most men did, Cassian had done so subsequent to fucking her better than she could have dreamed. And she’d had that dream. Multiple times.

Wet dreams that couldn’t hold a candle to the way he’d had her dripping down to her knees, begging for his cock, trembling on legs he’d thrown over his shoulder to lick out her cunt like it was the reason he got out of bed in the morning. The man had spoilt her rotten.

Nesta knew she probably shouldn’t have been thinking about sex in a church. Her mother was likely burning with a fury hotter than the flames that surrounded her down below, but she couldn’t help it. Because while she hated the sinner- ever bronze buffed, tattooed inch of him - god did she love the sin.

“The adult is going to talk,” she said quietly. “If you want to throw a tantrum you can do it on your own time because as of this moment, I’m officially off the clock.”

Eris’ silence said he knew better than to interrupt her. Perhaps he was smarter than she was about to give him credit for.

“In fact I stopped working for you as of the moment you chose to question my methods and profess concerns that I may have jeopardised our venture because I lack the professionalism to keep my legs shut,” she said.

“So if you want Helion Day neutralised, you’re going to have to find someone else to do the job. Though I seriously doubt you’ll be able to.”

Cue phase two of the plan.

Because she may have hated Cassian, but she wanted the monopoly on causing him emotional anguish.

Like hell some other pro was going to put a bullet between Helion’s eyes and devastate his bodyguard. Making that man cry was Nesta’s prerogative.

“I have made it clear to anyone in my field you might attempt to solicit that you are a impertinent, trust fund brat, who insists on micromanaging the work of other’s despite your incompetence in an attempt to feel important beyond the breeding mummy lied and told you made you special.”

“I wasn’t aware you also specialised in character assassination.”

Eris’ voice was charred with a sweetness like wealth; earthy and rich it reminded Nesta of muscovado sugar.

He was right. She was being unprofessional. But she was tired and hungover and out of a gorgeous lay so fuck him.

“My specialities are no longer any of your business, Mr Vanserra,” she replied. “My displeasure however, should be of great concern to you.”

“Is that a threat?”

“I wouldn’t do you the courtesy of warning you if I intended to kill you.”

Eris said nothing.

“You can consider it incentive if it helps you sleep at night though,” Nesta continued. “To do as you’re told.”

She gave him strict instructions. Wait five minutes then leave. Never contact me. Forget we were ever in correspondence in the first place.

“Murder is cheap, Mr Vanserra. You don’t want to learn the cost of disobeying me. It’s not the kind of thing daddy’s wallet can cover.”

She emerged from the confessional, slim shades obscuring her eyes and the deep bruises beneath. Her heels clipping against the stone floor as she made her way toward the station of votive candles at the back of the church.

Each glowing stick a prayer for a lost loved one. Matches and and a few unlit offerings still available.

She lit herself a cigarette on a flame.

And Nesta couldn’t have missed the fresco above those colossal doors of oak and rustic gold flake even through the plumes of smoke that curled upwards as she stalked lazily down the isle: a depiction of the Heavenly Father himself.

She didn’t bother flicking a glance behind her to the confessional.

Who’s your daddy, now?

She’d collapsed face down into already rumpled sheets.

They’d smelled like sex and heaven and she’d smelt like cigarettes and a church and that was all she knew before the exhaustion caught up with her, the world went black, and she was waking up in exactly the same position . Vex’s fluffy tail swishing against her ear. The tickling sensation plucking her from the bliss of pure nothingness.

Nesta groaned a little as she rolled over and pulled herself to sit up. Pleased to find she’d had the energy to take off her clothes. Unlike her makeup.

“Damn it,” she hissed as she saw the smudged mascara on the pillow.

Not that the sheets didn’t need washing anyway…

“Ugh,” she huffed, dropping flat onto her back again.

She’d been awake less then seven seconds and a man had already ruined her day. Just thinking about him…

“Ugh,” she said again, louder. Like she was angry with the ceiling for not acknowledging her the first time.

Vex meowed, his little head nudging at her bare arm. As though he were trying to coax her bra strap back up to a respectable position on her shoulder.

“Hi, baby,” she grumbled, picking him up for a cuddle. “You hungry?”

He meowed again.

Padding down to the kitchen she’d made them both breakfast (technically lunch, she’d slept in till almost one) and carrying her plate of fruit back upstairs to draw a bubble bath he winded between her ankles, catching her attention as he hissed at something in the living room.

“What?” she inquired, looking down at him before tilting her head to follow his own.

Cassian’s jacket.

Uhg.

Now she was thinking about him again.

Childish, dumb, insecure little prick. How he’d had the fucking nerve to call her a coward was truly a mystery.

He was so crippled by that fear of not being good enough he’d immediately presumed she wanted rid of him. Lashing out defensively- God he was infuriating.

She looked back to Vex who was now staring up at her. “If that thing somehow ends up on the floor,” she said, “you have permission to piss on it”.

He purred.

Vex truly was the only boy worth his salt. Something he proved yet again in hopping atop her bathroom counter and guarding her like a fluffy little gargoyle as she sank into the bath. Opening m the window to let out the smoke of her cigarette so as not to bother him. The sound of rain slipping something comforting through the January chill, twirls of smoke and steam visible in fatigued plumes.

Another lethal habit she’d picked up from Aunt Ripleigh.

The thought gave her an unpleasant feeling in her heart. Like a worm writhing in the rotted meat of an apple.

Ripleigh wasn’t actually her aunt. But Nesta avoided her much like she did the rest of her family and that was what really counted. Besides, spilling blood together arguably made for a closer bond than just sharing it.

Like Nesta said, not really her aunt.

Aunt Ripleigh – initials AR, an homage to the assassin’s preferred weapon the AR-47, American hybrid of the Russian Автома́т Кала́шников, A.K.A the AK-47.

Some mothers left their little girls pearls, or scrapbooks packed with baby pictures and the lingering scent of their perfume. Angelina Archeron had left her’s a Mafia assassin’s cell number.

Of course Nesta hadn’t known that.

Not until she’d found herself with her hands caked in something dark and sticky, her boyfriend’s skin stuffed beneath the lip of her nails and a taste in her mouth like hot rust.

She’d been seventeen the first time she’d killed a man.

Not a man. A boy.

A few months her senior, Thomas been a child just like her.

Her first crush. Her first boyfriend, her first love, and her first.

Nesta had known Thomas was using her for sex. Just as she’d been using him for his money, and wasn’t that what love was? Finding the gratification of your needs in someone else? In Thomas’s case he’d needed to get his dick wet. In Nesta’s…it was more than embarrassing but half the time all she’d needed was a hot meal.

She couldn’t count the number of times she’d called him in the dead of the night to hook up in his Porsche so she could sleep there instead of at home, where the windows screamed freezing air from their shattered mouths and the electricity bill was rarely paid.

But one night Nesta hadn’t felt like earning his kindness. And so he hadn’t offered it.

Instead he’d held her wrists, ripped at her shirt, forced his hands into her jeans. Pushed up against the bonnet of that Porsche by a lake in woods she’d torn through his face, her nails splitting through the waterline beneath his eyes as she’d kicked and screamed, blood pouring, his hand on her neck, throwing her head against the wing mirror. Heat spilling heavy down her jaw and neck from somewhere which had smelt like lose change.

She remembers blood in her eyes and the taste of soft, smooth skin and a kind of rubbery strength between her teeth as she’d bit down hard until something had popped or burst or split with a squirt or a tear. She remembers spitting out whatever of Thomas’s ear she’d torn off between her teeth and something swinging into her lower ribs so hard one broke. She remembers the sounds that had been both of them and then at some point just her.

Her screaming.

Her sticky, disgusting face, stinging with every horribly wet sob and shriek. The shrieks that hadn’t choked to shaky breaths until she’d pulled herself to sit back against the wheel of the car. Clutching at her ribs which had only hurt so much worse when she’d thrown up right next to her boyfriend’s body. What looked like a pint of blood glowing in the dust. His face…his head.

It’d looked like a Halloween prop. Like dark jam. Like a brutalised seventeen year old dead in the dirt.

And sometime after noticing one of his teeth in the dust, Nesta had realised how fucked she was.

It wasn’t much of an achievement when you considered Grafton, Vermont had a population short of seven-hundred: but the Mandrays had been quite possibly the most well connected and well off people in its less than seven-hundred square miles. And despite keeping Nesta’s name out of their sneering mouths through referring to her almost exclusively as “that white-trash bitch”, that population short of seven hundred didn’t give a shit about her.

Didn’t give a shit she’d been top of her class with a place at Georgetown. Because Nesta could never have afforded to accept it.

And it certainly didn’t matter she was a pageant queen when everyone knew the petty cash prizes were the only thing that paid the rent on their shitty one bedroom. Especially with things barely breaking even. In spite of Feyre’s making use of their father’s rifle and sourcing for the butcher any chance she could.

A too skinny child in the woods with a gun and blood in her braids.

Nesta’s efforts to keep food on the table had always seemed to pale in comparison to that. But she’d never felt bad about it. Wouldn’t bother hating herself when everybody else was already doing that for her.

Nesta Archeron was the cheap fuck that nice Mandray boy was messing around with. The gold digger with the dead commie mom and daddy issues.

No one would have ever believed he’d tried to rape her.

And she’d had no money for a decent lawyer- she hadn’t even had anyone to call. Not her dad, not a fourteen-year old Feyre nor Elain, sixteen and the last person she’d ever want wrapped up in something like this.

