[foxglovethicket]

MASTERLIST

Hey guys! I thought it was time to put together a masterlist now that I have more than one published fic :) Enjoy!

The Folk of the Air

Seven Hundred Letters

The Altar of Her Hips

A Court of Thorns and Roses

Wild Things (Rhysand x Nesta)

Wishbone (Nesta)

[whisperingmidnights]

Today is a little different. Instead of featuring an author, I wanted to feature a pairing I love that I can never get enough of. Are they toxic as fuck? Absolutely. That's why I like them. I want to read more of them. More of them being terrible to each other...or finding a way to be so, so good to each other. I don't care, I just want more of them.

1.) The red flower in my heart

I have no idea if this author is on tumblr – I don't have the brain space left to go searching – but when I tell you this is one of the best pieces of literature I have ever read, please know I mean it. I felt gutted and hollow in a good way. I liked the way it hurt. I would do it over and over again if I could. Ah, to experience this one for the first time.

2.) Wild Things by @foxglovethicket

A modern AU, but I love the way this was written. It's so poetic and incredible. I have been thinking about the last line for days.

[foxglovethicket]

thank you so much!!! I am so honored that you liked Wild Things :) this is so kind of you to say

[foxglovethicket]

Wishbone

For @nestaarcheronweek day 7: free day!

Summary:

You’re as much of a monster as they are, Nesta accuses when the wine-haired woman unleashes hell in the prison and leaves them to clean up the mess. You’re as much of a monster as they are. Love will do that to you. Was that what had done it? Was it love that had made her into this? Maybe so. She had died for love, for her sister and her family. And whatever had made her into this undead, monstrous thing—had that been love? Or something worse?

A look into Nesta's point of view during HOFAS.

Chapters: 1/2

Read on AO3

At some point in the months after Ramiel and Briallyn and Feyre nearly dying and Nesta saying I give it up I give it all up I swear—those flat, white, unending months—Nesta finally learned the lessons her mother had been trying to teach her all her life, and she thought to herself, Ah. 

Once she beat down the instinct for self-preservation, it was easy. Oatmeal with no sugar. She let them shape her body and her magic into something easier to wield. Training was no longer a release for her; she realized that it was never supposed to be such a thing. It was a whetstone, painted to look like a symphonia and a white ribbon fluttering in the air. There was no more shelving of books; there was only Amren pointing and Nesta destroying, because the Mother had forsaken her, had not listened to her desperate plea to take it take it please take it back, because Nesta had known, she had known. There were dinners with wine she wasn’t allowed to drink and evenings where she watched Mor give Cassian a back massage that required her to climb entirely on top of him, and Nesta didn’t care because it wasn’t her place to care. And in the end Cassian always fucked her body, and ran his fingers over her widened hips, and in the end she always, always told herself: It doesn’t matter what happens to me, because I am already dead. 

It had taken her a while to realize. The wildcat-bitch-viper of her railed at first, was selfish enough to want dignity and softness and to have Cassian all to herself. She had thought Ramiel and Briallyn and Feyre had meant something. She had thought that she had earned it. Brother, she had called Rhys. 

But he hadn’t called her sister back. 

So back to the House and its stairs. Back to oatmeal and sweat. Back to being the fanged thing they kept high in a tower where she couldn’t make a mess of things. And months passed and nothing changed, nothing ever changed, and it was like a dream: everything stagnant and dull and soft-edged. Forgiving Feyre and forgiven Rhys, their soft new child, red wine in a decanter on the table next to her hand untouchable and gleaming dark like blood. 

A hot autumn day, where the sheer heat threatened to rot the woods outside the city, Amren took her to a clearing and told her, Kill. 

Nesta’s flames, silver like running water and blazing like decay, swept away a swath of trees before them. A bead of sweat trickled down her brow, and that was it, it was done, and every living thing was gone. 

Dinner at the river house that night. Cassian knocked back whiskies like water, until he declared he couldn’t fly them home, and they would sleep here. Even though she said please, even though she had been soft and good all day, and could they at least go to bed, then? She was tired. She was so tired. He was drunk, and he said, If you’re so sick of spending time with the family, then go to bed by yourself. 

She went to bed. Her navy-and-cream room had been requisitioned for Nyx’s play room, Since you’ll be sharing with Cassian from now on, right, Nesta? and so she went to the room that had been made for Cassian: dark, warm woods and burgundy sheets. She could hear his laugh and Mor’s from all the way down the hall as she stood in front of the mirror and pulled her hair from its braid. She got angry, furious, imagining his argument with her in the morning and seething at the way he would dismiss it all and complain about her to everyone else. She hated him and hated him and then, as she had worked herself up to the point of ripping out her hair, it clicked, and she thought: This isn’t a life. This isn’t living. She thought, I died in the bloody room with the harp in my hands and I never came back. 

She thought: None of this matters, because I am already dead. 

What does a dead girl do with herself? Nesta mulled this over all night, while the stars slowly turned across the earth through the window. What does a dead girl do with an immortal life? 

It came to her only at dawn, when the rising sun pushed shadows across the room, into the corners and under the furniture, and her face in the mirror felt a little bit wrong, a little bit gaunt, a little bit far away: What does a dead girl do with an immortal life? 

She haunts. 

Cassian never came to bed; she found him snoring on the sofa in the morning, bathed in this cold, watery light that didn’t bother to make him look soft. She watched him for a minute while the world woke slowly around her. She could pick out Mor’s scent curled around his wings, entwined with the sliver of Nesta’s own that would be there always. She felt nothing. She didn’t need to. 

She didn’t need anything, anymore. She was nothing. She was just a figment of a girl who had once been, and was no longer. It no longer mattered what she did, what they did to her. It never really had. 

So Nesta became a bow. A weapon they could load with arrows and point where they pleased; a shape Cassian could bend and fuck at whatever angle he wanted. 

She didn’t falter when they asked her to unleash her fire, to fight, to politick. Any part of her that mattered—that was long gone. She didn’t care about what was left. The only time she ever wavered was with Gwyn and Emerie, when it was just the three of them and the charms on their bracelets glowed and burned hot, like a reminder, and her friends traded glances and said things like, We’re worried about you, Nesta. Is everything alright? Did Cassian do something?   

She said no, he hadn’t done anything, and she was fine, hadn’t they noticed how much better she was? She was better now. She could be part of the family, now. Anyway, did they want more tea?

Neither of them knew what to say to that. 

It didn’t matter. She’d already forgotten, refilling their cups. The House, timely as ever, had produced a plate of shell-shaped pastries that Nesta nudged towards her friends in offering. Forget, forget. 

Ah, the House. That was another thing. 

Some think it’s a haunting all on its own, but Nesta was always the ghost in this story. She knew Cassian feared it a little, and she thought that deep down, he knew it was her he was afraid of. He always fucked her like he feared her—as if he could conquer her like a nightmare. 

But she’s a nightmare that they like to use, so when a girl falls out of the sky and onto the lawn of the River House, she is not surprised when Azriel summons her to help. 

Cassian won’t like it, she tells him. They both know how Cassian likes to be the one to wield her. 

Cassian isn’t High Lord, says Azriel, and that is interesting, isn’t it?

So she goes to the dungeons. She does as Rhysand tells her. And when the wine-haired girl goes missing, something inside of Nesta, long thought dead, begins to smoke, and she knows she must be the one to go retrieve her. 

Cassian won’t like it. Well. She’ll deal with it just like she deals with every other one of her transgressions. Grit her teeth and let the rest of her become pliant and toothless. 

***

The wine-haired woman is reckless. She is like Feyre, in a way, forging ahead with an unearned and incomprehensible arrogance that would have driven Nesta mad, before. Now, she waves the irritation away as easily as she would a fly, or a feeling. 

When they reach a cavern of roaring water, Nesta waits to see what the woman will do, what magic she will have to give up in order to continue on. She hems and haws about her magic being drained, neatly skirting any divulgence of its extent, and then inelegantly asks if Nesta can’t winnow. 

I’ve never tried, Nesta says against the knives in her throat. 

The worst part is that it’s not a lie. At first, she simply hadn’t thought she’d be able to; her power was death, and winnowing was too synonymous with escape-life-living for it to be a power she possessed. 

And then, later, she—well, she couldn’t think about it. She wouldn’t have been able to stomach it if she’d had the means to escape all this time and never used it. If this songbird’s cage had been wide open and she’d never even bothered stepping a foot outside it—what did that say about her? Maybe some part of her knew that this was how she was meant to be, that this was everything she deserved. She would never be quicker than fate, would never be able to run from it; she knew it now. 

Regardless, by the time she stopped cringing away from her magic in fear, all of her deaths had come to pass, and it wouldn’t have mattered anymore. 

She can feel Azriel’s curiosity radiating behind her. She ignores it. 

Then, of course, the insouciant, feckless woman plunges into the rushing water, and before Nesta can let herself remember anything as primal as fear, she jumps in after her. 

Faced with her first death—the icy, biting water of the Cauldron—Nesta’s body wants her to remember fright. Wants her to panic. Wants her to return to the frailties of the living and grow in her teeth to protect herself from them again. 

Nesta muscles it all back and plans to excise those feelings from her body later. She swims hard, atavistic desperation guiding her body, and makes it to the other side. There was no other side in the Cauldron, and that is different enough to be comforting. 

Azriel is curious again. She can feel his curiosity tugging in her stomach, searching for the flames of life—hope of escape and fear of death—but he won’t find anything there. 

Later, when she reaches for the Mask, he still reacts as though there is. He does not understand. What grip does the Mask have over a dead immortal? Nothing, nothing nothing. Nesta is one with it. It does her bidding the way her hands do as an extension of her arms. 

Take it off, Azriel orders. It’s amusing. He’s so afraid for her. He should be afraid of her. 

Take it off, Azriel pleads. No, no. He doesn’t understand. This is the only place she can rest. Here, with the Mask, surrounded by her fellow dead. Here she is the purest distillation of what they want of her, isn’t it? She is death incarnate. She commands it. She is it. This is right. 

Take it off, Azriel snaps. Cassian’s waiting for you, Nesta. Take off the Mask. 

Ah, yes. She supposes Cassian would not like her like this. She would not please him as Death. 

Azriel says, He’s waiting for you at the House of Wind. At home. 

The House! Nesta does love the House. She knows the House does not like the Mask, the way it jumps the House’s wards.

Azriel says, Gwyn and Emerie are waiting. And Feyre and Elain. 

Well. Gwyn and Emerie do not like her when she is Death. Nesta’s gaze falls to the bracelet on her wrist, glimmering softly in her own silver fire. Feyre and Elain will never like her, but they hate her when she doesn’t pretend at life. 

Azriel says, Nyx is waiting, too. 

Ah yes, the deal. Nyx’s life for her death. A deal she couldn’t unmake. 

Nesta drops the mask. 

***

It was the music that ruined everything. 

You’re as much of a monster as they are, Nesta accuses when the wine-haired woman unleashes hell in the prison and leaves them to clean up the mess. 

You’re as much of a monster as they are.

Love will do that to you. 

Was that what had done it? Was it love that had made her into this? Maybe so. She had died for love, for her sister and her family. And whatever had made her into this undead, monstrous thing—had that been love? Or something worse?

Nesta thinks of those long, hallowed tunnels, where the wine-haired woman had played her music from her phone—such a wild and beautiful variety, sounds that swelled from deep in her stomach to the tips of her fingers and toes, sounds that she desperately wished she could hold onto for longer than a few minutes, sounds so lovely that she found herself wanting to cry. The music had broken something in her. She hadn’t cried in a good while. Not since the night after Nyx was born. Not even after her mating ceremony. 

When Nesta and Azriel return from the Prison, she is so lost in her own head trying to grasp onto every melody she could remember that she forgets to be afraid. 

Cassian is furious. At her, for volunteering to retrieve Bryce, at Azriel, for letting her. Nesta forgets to go pliant, snaps, Get over it, you overgrown bat, says, Stop treating me like a child. 

I don’t understand you, Nesta, says Cassian. You were doing so well. You were healing. Why are you doing this? Why would you be so reckless? Why are you getting angry with me for caring about you?

We need to set your behavior straight, says Cassian. You have to learn that there are consequences in the real world. As your mate, Nesta, I can’t just let you put yourself in danger like that. Nesta, I love you. I just don’t want you to get hurt. 

Nesta knows that if she had just apologized, it all could have gone away. Cassian would have chastised her for a minute, and then she would have calmed him down with reassurances and platitudes—I’m still here, I’m still yours, you still have me. There might still be time to save it; she could needle him with the teasing words that always get him riled up, let him fuck her, let him use her body to get the frustration out of his system. 

Instead, Nesta says the worst thing. She says: If you love me, you don’t love me in a way I understand. 

Cassian flinches back. Azriel, who has been watching tensely from a few steps away as everything devolved, sucks in a breath. 

Cassian says, You don’t know anything about love, Nesta. 

And he leaves off the balcony. 

***

When the world rends in front of her, Nesta is sitting in the library, quietly panicking in an armchair before the fireplace. 

It is evening, and she hasn’t seen Cassian in days. She has spent them alone, unwatched, a little feral. There has been no training on the roof. No early rising. No fucking. No family dinners. It is making her madly anxious. She oscillates between staring blankly at a random page of a book while she waits for him to come back, dancing wildly and untamed across the halls, huddling in a corner with her hands tucked over her ears as she tries desperately to remember the notes of the music Bryce had shown her. The music, the music. Every time she remembers a string of notes she grasps at it greedily, wanting to cry again. 

Nesta rises, palming a dagger. The wine-haired girl again, this time in a backdrop of brutal snow. Hello, Nesta, she says. 

What are you doing? Nesta asks. 

I needed to talk to you, says Bryce. 

There are three fae with her, shivering in the cruel landscape behind her. Nesta has not seen anyone for days. 

How did you know I’d be alone? Nesta asks. 

I didn’t, Bryce says. 

Nesta hums. Whatever Bryce wants, Nesta cannot give it to her. Nesta has nothing at all, save death. 

Fitting that death is exactly what Bryce asks of her. I need you to give me the mask, she says. Begs. 

Nesta feels the event horizon of Rhys’s darkness approaching, stars winking out in its wake. She wants to say, stay a while and death will find you easy, but doesn’t. 

