“Yeah,” he said instead. “I did.”
Arkady and the monster both smiled at the same time, with the same mouth, and… pinched. Black nails punched easily through the raised nub, and Cash whined a high note in the back of his throat as he struggled to stay still. Muscles trembled under his skin as he locked them and sucked in a sex-musky breath through his nose.
The flash of pain snapped through him, from his head to his heels. It caught the after-tremors of orgasm on his nerves and fooled them it was one of them. Cash trembled as the pain slipped over to pleasure in its confusion, dark and drug-heady as it roared up toward his head.
He felt blood wet against his skin, and then Arkady leaned in and breathed on it, his breath wispy and gray as it left his mouth. It felt like a poison ivy rash for a second. Then it faded to a chill numbness, like when your foot went to sleep.
Cash swallowed and looked down, his mouth dry. It wasn’t beyond possibility that he had lost a nipple. The addition of a little humanity had not made monster relationships any less weird.
Luckily it was still there, bruised dark against his pale skin, but there. A heavy garnet ring was threaded through it, thicker than the ring he’d taken out and with flickers of smoky darkness at the core of it. His blood and Arkady’s magic.
That was… not what he expected. Cash poked his nipple with a finger and flinched when it hurt. It was real, then, and any monster who saw it would think he was married to Arkady. More than married, actually. Marriage could be dissolved by either party, for good reason or because it would be funny.
This—Cash turned the ring gingerly—was a claim that only Arkady could dissolve, since Cash had been cock-struck and stupid enough to just agree to it on the assumption that Arkady wouldn’t do something like this. Not to him.
“What the fuck?” he spluttered.
Arkady rolled away from him and got out of bed. His back was long and lean, strapped with bands of wiry muscle that ran from his shoulders down to his lean waist. What it wasn’t was expressive. Even Cash couldn’t read much from the tight curve of Arkady’s ass. So, under the circumstances, he reminded himself, he really shouldn’t be so distracted by it.
“You’re here to solve my problems,” Arkady said over his shoulder as he opened his wardrobe. “Not make more. I don’t intend to save the family name from the Prodigium only to have my name become a laughingstock when my lover throws me over for my sister. Again.”
The flash of old hard-done-by irritation was a familiar distraction from the knot of… whatever it was Cash felt. Uncertain, maybe.
“For fuck’s sake—” he started.
Arkady cut him off. “It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You know that. The perception would be enough. So now it doesn’t matter how many private chats you have with my sister, everyone will know you’re mine. Which is why you’ll wear the clothes I left out for you.”
Cash could feel the frustration in his jaw. He hated being out-angled. “Did you plan this?” he asked.
There was a pause as Arkady considered the question. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I didn’t mean to, but it all kind of fell into place, didn’t it? Does it matter?”
“Yes. No.” Cash scrambled off the bed and grabbed the clothes from the floor. He ached dully in all the right places, a satisfying feeling of beingthoroughlyfucked, and he was sticky where he didn’t sting. “And after this weekend?”
His breath caught in his throat like he didn’t know the answer. Except they both did. It was a deal, and the Abascals kept their deals to the letter. It wasn’t a matter of choice.
“After this weekend, everything will go back to normal,” Arkady said. “As agreed. Nothing has changed.”
“No,” Cash said. “I guess it hasn’t.”
It never did, but the hope that it might one day had always been the hook his heart hung from. The admission—that he had never had his cock or his pride, or at least notjustthem, at risk—dropped like a stone in his brain. His temporarily sated monster let it settle without comment. It didn’t seem worth its while to comment on the obvious.
“You worry what they’ll say if they think I’m still sweet on Yana?” he said sourly as he stalked out the door. “What, and see what they say when they see you dragging mutton dressed as lamb around the floor.”
Chapter Fourteen
AS ITturned out, Cash still looked pretty good in leather. In the humid, unwholesome lair of monsters, anyhow, where mouse-nibbled ruffs of tea-colored lace came straight from the best underground fashion houses and brocade was evergreen. If he turned up at Ellie’s school gates in skintight leather, his shirt cut down to there and his pants laced up to just about decent, he’d look a bit more desperate.
Not any sweatier, though.
Cash wiped sweat off the back of his neck, his freshly washed hair damp again under the rough ponytail he’d pulled it back into. Had it always been this sticky down here, or had years of air-conditioning just spoiled him?
“The child is at camp, of course?” the bogeyman said to Arkady. He was tall and thin, stretched out like a child’s drawing in a stylish gray suit nipped in to exaggerate his exceptional boniness. Cash could have told how many buttons there were on his frock coat, but not the color of his eyes or the set of his mouth. There was definitely a face there, but it refused tostick. A human would have seen something to upset them—a hated teacher, diseased features, his own death—but the bogey’s powers didn’t work on monsters. His aura was shriveled and starved, all rags and tatters that picked and plucked at everything on the way past. “My son goes next year. His first time. How has s… the child… found it?”
Behind him the party was in full swing. Everyone had stuck to their human forms for now, draped in capes and designer shrouds. Some of the jewels that sparkled on fingers or around throats still had the grave dirt on them. Things that could live for centuries didn’t value aged things as much. A bit of fresh graverobbing showed a certain rakish style.
“Ellie,” Arkady said. He stole a blood-red crisp from Cash’s plate and popped it into his mouth, his fingers stained pink from the seasoning. “My niece. Cash’s daughter. My mother’s granddaughter.Thatchild?”
The bogeyman ducked his head. Somehow the shabby stovepipe hat he wore didn’t shift on his head as he did so. “I meant no offense, Arkady. It is just hard to navigate such… civility. In my day, the child would have been fostered out to peasants, and at least two people would be dead or buried alive. But I suppose one must move with the times if one wants to kill with them.”