Nesta had been desperate and vulnerable and jaded for as long as she could remember but she’d never felt as terrified and broken as she had in that moment. Crying alone and hugging herself tightly, she’d just wanted her mom. As cold and neglectful and dead as the woman was.

“три три два пять семь девять пять шесть три восемь”

Her mother’s last words.

Ten numbers.

Nesta had somehow gotten to her feet, only realising Thomas had broken a few of her fingers when she’d tried opening the car door. All but collapsing inside once she’d managed as she’d fumbled for her phone.

“три три два пять семь девять пять шесть три восемь” she’d repeated to herself, voice hoarse and wet and cracking as she’d dialled.

Ten numbers. Ten numbers. Ten numbers.

Like a phone number.

No doubt concussed Nesta had deemed it logical enough. Her mother’s dying breath a kind of atonement for leaving her children with nothing in the whole word but a father that could watch his girls starve and go into the woods with his hunting rifle and whore themselves out like they meant nothing.

A life-line in the deep waters opaque with clouds of blood.

“Здравствуйте.”

Those three syllables had been like a punch to the gut.

Nesta had made a noise that might have sounded like “mom?” or the creaking of a damn as it ached under duress. She’d obviously known it wasn’t her mother, but she hadn’t heard a woman speak Russia since- hadn’t heard Russian at all in years.

“Who is this?”

Trying to pull herself together Nesta had taken a breath that had rattled, dripping wet and slightly wheezing. Everything was going to be okay. She’d been right. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. Of all the phone numbers in the world what was the likelihood that the voice on the end of this one spoke her mother’s native tongue?

“I’m- I’m Angelina Archeron daughter. She gave me this number I don’t know what to do I-”

The specifics aren’t as clear after that. Like a jigsaw left out in the rain or soaked in fresh hot blood, the pieces, the details, they’d melted to mush.

A mess she’d held in her hands and wondered what the fuck to do with.

What do you do with a dead body and the knew found knowledge your mother was a boyevik for the Russian Mafia? What do you do with her retirement package which contained nothing but the contact for an assassin working for the New York arm.

Nesta had only known what she wasn’t going to do.

Go down for murder.

Aunt Ripleigh had told her what to do over the phone, instructing her on how to deal with her injuries and Thomas’ pulp of a body. How to explain the state of her face and ribs and fingers and head. What to do with his car and how to speak and sit and and react when then police came asking questions about Thomas’ disappearance. How to get away with it.

Nesta had followed each direction flawlessly. Consoled in finally having a definitive plan. Even a plan that started with “buy meat cleaver, trash bag, battery powered blender and bucket, with cash from dead boyfriend’s wallet.” Even a plan that got progressively worse from that point on.

Filleting chunks of a body that had once been inside her. Hauling a trash bag of boyfriend smoothie to the river with broken fingers. The thick slop sinking almost immediately just as Aunt Ripleigh had said it would. Before she’d told Nesta to burn the bones and roast marshmallows over them.

“If it had not been you it would have been next girl,” Ripleigh had said. “And she might not have had your fight.”

“You mean she might not have been disturbed enough to kill her boyfriend?”

“Killer instincts, Anastasia. Is not disturbed, is talent,” Aunt Ripleigh had said. “Cannot be taught but what can be taught you learn quick. No whining. Like very good puppy with very sharp teeth.”

“Woof,” Nesta had said dryly.

“Stray puppy though, no? Is why you have no manners.”

“You offering to adopt me?”

“I have pet already. And my husband is funnier than you.”

Nesta’s compromised rib had punished her for finding that funny.

“But you ever want job, you call me.”

Needless to say that was not the last time she’d called Aunt Ripleigh.

Three weeks later and four months shy of getting her high school diploma Nesta had turned eighteen and moved to New York in order to “pursue modelling”.

In reality she was doing coffee runs with a dash more arsenic than normal and luring prosecutors to hotel rooms they’d never leave. A personal assistant of sorts to Aunt Ripleigh.

She had kept the mafia, the Bratva, at an arms length whenever she’d been able. Paying off the shitty house she’d left her sisters in with one less mouth to feed and not wanting their address in any files accessible to people with skill sets like her’s.

And while working with Ripleigh had been a mortiferous riot, two gals shattering the glass ceiling in their industry and slitting throats with the shards; Nesta had developed expensive taste from the fringes of high criminal society. She’d cared less about the art of killing than she had about the art she could hang up in a penthouse apartment if she were in private practice. Her lust for comfort winning out after two years or so at which point she’d gone freelance. Assisting in a few heists before getting in with a crowd of Nazi hunters for a bit, all the while keeping in touch with her mentor.

Until Feyre had moved to the city.

Then she’d given up on the more dangerous antics, selling out for safer and even more lucrative bets like CEOs and cutting ties with Aunt Ripleigh. Terrified if not a little paranoid of something happening to her sister. Which had been shit. Because Nesta hadn’t had any other friends. Like, at all.

At eighteen Feyre was still as bitter and proud as she’d been when Nesta had left. As Nesta herself still was.

Elain had tried bridging her sisters’ relationship once she’d moved to New York but she’d had better success career-wise. Working at a florists before eventually graduating to a self employed wedding planner.

Nesta had kept her thoughts on the psychological tells of a girl jilted at the alter becoming a wedding planner to herself. Mostly because Elain was always brining her cake samples she’d stolen and Nesta wasn’t going to sabotage her supply of free cake.

Feyre on the other hand had gone about far less conventional means of making a living. The child was a force to be reckoned with if for nothing but her resourcefulness and almost objectionable will to survive. Fiercely independent and clumsily capable she’d taken a crack at everything while selling her art on the side. It was a piece she’d modelled for that had delivered her to true economic grandeur however.

Well, “modelled” maybe wasn’t the word. Her sister had essentially been used as a human stamp. Her naked body detailed with intricately painted swirls then pressed to canvas.

The work had been showcased somewhere high brow and had caught the eye of one Mr Rhysand Velaris, thirty-one and the sole inheritor of his late father’s worldly possessions. Among which were several millions of dollars.

Half of which now belonged to her sister thanks to a very reckless prenup on his part.

Though Nesta had briefly wondered if he’d spent at least that on the engagement ring. A glittering iceberg that seemed to only glare brighter next to the stark black band tattooed just beneath it, a matching tattoo on Rhysand’s own ring finger. Because of course they’d eloped in Paris and gotten tattoos instead of wedding rings.

If Nesta had been closer to her baby sister she imagined she might have felt betrayed on some level. But as things were, Nesta wasn’t entirely sure she would have received an invite even if they’d had a traditional wedding, planned to perfection by Elain.

It was probably the worst part of her job. The distance she had to put between herself and everyone she had the potential to care about. A distance she could never close even if she decided to retire right this minute because the damage had already been done. Nesta had become a liability to their safety the minute she’d moved here and started in this line of work.

She took another chocolate from the box she’d snatched from downstairs on second thought. Her supply already dwindling thanks to the rather depression freight train of thought she’d embarked on.

That and the fact they were really very good.

Cassian may have been a prick, but she couldn’t deny he had great taste.

In chocolate, and women, she thought smugly. Sinking deeper into the basin.

A heat flushed up her neck that had nothing to do with the bath as she unwillingly remembered how he’d softly coaxed one of these lovely little parcels between her full lips. The drunk hunger in his deep brown eyes and what he’d done next, snapping her lace thong between his teeth-

Her music stopped. Only to be replaced by a buzzing thrum of her phone.

Leaning forward Nesta checked the caller ID before swiping across the screen to accept the call and sinking back to her earlier position.

“I’m not in the mood,” she hummed dismissively, head tipped back against the lip of the tub and eyes closing. She’d known this was coming, better to get it over with.

“When I supply you with handsome, rich, and eligible men, I do not expect you to break them!” Feyre castigated through the phone, and anyone might guess she were the elder sibling.

Feyre indeed thought herself wiser and more worldly than both Nesta and Elain, and getting married hadn’t helped diminish her false sense of maturity. Thrusting her character into some weird sarcastic seriousness that mirrored her husband’s demeanour perfectly. It made Nesta cringe so thoroughly she was mildly concerned about getting wrinkles.

“And I thought we’d grown out of sharing toys, but it seems both our expectations were thwarted.”

“Humans aren’t toys!” Feyre reminded her. Not that Nesta didn’t already know that. No vibrator had never made her cum as hard as Cassian had.

“And if you resented me setting you up with Cassian then why did you fuck him ?” Feyre asked. And she said fuck as though it were synonymous to stab or poison.

“Was it to punish me? Because if so you did a spectacular job. He’s crazier about you than ever and won’t stop moping. The second-hand embarrassment is painful enough without the added agony of how annoying it is.”

If he likes me so much why was he so eager to assume the worst of me? Nesta thought spitefully.

It didn’t matter that she technically was lying to him. He didn’t know that.

“You told me to give him a chance.”

“And you couldn’t have decided you didn’t like him before having sex with him?”

Nesta wasn’t surprised Feyre had taken Cassian’s version of things at face value.

Her husband’s family were unimpeachably wonderful in her eyes. Meanwhile Nesta remained just another reminder of a time Feyre couldn’t have afforded the plane ticket to get to New York, let alone a town house on the upper east side. A cold bitch who hadn’t begged to join the weird cult that was the Velaris family and their innermost circle when Feyre had married Rhysand last year.

“Oh I’d already worked out he was an ass by that point but I thought he could at least make up for putting me through the date. Not much going on in that head but he quite clearly had it all going on-

“Ew ew ew!” Feyre interrupted. “One, I need this conversation to steer clear of anything anatomical, and two, do you have to be so horrible?”

