Leather peeled away from Arkady’s cock. It was slick with sweat and precome, thin skin drawn tight over the thick shaft and the foreskin drawn back from the pink, glistening head. It hadn’t changed. Cash wasn’t sure why part of him had thought it might.
He wrapped his hand around the base and squeezed gently. The pulse of it throbbed against his fingers, fast and eager as Arkady folded his lower lip between his teeth and waited.
“What do you want?” Cash asked.
It was an old question, one that cut through rank and ignored the hand Cashwantedaround his throat, the one that made sure this wastheirdecision, outside of whatever their nature or nurture poked at.
What do you want? Do you want this? Do you want me/us?
Last time Cash asked, his throat tight with hope and resentment, Arkady was about to head to the Hunt. He hadn’t turned around when he said coldly, “For you to stop asking me that.”
Cash felt stupid for letting the words leave the inside of his head. It was a question for stupid, hungry boys, for stolen moments in dark corners.
“You,” Arkady said. It felt raw, the honesty of their old ritual too blunt to question. He pushed himself up out of his sprawl and cupped his hand around the back of Cash’s neck to pull him in for a kiss. It was awkward and a bit clumsy, not like Arkady at all. Then he pulled back slightly, just enough to catch his breath, and the low rasp of command was in his voice again. “Now.”
Chapter Thirteen
SOME MONSTERSstripped off their humanity to fuck, doing it as the devil intended—in fur, scales, and loops of raw muscle. But that didn’t work for everyone. Cash was too human, his skin too thick to shuck off like a raincoat, and even if he’d been able to, without their human face, a wisp was just swamp gas with evil intentions. That made them hard to fuck unless you were another wisp, and even if you were, or so Cash had heard, it wasn’t that satisfying.
Others didn’t have enough skin to risk damage. The Worm bought and bargained for his skin—with people who, all evidence to the contrary, thought they’d come out ahead—and they were tailor-fit to him. He squeezed himself out and he’d never squeeze himself back in. Donna’s masks were works of arts, crafted to order, and took three maids and a bath of blood to remove. She wasn’t going to waste all of that on a quick tumble.
As for Arkady, he’d only ever had what the Prodigium—somehow—had given the pure-bloods like him. The human shell that would do to let him move around human scrutiny and the uncomfortable squint of the sun. It was a one purchase per monster deal, and he needed to care for it. Better than he had, anyhow.
Besides, if he let his monster crawl out, it would probably end with Cash dead, or at least peeled open to see if he was wisp enough in his gooey center to survive it. He might be, by now. Probably not.
Cash was monster enough that the idea made him catch his breath with sticky, unhealthy interest. It was like candy. A little was okay, but youwanteda lot, even if it was bad for you.
The Abascals, taken separately or together, were a lot. It was in their job description.
“Penny for them,” Arkady asked as he pushed Cash’s hair out of the way and scraped a sharp kiss over the nape of his neck.
Cash laughed raggedly and leaned back against Arkady’s chest. They’d both lost their trousers, the half-serious game of service abandoned as they ran out of patience and stripped off with clumsy, button-scraping haste and knelt on the bed. He could feel the press of Arkady’s hard, slick cock against the small of his back.
“One deal with the devil per wedding is my limit,” he said. A bitter laugh he’d have struggled to explain caught in Cash’s throat and then dissolved as Arkady reached around to wrap long fingers around his cock. Pleasure flicked along his nerve endings, a hot pulse of need that staggered through his body and escaped his mouth on a whimper. He wanted this. Almost enough to make himself a liar. He twisted his head around and caught a hasty kiss on the corner of Arkady’s mouth. “After that I’m anybody’s.”
Arkady caught his jaw in one hand, fingers curled around his chin so he couldn’t slide away.
“No,” he said, before he slashed a sharp-toothed, possessive kiss over Cash’s lips.
One of them drew blood from the other—a bloom of copper and salt on their tongues—but Cash wasn’t sure who’d bled and who hadn’t. Arkady’s aura folded tightly around them in bruised shadows that slid over Cash’s leg and faded through his cock. It made Cash shiver, goose bumps on his inner thighs, as if it were tangible. He couldn’t feel it, but his skin knew it would feel like thick, tight-woven silk—smooth and heavy and cold.
Arkady played with Cash’s dick with one hand, callused fingers tight with impatience, and ran the other hand from Cash’s chin down his chest. His fingers, already slick with lube, grazed over bare skin and pinched the hard bud of a nipple. If Cash had been standing up, his legs would have gone out from under him. As it was, he had to brace himself against Arkady to keep his balance as pleasure snapped through him like a plucked wire. A throaty, hungry whimper escaped him, thinner as it hit the air than it had felt in his throat.
“What happened to the ring?” he asked. His teeth nipped at the curve of Cash’s ear as he scraped his nail over the tender flesh. “I liked the ring.”
Cash reached back and curled his hand around the nape of Arkady’s neck. He slid his thumb up into the tender span of soft skin just under his ear. “Maybe that’s what happened,” he said. “If it wasn’t for you, why keep it.”
It hadn’t been. The truth was that single fatherhood with a grabby toddler was not a lifestyle choice conducive to nipple rings. After one particularly snake-like strike from Ellie, he thought he’d lost his nipple. So it had gone into a box for later, then the box had gone in a drawer, and at some point, he’d lost track of it. Inertia rather than romance.
That wasn’t the sort of story that set the mood.
Arkady made a rough, amused sound in his ear and dragged his hand down Cash’s cock, from the head to the base. His palm was slick with precome as it slid along the shaft. Pressure, hot and strung so tight it felt likesomethinghad to snap, knotted in Cash’s balls as he whimpered. His skin felt too tight, pulled over bones, muscle, and bubbling, sticky hunger.
“See, that’s why I thought of you when I needed help,” he said. “You aren’t just a good liar. You know when to lie.”
He kissed Cash’s throat—without teeth this time—and pushed him down into the pillows. Cash shivered, his back cold as the air kissed it, and then Arkady was sprawled out on top of him again. He ran warm, slick hands up the inside of Cash’s thighs and gripped the taut cheeks of his backside to pull them apart.
Cash expected the blunt pressure of a finger. Instead he got the wet, slick push of a tongue against his ass. His surprised whine was muffled against the pillows as he pressed his face down into them. A hot tongue probed at his ass, spit-wet and thorough, while long hands stroked his thighs and pinned his hips down to the bed. Silk twisted between Cash’s fingers as he squirmed—or tried to—against the spill of warm, honeyed pleasure that filled him.