Please I need it please I’ll do anything I’ll give you anything just take my parents at least, begs Bryce. Please. Please. Please. 

It is laughable to even consider. Nesta loves the Mask. The Mask loves Nesta. It is her calm, her peace, her place. Her pure death, where she belongs. She cannot give that up—she needs it. 

Take my parents, Bryce asks. They’re good people. 

Nesta has never been a good person. She does not intend to start now. But she looks at the humans, huddled in the cold, frightened, and she thinks of herself years ago in the cottage with her sisters and her father. How hard she had fought to cling to life. 

She thinks of music. She thinks of dancing. 

The mask is in her hand. 

Good luck, says Nesta. 

The two humans are shoved towards her; the portal closes just as the primal, unquenchable fury of Rhysand’s darkness erupts into the room. 

You can only whet a blade so far before it becomes brittle, and breaks. 

[foxglovethicket]

Wild Things

Summary:

Some Nesta x Rhysand for day 7 of @sjmromanceweek !

Devour me, he used to urge her. Devour me, Nesta. 

I love you so.

Devour me.

She would nip at the tips of his fingers in play, pretending to be a little feral thing. And he would pretend not to see the wildness in her eyes and dripping from her hair and glinting off her canines when she smiled one of her rare open-mouthed smiles. 

(AKA, the toxic Nesta x Rhys fic that has been rattling around in my brain for months)

Chapters: 1/1

Read on AO3

November 11th. The first snow of the year numbs Velaris like novacane. 

White snow, white sky, white salt on the roads. Clean and blank and pure for a new year—her twenty-fourth, as of sometime mid-morning. Upon waking, shivering under her dove-grey duvet, Nesta thinks: twenty-four is the year of not fucking things up. 

The kitchen is the fire to her hearth. The spray of small yellow rosebuds in a vase on the island, Gwyn’s flame-lick of hair, Emerie’s embrace, the round smiles that fill their cheeks, the pastry waiting at her seat in a white bag, spots translucent with grease. It’s all warm. it all makes her blood move, down to her fingertips, where they prickle with feeling. 

***

Want is a funny thing. The question—what do you want?—I want, I want, I want, like a black hole eating the stars. Nesta wants a lot of things: to be warm, awake, clean and untouched like the snow on her bedroom windowsill. 

Emerie and Gwyn had asked her months ago what she wanted to do today—today, she has some extra measure of choice, today she’s allowed to want a little harder. 

Today, Nesta wants to read and she wants to dance. And she wants—

No. No. So they tuck their feet up on the couch and pile on the blankets and Emerie makes her hot chocolate just the way Nesta likes it and the next few hours are pages whispering as they are turned, steam rising from half-empty mugs, snow curling down outside the window. 

***

It had ended just how it had started: cold wind whipping off the Sidra to slice their cheeks wide open. The first time, it made their mouths split into smiles; the last, into trebuchets of hurt. Neither of them is good at pulling punches. His coat was on her shoulders. He said something, then she, and it was suddenly a vile thing on her skin; she ripped it away and threw it down onto the rain-soaked cobblestones. She didn’t throw it over the bridge, into the river, because that would have been irreversible, but now, now, she wishes she had. 

That was September, the last long day before time jumped back and the evenings stopped clinging to the sun. 

You’re fucking mine, Nesta. 

I’m fucking gone.

She doesn’t think about it. She ruined everything, and it didn’t matter, and she doesn’t think about it. 

***

Anyways, she’s good at being fine. She’s twenty-four now and she’s going to be fine forever, starting now. Gwyn has a carefully curated getting-ready playlist blasting from her speaker as she curls her hair. Emerie bites her lip as she draws eyeliner across her lid. Nesta sips from a wine bottle as she stares at her jewelry box: there are the little pearl-drop earrings he gave her when they went to Adriata for a weekend in August. I know you already have a favorite pair of earrings, but I thought these could be nice for the Patron’s Gala, maybe. If you like them. 

Nesta fishes them out of the drawer and puts them in. She looks at herself in the mirror until her eyes turn red, and then she drops them back in the jewelry box, and stabs large silver hoops through her ears instead. 

She turns off the light in her room and goes to the kitchen. Carefully, she pours the rest of the bottle of wine into a plastic Mountain Dew bottle, sucking the spilled drops from her fingers like it’s precious, and not a fourteen-dollar bottle. She plucks her coat off the hook and her keys from the dish by the door. 

The three of them are laughing and chattering as they leave the apartment; Gwyn threatens to buy her a birthday girl sash, Emerie says, I think it’s too late for that, Gwyn says, The party store on East 12th is open until 11, I checked. Nesta says, I will strangle you with your own sash if you even think about it. They only laugh at her threat, and she can’t keep her face from smiling, and it doesn’t even bother her when the snow at the curb smears over her boots. She’s untouched. She’s new. She’s only started learning how to live. 

***

It doesn’t really matter how it ended. There one minute and gone the next. He was there and gone, there and gone, like seasons, like purity, like the flash of a camera imprinted on the back of your retinas, there, and there, and there, and gone. 

So he’s gone. And good riddance. 

She used to like to hold his hand. Liked the strong, slim bones of his fingers, the veins that crawled up the back of his hand; liked running her fingers over the scar on the knuckle of his ring finger. He had a freckle on the inside of his left wrist, too, one she liked to press her lips to. I love you so, she would whisper. I’ll eat you whole. 

Devour me, he used to urge her. Devour me, Nesta. 

I love you so.

Devour me.

She would nip at the tips of his fingers in play, pretending to be a little feral thing. And he would pretend not to see the wildness in her eyes and dripping from her hair and glinting off her canines when she smiled one of her rare open-mouthed smiles. 

***

They step inside the club and check in their coats and the music is so heavy she can feel it pressing right through her muscles and into her bones. She tips her head back. Her spine is one long bass note. Yes, yes, yes. 

Bodies shift around her, swaying like stalks of kelp in a western current, and she, an otter twisting among them as she dances. Sleek and warm and with only one wild and carnal drive: hunger. 

She wants to devour this scene. The red lights. The upward-reaching limbs. The abandon. The singing mouths, the smell of vodka, the smell of perfume and cologne that surges  when pressed too closely among the others. 

“11:11,” says Gwyn, not long after they arrive. “Make a wish.” 

You already know what she wishes for. 

Emerie hands her a shot instead of a birthday candle. It sears her throat and then lights her aflame and she throws herself back into dancing and dancing and oh, when she tilts her head back like this, baring her throat, she feels knifelike and untouchable and violent, like she could strangle the whole world in her fists. 

She imagines it. Sinking her teeth in. Getting the snow banks messy. Starting everything over so she doesn’t have to make so many mistakes this time. Sometimes, when Nesta buys a new book, she’ll bring it on the train and accidentally bend a corner when she goes to shove it in her bag in her haste to get off at her stop. Later, she’ll look at the crease, run her finger over it as if she can smooth it away, and fight the urge to buy a whole new copy—one she hasn’t irrevocably marred. She never does buy a new one; she knows, on some level, that it’s ridiculous to even consider it. 

No creases this year, she reminds herself. She’s drunk now. Half of her blood is vodka. The music goes even louder, like a reminder or a threat. Emerie is grinding up against a striking blonde girl now; Gwyn is making eyes at someone across the room, sweeping her hair off her collarbones like a challenge; Nesta feels a drop of sweat run down her temples and sucks more swollen air into her lungs, her body greedy for it in the club’s heat. 

All the lights go gas-flame blue, and that’s when she sees him. 

***

So it ended. Fine. But it had started once, too. 

Nesta had been in ballet as a child—no surprise, considering her family: upper class in a pearl-necklaces-and-endive-salads way. Everything was satin slippers and hair slicked back too tightly into unforgiving buns, until her mother died when she was fifteen and her father didn’t care enough to make her continue taking classes. It left her with a lithe body, a hatred of the Nutcracker, and a severe case of perfectionism. 

Her favorite show to dance had been Sleeping Beauty, so last winter, when she heard the Velaris Ballet was showing it, she went to see it twice. Once, with Gwyn and Emerie, and again with Elain, except Elain canceled last-minute and Nesta thought about canceling both their tickets and staying home, but didn’t. 

So, of course. He picked up Elain’s ticket. 

During the show, she could drink up the colorful dresses, the masterful dancing, the beautiful shapes the dancers’ bodies made as they moved gently across the stage. When intermission came, she had no such distraction. There was only the stranger sitting next to her in his night-black suit, and of course he was devastatingly beautiful, how could she not notice? Admiring him was inexorable. 

She caught him admiring her right back—those dark blue eyes making a steady, unapologetic map of her face. 

It happened in textbook steps, alarming in its simplicity, really: He introduced himself. They talked throughout the rest of intermission. At some point during the third act, his knee made its way to press against hers, and he didn’t pull it away, and she didn’t pull away, either. When the lights flooded back on, the spell broke, or maybe it was cast?, and he asked her if she’d like to see the Balanchine performance with him the following week, and she wrote her number on the back of his hand with a sharpie she’d found in her purse. He had beautiful hands, like a piano player, and she asked if he played, and he said Tchaikovsky was his favorite to play, it was why he liked coming to the ballet. 

Several weeks later, she would lie with her head in his lap, those nimble fingers combing through her hair, and ask, Play for me?, and he would, and it would become her favorite sound. And after that, she would sometimes sit on the edge of the bench, or kneel beside it, or stand behind him as he played, and close her eyes and imagine herself moving to the sound. Pas de bourré, pirouette. 

But not yet. That would come later. 

***

She sees him and the world keeps moving, even though she feels like it shouldn’t. She sees him and the world doesn’t end. It should. It doesn’t. 

A current of blue bodies around her. He swims right through them. She doesn’t look at Gwyn or Emerie when he reaches her because she doesn’t have to see their faces to know their reproach.

She’s been locked into those stunning eyes since she first caught them; in this blue light, they are so, so dark, like midnight, and just as devastating. And they devastate her, they do. 

Nesta thinks, You can’t unruin this. She thinks it so loudly that there’s no way he doesn’t hear it. But he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. He just looks at her, and she just looks at him, and, light with drink, she sways with the other kelp, sways right into him. 

She can smell the alcohol on his breath. He’s holding a drink—a gin and tonic. He always liked gin. Elderflower gin, something that sounded fairy-like and ancient, something that smelled divine and didn’t hurt going down. She takes the cup from his hand and downs half. It’s cheap; burns like hell. He takes it back. Holds her stare as he drinks down the rest and drops the cup on the nearest flat surface. 

He’s already drunk; she can tell because his face is a little too devastated when he looks at her. 

His hands on her waist. Her waist in his hands. His hips pressed to her stomach. Her stomach burning gas-flame blue. 

Nesta, he mouths. His eyes drop to her lips. His forehead drops to touch her own, as if he could press a feeling straight from his mind into hers. 

Don’t, she says. Or maybe she thinks it.

He kisses her. 

She kisses him back. 

It’s inevitable, after that. 

Gwyn and Emerie don’t even bother to stop her. They know better. He leads her downstairs, to the front of the club. She collects her coat. She follows him out onto the snow-driven street. A fresh coat has fallen since she and her friends went inside those few hours ago. It makes her think of new slates and starting over. 

It makes her think of the way her boots crush the powdery snowflakes to grey slush. 

You can’t unruin this. 

He lives close—close enough that they can’t justify anything other than walking. She doesn’t look over at him and he doesn’t take her hand as they walk, and it’s almost as if they’re colleagues, with this space between them. Space enough for her ghosting breaths to dissipate entirely before they could ever reach his face. 

And then—the bridge. The quay. Inevitable, she knew it, knew they’d have to cross the slushy Sidra, but. But. 

She can feel him looking at her. 

They reach the middle of the bridge, and she can’t keep going anymore. She’s shaking, knees knocking together embarrassingly, like a child. Nesta stops and she turns and she looks at the snow on the bridge and hates it for how serene it seems. 

“I missed you, Nesta,” he says. 

Past tense. He doesn’t anymore. He has her now, is what he means. He won't let go again, not like last time. 

“Are you cold?” he asks. “Do you want my coat?”

She bites her lip and shakes her head, still looking down at the snow. His shoes scuff the snow as he steps closer. He takes her in his arms and he is just as warm and comforting and safe as he ever was, and it makes her want to cry, but she doesn’t. She does let him hold her. Even though it makes everything worse. 

Rhys tilts up her chin and she keeps her eyes closed. He kisses her, so gently at first that she shudders, and then her mouth opens to him like a rose, and she presses harder into him, and he isn’t gentle anymore. 

Her lips, cracked from the cold, split and bleed when he bites into them, and their kisses change to copper. 

***

Nesta threw up before their first date. She stood in front of her mirror, trying to like the grey dress she was wearing, but she started thinking that maybe a dress was too much, and then she envisioned herself sitting stiffly next to the man—Rhysand—for the whole two and a half hours, not looking at him, and the thought—the thought of the awkwardness made her physically ill. He wouldn’t like her anymore, and then she would never be able to go to the ballet again, and and and—

She threw up neatly into the toilet, flushed it, brushed her teeth, and left. 

By the time she was walking up the steps to the theater, she was trembling like a fawn, but she needn’t have worried. He was charming—his hand holding the door for her, his hand steering her respectfully from the small of her back, his hand alighting on her knee during intermission and lingering there, light and steady, until the lights began to dim again and he pulled it away. 

The second half of the performance, she watched him. The way his breath caught at the crescendo of a number. The way his fingers tapped on his thighs in time with the notes. The way the bare light that reached them from the stage cast a glowing outline around the beautiful parts of his face, which seemed to be all of them. 

The ballet ended, and he invited her to get a late-night coffee; he knew a cafe, one run by real Italians, so she should know it was good. By midnight, she’d made him laugh so hard he’d choked on a sip of his cappuccino, and he had made her feel coltish and new and brilliant, and finally, entirely at ease.

He was always very good with prey. 

***

Nesta isn’t prey. She has a mouth full of teeth and she uses them. He’d do well to remember that, for fuck’s sake. 

She bites down too hard and Rhys makes a noise in his throat. She pushes him away and they stand there, panting, staring at each other. 

“Nesta,” he says. 