“You’re the one pimping out your friends, I just took you up on the offer.”

“Ever heard of the third date rule?”

“Didn’t you marry Rhysand on the third date?”

Feyre sighed.

“Cassian’s a good guy, Nes. It takes a lot to come out the other side of what he’s been through a good man and he deserves the world so-”

“So why did you send him my way?”

Nesta knew what Feyre thought of her. And if she hadn’t then this conversation would have made it very clear.

“Because Nesta! You’re twenty-four and already a crazy cat lady! I’m sorry I tried to save you from dying alone and having Vex eat your corpse.”

Nesta rolled her eyes.

“Have you ever considered I choose to be alone because I like it?” She asked.

Feyre sighed again, but it was softer this time, sad more than exasperated.

“You’re not alone, Nesta,” she said. “You’re lonely.”

It was annoying enough that she was right, she didn’t have to be so pretentious about it aswell.

“I’m fine,” Nesta said.

“You sound just like Cassian,” Feyre grumbled.

“Well I’ve been smoking.”

“I’ll be sure to put how funny you were on your headstone when those things kill you.”

“I’m racing Rhysand to the grave, he has more cigars than I do shoes.”

“He only smokes them on special occasions.”

“And how do you know this isn’t a celebratory cigarette on account of you calling me?”

“Because instead of saying hi you said I’m not in the mood.”

“Oh so you did hear me?”

“I hear you, Nesta,” Feyre conceded, disappointment weighing on her words. “Loud and clear. Have a good week.”

She hung up.

“You too,” Nesta said into the silence.

When the silence replied she sank beneath the water. As though she hoped it might act as the cushioned walls of a padded cell meant to protect those who posed a danger to themselves.

It didn’t. And that unpleasant ache didn’t go away. It never did.

Worse than the dull pounding in her ears and tightness in her chest as she held her breath.

But it would be nothing compared to the devastation of seeing Feyre or Elain hurt. The tender ache of keeping them at arms length, knowing they were at least there to brush her fingers against, was worth avoiding spending the rest of her life reaching for someone taken from her.

Perhaps that was also why she’d wanted so fiercely to dislike Cassian.

Nesta re-emerged with a gasp, her chest on fire.

What an unpleasant notion, she thought, running her fingers through her wet hair and sinking back as she took a slower breath. That she’d been looking for a reason to dislike him even after overcoming the minor detail she was going to kill his friend and client. An excuse to throw in the towel as soon as she could. Because it was just easier.

Easier than accepting she was fundamentally terrified of keeping him around.

Easier than keeping him around and seeing him get hurt.

Fuck.

Her being mad at him had been a cop out.

Because yes he’d been a petty, insecure idiot; but hadn’t she told him she was going to fuck and chuck him? Hadn’t she been at typically fast to get in a fight with him? Substantiating his insecurities.

Nesta might have been furious at his calling her a coward, but he hadn’t actually been wrong.

She’d let some subliminal fear convince her to sabotage things.

A subliminal and blissfully irrational fear she realised because, Cassian, a monument of pure muscle, could definitely look after himself. He’d been marine corps for Christ’s sake. Not to mention she’d seen him take down Helion enough times in the ring while still working for Eris and the fact the man literally specialised in keeping people safe for a living!

Nesta felt a weird and almost unfamiliar lightness in her shoulders. It felt a little like hope. Which was also terrifying.

But she wasn’t going to the let the fear control her this time.

—

Cassian had ignored her calls.

All three.

Which was fine because she’d been stalking him for the past month. She knew exactly where he’d be that evening and doing things in person meant she could kill him if he kept up the asshole routine.

Nesta’s platform stiletto boots clipped against the laminate flooring as she emerged from the elevator. Stalking lazily through the top floor of the Illyria building.

Even if she killed Cassian he was going to die happy. She looked good enough to eat. Thick hair fastened back into a high ponytail, the details of her face were subject to full attention. Her eyes appearing almost wider and lashes lavished with a black like her jet thigh-highs and tied coat. Plump lips softly lined and shaded, she looked drop dead fucking gorgeous.

Though it was what she was wearing under her fastened coat that was the real killer.

Nesta didn’t uncross her ankles from where they’d flicked over one another as she let herself lean against the doorframe of Cassian’s office.

It was wide open. No privacy needed when everyone else had gone home around four hours ago. The night detail on Helion allowing Cassian time to catch up on work as he had every night and well into the morning for the past month.

“All work and no play?”

Cassian looked up from his desk.

“I can fix that,” she said.

He’d never looked more handsome.

Hair bundled into a dark band, his shirt cuffed at his forearms and a bit of scruff marring his chiselled jaw. A pair of slim reading glasses were pushed up his slightly imperfect nose and it was such a turn on Nesta was glad she was leaning against something.

He looked a little exhausted in a kind of brooding and adorable way.

It gave her this awful pining to massage those sculpted shoulders as he let loose a deep, tired sigh, arms folding across that powerful chest causing his white shirt to hiss as he leaned back into his chair. It was a fucking massive bit of furniture. But then it had to be to accommodate him.

“What are you doing here?”

Rude.

Nesta pushed off the doorframe and into his office.

“You ignored my calls,” she said by way of explanation. Making her way to the bookcase and running her fingers across a row of spines. It was mostly files, but she noticed a few novels as well.

“You kicked me out of your bed at three in the morning.”

She turned to find him watching her.

His words were dismissive and effortlessly confrontational as usual. But there was an edge to his voice. And it wasn’t arousal. Even if his gaze caught on her boots and lingering there for longer than he’d probably care to admit.

Nesta leaned back against the bookshelf, inspecting her manicure with an eye roll.

“You’re still upset about that?”

“Not at all,” he said with a smirk. Reclining back against the chair a little further, hips rolling and arms casually folding. Too casually. The dangerous grace of it speaking to the emotion that no doubt roiled beneath his bronze skin. Belied by that bullshit cockiness which grated her to the bone. “It seems I dodged a bullet.”

“Oh really?”

“The whole hot but mean cliché is one thing, but crazy hookup who stalks me-“

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she sneered.

She’d seen hints of this before. The rugged and crude act meant to cover up the insecurity she’d also been treated to.

“Oh I’m sorry. I forgot you can’t ever admit what it is you want.”

“You don’t have a clue what I want.”

“I have several, Nesta.” He looked her up and down pointedly.

The way he said her name. Even like this it made her weak in the knees while her fingers itched to choke him.

It was all very conflicting.

“Oddly confident in your last performance for someone so insecure,” she quipped lazily.

Cassian rose his brows with a mean a laugh.

“What do I have to be insecure about?” He said. “I didn’t hide behind a half-ass lie to throw someone out of my bed. And I’m pretty sure even your neighbours can attest to how good of a time I gave you,” he smirked again. “You’re not a good enough liar for the way you moaned my name to have been an act.”

The white hot fist in her stomach folded in on itself as it melted to a stickiness despite the misguided insult. She certainly hadn’t been putting it on Saturday. Every sound he’d drawn from her dripping with sincerity. Every moan and whimper well deserved.

“You’re right,” she said.

Cassian blinked.

Nesta prowled toward him and hummed, “those, four, orgasms, were about as fake as my emergency.”

The sultry softness to her voice thickened to something less affected at those last words.

Cassian scoffed. Though there was something withdrawn and careful to him that hadn’t been there a second ago. Like a snake recoiling in case it needed to strike. “Your emergency, of course. Which was?”

“Nothing to do with you.”

He shook his head, laughing bitterly.

“Seriously, Nesta? You’ve had two days to come up with something now.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Nesta slipped atop the corner of the desk, perching there with her long legs crossed over one another. The blade of a stiletto heel close enough to brush up his calf if she wanted to make him shiver.

But she didn’t. She just wanted him to listen. To understand what she was saying so she didn’t have to say anything more because for fucks sake he was the one who’d acted up and yet she was here putting her pride on the line again.

“It had nothing, to do with you,” she said slowly.

A weighted silence settled like snow between them.

Until Cassian took a blow torch to it.

“Shit.”

His head fell into those large hands.

“Shiiiiiiiit,” he cursed again. “Oh god, how badly have I fucked up?” He groaned, looking up. So humbled and distraught it was almost comical.

“Irredeemably.” Her eyes flirted with the notion of a little smile even if her mouth remained unquirked as she propped her hands against the desk behind her and leaned into them to more comfortably watch him suffer.

“I’d beg you not to tease me but honestly I think it’s the least I deserve- fuck.”

“Like me teasing you isn’t the highlight of your day.” She rolled her eyes.

Cassian laughed, pained and almost sheepish, which shouldn’t have been hot but god it made her blush.

Keep your cool goddamn it. She wanted a little more bang for her buck where grovelling was concerned before she let on how eager she was for things to get back on track.

“Want to flat out abuse me and make it the highlight of my year?”

She was struggling to keep the smile off her face even as she said, “I’m not in the habit of rewarding bad behaviour. You’re a man, you get enough of that already.”

“Nesta,” he took his glasses off, setting them down on the desk beside her thigh. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “I’m, really, really fucking sorry I’m an idiot.”

Nesta slid of the desk.

“Go on,” she instructed.

“A moron a fool a stupid, stupid son of a bitch.”

Taking a step forward she was stood between his thighs. Picking up his glasses and pushing them back on his nose. Missing the sight of this hulking, powerhouse of a man in spectacles.

