It was pointless to get annoyed with Arkady for being an Abascal. It wasn’t just who he was, it was what he was. The same way that Cash sniffed out secrets to lick at the raw spots, Arkady angled to make deals.
A man had to eat, after all.
Cash still gave Arkady the finger and stalked out of the room. He slammed the kitchen door behind him and slouched back against it to catch a breath that wasn’t ripe with Arkady. It didn’t work. Cash could smell Arkady on his skin, taste him on his tongue. It was the clean soap and green-tea cologne of humanity, layered over the darker smoke-and-honey-mead smell of his power.
From experience, Cash knew he’d smell the renfaire bonfire on himself long after the green tea had faded.
Worse than that, down in the pit of his bones, where his monster sprawled, he could taste Arkady’sneedlike whiskey. Not just the hot cinnamon burn of want, but a dark, smoky thread of genuine concern that plucked at Cash.
“Fuck,” he muttered to himself.
“Not until we talk,” Arkady said, so close to Cash’s ear that he had to be leaning against the other side of the door. “If it helps, this is for El’s sake too.”
It did.
El was his. It had been made very clear, years ago, that Arkady wasn’t. No matter how much he made Cash ache, that wasn’t going to change.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked.
“Stop hiding in the kitchen and come out to talk to me,” Arkady said. His voice faded as he moved away from the door. “For a start.”
Cash pushed himself off the door and padded across the kitchen. He might be going to do what Arkady wanted—he knew full well that “just hear him out” wasn’t going to end there, so why pretend—but he didn’t have to be prompt about it.
Sure, as long as you don’t ask “how high,” it means you’re your own man and just wanted to jump.
Cash grimaced at how close to the bonethatcut and how familiar it sounded. At sixteen, he’d definitely believed that. On the other hand, the snide little voice hadn’t actually piped up when it could have been helpful—for example, before Cash kissed Arkady. So it could shove it.
He got a beer out of the fridge and pressed the cold glass to the back of his neck. The chill made him flinch, a trickle of condensation icy as it dribbled down his spine. It did absolutely nothing to quench the itch of want that made his skin feel too tight on his wiry frame.
It felt like he hadn’t fucked anyone since the last time with Arkady, hadn’t felt anything. He had. For a while Cash had even fallen into the old wisp trap of believing that what you ate was what you were. It had felt real, playing human house with Pete and swallowing all that filtered love—right up until Pete started to talk about living together and adopting El.
Maybe Cash didn’t hate Donna after all. He popped the cap off the bottle with the edge of the table. If he ever suggested that to her, the old monster would have consumed herself in her fury, like a rat snake eating its own tail.
It had been twelve years, yet Arkady pulled Cash’s hair and chewed on his throat and Cash’s body apparently decided that this was sex and the rest had just been… filler.
Cash took a swig of beer and headed back into the main room.
His own man, that was definitely what he was.
THE HOUSEwas clean, but it wasn’t particularly tidy. There was a stack of roughly folded laundry on one chair, a plate and an empty glass abandoned on top of El’s textbooks for school, and at least three shoes kicked under the table.
Shabby was the word. Cash got paid well enough, but he worked long hours, and sometimes there were long stretches between jobs. There was always something better to do with his money than replace the carpet—a rug covered the burn well enough—or repair the lock on the door.
Somehow Arkady, sprawled bonelessly on the couch with one foot braced on the coffee table, managed to make it look classy. Cash didn’t know if it was confidence, power, or really good tailoring, but Arkady made everywhere look like a deliberately staged photoshoot.
In contrast, Cash tended to make everywhere he went look like a recent crime scene. It wasn’t fair. That was one good thing about being a monster, though. No one ever told you it would be.
“Okay,” Cash said. He pushed Arkady’s foot off the coffee table and sat down on it in front of him. “Now what?”
Arkady looked frustrated. “Do I have to kiss you stupid every time I see you to get a civil word out of you?” he asked as he put his foot down on the floor. “Or just every ten minutes?”
Cash smirked despite himself as he took a swig of beer. “I can’t promise anything,” he said dryly. “But it could work.”
He regretted the joke immediately as something dark flickered through Arkady’s faded eyes and he reached for him. Cash leaned back quickly until he had half sprawled out over the coffee table, weight braced on one arm.
“How about we just call a truce instead,” he said.
Arkady plucked the bottle from his hand and leaned back into the faded red leather of the couch. He licked the rim of the bottle, tongue curved around the glass, and Cash felt the damp kiss of it against his mouth.