They stand on the bridge. The snow numbs sound, numbs hurt, numbs everything. 

“Come home with me, Nesta,” he says. 

She goes home with him. 

***

He loved her too hard. Maybe that was the problem. 

Rhys wasn’t clingy, desperate—nothing so plebian as that. It was more authoritative. More intense, like a bruise. He always, always wanted her. Sex, of course, but more than that. 

When it was sex, it was hungry. It was always too much, and it was never enough. It hurt every time, but it was never painful. There was sweat and tangled hair and open mouths and tenderness, always, and gentleness, only sometimes, only after. His hands were always tight around some part of her flesh, as if he were afraid she’d disappear the moment he let go, as if he could have more of her if he held more tightly. 

She could never stop herself from sinking her teeth in, anyways. His shoulder, his neck, his arms, his side. She’d never made a habit of it before. It was something primal only he could bring out in her. 

When it wasn’t sex, it was a different kind of want. Uncontainable, devastating. He wanted her like it hurt him. Sometimes she wasn’t even sure if he liked her. He just wanted her. 

One hot day that summer: billowing, gauzy curtains, Nesta in those lavender sleep shorts he liked so much, the hair around Rhys’s temples curling with sweat. Still, he held her close against him as they lay on the couch, her stomach to his stomach, her chest to his chest, her chin tucked against his shoulder. 

Nesta asked, “Why did you ask me out that day at the ballet?”

His arm banded around her more tightly. He said, “I liked the way you watched them. Hungrily. I wanted to make you look at me like that.” 

***

They step inside Rhys’s townhouse and the familiar smell hits her like a truck. It’s just the smell of a home—a home he’s lived in. Recently, without her. She wonders if his coffee machine still refuses to work unless he thumps the side of it as it gets going. She wonders if he ever got around to replacing the batteries in his TV remote. She wonders how many other women he’s brought here since everything ended. Maybe he fucks them in their own houses. Maybe he brings them here, has them on the couch, pushes the dove-grey pillows to the floor to make room for their bodies. She can’t imagine him fucking them in his bed, or she’ll throw up right here on his doormat. 

The door clicks behind her, shutting out the cold. The air inside is warm and still, waiting for something. His hand touches her waist, moves her until her back is against the wall, and she thinks this is it, this is the part where he kisses her and takes her apart—but not yet. 

Rhys kneels on the floor, takes her calf in his hands and slips off her boots, one by one, setting her feet down gently as if she were a child, or a queen. Something precious and vulnerable. 

His soft fingers, piano-player’s fingers, trail up her body as he rises, hitching her dress up with them. She knows how this ends and it hurts. He kisses her wet cheekbones, one and the other. 

“Nesta,” he says. He kisses her lips and she tastes salt. 

She sinks her hands into the hair at the nape of his neck and pulls him closer. 

Their kisses get harder, serious. She hitches her leg around his hips, presses into him—his beautiful fingers are everywhere. They tangle in her hair and pull her head back so he can better lick her throat. They count her ribs, looking for a way in. They move over her hips, down, cleverly stroking the wet seam of her underwear, starting out gentle, just how he knows she likes it. 

She reaches for his belt. She wonders, where will he have her? Will he bring her to the couch? Will he have her right here, against the wall? Will he take her back to his bed, or would that mean to much? 

Rhys shudders into her touch, eyes rolling back. His mouth is saying things like Fuck, Nesta, I missed you, yes, harder, more, Nesta, Nesta, Nesta—

He chokes on his own breaths and pulls her hands away. With a few tugs, her dress is over her head, and he sinks to his knees again. She looks off to the side, towards the door, not wanting to face the way he looks up at her. Devotion poisoned by possession. His hands are hot on the backs of her thighs. 

“Look at me, Nesta,” he orders. He pulls her underwear away—embarrassingly wet. The expression that flits across his face then—it’s a bit too relieved to be a smirk, but close. 

She puts her hands into the silky onyx strands before her. 

“Eat, then,” she says, unkindly. 

He does. Like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to do. Like he’s afraid she’ll stop him, take it away from him. She wishes she would, but she doesn’t. She’s too weak to give up something this good. Something that feels so inevitable—what’s the use?

Nesta comes right there, silently, except for one gasping breath that she immediately stifles. It’s horrible, it’s so, so horrible, how badly she misses him in that moment. It hits her, a pain so sharp she nearly flinches. It’s so horrible. So obvious, how he’s ruined her. 

A tug on the backs of her knees, and her body falls obediently to straddle him where he kneels on the floor, her lips coming to meet his, hungrily taking the taste of herself from his tongue. He pulls her back, back, until he’s lying flat on the floor of the hallway, and she’s sitting over him, fumbling to yank off his shirt, to shove down his pants. Her body remembers how to move with him, remembers the steps to this. It remembers, even if her mind feels heavy and watered-down. 

There is a bright spark of pain as she sinks down onto him. Rhys looks up at her from the floor. His eyes glint like a country sky at night, his sin-dark hair splays across the floor like a sunburst, his mouth parts like submission. 

Nesta takes his throat in her hands and squeezes. “I hate you,” she tells him, and he lets her. Her knees press into the hardwood. He jerks his hips up with a groan. She says, “I hate you, Rhys.” 

She feels a tightness in her throat that means tears. She won’t cry. She lets go of his neck and bites into her palm to hold them at bay. She won’t cry, she won’t cry. Her fingerprints fade whitely from his skin. 

Rhys flips them over and settles his body over hers, between her knees. He fits in her body like he’s made for her. Her head fits just so in the space between his neck and his shoulder. She breathes him in through her nose, out through her mouth, as he begins to fuck her. He had always smelled so good, like something she shouldn’t eat. Sweet and rich, with some kind of spicy undertone, like pepper or ginger. Achingly sweet with a stinger. 

Rhys takes her hand away from her mouth and pulls her wrists over her head. 

“You love me, Nesta, you love me so,” he says. He threads his fingers in between hers. “You love me so.” 

***

Nesta closes her eyes as he washes her hair in the shower. 

“Nesta,” he says, smoothing soap away from her brow. “Stay.” 

She tilts her head up, but doesn’t open her eyes. “You keep saying my name,” she says.

She can feel the sigh come out of his chest. He says, “I’m afraid I’ll forget how it sounds.”

In spite of her will, her body begins to tremble. Anger and fear and rage and desperation all well up at once, and her eyes fly open, lashes dripping under the stream of the shower, and she means to say a hundred things—a hundred accusations and castigations—but only a single word comes out, choked in steam. “Please.” 

His face changes into a shape she doesn’t know well. “Nesta,” he breathes, pulling her body into his. 

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, she thinks. But she lets him towel her dry and brush out her hair and braid it down her back with his nimble fingers, the way she taught him, once. He pulls one of his t-shirts over her head—her favorite one, god, she hates that she has a favorite—and tucks her close to him under the covers. His sheets smell like his detergent and him, and it’s miserable, knowing he’s letting her go after this, even though that’s what she wanted in the first place. Catch and release. You can’t uncrease a paperback cover. You can only buy a whole new book. 

God. Twenty-four hours as a twenty-four year old and she’s already fucked everything up. She’s already let him ruin her. 

They lie there in his bed in his sheets in his townhouse on the river. She’s still drunk. She’s still here. His heart is still beating just a few ribs away from hers. She counts those beats, those bloodier sheep. One-one. One-one. One-one. One-one. 

She’s not entirely sure if she’s dreaming when he says it. She hopes she is. She wishes so badly that she is. 

I won’t go, he promises into the dark, into the sweet warmth. Just eat me whole. 

***

Snow falls overnight. 

In the morning, when Nesta looks out Rhys’s window, her eyes hurt to touch anything at all, it’s so bright. 

He is behind her, suddenly. His arms come around her, his chest pressing to her back. He fits. It is suddenly, terrifyingly, as if she never left. 

“Nesta,” he says, one last time. 

She turns in his arms, fitting herself into the crooks of his body. She is real, she is new, she is blinding like the pure fallen snow. 

Nesta makes a decision. 

“Rhys,” she answers, speaking against his heartbeat. 

When she smiles up at him, secretive and small, her ribcage opens up and curls around him like the legs of a spider.

[foxglovethicket]

The Altar of Her Hips

Summary:

Cardan's POV during the scene in The Wicked King where he and Jude meet in the room behind the dais, except I added smut. Enjoy!

Chapters: 1/1

Read on AO3

The small green room off the dais is wet and alive.

I can nearly feel its heart thumping in time with mine; a syrupy, cunning pulse that presses in on us from all sides. Jude’s eyes strip it all bare as she takes in the moss-carpeted walls, ivy-laden door, clusters of gently-glowing mushrooms weeping pale light over our faces. I can practically see her tucking it all away for some nefarious later use.

It is quiet, the moss sucking away any softer sounds our shoes and breaths make. I take a step towards her and watch her flinch. I am a little delighted that I can still scare her; yet, some uncomfortable, nameless feeling itches my neck at the same time. I brush it away, irritated, and fish the letter from my pocket.

“My brother sent me a message,” I say. No longer is there any need to specify which one I speak of. I should resent her for that, but I am too busy resenting myself.

She takes the letter in callused fingers, careful not to touch me. That bothers me more. I am so irritable when it comes to her.

“So,” I prompt, “what have you been about?”

I want her to look at me. I want to have her on some kind of leash, as the letter suggests I should. I want to put my fingers around her neck and close them until I feel her windpipe pushed out of place. I want to push her and hurt her the way we all want to hurt small, delicate things, but Jude is hardly either.

Jude sighs in relief, a sweet, short exhalation that I want to take right off of her tongue. I want so much of her. I know by now I never get what I want.

“I stopped you from getting some messages,” she says. I flex my fingers.

“And you decided not to mention them. Just as you declined to tell me about Balekin’s meetings with Orlagh or Nicasia’s plans for me.”

“Look, of course Balekin wants to see you,” she says, in the same insufferable tone she used to use at school that suggests that I am very simple. “You’re his brother, whom he kept in his own house. You’re the only person with the power to free him who might actually do it. I figured if you were in a forgiving mood, you could talk to him anytime you wanted. You didn’t need his exhortations.”

It is fascinating to watch her justify it to herself. Fascinating, and infuriating. I snatch the paper out of her hands. “So what changed? Why was I permitted to receive this?”

Permitted. The concept of permission should have been lost to me the second the crown lay atop my head, but instead I am shackled to the whims of a mortal girl who’s learned too much from her foster father. “And I am supposed to reply to this little note?” I grind out.

She reaches out to swipe the paper back. Its corner slips against the side of my finger, leaving a thin red line. I bring my finger to my mouth, scowling and unreasonably angry, but she’s not looking at me. She is too drawn into her own head, scheming, to notice me. “Have him brought to you in chains. I’d be interested to know what he thinks he can get from you with a little conversation.” The paper curls as she shoves it into her pocket. So fucking proprietary. “Especially since he doesn’t know you’re aware of his ties to the Undersea.”

I can feel the lie hanging somewhere in the humid air between us. I want to bite it out of that space and spit it at her feet, call her bluff, make her kneel. I watch her thumb glide over her missing fingertip. Instead, I say, “I expect he will try to shout at me until I give him what he wants,” and I swallow it all down. I swallow everything down. “It might be possible to goad him into letting something slip. Possible, not likely.”

Jude nods, and I can see the map of her thoughts in the crease between her eyebrows. I want to press my thumb there.

I want, I want, I want.

“Nicasia knows more than she’s saying. Make her say the rest of it, and then use that against Balekin.”

I tuck down a harsh laugh. “Yes, well, I don’t think it would be politically expedient to put thumbscrews to a princess of the sea.”

She looks at me like she is analyzing a particularly strange beetle. “Not thumbscrews. You. You go to Nicasia and charm her.”

She stumbles over the words charm her but lifts her chin when she finishes speaking. She is embarrassed by the very notion of seduction. I’m embarrassed of her embarrassment.

“Oh, come on,” she says, doubling down because Jude has never once conceded anything. “You’re practically draped in courtiers every time I see you.”

She’s looking, an ugly corner of my mind croons. “I’m the king,” I say stupidly.

“They’ve been draped over you for longer than that.”

“You mean back when I was merely the prince?” I mock. I’m well aware of the reason everyone fawns. Of the reason Nicasia wanted me in the first place. I don’t know where Jude is going with this conversation but this room is too small, too hot for the ending.

“Use your wiles,” she says, and oh, she’s blushing magnificently. It feels like a triumph to witness it, the timid pink flushing her cheeks and her neck. I’m going to run this moment through my head very, very often. “I’m sure you’ve got some. She wants you. It shouldn’t be difficult.”

Jude spits those last two sentences like salt from her tongue. I nearly laugh, but it is too strange, too heavy, sitting in my chest. “You’re seriously suggesting I do this.”

It’s an effort to breathe like normal. Even Jude seems to struggle in this air, sucking it in heavy and deep. “Nicasia,” she says after a moment, “is the one who came through the passageway and shot that girl you were kissing.”

It sounds like an accusation when she says it. “You mean she tried to kill me?” I reply, half laughing even as my voice tilts high with frustration. “Honestly, Jude, how many secrets are you keeping?”

She looks away, tipping her head in a way that makes a triangle out of the mushrooms’ light and her nose’s shadow. “She was shooting at the girl, not you,” says Jude. She shifts her feet into a wider stance like she wants to run, and speaks the rest of her sentence very quickly. “She found you in bed with someone, got jealous, and shot twice. Unfortunately for you, but fortunately for everyone else, she’s a terrible shot. Now do you believe me that she wants you?”

“I know not what to believe,” I snap. A fresh wave of frustration boils up from my stomach, heating my fingers, and I clench them into fists. She is such a liar, such a—

“She thought to surprise you in your bed.” Her voice rises; she’s frustrated, too, though I can’t imagine why. I’m the one who got shot at with a crossbow, and I feel that we are paying entirely too little attention to that fact. “Give her what she wants,” says Jude, “and get the information we need to avoid a war.”

My feet move my body closer to hers. There’s a string tying our bodies together and she’s pulling at it, hard, with the way she frowns and furrows her brows and seethes at me with those horribly soft brown eyes, and then I’m standing before her, far too closely. The sensible bit of my brain that has been screaming at me to stay far, far away from Jude has gone suddenly, dreadfully, quiet; snuffed out like a candle pinched between the fingertips.