“I’m sorry.” Cassian was looking up at her with those big brown eyes, and the bastard actually leaned into her palm.

“Oh for fucks sake how did anyone discipline you as a child with those damn puppy-dog eyes?” She growled softly, furious.

“They didn’t to be honest,” he admitted with a breathy laugh.

“I can tell.”

She slid her hands to his shoulders, fingers curling soft and possessive over the stacked muscle and palms pressed to his upper chest, stepping tighter into him.

“I guess I’ll just have to do it.”

Cassian swallowed.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time, sweetheart,” he tried. Intoxicatingly deep, trying to maintain that arrogant and playful edge in a way that made his words all the hotter. The simmering ache he attempted to push down all but throbbing in his voice.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she returned, brows arched. Battling a smirk off her face.

“Can I ask you to do something for me, then?”

“If you say please.”

“Please don’t screw around with me.”

Nesta faltered.

Those warm hands came to rest on her lower back, long fingers curling slightly into the fabric and coaxing her that last bit closer so that her thighs brushed against the edge of his chair and her stomach was brushing up against his.

“I’m really into you,” he admitted. “You’re smart and you’re beautiful, and at first I thought the whole hard to get thing was an act but woman you are genuinely hard to get and it is, so sexy. But whatever it is that’s holding you back, that made you wait a week to call me, that made you claim all you wanted was a hook up; I’m clearly not cut out to compete,” he confessed. “It got in my head, and that’s on me and me lashing out at you the other night that’s on me too and I’m so, so sorry Nesta. I need to know where I stand with you though. I need to know if you’re actually interested in me. Because I like you. But I’m too old for games.”

The silence was so thick she could have cut through it with a knife.

Nesta’s hands fell from his chest slowly.

“That’s good,” she assured him at last. “Because I’m not a toy.”

She brought her fingers to the belt of her coat and pulled slow and deliberate.

Black glazed her figure with a gorgeous intimacy. The dress hugging at what little it concealed with perfection enough to make up for its lake of mercy. Long legs sheathed in those thigh-high boots, the item was short enough that a decent length of her thighs could be seen. Interrupted at the last possible moment by sleek jet as though she’d been dipped in oil of purest night.

Cassian’s eyes blew out to sticky treacle behind those glasses.

“I’m human, Cass,” she hummed, tossing her coat onto the desk behind her as she spoke. “Which means I make mistakes.” He swallowed as she sighed softly, her cleavage swelling a little with the motion. “And that I have needs. Needs you can be the one to fulfill or not.”

She slipped into his lap, straddling him, knees bent either side of his thighs. The corded strength of which pressed painfully and exhilaratingly apparent against the soft seam of her inner thighs and she was genuinely suffering from some kind of contact high. Every inch of him seizing up subtly, deliciously taught at her touch in an effort not to respond and yet it only revealed just how much she affected him.

“Nesta-“

“Shhhhhh,” she interrupted. Hands cupping that ruggedly handsome face and titling it back to tuck her’s against him slowly. “But I want it to be you,” she purred against his jaw, tracing her nose up the stubbled curve. “Let me show you how bad.”

“Someone could come back-“

“I don’t care,” Nesta murmured against his mouth. “I want you.”

His eyes fluttered shut. And she felt his cock stir in those immaculately tailored slacks.

“Nesta-”

She could feel every muscle that licked up his stomach tremble with a drawn out contraction as she said it again, her hands slipping down to his broad shoulders.

“I want you,” she purred again.

He might have tried to breath. And it might have rubbed up something uncomfortably nice in her lower tummy.

“Say it,” she whispered, tilting her face so that the tip of her nose brushed up the side of his. Her breath hot on his stubbled Cupid’s bow and hands running down the solid power of his upper body, burning up through his shirt. “Say it, Cassian.”

His brown eyes like cognac and magnolia were hooded behind his glasses as he conceded.

“You want me,” he breathed.

She grazed her mouth against his. Lips parted suggestively and an almost silent, utterly cruel noise escaping her.

The length of his thick cock pressed up against the seam of her plush sex as he grew to full, hard attention in his slacks. Warm and thrilling even through her panties and their open mouths melted into one another hot and heavy, tongues caressing as his large hands came to her knees and smoothed up her bare thighs covetously.

“Fuck,” he groaned lazily as her hips began rolling deeply into him, and her hands slid under his shirt. Fingers splayed, she snaked up the cobbled muscle of his stomach, the flesh burnished and warm beneath her touch. His shirt riding up to reveal the gutter of his hips, gruesomely toned and dusted with hair.

“This is…such a…” he breathed, between the perfect and yearning motions of their jaws, a hand smoothing up her waist in a way that made her shiver.

“Dream come true?” She hummed, kissing him wanton and unhurried. Dangerously close to becoming a brainless mess with the way his cock rubbed up her core.

His groan melted to a laugh or maybe it was the other way round.

“Yes,” he admitted breathlessly. “And a bad, bad…idea.”

“Well you’ve been a bad, bad boy, Cassian,” she whispered filthily against his ear, before capturing the lobe between her teeth softly.

She sucked and nibbled oh so gently and he expelled a breath so gravelly and masculine it twisted the hungry knot in her core tighter.

“Nesta…we-fuck you’re good at that…” he groaned lethargically . “Sweetheart, we can’t…”

“Why not,” she coed quietly, the sound airy and affectedly filthy.

“We’re…” he choked as he took in the sight of her cleavage, pushed intimately to his chest and escaping the neckline of her dress like a plume of toothpaste squeezed from the tube. “Fucking hell Nesta we’re in my office.”

“And I’m saying you could be in me.”

She rocked her hips against him with a particularly cruel slant.

The groan that escaped him made something flip in her stomach, tossing about whatever sweet, impossible to describe feeling rushed there at the same time at the way his head fell back against the chair as she worked him over. The hot friction that rubbed against her sensitive core the cherry on top of the sweet, creamy, decadent sundae.

“Besides,” she moaned, breathless and sultry. Teeth plunging softly into her plump bottom lip as she continued rolling her hips. Hands rubbing over his shoulders and providing her leverage. “You’re the boss.”

“I think we both know…that I’m not the boss…right now…” he groaned. Almost pained.

“Your cock a little much for those slacks?” She hummed, faux sympathy dripping through her mocking pout.

“I thought you liked a tight fit,” she teased, still pouting but eyes smokey. Her toes curling in her boots as her fingers began work on pulling his shirt apart.

The buttons popped undone with a sensual and pining tempo and she was moaning quietly into his mouth as she explored the panes and ripples of that powerful upper body. More than thorough in her hands-on assessment.

Cassian’s own hands were keeping just as busy, massaging and kneading her ass indulgently before smoothing over her rolling hips and eventually coming to her lower back. His thumbs pressing to the small of her back either side of her spine and it made something tight inside her swoon. The touch so hot and the memory it conjured so good. His big hands on her as he fucked her from behind.

“Nesta,” Cassian groaned deeply, as she began rocking into him tighter, hotter. The impression of his cock lined up just right with her aching core.

“Hey, baby,” She purred, drunk on the friction that made her whole body throb and hum with pleasure and the tip of her nose brushing the side of his. Hands snaking from his exposed chest to either side of his face and capturing his bruised mouth with her own. Chewing on his bottom lip obscenely, the friction beginning to push her over edge.

“Fuck you’re incredible,” he groaned huskily once she let up. Kissing back decadently. “I’m so sorry,” he breathed almost mindlessly. “I’m so fucking sorry, Nesta.”

“You wanna show me how sorry you are?” she purred, sultry and low, mouth parting, forehead still pressed to his and eyes fluttering open to hold his own.

Cassian nodded, dumb and silent and eager and Jesus it turned her on.

“Yeah? You wanna make me cum?” She hummed.

“Yes, yes, please.”

“Touch me, Cassian,” she whispered against his open mouth. “Make it up to me, make me feel good.”

Cassian’s hands slid back to her ass and she moaned into the kiss he captured her lips in as he lifted her with a sensual squeeze, wrapping her long legs tightly round the tapered cut of his waist as he stood.

The surface of the desk was beneath her before she could work out which way was up and his touch smoothed down her legs to her knees before she could take a a breath in reprieve from kissing him. Her legs splitting either side of his broad hips and his erection, tucked to the side in his slacks and thick and heavy and hard, pushed against the inner seam of her thigh as he pulled that band from her hair.

“I’m gonna make these gorgeous legs tremble for me,” he pledged against the her jaw, kissing and nipping his way down to where her pulse throbbed for him as he a hand through the loose locks.

And he began suckling at that sensitive spot just as a calloused hand slipped between her thighs.

“Mmmmm,” Nesta moaned smugly, gripping at his biceps still sheathed in the sleeves of his shirt as Cassian’s thumb ran up the seam of her dripping cunt through her panties. The lace a flimsy veil between her swollen clit and his hot touch.

“Fuck I’ve missed you,” he moaned into her neck, her head rolling back as he snapped her panties and began stroking his fingers through her soft folds possessively. “Missed those little sounds and your mouth and this pretty neck and perfect pussy.”

“Then cut out the all bark no bite bullshit and prove it,” she breathed.

“Yes ma’am,” he murmured thickly, the pad of his thumb coming to her clit and she moaned as he circled the sensitive bundle of nerves expertly. Her nails pressing into his shoulders, a few through the hiss of his shirt but the others carving crescents into the bronze muscle and tattoos like the meat of an apple.

His forefinger began teasing at her tight entrance and Nesta’s breath caught.

“Tease me and you’ll fucking regret it,” she warned thickly, and he pushed the digit inside.

The intrusion was far from the thick, eight inches she craved, but when he curled his finger against a sensitive, swollen spot deep inside her Nesta keened aloud.

“You look so fucking good like this,” Cassian breathed, husky and bestial as he crooked his finger inside her over and over.

“More,” she demanded.

It probably wasn’t clear if she was demanding more dirty praise or physical attention but Cassian was a good boy and covered all his bases. A second finger pushing inside her that second.

She gasped as the snug walls of her cunt stretched to accommodate the two of them as he waxed lyrical about how hard her moaning got him. Their foreheads level and those deep brown eyes lathering her with his earnest attention.

“You’re dripping down my knuckles like a fucking peach,” Cassian told her as he thrust inside her over and over, the only thing more obscene than her facial expression and the breathless sounds she was making being the quite, wet noises his fingers illicited.

He hadn’t let up on her clit, and at the exact moment he decided to start curling those two fingers together, he increased the speed and pressure with which he rubbed at her most responsive spot with his thumb.

“Cassian,” Nesta moaned, her fingers running up the nape of his neck and delving into his hair, still pulled into that bun.

“That’s it, that’s so fucking hot, baby, I want your cum dripping down my wrist,” he growled softly. Her nails sliding down his scalp.

“You’re so fucking needy,” she got out, which only served to utterly delight him. His thumb working at her from an oh so subtly more intense angle that had a familiar buzzing low inside her threatening to pluck her apart at the seams.

“Oh my god fuck,” she moaned. “Uhhu, that’s it, just like that oh my god.”

“You gonna cum, Nesta? You gonna cum on my desk- Jesus I’m gonna be thinking about you moaning, long legs spread for me while you moan so fucking dirty for my fingers every time I’m sat at this fucking desk now, you know that?”

His words sent her over the edge.

Silently she threw her head back as her orgasm licked up every frayed nerve in her body. It was hard. And Cassian kept on working those thick fingers inside her and over her sensitive clit throughout.

Fucking her dirty and skilled. Prolonging her twitching and bone melting pleasure.

Until she was snaking her hands from where they’d wound through his fastened hair, and pushing him off her at the shoulders. Falling back on her forearms with a shaky exhale, thighs still trembling subtly.

Cassian smirked. And brought his fingers to his mouth. Licking up the length of the calloused, sticky digits. Eyes on her’s from behind those obnoxiously sexy reading glasses she had half a mind to slap off his face.

“You taste even better than I remember,” he purred.

“Then get on your knees.”

Her voice was shaky but he didn’t even throw her another of those antagonistic and gorgeous smirks, just sank down. All six foot whatever, two hundred and something ridiculous pounds of muscle. Knelt on the floor between her legs.

“Is initiative encouraged of am I to be strictly obedient?” There was that smirk.

“You can use your brain,” she permitted. Still out of it. But still dying for him to touch her again. “If only because I need to be convinced you have one.”

His chuckle felt like fucking heaven between her thighs. His stubbled jaw rubbing up against her aching cunt as he kissed her like he meant it. Open mouthed and his tongue then slipping out to lavish her dripping slit before he began playing with her clit with the tip.

Nesta moaned, chewing down on her lip once she located the dignity to quieten down so she could keep it that way.

Her previous orgasm should have taken the edge off, but it had only reminded her already whetted appetite what there was to gorge on. Leaving her pining for more and disastrously sensitive.

“Mmmm,” Cassian moaned deeply- though honestly it was closer to a growl which was hot- and brought those large hands to her thighs. Holding her open for him stoking the bruise-blue flame that writhed in her core and allowing him better access to her pussy.

“Oh god right there,” Nesta keened. His nose brushing up against her clit as he licked up her snug entrance, teasing his tongue inside.

He threw her legs over his stacked shoulders and obeyed, working his tongue inside her with shameful enthusiasm only emphasised by the noises he was making. Seriously he was putting her to shame.

In fact if she hadn’t been rapidly approaching another orgasm she might have thought he was have more fun than her.

Hands no longer occupied with gripping her black-clad thighs they came to her hips and waist. Coaxing her to slant forward at an angle that granted him an even more advantageous angle from which to eat her out.

She moaned, manicured nails almost clawing into his desk behind her. “Mhmm mhmm uh,” she gasped sharply at the sudden relocation of his tongue. Cassian capturing her clit in his mouth and sucking on the sensitive bud as he flicked his tongue up and down.

“Fuck, yes yes yes yes,” she was utterly breathless. “Oh god, oh fuck, I’m gonna cum, I’m gonna cum,” she whined.

Cassian fucking groaned and it was like he’d pulled at the knot in her stomach with his teeth.

The muscles in her lower stomach twitching as she came, the cushiony walls of her cunt pulsing tight and the only thing grounding her to reality.

Though she was just lucid enough to know Cassian was lapping up the nectar between her legs with audible and pleased snarls of pure, masculine satisfaction.

Nesta couldn’t say how long it took her to stop seizing, just that she was completely drunk on pleasure by the time her body allowed her to at least try and think. She failed completely. Wasted on her orgasm, on Cassian.

“Come ‘ere,” she said, breathless and doped up. Eyes barely fluttering open, heavy lidded and probably glazing over with unabashed appreciation as Cassian did as he was told. Rising to stand before her, thick arms winding round her waist snuggly and pulling her to him tight.

His sheathed erection pushed to her sticky inner thigh and his powerful upper body, chiselled and broad and comforting, warm and hard and dusted with dark hair, pushed to her’s.

His sharp jaw, like her thighs, was slightly sticky, and his mouth looked even more abused than it from the attention of her teeth. But the best part- better than his mid-sex blush or the way he was breathing all deep and powerful and hungry for her, were his glasses. They were slightly fogged up at the edges.

“Apology accepted?” He asked huskily, like he was already sure of the answer. Like he didn’t care because no matter what she said he was going to have her screaming for him till they were both sick of each other.

“Apology accepted,” Nesta confirmed. Splayed hands smoothing up his broad chest as she captured his lips in a wanton kiss.

“That still leaves your punishment though,” she whispered.

Cassian’s dark brows had barely risen before she’d pushed him back and he was falling into the chair again. Breathing deep and thrumming with a desire that destabilised him as he watched her slip a stiletto heel beneath her panties on the floor and flick them up into her hand. Prowling toward him and climbing into his lap. Hoping it wasn’t obvious that her legs felt like liquid.

“Hold these,” she demanded, feeding the bundle of lace into his mouth, his groan muffled by the fabric and her hands making quick and embarrassingly eager work of removing his unfastened shirt. All but tearing it off his sculpted arms that must have been as thick as her thighs- his body was ridiculous.

She griped his wrists before he could start doing something like feeling her up and brought them behind his head. Elbows out and biceps flexed, his hands meeting in the middle at the nape of his neck.

Cassian kissed and nipped at her fingers as she plucked her panties from his mouth with one hand, holding his wrists with the other.

He licked at his lips as though chasing the taste of her lingerie, eyes on her’s from behind his glasses.

She wasn’t gentle knotting the lace round his wrists.

“Oh,” he grinned, trying to move his arms.

He couldn’t of course, the physics working against him and rendering it so his only way out would be pulling until the lace snapped for a second time this evening. Still, it was a fucking gorgeous sight watching him try. Biceps and broad chest flexing.

Tied up and at her mercy she was dripping wet for him and slipped her tongue into his mouth as a little reward for how fucking hot he looked like this. Kissing him obscene and wet.

“Safe word?” She murmured into his mouth.

“Harder,” Cassian grinned. No doubt referencing her answer to the very same question the other night.

Nesta bit his bottom lip, puncturing the bruised cushion subtly and she tasted blood on her teeth and his tongue.

“Safe word,” she insisted once more against his lips, fingers winding through his hair with a drawn out and yearning pull.

“Amren,” he groaned`. Then added, “don’t ask.”

“Yeah we’re done talking,” she informed him dismissively. Unbuckling his belt and pulling it through the loops of his slacks with a swift tug.

Cassian’s hips jumped beneath her and she unfastened the button slung low on his hips, pulling the zip of his fly down. Parted lips close to brushing.

“Down boy,” she purred.

“Bit late for that,” he breathed raggedly, jaw feathering as she slid her hand into his boxers.

“God you’re adorable,” Nesta pouted, freeing his thick cock. Obnoxiously engorged and a dribble of pearlescence spilling from the uncut tip.

“Now be a good boy and don’t you dare cum until I say,” she warned.

And sank down on thick inch after inch of his hot, rigid shaft.

Nesta couldn’t help the arch that slipped through her spine as he filled her up, the stretch so acute it had her eyes rolling back with a flutter of her thick lashes.

“Oh my god,” she moaned breathlessly, hands splayed against his powerful chest. Thighs straddling his, her walls hugged him vice like and- Jesus, he rubbed up that deep spot inside her perfectly.

“Nesta,” Cassian groaned beneath her. “You’re so… fucking tight.”

Nesta rolled her head to the side in tandem with her hips, growing accustomed to the sheer size of him and eliciting a raw sound from the man before she removed his reading glasses. Fitting them over the bridge of her own petite nose.

“No backseat driving now, sweetheart,” she purred a little shakily.

She rose onto her knees only to sink back down again with a filthy twist of her hips. Repeating the motion again and again. Gliding up and down his cock with a tight and slippery friction that had her stomach flexing and his gaze heavy lidded. Encouraging, low noises escaping from deep in his chest that she wanted to bottle up and get drunk on.