She’s so much shorter than me. I don’t mean to notice, but Jude is so unlike the folk that I can’t help it. Where we are tall and spindly, she is a full head shorter than me; I dip my head down to her ear and speak into the strangely round shell.

“Are you commanding me?”

“No,” she says quickly, genuinely surprised. Her eyes don’t quite hit mine before falling somewhere around my shoulder. “Of course not.”

With a distant horror, I watch my hand rise to her face, my fingers nudge at her chin until her eyes are back on mine.

“You just think that I ought to,” I say tightly. “That I can. That I’d be good at it.” I swallow away an uncomfortable, unnamable feeling that’s rushing up my throat. I’m angry, and something else, something worse. “Very well, Jude. Tell me how it’s done. Do you think she’d like it if I came to her like this, if I looked deeply into her eyes?”

My hand slides to the nape of her neck, where it grasps at the roots of her hair and tugs her head back.

“Probably,” Jude says warily. Her breath comes out a little more sharply, and I can feel her heart speeding up like she’s afraid. But she’s not. I see it in the widening black of her eyes, in the flush scattering up her neck, in the slight part of her lips before her tongue darts out to wet them. “Whatever it is you usually do.”

She wants me. She does. She must. And yet—she’d happily see me crawl back to Nicasia’s bed. And she’s lying, she’s always fucking lying, as if her body doesn’t betray her every single time. Would it kill her to just tell the truth one fucking time?

She would never, never admit to it. But I can make her. I am going to make her.

“Oh, come now. If you want me to play the bawd, at least give me the benefit of your advice,” I hiss. My words are sharp and cruel but my touch is gentle, skimming the edges of her face. I nearly get distracted by all the soft, round curves of her face. The desperately vulnerable fluttering of her heart in her throat, just under her jaw. “Should I touch her like this?”

“I don’t know,” Jude whispers. Her eyes flutter shut as my hands move, exploring the slopes of her shoulders, her ribcage, the small of her back. My mouth moves to her ear; I can’t stop myself from coming back to the shape of it. When my lips brush the skin there, I taste the salt of her skin and nearly groan.

“And then like this?” my mouth is saying. It’s functioning separately from me, at this point; all of me is focused on the newness of Jude’s body. I’ve never had a chance to study her like this. “Is this how I ought to seduce her? Do you think it would work?”

I am present enough to know I am not speaking of Nicasia any longer.

She trembles under my hands. Nothing so maidenly; she’s angry, she hates me that I’m not repulsive to her. I hate myself for it as well; she can dispense with the dramatics. “Yes,” she grits out. She is not speaking of Nicasia, either.

Our time in this green room has been all hot, sparking, strangled anger, an anger that we have each held onto for so tightly for so long that when my mouth meets hers, sans teeth, sans blood, I nearly startle myself into pulling away.

An agonizing millisecond passes with my mouth pressed to hers and our unbeating hearts lying still and red in our chests; then her fingers are sinking into my hair like a confession.

The moment of tenderness dies. Our movements are famished as we stumble across the room, gasping into each other’s mouths; when we reach a low couch, I put a hand on her back to ease her down. She digs her fingers into my tunic and pulls me down over her, so abruptly that I nearly fall, but catch myself on my hands with my face just over hers.

What am I doing, I think, distantly and a little desperately. Jude stares up at me as if she does not entirely trust me not to stab her. Whatever we are about to do, we probably should not. But we are both watching as we wreck each other anyway, neither of us moving to stop it.

“Tell me again what you said at the revel,” I say as I nudge her knees apart with my own.

“What?”

“That you hate me,” I croak. I am depraved. I should not want this. I should stand up now, before it’s too late, find someone else to distract myself with, but I know I will not. My stories do not end that way—with good sense, disasterless, happy. “Tell me that you hate me.”

Jude looks up at me with those wide brown eyes. I watch her lose the same doomed war with herself. She says, “I hate you.”

The frustration and anger in me turn hot and liquid.

Our mouths come together again, over and over. “I hate you,” she says into my mouth, and I feel like a mortal dancing in a faerie circle—caught fast in an enchanted reel until I dance myself to death. “I hate you. I hate you.”

She gasps onto my teeth, bites my lip. She says, “I hate you so much that sometimes I can’t think of anything else.”

I am so fucking ruined.

I can’t hide it when I shudder against her. It’s too late for that, anyway. It’s too late for anything now.

My fingers are quick against the buttons of her jacket. I think I feel her stiffen, but when I sit back, she looks just as hungry as I do, making quick work of her top as I tear away my own jacket. I’m reaching for the hem of my shirt when she strips off her undershirt, revealing a swath of tan skin that empties my head of all thought save for an overwhelming feeling of want that dizzies me.

“This is an absolutely terrible idea,” I blurt out as I watch her fumble with her boots. I don’t even like her. She hates me. Surely, I can’t want her this much.

“Yes.” Her hands shake on the laces. She’s nervous. Afraid. Something. It unbalances me, the way she bares herself for me so readily, vulnerable and far too trusting. I don’t think she’s done this before.

In my dreams, the ones I wake from sweating, she’s done this many, many times.

I take her hand to still her trembling and press kisses to her knuckles like bruises. She almost flinches, as if they are.

It’s entirely too soft, and the realization scares me into dropping her hand in favor of touching all the skin she’s bared for me.

“I want to tell you so many lies,” I confess. I want to tell her I hate her. I want to tell her this means nothing to me. I want to tell her I would be happy to seduce Nicasia, thank you very much. I want to tell her how awful and loathsome and hideous she is.

I can’t.

I can’t stop myself from touching her, either. I watch, horrified, as my own traitorous hand slips over her thighs, then between them. I groan against my will at the slick, wet heat, entirely distracted by the feeling until her hands reach for my waist and I realize I’m still half clothed. I scramble out of my clothes and don’t think about how eager I am to go back to touching her.

Jude reaches for me. She slides her hands up my chest, then back down, and takes me in her hand like a dream. She strokes me once, almost hesitantly, and so softly, as if she is afraid of hurting me. We should stop, I mean to say. What comes out is a strangled, “More—Harder.”

To have Jude under me, doing as I say, is almost as heady a sensation as that of her hand as it works me. My fingers stroke her lightly, circling at the apex of her thighs. My eyes devour her as she begins to pant and push her hips up against my hand; she stares right back, her expression half a glare, half…embarrassment, almost.

It’s too much—too close. I want to make this last long enough to at least convince myself it’s not a horrific decision. I pull back, out of her touch before I can embarrass myself more than I already am just by—just by being here. She stills, watching my movements with the wide-eyed, careful intent of prey.

“Jude,” I say, lifting her leg and pressing my mouth to her ankle. I kiss up the length of her leg until I hit the crease of her thigh, the scattering of soft, downy hair that reaches towards it. She sucks in a breath and her whole body tenses, so tightly that I can see the muscle on her stomach shift. “Are you afraid of me?”

I put my tongue to her before she can respond. One long, slow lick, and I know right then that the taste of her is something I will never forget.

Jude shudders. Her hand shoots out to grip the roots of my hair, and she pushes me closer as I lay an open-mouthed kiss over her center, then another.

“Cardan,” she says, too sharply to be a plea, but that’s Jude; she is all sharp edges, never softness, except for here, now, under my tongue where she tastes electric and warm and new.

It’s clear Jude wants me to get to work if the strength of her grip is anything to go by, but I take my time to explore. Little licks at the crease of her inner thigh, the apex of her center, the tendon where her thigh and her pelvis meet. Jude writhes, panting under my touch, and this—this small control I have over her is nearly as heady as the taste of her.

“More,” she orders as my tongue skirts around the place she wants it most. Her hips buck up uselessly under my arms.

“Beg,” I say sweetly, and her answering growl makes delight unfurl in my stomach, hungry and unfamiliar. She could command me if she wanted to. The thought of it makes my skin tight and hot, sending all of my blood south.

I lay my cheek on her thigh and look up at her. She flinches when I meet her gaze, then sets her jaw and glares right back at me. Wariness still edges her frustration; I can feel it even more so when I smirk up at her and return my attentions to her center.

My tongue laves over her in broad licks now. I hear her strangle a noise in her throat as I push the tip of a finger into her body, and a rush of wetness coats my chin.

“Relax,” I coo, an attempt to maintain nonchalance while my brain empties at the tightness of her body around my finger. I grind my hips into the couch as if that could ever take the edge off. In truth, I am one breath away from finishing, and panicking at the realization of how good she feels, how right, when a part of me had been banking on this getting her out of my system, or—or something.

“Fuck,” Jude grits out, “you.” She relaxes infinitesimally and I am able to push in further, curl my fingertip against a spot that makes her arch off the couch and let out a small sound.

I lose all finesse, if I ever had any. I lick at her like I’m starved, groaning against her skin. Her hands dig into my hair, pulling harder and sharpening the pain at my scalp. I only want more.

“Jude,” I say, chant, plead. “Jude, you’re divine.”

“I hate you,” she tells me. “I hate you.”

The sounds coming from us are gruesome and slick and wanton; Jude does not moan, but her breaths become harder, sharper, messier—

When she throws her head back and comes, I think: I want to worship you.

She grinds into my face, using me to ride out her orgasm, and pushes me away when she becomes over-sensitive. Mechanically, I reach for her, wanting to watch her come again and again, but she grabs my face and pulls me up until her mouth is on mine. She licks the taste of herself out of my mouth and I etch the memory deeply into my mind. She will never let me do this again, and it has become the only thing I will ever want to do for the rest of my life.

“Let me—” She breaks off, bites her lip. Her nails sink into my shoulders. “Show me how you like to be touched.”

Hardly daring to believe this is real, I take her hand, maybe too tightly, as if I believe she’ll vanish into thin air at any minute. I put her hand on me, and my own hand over hers, guiding it—

And, fuck. Fuck. She grips me just this side of too hard as she strokes, as if she wants to hurt me. I know she does. But contrary to her probable intent, it feels divine. She stares up at me the whole time she touches me, the whole time I unravel under her, and I do unravel, I do, I’ve never felt such a tenuous control over my own self, and that whole time, something burns in her eyes like violence.

“You’re so good for me, Jude,” I say, pushing my luck as I fuck into her hand. “You feel so good, wrapped around me like that.”

Those eyes, cold and brown like winter leaves, like the shell of an acorn, soft like quicksand. I could sink right into them. I sink right into them. I don’t look away. Heat builds in my stomach, and all my muscles seize, and I come onto her stomach, her breasts, without looking away.

Just our damp breaths in the room, and quiet. She blinks away. I let my body collapse next to her on the couch, then reach for my discarded coat to wipe off her chest. It is sobering.

I don’t say I’m sorry, but the words are right there. I could say them if I wanted to.

Jude looks up at the ceiling. She likely regrets it. She hates me, anyway. Said it over and over, so I wouldn’t forget.

She sits up; I follow. She reaches for her shirt; I for my trousers. She looks unbothered, unchanged, unafraid. I keep searching her face for something else, but she’s so good at lying, not only with her words.

“You keep looking at me,” she says as she pulls on her underwear. Mortal underwear—light blue, lace trim, form-fitting. I will never, ever get them out of my head. And it hits me—that I could have had this. We could have had this. Had we not been so horrible to each other, we could have been doing this for so much longer, and I could have her on my tongue whenever I wanted, I could have her clever hands wrapped around me every day—

But it’s too late for that now.

“We should’ve called truce,” I say, frustrated, only one arm through a shirtsleeve. I run my hands through my hair as if I can clear it all away. “We should’ve called truce long before this.”

Jude says nothing. I know what we’re both thinking: there can be no truce, now. Not after everything we’ve done to each other.

[lionfloss]

By Samantha Cavet

[ur-daily-inspiration]

[expressions-of-nature]

by Aurélien Bernard

[geritsel]

Gustave Doré - Forêt a crépuscule (Twilight in the Forest).

[c-e-d-dreamer]

But It's Not Real, And You Don't Exist (And I Can't Recall The Last Time I Was Kissed)

A/N: Happy happy @sjmromanceweek, lovelies! Very excited to share this fic for Day One: Meet-Cutes :) If you're on the same side of TikTok I am, you may have seen the trend with Ceilings by Lizzy McAlpine, and it's those videos that inspired this fic. Hope everyone enjoys!

Floor to ceiling windows stretch along the back wall, spilling in streaks of orange and pink light as the sun sets outside. The rays tumble across the hardwood floor and across the fluffy, white blankets and pillow piled high on the bed in the center of the room, casting shadows and shapes over the whole space. The apartment is high enough up that wisps of clouds float past the windows, none of the traffic sounds Nesta has become accustomed to pricking her ears.

The steps of her bare feet are quiet, the fingers of her outstretched hand just barely teasing along the white walls as she steps over the threshold of the room. Even still, the man already in the bed looks over, meeting her gaze. The dark, curly strands of his hair are pulled back away from his face, gathered in a messy bun, the hazel of his eyes practically a molten gold as they glint in the light of the bedroom. He offers Nesta a small, slow smile, a dimple popping in his right cheek beneath the stubble littering his jawline.

Something warm unfurls and blooms between Nesta’s ribs at that smile, that gaze. It’s golden and pulsing as it ties tighter around her heart, tugging her steps forward and forward into the room. And yet, it doesn’t scare her the way she knows it should. There’s something familiar about the man. Something safe. Something that feels like he’s not just welcoming her back, but welcoming her home.

As Nesta approaches the bed, he holds out his hand for her. Nesta slips her own hand into his, calluses sliding against her skin, and uses it to keep herself steady as she kneels onto the bed and slips beneath the blankets beside him with ease. She drops his hand to shift and get comfortable, but he merely raises it, the backs of his fingers trailing down her temple, her cheek, like he’s refamiliarizing himself with her. Nesta’s eyes flutter closed at the contact, and she leans into the touch, the warmth even just his hand seems to radiate. When she opens her eyes again, that same smile is still ever present, a softness to his eyes that has her breath catching quietly.

“Hello, Nes,” the man says, his voice seeming to rumble straight from his chest and skating across her skin. “How was your day?”