“Uhh,” she keened, dirty and blissful, hands on his stacked shoulders. “Uhhu.”

“Oh fuck,” Cassian breathed huskily. “Mmhhm…that’s it…fucking ride me baby”

Nesta felt a familiar heat fan at her core as she drank him up. Every perfect, delicious inch there for her to use.

“Cassian,” she moaned. The sound tasting like sex in her mouth.

She fluttered around him again on an upwards twist of her hips, his cock pushing in and out of her snug cherry with a delicious wet sound. Just audible above her filthy moans.

Riding him was like sucking on a hard candy, that intense sweetness at the centre burning ever closer. And he kept running that damn mouth. Gravelly and deep, lavishing her body with sickly sweet and dirty compliments.

“Fuck that’s it gorgeous, just like that sweet thing fucking hell you’re fucking perfect.”

Powerful and dripping with raw fucking desire his body rolled upwards into her, slick with sweat and chiselled sinew. His cock burying deeper inside her. The sounds he was making just to top it off causing a tight fuzziness to tremble in her upper thighs.

“Oh my god,” Nesta moaned, hands coming to his face and lips brushing his as so she moaned a hot, “I’m gonna cum,” into his mouth.

Cassian groaned. Kissing her hard and deep.

“Cassian,” she keened.

She began bouncing deeper in his lap. Up and down up and down. His cock thrusting inside her hard and rubbing at her g spot just right while her clit grazed the coarse hair at his rugged hips. There was a bead of sweat gliding down the chiselled muscle that carved his broad torso, washboard abs flexing as he resisted release and Nesta felt the pressure between her thighs reach a fever pitch.

Grunting he bucked violently beneath her once, twice, and she was undone.

Nesta might have made a noise this time. Airy and hot and open mouthed against his neck as she buried her hands into his hair.

He was so tense beneath her, like pure marble soaked in the heat of the sun. Trying not spill inside her as her walls flexed with every hot wave of pleasure.

And once it passed his breathing was as ragged as her own.

“You did so good,” Nesta whispered at last against his ear. Voice wrecked like she were experiencing a sugar crash. Nibbling at the lobe. Tasting salt on her lips and eyes fluttering shut at the heady scent of his aftershave.

“Does that mean I get a reward?” he managed.

“Something like that,” she hummed, repositioning herself so that her back was to his chest.

“Nesta please. Just untie me, sweetheart,” Cassian whispered against her ear. Voice trembling like he’d shot up something good.

Nesta only chuckled, head knocked back so she could hold his eyes as she rolled her hips. Teasing, tormenting.

“The second you get your hands on these,” she brought her hands to her tits, giving them a soft squeeze and biting her lip, “you’ll be cumming and out of commission.”

Cassian growled, watching her feel herself up as she rolled her hips in leisurely circles. Sensual and dirty. The length of his hard shaft, thick and velvet smooth beneath her.

“Fuck,” he moaned huskily. Nose buried at her throat and lips working against her pulse point with the assistance of his tongue and teeth. Just as slow and through as her hips.

She gasped softly, grinding deeper.

“You know how good I can make it for you,” he purred.

“Mmmm,” she moaned quietly in agreement.

“Let me take care of you.”

“Cassian.”

“You make my name sound so sexy,” he grazed his stubbled jaw against the bruise he’d worked into her throat, the sensitive skin blushing warm at the contact as he moved his mouth to another location and started kissing and nibbling there. “Untie me, baby, and I’ll give you everything you want.”

Nesta smiled.

“Or I could keep you tied up and just take it.”

Cassian growled against her neck as she tilted her hips forward allowing his cock to spring up, and sank down on him again.

She moaned, loud and keening. Hands snaking through his hair behind her as she rocked herself up and down slowly. There wasn’t a lot of friction, but for now it was enough just to revel in how good Cassian’s cock felt. That last orgasm having finally takes the edge off.

“Fuck that’s it grind for me,” he moaned. His breath was hot against her neck and she could feel his heart beat. Feel every deep sound reverberate through his chest as she moved.

His cock rubbed up against her g spot, colours and stars bleeding behind her eyes like fireworks.

“Cassian,” she whimpered lowly.

It was so good.

Hands fumbling distractedly she brought her fingers to untie him. And he deemed it all the permission he needed. Tearing himself free with a growl. Capturing her mouth in a slow and wanton kiss as those big hands came to rove her body, taking his time to pull her apart.

His touch hot and calloused, Nesta moaned into his mouth as he ran up her stomach, her hips, her thighs, her tits. Massaging and glazing every inch of her with a rough heat that made her feel like she was going to explode. Her body a champagne flute dangerously close to shattering at the frequency of his hot groans and growls.

“Right there, oh right fucking there baby,” She moaned quietly against his lips, one of his hands rubbing her hip and guiding her motions while the other palmed at her breast.

“Yeah? You like that?” He dipped his head to pull down the straps of her bra and dress down with his teeth until her cleavage spilt from the cups. Pebbled nipples tight and rosy in the dim light, peaking over the balcony of her bra.

“Mmmmm,” he murmured against her throat, exploiting the sensitive spot as he made his way back up to her face and watched her plump tits sway. A hand running from her hip down her thigh and back up again to slip between her legs to stroke her clit.

Nesta whined softly.

“Cassian…more…”

She kissed him sluggish and distracted. The two of them humming and moaning every so often until he started caressing her clit tighter and her sounds grew more frantic.

“Fuck uhhu, uhhu just like that,” she panted quietly into his mouth. “Oh god uhh, uhhh more…more…more more Cassian fuck me.”

She was on her feet before she could complain that his hands were no longer between her thighs. Pushed up against the edge of his desk, hands falling splayed against the surface to stop herself falling across the wood and legs split apart.

“Oh!”

“Good girl,” he grunted deeply. “Moan for me.”

His calloused fingers came to her clit, coaxing her closer to the edge as the other gripped her hip.

“That’s it, that’s my girl such a good girl baby.”

Mouth caught open as though on a fish hook Nesta started seeing black splodges, the puddles flaring in her vision on every one of his thrusts. Deep and dirty and filling her till she was so impossibly full she spilt over.

“Fuck fuck just like that oh my god you’re so fucking tight, cum on my cock, cum on my cock, uh, uh, uh.”

Cassian finished inside her with a guttural sound as she came. Pumping her full one last time with a brutal snap of his hips.

She was vaguely aware of his ragged breathing against her ear. Somewhat sure her forearms had fallen flat against his desk and her head hung forward. Hair falling over her face and back arched as her tight sex twitched and fluttered around him.

Coming back to her senses took longer than she’d ever admit.

“Is that cctv?” Nesta asked eventually, head tipped back and resting on his shoulder. Eyes flicking in gesture to the tiny little camera in the opposite corner of the ceiling.

“Don’t worry,” Cassian breathed. “It’s switched off.”

She turned her gaze to him.

“Shame.”

He let out an exhausted and reverent sound that might have been a laugh. And just as exhausted, once he’d pulled out, he fell back into the chair behind him. Trousers pulled back up but unbuttoned.

Nesta followed in fatigued suit, working her dress back down over her hips and sinking to the floor, back against the desk. She probably shouldn’t have worn black… but the impending bill and judgement from her dry cleaner would be worth it.

“Friday night. Pick me up at eight,” she breathed.

Cassian grinned.

“You like Italian?”

Nesta rolled her eyes from behind the reading glasses askew on her nose, but nodded none the less. She was sort of screwed if she didn’t. Cassian’s adopted family were Italian on his father’s side. The cuisine was going to be pretty commonplace if they kept seeing each other she imagined.

“What are you thinking about?” He hummed, watching her.

Nesta smiled. Then crawled toward him across the floor. “How I still have that table cloth you call a dinner jacket at my place.”

“Was that plan b?” He laughed, snaking an arm round her waist as she climbed into his lap. “Hold my jacket hostage till I agreed to go out with you again?”

“No,” she glared at him softly, nestling into the crease of his shoulder. “Though I had thought about wearing it tonight. Just your jacket and a pair of heels.”

Cassian licked his lips as though contemplating the sight and liking what he imagined very much. “Next time,” he hummed distractedly. Less promise more pleading. “This was…,” his free hand roved down her side, the black fabric glued to her figure. “And these…,” his touch made her melt as he ran down her thigh and platform boot, her legs flicked over one another.

“Lethal,” he whispered.

Nesta scoffed. “You’re telling me. My toes are killing me.”

Cassian hummed sympathetically, fitting a heel in his hand and guiding the shoe off her foot. Nesta groaned softly and he did the same with the other boot.

“That bad?” He chuckled, starting to massage her.

“Worth it though,” she sighed, nuzzling into his shoulder.

Cassian held the door open for Nesta to emerge out onto the street first. The cool night air whipping lazily at her hair.

Their second date had been incredible.

He’d taken her to Gnocco in the East Village. Proper Italian food, fairy lights, and intimate little corners perfect for flirting over too many glasses of wine and playing footsie beneath the table. Not to mention casual enough to see Nesta Archeron fitted out in heels, a snug black top, and a jaw dropping pair of jeans.

Tactically quiet and effortlessly biting as ever, she’d been armed with passionate reviews on the podcasts she’d listened to or books she’d read that week. Asking him about his own week and listening thoughtfully in a way that had probably made him blush.

If it hadn’t, then the way she’d licked at the creamy vanilla gelato on her dessert spoon definitely had.