“Long. I had to work late again,” Nesta explains, sighing softly as she remembers the endless stream of emails and requests she had to deal with. “All I could think about the whole day was how badly I just wanted to curl up with my book instead.”

“Finally getting to the good part?”

“Yes. The love interest is about to finally get his head out of his ass and realize what’s right in front of him this whole time.”

The man’s lips twist up in a teasing smirk. “How silly of him not to realize before.”

“Exactly.”

The man laughs at her prim tone, the sound somehow deep and warm as it wraps around Nesta’s limbs. It leaves goosebumps pebbling across her skin in its wake. Has her heart skipping a beat in her chest, even as it aches to hear the sound again, as it carves out a piece of itself to forever store that sound, this feeling, away.

The silence that settles after is a comfortable peace, and Nesta finds herself counting every gold and green of his eyes, tracing the scar that cuts through his right eyebrow, counting the breaths between them.

Because she can, she reaches up, tugging the hair tie loose from his hair until the strands fall around his shoulders, letting her fingers slip through the softness of them. His own hand reaches forward too, pulling free the hair tie in Nesta’s own hair with ease. His fingers are careful and meticulous as he unwinds her braid, and Nesta lets herself enjoy the feel of his fingers in her hair, the way they card gently through the strands once freed.

“Fair is fair,” he whispers close to her ear. "Besides, I've always thought your hair looks beautiful when it's down."

Nesta turns to smile at him and finds his face closer than it was before. His hands leave her hair, but they merely shift to cup her cheek instead. His thumb traces the line of her bottom lip, his gaze tracking the movement. Ever so slowly, he leans in, closing the distance between them. The kiss is soft, sweet even, but Nesta’s blood heats anyways, and she practically melts into him, into his touch, his warmth.

He pulls away and shifts to lie down properly, and Nesta realizes that it’s suddenly dark in the room. When did it get dark? How much time had passed? She blinks a few times to reorient herself and, reluctantly, lays down as well, sighing softly as she gets comfortable against the pillow. She reaches out through the dark, fingers still finding the dark lines and swirls of the man's tattoos, as if she already knows them by heart. She traces them up his arm, across his shoulder, toward his heart. He catches her hand as it skitters across his chest, bringing it up to his mouth and pressing a kiss to the center of her palm.

“Go to sleep, Nes,” he tells her, setting their joined hands back down on the mattress between them.

“I don’t want to,” Nesta admits quietly.

“You’ll regret it in the morning if you don’t.”

“I know what happens when I go to sleep.”

Even though she can’t see him in the dark, she can hear the confused frown in his voice when he speaks again. “What do you mean?”

Nesta doesn’t know how to explain it, doesn’t know the right words to say, so instead she stays silent. Warm, strong arms curl around her waist, pulling her into him, and Nesta lets the weight of them, the comfort of them, coax her back into relaxation. She tries to focus on those arms around her. On the slow, steady breath that skates across her skin. On the lips pressed gently against her shoulder. On the chest that brushes along her spine with every inhale.

She tries to focus on the feeling in this room, in this bed, in this man’s embrace. The warmth. The comfort. The safety. The love. She tries to keep hold of it, grasp it firmly in both her hands. She tries to memorize it, etch into her mind, into her bones, into her soul. Even as her own eyes start to flutter close, as her limbs start to feel heavy, as sleep pulls her under.

Nesta’s eyes snap open, and she’s greeted by gray sheets and a cold bed. She swallows hard and blinks a few times, the dream already fluttering away and out of reach. With a huff, she pulls herself up into a sitting position, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes and taking a deep breath. Slowly, she peels back the blankets and slips out of bed, padding down the hall into the kitchen.

Both of her roommates are already awake, Emerie eating her breakfast at the table and Gwyn mixing her coffee at the kitchen island. Thankfully, the redhead pours Nesta a mug as well when she sees her, sliding it over to her. Nesta takes a deep pull of the coffee and settles at the table across from Emerie, letting out a soft sigh as she pulls her feet up to rest on the chair.

Even as the exact images, the exact sounds and everything from the dream all slip further and further from Nesta's mind, she can still feel that heavy ache between her ribs, the ghost of that love and happiness all wrapped up in a dreamy all white bed. Almost subconsciously, her hand presses rubs at her chest, as if expecting to find some actual, tangible hollow there.

“You good?” Emerie asks, raising an eyebrow as her eyes sweep over Nesta.

“I had the dream again last night,” Nesta explains, shrugging a shoulder.

“The soulmate dream?” Gwyn asks brightly, coming around to join her roommates at the table.

“I’m not dreaming of my soulmate,” Nesta reminds her. Again. “It’s just a recurring dream. A weird one at that.”

“Oh, really?” Gwyn challenges, an unimpressed look settling over her face. “You said yourself that even though it’s always the same apartment and the same guy, every dream is different. That’s not how recurring dreams work. I researched it after you had the dream the third time. Recurring dreams are always identical. These dreams you're having mean something, Nesta.”

“All it means is that I need to stop eating chocolate before bed,” Nesta shoots back, standing back up with a sigh. “I need to go get ready. I’m meeting my sisters for brunch, and I don't want to be late.”

The cafe that Elain has chosen for brunch is thankfully not too busy, a few small groups and even a few couples and families littered around the various tables of the space. Large windows stretch along the right wall of the cafe, spilling in light between the pretty flower mural that’s been painted across the glass. It’s a motif that’s reflected inside too, a potted plant wall stretched along the back wall and even more potted plants hanging from the ceiling. Nesta wonders if the style is what drew Elain here in the first place.

“You order up at the counter and then we can take any table,” Elain explains brightly. “The pastries they make here are delicious.”

Feyre nods her head in understanding, already eying up the different treats on display in the glass case beside the register. Nesta’s own eyes flick up to the black chalkboard hanging above, displaying the different drink options. She steps up to the register, asking the young woman working for a latte and one of the big, chocolate scones before stepping back for her younger sisters to order as well.

While she waits for Feyre to decide what she wants, Nesta’s gaze once again wanders over the different patrons in the cafe before skittering toward the window to watch the different people walking past. She smiles as she spots a little girl skipping down the sidewalk, hand clutched in her mother’s, admires the power suit of a woman walking the other direction while she taps away at her phone.

Her attention is snagged by someone walking along the opposite sidewalk, and in a second, everything freezes. The light, pop music playing from the cafe speakers overhead, the quiet speaking of the different patrons, even her own sisters ordering their coffee and breakfast, it all fades away until all Nesta can hear is a ringing in her ears. Goosebumps break out across her skin as her heart trips over itself between her ribs, her breath hitching hard enough in her lungs it practically hurts.

“Holy shit,” Nesta whispers, mostly to herself.

“Is everything alright?”

“What’s wrong?”

Nesta ignores both her sisters' confused and concerned questions. Instead, she pushes out the door of the cafe, barely pausing long enough to ensure there are no cars coming either way on the street before crossing it. Her mind can’t stop reeling at what she’s seeing, still desperately trying to grasp at it even as it slips through her fingers like water. She’s not even sure how this is possible. Not even sure she truly believes it. But there’s no denying the familiar head of dark curls, the wide shoulders, and when Nesta gets close enough, the pair of hazel eyes that have been haunting her dreams for months.

“It’s you,” Nesta says in way of greeting, her voice breathless and awed.

The man’s brows furrow slightly, but he smiles, a sight that has Nesta’s heart fluttering. “It’s… me? Sorry. Do I know you?”

If Nesta thought her world had frozen before, it comes absolutely crashing down around her now. Gods, what was she thinking? This is what she gets for letting Gwyn’s words get to her, for letting those declarations about soulmates niggle their way past her defenses and into her mind. And now, here she is, approaching a complete stranger on the street who, of course, has no idea who she is. Nesta’s never felt more embarrassed in her life. Her stomach sinks straight through her shoes, and she starts silently praying to any deity that will listen that a giant black hole will appear to swallow her whole. Already, she can feel heat creeping up her neck and crashing across her cheeks, and she curls her fingers until the bite of her nails against her palms can ground her.

“I’m so sorry,” Nesta quickly apologizes, swallowing down her wince. “I thought you were someone else.”

Nesta turns on her heel, well aware that she’s basically running away, but she’s determined to walk away from this man, this horribly awkward situation, and pretend it never happened. Once she gets home from brunch with her sisters, she’s going to absolutely tear Gwyn a new one, even as she knows Emerie will laugh herself hoarse once she hears what happened.

“Wait!”

Nesta pauses, slowly turning to find the man jogging after her. She blinks in confusion as he comes to a stop in front of her. He offers her a lopsided smile that looks almost nervous, shoving a hand up and through his hair before stuffing both hands into his pockets.

“What’s his name?” the man asks, something passing through his hazel eyes that Nesta doesn’t recognize.

“What?”

“The guy you’re looking for, what’s his name?”

“Um…” Nesta frowns, suddenly realizing that he’s never said his name in any of her dreams, that dream-her never seems to ask. “I don’t know actually.”

“Oh… well, what’s your name?”

“It’s Nesta, but…” Nesta hesitates before deciding to plow forward with the admission. “But he calls me Nes.”

“Nes,” the man breathes like he’s tasting her name on his tongue.

The single syllable skitters down Nesta’s spine and leaves warmth blooming through her chest, her heart lurching between her ribs as though pulled by a phantom string tied around it. The slow smile tugs its way back across his face, that same dimple popping in his cheek, and Nesta can do nothing but stare, nothing but try and keep her face neutral and not betray the way air stutters in her lungs, the way her whole chest still seems to ache despite the logic of her mind screaming against this entire interaction.

“Well, if I ever meet my doppelganger, I’ll be sure to tell him you’re looking for him.”

~ * * * ~

Cassian watches Nesta walk away, rooted to the spot on the sidewalk even after she vanishes into the cafe that’s across the road. He finds he’s suddenly disappointed now that she’s left, finds that he somehow feels colder now without her in front of him. It’s the strangest sensation and yet Cassian can’t quite seem to put his finger on an explanation for it.

Nor can he put a finger on how Nesta had felt so familiar to him, and yet, he’s positive that he’s never met her before. Still, something prickles and tugs at the back of his mind, demanding that he remember, but try as he might, whatever it is keeps slipping through his fingers, leaving behind only whispers and fog that he can’t seem to sort through. He closes his eyes and tries to focus, but all he gets is an ache throbbing deep in his chest that feels suspiciously like… longing.

Cassian shakes his head of the jumbled mess of thoughts and feelings, letting out a quiet exhale and re-steadying himself. One last glance toward the cafe, toward Nesta, and he continues on his way, heading down the street and around the corner to the gym there. Azriel and Mor are already inside when Cassian pushes through the doors, his brother helping to spot the blonde.

“You’re late,” Azriel comments, never taking his eyes off the bar as Mor gets in her final rep.

“Sorry,” Cassian offers, setting his gym bag down on one of the benches along the wall.

He digs out his hand wraps from his bag and begins to wrap them around his wrists, but a tingling sensation cascading across the skin has him frowning and pausing. He swears he can feel phantom fingers sliding along his palm, slotting between his fingers. His own fingers curl in almost subconsciously, as if expecting to feel that invisible hand cradled in his own.

The prickling sense at the back of his mind picks up again, and Cassian tries to lunge for it, but it’s like trekking through mud, and before he knows it, it’s gone again. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, but the scent of jasmine and vanilla flood his senses, and if he listens closely, he swears he can hear a light, melodious laughter almost dancing on the wind, can hear whispered words about someone's hands being bigger.

“Have either of you ever met someone and felt like you knew them somehow even though you know you’ve never actually met them before?” Cassian asks, whirling back around to face his family.

“No,” Azriel says matter-of-factly, sliding the weights off the bar and placing them back on the rack.

“I take it you have?” Mor asks, sitting up and raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, on the way here,” Cassian explains, dropping his gaze to finish wrapping his hands. “There was this woman, and I know I’ve never met her, but… I don’t know how to describe it. She was just so… familiar somehow.”

“Maybe you knew her in a past life.”

Cassian’s eyes snap back up to the blonde. “Is that a thing?”

“To some people,” Mor offers with a shrug. “I had an ex-girlfriend who was super into all that stuff.”

“I’d be more than happy to knock you out and see if that sends you back to your past life,” Azriel cuts in dryly, a smirk tugging up his lips.

“You’ll have to actually get in a punch first to do that.”

Azriel is able to get in a punch. He’s able to get in a number of punches. Until Cassian’s ass hits the mat and he’s wiping blood away from his split lip. He knows that he should be annoyed, that he should be frustrated, but he’s still too distracted. Despite only speaking with Nesta for a handful of minutes, she’s wrapped herself so securely around his mind, around his chest, like some sort of golden thread that consumes his every thought.

All he can think about is the way the sun had glinted off her hair, the strands looking like burnished gold. The way a blush had taken over her cheeks and drew emphasis to the smattering of freckles dusted there and along her nose. The way her smile had been breathtaking, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Wait. She had smiled at him, hadn’t she?

She had to have smiled at him. How else would Cassian be able to perfectly picture the way her lips curved, small and tentative at first before taking over her face, the way the blue of her eyes lit up and shone with fond amusement.

By the time Cassian makes it back home to his apartment, he feels like he’s losing his mind. It’s the only explanation for why he spends hours on his phone searching through Instagram until he finds one Nesta Archeron. He knows this is definitely crossing a boundary, probably broaching into creepy territory, but he can’t stop staring. Not at the silhouetted photo of her in front of a window, arms raised and hair braided back. And especially not at the candid photo of her mid-laugh, a glass of wine poised in her hand.

Cassian’s finger hovers over the follow button, considering that line once again, before he lets out a frustrated groan and tosses his phone aside. Since when does a chance encounter, a short encounter at that, with a woman get to him like this? Beautiful or not. He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and decides that he needs a drink. Or three. Whatever it takes to finally get his mind off this Nesta Archeron.

It’s days after meeting Nesta that Cassian decides to forgo going to the gym to go for a run instead, the sudden urge riding him almost as soon as he wakes up. As he gets changed, as he pulls his hair back, as he laces up his shoes, it’s like some voice goading him in the back of his mind, an invisible hand all but shoving him out the front door of his apartment. It’s not until his feet are slapping against the pavement that he’s finally able to shake it.

He follows his usual route, relishing in the way his heart pounds in time with his strides, the way his lungs heave as he pushes himself faster and harder. He decides to cut through the park before looping back toward his apartment, smiling to himself as he passes families enjoying the weekend of nice weather. He comes around the bend of the duck pond, preparing to double back when his steps stutter to a stop.

He glances around quickly, considering, that ever present line practically daring him to cross it, but there’s no denying the way his grin grows, the way his heart gives a little leap between his ribs. That voice from before seems to return to whisper and goad in the back of his mind. It seems to have grown fingers too that squeeze around his chest, his heart, all but yanking and tugging him forward. Before he can think twice or talk himself out of it, he takes a deep breath and plows ahead.

“Nesta!” Cassian calls, jogging over to where she’s walking along the path.

Nesta pauses, glancing over her shoulder at the shout of her name. She has her hair pulled back into a high ponytail today rather than the braid when Cassian first met her. It has hair tumbling down her back, and he almost wishes he could see it properly down, swears he can almost imagine how it would look, how it would feel to card his fingers through it. Cassian’s eyes sweep over her frame, over the light blue athletic set she has on, the black yoga mat tucked neatly under her arm, and unsurprisingly, she makes even that look good.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Cassian teases lightly when he reaches her, offering her a lopsided grin. “Did you ever find that guy you were looking for?”

“Sort of, but not really,” Nesta explains, grimacing slightly. “It’s complicated.”

“Did you at least finally find out his name?”

That blush returns to crash across Nesta’s cheeks, and she glances away from him. “Technically, I did get the chance to ask him.”

“And? I have to say I’m invested now.”

Cassian waits with bated breath before Nesta lets out a soft sigh, finally answering, “it’s Cassian.”

“What?" Cassian blinks a few times in confusion, swearing he must have heard her wrong. "But that’s my name.”

Nesta’s eyes snap back to his, wide and almost horrified at the turn of events. “No, it’s not. You’re fucking with me, right?”

“How did you say you met this guy again? Was it a dating app? Do you think someone could be catfishing as me?”

Nesta lets out an embarrassed groan, burying her face in her hands. “It wasn’t a dating app. Don’t worry.”

“Then how’d you meet him? I feel like I should know if someone is running around with my stolen identity.”

Nesta takes a deep breath, seeming to steel her nerves before letting her hands drop back down to her sides. With her shoulders back and spine straight, she settles Cassian with a hard look, those stormy blue eyes narrowed slightly. Cassian half wonders if she plans to cut him down where he stands. The other half thinks he would let her.

“If I tell you,” Nesta begins, her tone cool. “You have to promise not to laugh.”

“Deal,” Cassian agrees with a shrug, holding out his pinky finger between them.

“Are you pinky promising me?” Nesta asks, eyeing his hand dubiously. “What are you? Five?”

“Pinky promises are very serious business, Nes,” Cassian points out with a smirk, wiggling his pinky as if to emphasize his point.

Something crosses over Nesta's face, something Cassian can't quite seem to pinpoint, but before he can ask, she slots her pinky against his. The contact of her skin against his sends jolts of electricity ricocheting through Cassian’s every nerve ending, all cascading out from that one point. He has to swallow hard around the sensation, around the way flames lick up his limbs as if rising to meet her, to answer some melody floating on the breeze and twirling around them.

He clears his throat, getting his bearings back and dropping his hand. “Alright, let’s hear it then. How did you meet him?”

“I met him… you… in a dream. It’s this recurring dream that I have, okay?”

Cassian presses his lips together, uses all his willpower to keep his face neutral as he nods along in understanding, but Nesta merely scowls at him and he knows he’s been caught, knows that his expression clearly gave him away.

“Don’t you even dare,” Nesta warns, pointing an accusing finger.

“I didn’t do anything,” Cassian defends, holding his hands up in mock surrender.

“Look, I know it sounds stupid. I honestly don’t even know how to explain it. My best friend, Gwyn, swears it’s a soulmate dream, that I’m dreaming of my soulmate, and honestly, I thought that was crazy until I saw you on the street, but then you clearly have no idea who I am, so it seems to be some sort of weird one sided dream, and I—”

“Do you want to get a drink with me?” Cassian cuts in.

Nesta blinks a few times in confusion, her lips parting in surprise. “What?”

“Do you want to get a drink with me? Friday, maybe? If you’re free?”

“I just told you I have a recurring dream about you, and you want to get drinks with me?”

Cassian shrugs his shoulders, and he knows it’s crazy, this whole thing is crazy, but he can’t stop thinking about the fact that Nesta is the most beautiful woman he’s ever met. Hell, he couldn’t stop thinking about her from the very first moment he met her.

There’s just something about her, something that tugs at his mind, at his heart. Something that draws him in, has him wanting to spend every second with her. Wants to make her smile and laugh and hear about her day. Wants to learn everything there is to know about her, everything that makes her tick. Wants to catalog every expression she makes and tuck those notes away somewhere safe next to his heart. Something that swears he already has, that he already knows.

It’s that familiarity, that sense that somehow, some way, Nesta is his home.

“Best case scenario, your friend is right and I have drinks with my soulmate. Worst case scenario, your friend is wrong and I have drinks with a beautiful woman. Sounds like a win-win to me, so… Friday?”

—

Updated Taglist (let me know if you’d like to be added): @moodymelanist @nesquik-arccheron @sv0430 @talkfantasytome @bookstantrash @eirini-thaleia @ubigaia @fromthelibraryofemilyj @luivagr-blog​ @lifeisntafantasy​ @superspiritfestival @hiimheresworld @marigold-morelli @sweet-pea1 @emeriethevalkyriegirl​ @pyxxie @dustjacketmusings @hallway5 @dongjunma @glowing-stick-generation @melonsfantasyworld​ @isterofimias @goddess-aelin @melphss @theladystardust​ @a-trifling-matter​ @blueunoias​ @kookskoocie​ @cassiansbigwingspan​ @unlikelypersonalknight1​ @blurredlamplight

[headcanonheadcase-deactivated20]

The Valkyrie's Wolf - Love Languages

@sjmromanceweek Day 2 and it's time for a look at love languages.

I really feel there is no way that physical touch is not Ithan Holstrom's love language. I have a feeling that Gwyn's might be quality time (I fluctuate between that and acts of service), but it aligns with Ithan's here as she would be spending time cuddling with him. Plus, I heavily head canon Gwyn as touch-starved. So, it's a win-win for our Valkyrie and Wolf Shifter.

You can find installment two - Love Languages on AO3. Keep reading below for a snippet.

Ithan went still, his eyes wide. “I don’t have a crush,” he deflected. 

“It’s alright, really. I’m not judging you, and I’m not going to tell anyone. But I’ve seen the way you look at Nesta when she and Cassian are being affectionate, which, let’s face it, is all the time. You get this… this sort of ‘moony’ look in your eyes, and-”

“Nesta?” Ithan’s expression was frozen in shock. His mouth had finally caught up with his mind. He’d been trying to process her ramblings for a few moments. She thought he had a crush on Nesta? What could have possibly given her that idea? 

“Merciful Cthona,” he grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I don’t have a crush on Nesta.”

Now it was Gwyn’s turn to look confused. “But if you don’t have a crush, then why do you spend so much time watching her?”

Ithan swallowed hard. It was difficult to admit this. No one outside of a fellow wolf shifter would understand. Well, maybe some of the other shifters would; the ones who ran in packs. But the fae were different; they didn’t have the same needs. 

“Wolf shifters are very physical,” he began, hoping and praying that he had all the words necessary to explain this to Gwyn. “We touch all the time. A hand on your shoulder, a brush of your arm. We squeeze together onto couches until we’re just one mass of bodies. It’s not sexual - though for mates it would be. It's more about the need to know that we’re connected. We’re family.”

“And Nesta and Cassian touch all the time,” Gwyn concluded for him, putting the pieces together. 

Ithan nodded. “I don’t watch Nesta because I have a crush on her. I watch her because I want what she has: the freedom to touch and be touched.”

[jeniferprince]

evelyn hugo and celia st. james 

[lionfloss]

Michael Lange

[nikittysan]

🍃Cardan & Jude🍁

[running-with-thewolves]

Fuck off im so in love with this fictional man it’s embarrassing

[lovehatecomics]

[separatist-apologist]

When The Sky Fades To Blue

Under the stars is when I'm over the moon

Summary: In a moment of panic when the mating bond snaps beneath the mountain, Rhysand brings Feyre back to Velaris with him. Pretending he's called their bargain, Rhysand has seven days to convince her to stay with him.

Rhys will do anything to keep her

Day 3 of @sjmromanceweek: Honeymoon (Because I say it is)

Read on AO3

CW: Rhys tricks Feyre into accepting the mating bond- full consent the entire time they're together

“Well, goodbye for now,” Rhys said to Feyre, his heart hammering in his chest. The image of her body, broken and twisted on the ground still hung just behind his lids. He could still scent the copper tang of her blood, could all but taste the rotting presence of death just in the shadows. Rhys didn’t know if he’d ever forget that sight—or forgive Tamlin for dragging her into all this in the first place.

His rage was a palpable thing, strumming in his chest until it was all but taut. He wanted to go home, to see his family, his city, his people. He’d figure out what to do about Feyre after all that. Too much still lingered, unfinshed. That bargain threaded between them, binding her for at least a time. He’d see her again when he was ready.

When she was ready.

He lifted his eyes to her own, drinking in the bright blue. She was alive.

Vibrant.

Exhausted, and reeking of sex which rankled him. She’d been dead. Tamlin couldn’t give her a minute of peace? Rhys wanted to wipe those purple smudges from the hollows of her face, to chase away the darkness until only the brightest starlight remained. 

Feyre held his gaze, her upturned, pink lips parted. Rhys’s heart sped up, racing in his chest. His blood bubbled as that string he’d mistaken for rage snapped viciously in his chest. He could scent it then, burning in his nose, taunting him for knowing and yet still doubting.

He’d known the moment Amarantha turned her fury on Feyre’s still human body.

Mate. She’s my mate. She’s mine. 

He stumbled back a step, his nostrils flaring as he drank her in. Rhys felt wild—out of control. He needed to get out before he did something stupid, needed to leave her.

She’s my mate.

And she reeked of another male. 

Rhys summoned his magic to winnow away. He had every intention of leaving her behind. He swore he did. 

And yet at the last moment, as she began to ask him what was going on, Rhys lunged, yanked her into his arms, and ripped them both from that cursed mountain before anyone could stop him. Vaguely, he had the sense that Feyre had hit him, but Rhys didn’t realize anything beyond getting his mate far away from everyone and everything that might hurt her.

Rhys slammed into the center of the dining room, knees buckling against ivory marble. He was in the moonstone palace, he realized. He was home. He’d forgotten for a moment that he was still clutching Feyre to his chest. Rhys drank in the soft scent of jasmine as cool air brushed over his cheeks.

Welcome home, High Lord. 

“Rhys?”

Rhys’s head snapped up. Morrigan was sitting at the dining table, dressed casual in amethyst pants. Her blonde hair cascaded around her shoulders and those eyes—Rhys had long forgotten how big and bright and brown they were—looked both horrified and relieved. 

He wanted to go to her but he still held Feyre, who wasn’t moving at all. She was staring around the opulent room with open fear, flinching when Mor screamed for Cassian. 

Mor stood from the table and Rhys tried to, too. “She’s my mate,” he said by way of greeting. 

Mor’s steps faltered, the breath dying in her chest. Feyre twisted then, palms braced against his chest to push herself away.

“Rhys,” Mor whispered, eyes flicking between the pair of them. 

“I’m not your mate!” Feyre hissed, putting distance between them. “Take me back!”

Cassian rounded the corner with Azriel just behind him. Both winged males froze in the arched entryway, mouths open. 

Azriel was the first to notice Feyre, who had gone very, very still at the sight of them. His brothers posed no danger to her, which was the only thing that convinced Rhys to take a step toward them.

Cassian caught him first, pulling Rhys into a hug so tight it bruised his ribs. “You’re alive,” Cassian whispered, his voice rough with emotion. 

“We’d heard—” Azriel cleared his throat, silencing whatever Mor had been about to say. Rhys could guess what they’d heard, what they were wondering. He held his brother a little tighter before he let go, turning to look at Azriel.

“It doesn’t matter what they said,” Azriel told Rhys in lieu of a hug, though he did put his hand on Rhys’s shoulder. “We never believed it—and we never fucking cared, Rhys. Do you hear me?”

There was a dull roaring in his ears at Azriel’s words, at the glassy shine to Cassian’s eyes and how Mor had gone to Feyre and offered her a friendly smile. He had to tell them, so they knew how awful he was, how he didn’t deserve any of this, how—

“It doesn’t matter,” Azriel repeated, fingers digging into the fabric of Rhys’s tunic. “Tell us if you have to, but not because you think we should hate you.”

“You did what you had to, Rhys,” Mor added.

Cassian slapped Rhys lightly on the cheek. “You’ve gotta try a hell of a lot harder to get rid of us.”

“You saved us,” Mor added, swallowing hard. “And everyone in this city knows it.”

There was ringing silence for a moment, and then— “Oh. Are you back, then? Well, it took you long enough.” Amren’s voice sliced through the tension. She was just as small and terrifying as he remembered. Her gaze settled on a frightened, exhausted Feyre, inching closer and closer to Mor. Her nostrils flared, scenting what everyone else in the room could smell, too.

Sex—not from him, but Tamlin. Death, and blood, too. But beneath the horror was the thread between them, their mingled scents that whispered the truth of what they were. Feyre didn’t move, all eyes firmly on her.

“Take me back,” she whispered, her eyes steely.

Cassian huffed out a breath and Azriel cocked his head, clearly curious what male she’d been with before Rhys intervened. They were going to absolutely lose it when they found out. He braced himself for their laughter.

“Back where?” Mor asked kindly, clearly deciding that she would be Ferye’s friend.

Feyre was still looking at him, half pleading, half furious. “Back to Spring. To Tamlin.”

Right on cue, Cassian burst out laughing. Azriel clapped his hand on Rhys’s arm while Mor shook her head, chiding him without saying a word. 

“Settle this,” Amren warned him, fingers brushing the back of his hand before she returned to whatever she’d been doing before he’d arrived.