Cassian was far too tempted to slip his hand into the back pocket of her dark skinny jeans as he emerged after her, but he felt Nesta probably wasn’t one for PDA. Or more accurately, public groping. And he was determined to be on his best behaviour this evening. Determined to make her forget all about how shit-awfully he’d handled last Saturday.

Not that he hadn’t given her a thorough apology.

Consistency was key however, and there would be no lapse in his conduct any time soon when it came to Nesta. He’d lucked out so fucking hard in getting a second chance when he hadn’t even deserved the first with a woman like her. Clever and beautiful and passionate and god he had it bad.

Had been thinking about her all week. Their date the only thing getting him through the late nights that were pretty much killing him at this point and the days spent arguing with Helion.

Cassian had worked out who’d put a hit on his friend. And why.

The contracts Helion was in the midst of signing were of a more personal nature that he’d originally let on. His will to be precise. In which it was detailed that upon his death, the pharmaceutical powerhouse that was Day Inc. should be handed over to Saoirse Vanserra.

The married woman Helion had gone and fallen in love with twenty odd years ago. The mother of his child.

Not that Helion had been aware of the that little detail until recently. Terminally ill, Saoirse hadn’t wanted the secret buried with her, and had gotten in touch with her old flame to tell him her youngest was his.

Despite being well into his fifties, Helion behaved like a twenty-something at the best of times. But learning he had a son that actually was twenty-something had thrust him into a panicked play at accountability. Saoirse was going to die, and soon, but Helion would still have a piece of her, a piece of the both of them despite the estrangement that had haunted their relationship since the start. A piece he’d do every and anything in his power to do right by.

Which meant Lucien would inherit his father’s company when the time came.

But removing Saoirse from his will…it felt like signing her death warrant. At least that’s what he’d told Cassian. That it it felt like he was giving up on her.

Cassian wished Helion could process everything in as much time as it took him. But time was a luxury not even the multi-millionaire could afford. Not with Saoirse’s eldest, Eris, trying to take him out before the will could be changed.

As things stood, Eris was set to inherit anything of his mother’s- a compromise reached between Saoirse and her cunt of a husband who’d wanted everything in his name. The Vanserra court its own savage little patriarchy of snakes and vipers, meaning as long as Beron was around, what belonged to his sons, belonged to him.

Still, Eris was the undisputed second in command and Beron wasn’t getting any younger. If he could take Helion out before any changes were made to the CEOs will, and if Saoirse’s doctors were to be believed, Day would practically be his by the end of the year.

Maybe sooner. If Beron beat his cancer ridden wife to death upon learning she’d been left Helion Day’s company and why.

He doubted anyone would put it past the bastard.

“Hey,” Nesta’s voice tugged at his attention as they turned off tenth. “Where’d you go?”

Cassian snaked his arm around her small waist, pulling her against him. “Just thinking,” he said. And as hard as he tried to push those thoughts away, something of them lingered in his voice.

She raised a neat eyebrow. That little beauty spot above the arch lifting with it and the one beneath the corner of her plump bottom lip quirking just barely.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do that before.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. Tucking her tighter to his side as he looked down at her. “That’s because the only thing I ever think about is you. And when I’m with you, I don’t have to do that, do I?”

Her blush was so utterly adorable it made him want to kiss her senseless.

“How do you do that?” Those eyes like the smoke of ice narrowed in sincere curiosity. It was a little terrifying. Which off course only made him like her more.

“What? Make you blush like a-”

“No,” she interrupted him with an embarrassed and chiding laugh, pushing at his chest slightly. “Say things, just say them- like the only thing that matters is that you mean them?”

Cassian smiled. “Not everything has to be done strategically, Nesta.”

“Says the military man.”

“And wouldn’t you say that makes me qualified to- okay fine, roll your eyes at me. Jokes on you because it’s actually very sexy when you do that so.”

Nesta laughed, her head falling to rest below his chest as they walked.

“Fortunate you say something to make me roll my eyes every five seconds then,” she hummed.

“And that I know just how to make those eyes roll back,” he purred lowly in response with a roguish grin, rubbing his thumb against where her coat lay over her stomach.

“Oh and you’re telling me this whole conversation wasn’t strategically constructed so you could use that line?” Nesta looked up at him.

“Sweetheart, when are you going to accept that I’m just incredibly smooth?” He grinned. “Besides, that wasn’t a line.”

“That was so a line!”

“You’d know if I was giving you a line.”

“Go on then. Give me your best line,” she challenged. Stopping dead and turning on him with her arms folded. Cassian didn’t let his arm slip from around her waist though. Kept it right where it was as he brought his free hand to tuck a lock of chocolatey hair behind her ear. Inspiration striking him.

“Are you a box of chocolates?” he asked, gravelly and suggestive. “Because I’d love to take your top off.”

Nesta really had the loveliest laugh in the world.

“That’s awful!” She put her hands firm against his chest. “How did you ever get laid before I took pity on you?”

“Um I’m gorgeous and rich,” he reminded her, both arms now caging her in.

“What a coincidence,” Nesta purred, their noses tucked against one another just barely thanks to his date’s shoes. No doubt expensive as they were tall.

“No coincidences here, sweetheart. This is all fate.”

“I’m deliberately not rolling my eyes just to spite you for saying something so cliché and dumb,” she murmured.

“Fine then. Fate and your meddling sister,” he admitted.

“Let’s not talk about my little sister right now,” Nesta’s hands snaked up to toy with the lapels of his coat.

“What would you rather we talk about?”

“I don’t want to talk at all,” she whispered. And pulled him down lazily to meet her mouth.

Cassian moulded his lips to the perfect pressure of her own. Hard and soft, her mouth like velvet and her body pressing into his tight and loose in all the right places.

Kissing Nesta was like brushing you fingers against the glacial softness of snow like flakes of glass. Irresistible and inevitable. Burning so soft at first before the sensation grew unbearably tender and acute. It reminded you that you were alive.

The movements of their mouths grew hotter, no less lethargic, but simply heavier. Like they had all the time in the world and planned to exploit every second.

So much for not into PDA, Cassian thought, as she coaxed his mouth open further with her tongue, his own slowly swiping to meet it. And he did slip his hand into her back pocket then, giving her a fond and pining squeeze which pulled her tighter into him.

The pads of her thumbs brushed at either side of his jaw as she arched a little, those perfect tits pushed against his upper body and he dug his fingers a little more possessively into the fabric of her coat. Bunching at her waist beneath his calloused touch.

Nesta sighed sweetly into him-

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Cassian swore. Tame Impala playing from his pocket.

“Looks like I’m not the only one who likes your attention,” Nesta laughed quietly, hands smoothing back to her sides politely. The little menace. Her effortless composure all the more devastating with her mouth kissed cherry-red and pupils blown wide as saucers.

He fished out his phone, and declined the call.

“Well you’re the only one getting it.”

She rose her brows as though she were impressed, winding her arms back around his neck.

“For a man who hates games you have game, Velaris.”

“Would you feel less wooed if I told it you was just Rhysand?” He admitted. Rejecting his busybody brother’s phone call a far less bold gesture than if it had been work.

Nesta’s little smile was like molten satin.

“That makes it even better,” she kissed him again.

Cassian kissed her back through his laugh, dipping her back slightly for a more indulgent angle, her arms lacing tighter around him to hold herself up. Like he’d let her fall.

Nesta was the one laughing now and it tasted like gelato and champagne and sunrises. He nipped at her lip as he pulled her back up with him snuggly, and she brought her hand to cup the side of his face, the other at his tapered waist.

“I should get going,” she hummed distractedly, hand gliding up his body like she didn’t even realise.

Her tongue caressed his slowly before he was muttering against her, “probably”, chasing the plush heat of her mouth.

They didn’t stop. Not even as Nesta was murmuring a disjointed, “heighten the…suspense…keep you…wanting and all that.”

“I’m already losing interest,” he purred gruffly, their jaws knocking intimately as the kiss became hotter and fitful, short breaths and hungry mouths. Her nails scraping softly up the nape of his neck and through his hair.

“And you’re looking for it in my back pocket, is that it?” She whispered, and Cassian gave her ass a firm squeeze as either confirmation or reprimand.

She bit his bottom lip, the nip of her pearly teeth giving way to a sensual sort of chewing that made his eyes roll back behind closed lids and his large hands wound through her hair to guid her head back so he could take charge. Kissing her slow once again but dirtier, thorough and wanton and Nesta keened almost silently.

“Found it,” Cassian said thickly into her mouth.

“Want your prize?” She whispered breathlessly.

“Yes please.”

Nesta slid her hand between them. Fingers brushing his belt, then lower-

Cassian couldn’t tell if he was relieved or devastated when she slipped her way inside his pocket and plucked free his phone.

She withdrew just barely from the kiss, switched it on and turned the screen to him. The device unlocked as both his hands tucked into her pockets and her manicured thumbs were tapping away.

Cassian brushed at the curved beam of her high cheekbone with his nose, trying to see what she was up to.

“What are you doing?”

“Callander says you’re free Friday. Or it did. Now it says you have a date.” She nestled herself back into him tightly, tucking the device back into his pocket, exploiting that teasing proximity to something else entirely and driving him crazy as she grazed his mouth with her own.

“Congratulations.”

Cassian grinned.

“Tha- wait just to be clear the date is with you, right?”

“Yes, Cassian, the date is with me,” she chuckled. “And I can’t wait,” her humming melted to something wordless and heavy as he kissed her again.

Slow and explicit he stroked his tongue inside and he swore he felt the flutter of her lashes against his cheek.