“Tamlin?” Cassian wheezed, hand on his stomach. “Your mate is with Tamlin?”

“Good luck,” Azriel murmured, his eyes jewel bright. 

“Come on,” Mor said to Feyre, taking her hand. “You look like you could use a hot meal and some sleep. I’ll show you around.”

There was no arguing. Rhys straightened his spine, trying to remember who he’d been under the mountain. He’d just left, had been doing it for fifty years and all it took was seeing the faces of his family for Rhys to forget. Feyre’s wariness unsettled him a little. 

He’d have to send her back. Tamlin would be waking soon. He’d be looking for her, and when he didn’t find her, he’d put two and two together. Rhys needed to have things locked down before Lucien Vanserra came knocking on his door.

Or worse. 

Tamlin could march an army into Night and Rhys didn’t think anyone would mind. He had no allies, no friends, but plenty of enemies. Plenty of people who would like to see him fall, to perhaps carve up his territory amongst themselves. 

Rhys wanted to throw himself at her feet and apologize. To explain himself. To beg her to forgive him and then accept the bond. That was risky, though. Feyre might reject him—reject the bond. And she’d certainly tell Tamlin, who would never let her within a hundred feet of him again. 

So he forced a sultry smile on his face, as if he weren’t seconds from breaking down. “Your week starts now. Azriel will let Tamlin know not to worry—you’re safe and sound.”

Cassian and Az both shot him a look, recognizing the mask of the High Lord. 

“He’ll kill you for this,” Feyre snapped.

Cassian laughed again. Even Az had to smother a smile. Rhys couldn’t pretend he didn’t love her spirit. 

“I’m sure he’ll try,” Rhys all but purred. “Enjoy my home.”

“I hate you,” she whispered. Azriel and Cassian both looked away, wincing at her words. Rhys was used to her venom and unaffected for the most part. Anxiety threaded through his chest at that hateful stare. How could he ever move her from this place, get her to look at him with affection and maybe even love. 

He only shrugged. “We’ll see.”

Feyre stalked out, leaving Cassian and Azriel alone in the large, open dining room. All three exhaled a breath they’d been holding and then Cassian grinned.

“Same old shit, Rhys.”

Azriel chuckled, his shadows trailing after Feyre to keep watch. 

“I’m so fucked,” Rhys admitted, running a hand down his face. “Tamlin is going to kill me.”

“He’ll try,” Cassian repeated, eyes bright with amusement. 

“He’s got to get through us, first,” Azriel added darkly. 

Rhys swallowed. He could figure this out in a week. All he truly needed was for Feyre to accept it—everything else would come later. Nodding to his friends, he said, “Tell me what I’ve missed.”

Rhys had a lot of catching up to do.

FEYRE: 

Mor hadn’t been wrong. Feyre needed food and a hot bath, and then, when she’d clutched the female’s arm in fear and said she couldn’t sleep alone, was given a draught that chased away her nightmares. Feyre woke to glittering light pooling into her bedroom, turning the open space gold. The windows were clamped shut to ward away the chill of the mountains, though the curtains were pulled back. Everything felt intentionally big and spacious, as if whoever had put her in knew she was terrified of being locked away again. 

She hated that she appreciated that. 

Feyre hated even more than she was grateful not to be back in Spring. The thought slammed into her the moment she slid out of the satin sheets and padded toward the bathing chamber. Her back in Spring was smaller, was closed off and dark until someone came in to wake her. Feyre’s bedroom door was open, the curtains still open, the lights still flickering from the night before. 

Feyre swallowed and made her way to the window, where a vast expanse of snow and sky greeted her. There was a whole world untouched by the horror under the mountain. Beautiful and peaceful, unaware of what had happened to her. 

Of what she’d done. 

It was tempting to get back into bed. Instead, Feyre dug out a pair of wool lined leggings and a sweater that smelled suspiciously like Rhysand. She ignored that, yanking it over her body before hastily braiding her hair. Feyre pulled on thick socks and didn’t dare look at herself in the mirror. She knew what Tamlin would think of her garb. She could picture how he’d wrinkle his nose and remain silent, saving his praise for when she came out in one of Alis’s hand-picked gowns.

She didn’t want a dress, though. And she didn’t care if Rhys liked what she wore. Feyre padded out of her bedroom, admiring the high ceilings made of moonstone and marble. Mor had told her the palace belonged to Rhysand’s family and was built into the mountain. She made it seem as if they didn’t stay there often, and Feyre had heard someone mention a city—she wanted to see it, if Mor would take her. 

She found Rhys sitting in a chair a little off from a table laden with food. More than he could ever eat, piled atop plates and trays. She didn’t think he’d registered her presence and she could have turned around and left him brooding in that chair, staring out at the open archways that allowed mountain air in, warmed by whatever magic governed his palace. 

She’s my mate.

Feyre took a breath. She needed answers and to convince him to let her go back—even if going back turned her stomach. And to get back, she needed to try and play nice. If only a little. So she cleared her throat and made her way to the table, where she put food on two identical plates. Feyre noticed how Rhys stiffened as he turned to look at her, his eyes focused on the food.

He didn’t want to look at her? Even better. She didn’t want to see him, either. His face was too lovely, was too distracting. Feyre dropped the plate in front of him on the little round table, well aware he was too far away to reach.

“Eat,” she said, taking to her own seat. There was no sign of his wings, or claws, or anything but the slick male she’d come to know. Rhys brought his chair closer, eyes darting to her face for a moment as though he expected something else. 

Smart.

She took a bite of food like it was nothing and after a beat, he did too. Neither of them spoke, both hungrier than she’d expected. Feyre resented his presence, resented the cord she could feel in her chest, solidifying with each new breath she took. Rhys kept his eyes pinned on her, as if he expected her bolt at any second. 

She waited until he finished, only half done herself. Heart in her throat, she said, “I want you to take me home.”

Rhys laughed. “You are home, darling.”

Feyre clenched her fork in her chest. “This is your home. Mine—”

“Is with me,” he replied, silky as ever. “Your mate.”

“About that,” she pressed, holding his starry gaze. Warmth was spreading through her, loosening her limbs and prompting her to do something foolish and stupid. That, she realized, must be the mating bond between them. “How do I break it?”

His grin was positively feline. “You don’t. Azriel will be on his way as we speak, giving Tamlin the good word.”

Her heart sank. “You wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t I?” Rhys replied, picking some small piece of lint from the sleeve of his black tunic. “Have I not demonstrated the lengths I’ll go to to keep you with me?”

His eyes traveled to her hand, still inked with the bargain she’d made under the mountain. Feyre snatched it away, hiding herself beneath the table. Rhys only smiled. 

“I can say no,” Feyre told him, though there was an underlying question to her words. 

Can’t I?

Rhys was practically preening. “You could have ten minutes ago. You could have said no right until you served me breakfast.”

And then, because Rhys was a monumental, stupid bastard, he ripped on the cord between them to illustrate his point. Feyre gasped, pulled forward so viscerally she threw her palms against the table, knocking a crystal cup to the floor. It shattered at her feet, a strange metaphor for the life she’d once had. As Feyre stared at the pieces, wondering how it would ever be replaced, she couldn’t but wonder if some things shouldn’t be fixed. If they simply couldn’t, and it was better to start all over. 

“Why wouldn’t you stop me?” she whispered, waiting for the horror to settle in. All Feyre felt was relief. She didn’t have to go back and face Tamlin. She didn’t have to return to endless Spring, to a life of…whatever was waiting for her. She felt different, stretched over her bones. 

She’d broken herself for him. She’d gone under the mountain to prove herself worthy, to show him she would fight for him—and in the end, she’d died. 

Alone. 

Whoever that girl had been hadn’t come back. She’d known it the minute she’d drawn her first immortal breath that human Feyre was still dead, though she’d been dying long before Amarantha ever snapped her spine. Each day of silence from Tamlin, his mask of indifference had worn her down until death had been a relief. Feyre felt like a traitor, and yet she might have started sobbing if Rhys had agreed to send her home. She didn’t want to face that place. Or Tamlin.

Maybe even herself. 

Feyre wanted peace. 

She’d never had it—not when her family had been wealthy, not when they’d been poor, and not in Spring. Feyre took a calming breath. She had nothing but time. Didn’t she deserve a say in her life—in what she wanted? To just be?

“Why would I?” Rhys shot back, interrupting her thoughts. “I don’t want you to leave. I don’t think you want to leave, either.”

She hated him for saying that. Hated him for being right. Feyre stood, narrowly avoiding cutting her foot that was only clad in a sock. “Fuck you, Rhysand.”

“You will,” he called after her retreating back. “And I’ll be waiting.”

Feyre only turned to offer him her middle finger. 

She wanted to hate him for tricking her into accepting the bond.

But Feyre had the feeling he was right.  

RHYSAND: 

Tamlin’s response came to Rhys four days after Feyre left. Two words, written in red ink that, upon closer inspection, might have been blood.

Return her. 

Delivered by an amused Azriel, who promised he’d informed a rather irritated Lucien Vanserra that Feyre knew of the mating bond and had accepted it. Rhys needed to prove it and that was trickier given Feyre was openly avoiding him and the pull that was, frankly, driving him insane. Rhys was strung tighter than a bow and almost constantly erect. 

It was agony staying away from her and agony still to feel her own want and be unable to go to her. Rhys was constantly locking himself in the bathroom, trying to take the edge of his need, and it was barely helping. He swallowed before turning that letter to ash. He had three days left before the bargain was up and if Feyre was still hell bent on returning, Rhys would have a bloody war on his hands.

He had no doubt Tamlin would send Lucien from court to court to court with the tale of how he forced Feyre into accepting the mating bond. How he was still the villain, unchanged and evil. 

Just like his father. 

Rhys reclined in his chair and considered calling for Azriel. How much trouble would he be in if he just killed Tamlin? He could lie and say Tamlin tried to steal his mate…and Feyre would almost certainly tell the world the truth. 

Fuck fuck fuck.

Rhys buried his face in his hands, up far later than he wanted to be. He needed to go to bed and dreaded it, knowing his dreams would be a mix of needing Feyre and untangling his life beneath the mountain. That he was likely to wake up in come soaked sheets again, rutting into the mattress like an untested youngling. 

He exhaled a breath before stilling. The wood just outside his office groaned, bringing with it the sound of soft shuffling, like socks on slick marble. He waited, praying when he scented Feyre’s crisp, pear and lilac scent mingled with something that made his whole body shake with relief.

Arousal. 

Sweet and musky—salty, and still threaded among everything else. Rhys reclined himself in his chair and picked up some random piece of paper like it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. His door creaked open and there she was in one of his sweaters and a pair of skin tight leggings he wanted to peel off with his teeth. Her shoulder was bared, freckled as the too big sweater slipped off her frame. She was so fucking beautiful, so utterly stunning it robbed him of his ability to breathe. 

She looked tired, but well—he knew Mor was looking after her, dragging Feyre from place to place and ensuring she ate. 

“There you are,” he purred, letting his paper slip from his fingers. 

“Take me back, Rhys,” Feyre said, closing the door behind her with her foot. His stomach flipped—so that’s how she wanted things to be. She wanted a fight? Rhys would give her a fight.

“No.”

“Rhys–”

“No.”

“Rhys!”

“You keep saying my name like that and I’m going to put you on your knees,” he warned, arching a brow in her direction. “Show you exactly what you're doing to me.”

Feyre crossed her arms over her chest, cheeks bright pink. “You’re disgusting.”

He grinned, stretching out his legs while resisting the urge to arch his hips. His cock was rubbing painfully against his trousers, desperate to be freed—to be between her pretty pink lips. He was so close to snapping, his restraint tenuous. 

“Why are you here? To beg to return to your great love?” he taunted, unable to hide his own jealousy. He knew she heard it, that she knew Tamlin was under his skin.

But Rhys also knew the very first thing Feyre had done upon returning was let Tamlin into her bed. And he was jealous of that. He wanted to be in her bed, wanted to be taking care of her. Giving her pleasure, showing her the home he loved—that he wanted to share wholly with her. 

“Is that what it would take, Rhys?”

He hated himself for his next words. “Are you going to fuck me to go home, Feyre?” Rising to his feet, fingers pressed against the top of his desk, Rhys looked her straight in the eyes. “Are you going to open those pretty legs and let me fuck you all so you can see Tamlin again?

Feyre bit her bottom lip before reaching for a glass globe on his desk and flinging it against his bookshelf. Glass and water exploded around them, curiously violent for someone her size. He had to throw up a hasty ward to keep them both from being hit in the blast. What, he wondered, had they made when they brought her back?

Something beautiful. 

She turned to face him, as if she’d realized the same thing he had. Rhys squared his shoulders, a battle hardened soldier who could take whatever his mate threw at him. She needed to rage and scream and vent? If she was a storm, he was a mountain. Unyielding. Unbreakable. Let her throw herself against him.

Hell, let her throw everything she had at him.

Rhys would take that anger. That fury. Anything over the silence.

Feyre’s palms slammed against his chest with impressive force. Rhys caught her by the wrist to keep them both from falling to the ground and instead whirled her around and, in one smooth, fluid motion, hoisted her up on his desk.

Feyre slapped him in the face. Rhys blinked back stinging tears, shocked she’d dared. Feyre, too, seemed a little dazed that she’d actually hit him. He watched as her body tightened and the scent of her fear invaded his senses. Rhys held her gaze.

“Don’t do that again,” he warned her, every inch of him tight. He’d snap if she did and fuck everything up. “Why don’t you go to bed, Feyre. Put your fingers between your legs and dream of me—”

She slapped him again, striking so quickly he barely had time to register it. He swallowed hard, leaning over her. “What is it that you want, Feyre?”

She was panting, sucking in air so fast he couldn’t tell if she was still aroused or having a panic attack. He started to step away, dropping his hold on her wrist to give her space when all he wanted was to bend her over his desk and fuck her within an inch of her life. They were too close and the scent of the bond was eroding all his good sense. 

“I hate you,” she whispered, reaching for his tunic and bunching it in her fist. “I hate you so much I can’t stand it.”