“Cassian,” she breathed almost silently and it burnt his lungs like freezing air.

“Can I take you home?” Cassian whispered.

“May I take you home,” Nesta corrected between the sinful caress of their lips.

“Please do.”

She was kissing the smirk off his face like she could taste how snug he was and wanted a piece of it for herself. Like she were working at a marshmallow or strawberry lathered with thick chocolate from a hot fountain of the stuff.

“Maybe you are smooth,” she whispered and it only inflated Cassian’s self satisfaction. “But we both know I like it rough.” Ouch. “Just like we both know you’re way too exhausted to have your way with me.”

He pulled back abruptly.

But his mouth had barely opened to argue when she gave him a definitive “don’t”. It was little bit arousing. “You said yourself how late you’ve been working. Have you slept at all this week?”

For all her icy glares and hellish attitude, at her core, Nesta was kind. She cared despite her pretences to the contrary and it meant she noticed things. Like how despite his lively grins, Cassian was out for the fucking count.

“That’s what I thought. You can screw me when I know you won’t pass out before making it to third base.”

“The only one who’d be passing out is you once I’m through fu-”

“Save that thought for a night you have the energy to see it through,” she said.

“But I-”

A quirk of her neat brows shut him up.

He growled a bitter but accepting sound. She was right, of course she was right, because she was Nesta and a Nesta was always right.

“Friday,” he promised. “I’m gonna cook for you, something fucking romantic.”

“More romantic than that sentence?”

“Look I may not be Keats but I know my way round a stove, so hold all sarcastic comments until I’ve fed you.”

“I’ll try, but I know for a fact you’re going to make that very hard.”

“How have you already failed?”

“Shut up,” Nesta laughed.

“You have the sexiest fucking laugh.”

“So you’ve said,” she blushed.

“And I’ll keep saying it if every time I do you blush like that.”

“Like I’m embarrassed for you?” she countered with an arched brow and a cruel twitch at the corner of her mouth.

“You’re so mean,” he grinned.

They made their way to the curb and hailed down a car on twelf.

“Want me to ride with you back to your apartment?” he said, opening the back door of a yellow cab that had pulled up for her.

“That’s sweet, but trust me, I can take care of myself,” she promised.

“Text me when you get home safe and sound just to spite me then,” he said from the opposite side of the door.

“I will. But you better not be awake to read it,” She gave him a lingering kiss before gracefully tucking herself inside.

“Night, gorgeous,” he winked, and shut the door.

Her ride had just turned onto fourteenth when Cassian decided against hailing his own despite the cold. It was only fifteen or so minutes on foot, and he could probably do with cooling down.

Though even if he had to trek through tundra to get home he suspected he’d still find himself burning up under a cold shower in an attempt not to jack off to the thought of Nesta like a fourteen year old.

Stuffing his already slightly numb hands into his pockets he began walking, his fingers brushing against his phone. He should probably call Rhys back.

The phone rang for a moment before his brother picked up.

“Did you decline my call?”

“Yup.”

“Bastard.”

“I’m sure Feyre will kiss your bruised ego better,” Cassian grinned as he walked. “Along with something else so long as she doesn’t hear you’ve been calling me names,” he added slyly.

“Are you threatening to tell on me to my wife?” Rhysand asked, a little wound up by the allusion to Feyre’s kissing certain places even if he hid it behind an unimpressed drawl.

“Are you pretending the thought doesn’t have you quaking in your givenchy loafers?”

“On the topic of not upsetting Feyre, she’s demanding a family dinner.”

He laughed deeply at Rhysand’s avoiding the question.

“That why you’re calling?”

“Partly,” Rhys said. “Work’s been…She wants to be around family right now,” he said with an all too familiar casualness. “You free?”

“For Feyre?” Cassian said without hesitation. “Yeah, I’m free.”

He would just have to pull an all nighter on the Monday.

“Thank you. And also fuck you for implying if it was for me you wouldn’t be,” his brother said.

“Well you called me just as Nesta was about to slip her tongue down my throat so-”

“Nesta?” Rhys interrupted. “I thought that was over?”

Shit.

In all the carnage that had been the last week he hadn’t bothered letting his family know he and Nesta were back on. The woman was a touchy subject and he hadn’t had the energy or balls to get into it.

While Rhys had been able to excuse Elain’s inactivity when the Archerons had been at their financial lowest, he’d never managed to extend that same courtesy to Nesta. Maybe it was because the first time they’d met she’d called him a cradle snatching whore. Regardless, Rhysand pretty much hated the woman’s guts, meanwhile his wife was desperately trying to lure her into the inner circle of the Velaris family.

Cassian may have been able to bench a number higher than his IQ but he wasn’t dumb. He’d clocked on to the fact his sister-in-law was using him as Nesta bait. In all honesty he was loving it. Nothing made him happier than helping out his family, and if that meant taking out an intelligent, passionate, stunning young woman, then really it was a double-win.

Taking a second to grind his jaw softly he was reminded to tread carefully. Not something he generally excelled at, but for the sake of his brother he could try.

“I know you’re not her biggest fan,” he said. “But Feyre forgave her years ago for bailing-”

“Well Feyre’s a better person than I am.”

“I’ll say. She set me up with a smoking hot model, meanwhile you’re trynna cock block me,” he tried.

“You can put your dick wherever you want, doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“I guess not,” he ground out. Itching to hit something at the implication Nesta was just “somewhere to put his dick”.

“Cassian if you want to date a biblical plague in human form knock yourself out, seriously, god knows Feyre will be thrilled. And Azriel, your moping-”

“I don’t mope,” Cassian interjected.

“Fine, your stropping-”

“Fuck off.”

Rhys’ laugh was about smug as the bastard’s crooning voice.

“Mor’s gonna kill you by the way. You put a two grand dent in her wine collection over a woman you took back the next week.”

Cassian groaned, wiping a hand over his face. The only thing worse than the hangover he’d had Monday morning would be Morrigan’s laying into him on this.

“Don’t you dare tell her,” he warned.

“Fine but you’ll have to do it before next Sunday, you’re bringing Nesta.”

“Hang on a minute-”

“Feyre wants a family dinner and if you and Nesta are back on that means she’s coming,” Rhys said.

“Boy you are asking a lot of me here,” Cassian sighed dramatically. “I mean I can think of a few ways to persuade her but most of them are illegal in a lot of countries,” he grinned.

“I don’t care if you have to roofie her and strap her to the hood of your car, just make sure she’s there.”

“Alright, alright Don.”

“Don’t call me that,” Rhys growled irritably to Cassian’s delight.

“What else were you calling about then?” He smirked. “You said dinner was only part of it.”

“I wanted to ask how things were going with Helion,” his brother said. “Any update?”

Cassian sighed heavily.

“This a secure line?”

“Always”.

“The hit’s Eris,” he said. “Apparently Saoirse does pretty well for herself if Helion kicks it and it’s looking like she won’t last the year. When she goes Eris takes the lot so he’s trying to take Helion out before he can change his will.”

“That little bitch,” Rhys interrupted.

“I’m not done. Guess who Helion might be transferring that inheritance to?”

“Is Azriel going to finally have the funds to build that sex dungeon?”

“Not quite,” Cassian said. “The money’s going to Lucien.”

“Lucien?”

“Turns out the kid’s his.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Seems obvious in hindsight to be honest.”

Rhys was silent on the other end for a moment as he evidently thought through matter.

“You said might, is he waiting on a paternity test or something?”

Cassian winced. “No. No he’s dragging his feet about changing the will altogether.”

“Why the fuck is he doing that there’s a bullet with his name on it!”

“You think I don’t know that?” Cassian hissed, trying to keep his voice down. “I’m the one whose gonna have to jump in front of that bullet if he doesn’t get his ass in gear. But he…he’s losing the love of his life, Rhys. I’m trynna cut him a little slack-”

“Slack Eris is going to have someone strangle him with.”

“I’m handling it,” Cassian promised.

Rhys went silent again.

“We could always just kill Eris.”

Cassian would have laughed at the unrestrained glee in his brother’s voice if the suggestion hadn’t been so tempting.

“No you can’t,” he reminded him, ascending the steps to his front door.

“Sorry, sorry, you probably want plausible deniability and all that- which is a shitty reason to leave a family business-”

“What are you talking about? I left because I don’t like any of you.”

“Dick.”

“See it’s that kind of thing that made for a hostile work environment I really couldn’t foresee a future working under,” he grinned, unlocking the door.

“You taught me words far more creative than that growing up, monte de merda-”

“Desenmerda-te, and don’t cuss at me in Portuguese carcamano.”

“I’m fucking Persian!”

“Tell that to your pale ass like unbaked garlic bread, minchia,” Cassian retorted in Italian as he tossed his keys onto the skirting board and shrugged off his coat.

“A fanabla!”

“Love you too, tell Feyre I said hi.”

“See you and Nesta on Sunday, I’ll text you timings.”

“No shop talk okay, she still doesn’t know anything about-”

“I know, I know, it’s not me you have to worry about. Feyre keeps asking me to hire her.”

“As what? Has Cosa Nostra began dabbling in the modelling industry under your direction, baby brother?”

“If I said yes would you come back to us?”

“I’m a one woman man, Rhys.”

“Jesus, it’s been less than a month.”

“At which point you and Feyre were engaged.”

“Nesta’s no Feyre.”

Yeah, Nesta has enough wit about her to know you can’t go round offering Mafia jobs like candy, he thought to himself.

“Whatever man, I’ll see you then.”

“See you then.”

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