Her arousal slammed back into his chest. Rhys’s knees wobbled though he managed to keep himself upright, spreading apart her legs with one of his own. Rhys reached for her neck, fingers pressing ever so slightly against her windpipe.

“I’m your High Lord,” he whispered, sliding his nose through her hair. “You have to love me.”

“I’d rather die.”

“Do you know what the punishment is for disobedience, Feyre darling? For striking the High Lord in his own home?”

Her heart fluttered in her throat as she looked up at him through long, dark lashes. “I’m not afraid of you.”

Her words shattered his battered heart. Everyone was afraid of him—except his inner circle. His family.

His mate.

His mouth slammed against hers before he had a chance to think better of it. It wasn’t the kiss he’d first imagined, though it was familiar. Unlike before, when he’d had to pry Feyre’s mouth open with his tongue, she was already waiting for him. Her teeth caught against his bottom lip and when she tasted the tang of blood, she growled softly.

There you are, he thought in a daze. Rhys was wrecked when her tongue met his own, her fingers sliding up his back to yank at his hair. This was not soft nor was it nice.

But it was her. And Rhys had promised to weather whatever she threw at him, and if this was how she wanted to punish him, he was all too happy to take it. Standing between her legs, Rhys used a pulse of magic to shove everything else off his desk, not caring if it was ruined in the process. He could get new things—he would never have her like this again. 

This was the frenzy, though she didn’t know it. And Rhys intended to lose himself to it, to take her straight to bed just as soon as he could think straight. His cock was throbbing, pleading to be released. 

Feyre broke the kiss to gasp for air, leaving Rhys to nip down her neck. “Already in my clothes. Drenched in my scent.”

“Fuck you,” she panted as he reached for a fistful of her hair.

“Not yet,” he breathed, pulling her from the desk. Rhys settled Feyre on her knees, waiting for her to protest. “I promised you punishment. Though…my cock has been referred to as a gift from the mother on more than one occasion.”

“By who?” she crooned, not taking her eyes off him. “Your hand?”

“Would you like a list?” he asked, struggling internally to get his pants off with only one hand. What the fuck was wrong with him?

Feyre Archeron was what was wrong with him. He couldn’t be cool around her, could only wear the mask for so long before it slipped and she saw the male lurking beneath. 

Feyre was strong, something he wanted to explore with her later.If she wanted to be rid of him, she could have shoved him across the room. Feyre remained on her knees long enough for his cock to spring free, swollen and rigid and weeping precome. 

She laughed. Rhys had never heard her make such a sound and nearly dropped her in his surprise. 

“Is that all?”

“Open your mouth and find out,” Rhys replied, nudging his head against her soft lips. He was going to explode, clenching his ass to keep himself together. Feyre looked up at him, bratty as ever and he wondered if somehow she knew this was exactly what he wanted. This push-pull, her sass, that look in her eye that made her seem so alive. 

“Or wha—” He didn’t wait for her to respond. Rhys pushed past her teeth, hissing as they scraped the most sensitive part of him. 

“Too much talking, darling,” he managed, his rasping voice utterly betraying him. She’d tucked her lips over her teeth and as Rhys pushed himself into her throat, her tongue greeted him. Rhys couldn’t stop the low groan that escaped him, nor did he miss the look of triumph on Feyre’s face.

So he kept going, until her hands flew to his thighs and she was gagging around him, widening her jaw for a breath of air. Her nose didn’t quite reach his abdomen, though the sight of her swallowing him was so erotic his legs were shaking.

Rhys clicked his tongue in mock disapproval. “We’ll have to work on your skill. I expected better, darling.”

She snorted, nipping him with her teeth as he withdrew. Feyre made an obscene sucking sound, trailing saliva over his skin. He’d never been more jealous of Tamlin than he was in that moment. No wonder he was screaming about getting her back. Rhys would have, too. He knew he’d rip apart the world to keep her, that he would commit heinous, unspeakable atrocities to keep her forever.

But in the meantime, Rhysh had to reckon with the fact that Feyre was sucking the soul from his body. She didn’t move her head—he did that for her—but her cheeks were hollowed, her tongue wet and inviting. He couldn’t keep going like this—not when he needed her on his face.

Rhys pulled back, fist still tight in her hair. Feyre’s lips were bright red and swollen and he was delighted to find her scent of arousal was stronger. 

“On your feet,” Rhys said, yanking her up for a messy kiss. He could taste himself in her mouth, salty and slick and most importantly, his. He wasn’t particularly kind or gentle as he ripped those leggings off her body, ignoring how Feyre smirked when he had to get on his knees to do it. Still, she was half naked, and when he managed to get the sweater off, Rhys was certain he would have prayed solely to her if she’d demanded it. Feyre was everything—smooth and soft and so fucking pretty it made his teeth ache. 

“Did you come?” she asked with mock sympathy. “That was quick.”

“When I come, you’ll know it,” he snarled, hauling her up off her feet before she could protest. It was merely a show of power, hardly necessary. He dropped her back on the desk, legs spread.

Gods, but Feyre was unbearably pretty. He swallowed, unable to meet her gaze as he undid his own pants entirely. Those moon bright eyes widened, drinking in his naked form, eyes narrowing on the mountains tattooed on his knees. 

Rhys sank to the ground, running his hands up and down her smooth thighs. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anyone half as lovely as you,” he purred, holding her attention while pressing feather light kisses over her skin. Feyre’s breath caught in her throat. 

“I’ve been thinking of all the ways I want you—all the things I’d do to you.” “And?” she managed, her voice cracking as he came higher up her body. Rhys pulled her closer, until she had to drape her legs over his shoulders to keep from falling to the ground. 

“Will you beg me to taste you, Feyre?”

She laughed again, the sound repairing the fissures of his heart. Eyes sparking, she said, “I’m not the one on my knees.”

As if she hadn’t just been sucking his cock. Rhys spread her cunt open, drinking in the aroused, pink flesh practically dripping with need. He lowered himself before his mate—his queen, even if she didn’t know it yet—and took that first taste.

Rhys growled, the scent of her cunt filling his senses. She was perfect, sweet and salty in equal measure. He’d intended to lick her just enough to drive her a little wild, to break that bratty facade she wore.

Now he thought he’d die if he wasn’t suffocated against her. Feyre’s fingers slid through his hair, yanking viciously at the strands. 

“Please,” he said, not thinking of anything but the instinct to pleasure his mate. Rhys pulled her against his face, fingers digging against the curve of her hip. Feyre exhaled a soft shriek when his tongue circled around her, teasing and taunting before he finally sucked that nub of flesh between his lips.

He ought to have warned his friends mind to mind before he started this. It was too late now–and Feyre was far too loud. They’d be clearing out, realizing the frenzy was about to make both Rhys and Feyre intolerable to be around. 

Feyre ground herself against his face, panting like a wild animal. He glanced up, drinking in her flushed cheeks and eyes so dark they reminded him of a dusky night sky. Was his heart pounding because he was so aroused, or because he loved her as much as he did? Rhys wasn’t sure, didn’t care. He just needed her, however she was willing to let him have her.

Rhys slid a finger into her body, groaning at the wet, tight heat of her. He needed her on his cock, currently twitching between his legs at the phantom touch. He doubled his efforts, thrusting another finger into her as he licked and sucked, driving her up. Feyre’s hold on his hair was enough to make him whimper though he didn’t dare remove himself from his lady’s grip. Not when he could feel her convulsing against him rhythmically, or how the taste of her was flooding through his mouth.

“Rhys,” she panted—and that, he thought, might have been the first time she’d ever said his actual name. Breathy and full of need. Rhys sucked again and Feyre clamped tight around him, breaking apart with a scream loud enough to drive an avalanche down the mountain. He didn’t stop, desperate to lap it all up, to have every last bit of her. It was only when Feyre released his hair to push at his forehead that Rhys reared back. 

With one fluid motion, he stood, wrapped his arms around her, and tossed her over his shoulder. Rhys caressed her ass before delivering a ringing slap against her cheek. The flesh bounced and Feyre yelped, caught off guard by the ringing smack. She was still coming down from what he’d done to her with his mouth. 

“Another, for striking me twice,” he said before delivering another blow to her other cheek. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough to make her tender flesh bright red from his hand. Rhys couldn’t resist grabbing, squeezing in his hand before he brought them both into his lap. 

“Rhys—” But he didn’t wait before he sheathed himself inside her, too busy trying to get them both situated in front of his desk.

Feyre let out a soft moan when she felt him fill her while Rhys saw a burst of cerulean stars just behind his eyes. A low groan left him—Feyre’s body was sheer bliss, was heaven. He pressed his forehead into her shoulder, trying to remember what his plan had been. He could still feel her last orgasm rippling around her. 

Ah—right. Torture.

He snapped his fingers and everything he’d shoved off his desk reappeared exactly as it was supposed to. Feyre, panting, asked, “What are you doing?”

“Working,” he replied like the liar that he was. Losing his mind was more like it. Feyre was like second skin, a wet, warm vice squeezed against his aching, needy cock. All he’d thought about since he’d offered him breakfast was fucking her and now he was inside her body—and he was telling them both they couldn’t move.

“You’ll break,” she whispered, even as her hips rolled ever so slightly. Rhys stilled her with his hand. 

“You’re so desperate,” he taunted, like he wasn’t too. “By the end, you’ll be curled up in my bed like the sweetest little kitten, won’t you?”

She gritted her teeth, her eyes clamped shut. Rhys reached for a piece of paper, recalling the one Tamlin had sent. He needed to forget about the High Lord of Spring, especially given Feyre was currently squirming in his lap. But he couldn’t.

“How am I supposed to send you back like this?” he murmured, teeth grazing the shell of her ear. “Reeking of my cock?”

She said nothing, hips jerking as if she couldn’t help herself. Rhys could see a bead of sweat slide down the back of her neck. He leaned, licking the salt from her skin. He wanted it all, wanted to feel her come round him so badly it was making him reckless again. Dragging his hand down her body, Rhys found her clit and began to rub slow, lazy circles. 

“Do you want to go back, Feyre?”

He refused to call Spring her home. Velaris was her home.

He was her home. 

Feyre didn’t answer, though she did tighten around him. Rhys wasn’t done. She had to say she wanted to stay—that she wanted to be with him. He kept rubbing, intending to draw her up, to make her feel so good she fully submitted to the frenzy unraveling around them. He’d sent Cassian and Azriel back to spring in their Court of Nightmare masks with a warning.

Touch her and die. If you try and take her from me, I’ll kill you and everything you love.

“Oh, Feyre,” he murmured, kissing the side of her neck. She was panting, clenching around him with closed eyes. Rhys was losing his fucking mind. “Answer my question.”

“What question?” she panted, hips bucking outside of her control. Feyre dug her nails into his bare thighs, trying so hard to ride him. The sight was nearly his undoing, and it took every ounce of his will, to slam his free hand to her shoulder and hold her still.

“Do you want to go back?”

“I can’t,” she said, twisting to look at him. “I can’t—”

“Why?” he growled, wondering what he’d missed. Had something slipped through, some message from Tamlin that upset her?

“I’m too broken, too—”

Rhys roared in fury, yanking her off him just long enough to turn her around. Legs wrapped around his waist, his arms holding her, he snarled, “You are perfect.”

Feyre looked at him with those big, starry eyes. “Something broke beneath the mountain. I don’t think I can go back…whoever went down…she’s gone now.”

He slid his hands up her spine and over her shoulders to cup her face. “I know exactly how you feel,” he murmured, kissing her gently. “That doesn’t mean you’re broken, though. Only that you survived something.”

Feyre held his gaze. “Don’t make me leave.”

He could almost pretend they were having this conversation somewhere else, under better circumstances. Certainly not when his cock was twitching inside her. Instinct was running a river through him, making him more animal than anything.

“Never,” he managed, which was the truth of things. “Never.”

Feyre rolled her hips and this time Rhys helped, his fingers digging into her skin to keep her steady, to let her brace the majority of her weight against him. 

“Whatever is happening, Feyre,” he whispered, kissing the line of her jaw, resisting the urge to fuck her quickly in favor of long, deep strokes. “I can handle it. I can take it. You don’t have to hide from me.”

Feyre bit against his shoulder, hands running up his chest. “Take this off,” she whispered and Rhys was powerless to do anything but oblige her. With a wave of his hand his tunic was gone. He had to shift in order to bring out his wings, hidden with magic to keep from frightening her. Ferye looked up, eyebrows raised not in disgust, but awe. 

Cocooning them within the safety of his wings, Rhys let Feyre ride him until they were both panting and breathless. He was mindless with need, his mouth everywhere he could reach. Teeth tugged at her ear until she turned for a messy, desperate kiss. Release gathered along his spine as his blood all but burned in his veins. 

Feyre’s orgasm was a religious experience. Rhys went right over that edge with her, coming apart like a million falling stars. He realized he was chanting her name, kissing and fucking like a mindless creature bent only on the female writhing and moaning in his lap. It took him a moment to come down, his lust only barely slaked. He was surprised by how badly he still needed her. Maybe, he thought, it would always be like this.

Feyre grazed her fingers over his shoulders, tracing his tattoos with curiosity. “What do they mean?” she asked before pressing a kiss to his skin.

“Illyrian tattoos,” he murmured, mouth in her hair. “One day I’ll explain each one, but they’re for luck and glory in battle.”

She brought her own hand up to her face, a question on her face.

“I was always rooting for you,” he whispered, taking her palm and pressing it to his cheek. 

She looked at him. “You were suffering, too.”

Rhys swallowed. “And you died. I—” He didn’t know how to tell her how terribly sorry he was. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

“Don’t say that,” she whispered. “I can’t go back there. I can’t…I…”

“I’ll send Cass and Az to tell him you’re too lost to the frenzy to explain. You can see him when you’re ready. You’ve earned that.”

“And until then?”

“Consider this a honeymoon—a relationship in reverse,” he said, hope fluttering painfully in his chest. “Once we can walk again, I’ll court you the way you deserve. The way I used to dream about under the mountain.”

“You dreamt of me?” she asked, her eyes so full of wonder. Feyre was pure starlight, glowing with some unknown magic he wanted to explore. Happiness, he hoped. Love, eventually. 

Rhys smiled. “Of course. You, my darling, are my salvation.”

[alex-iltempo]

Gorgeous Jurdan part III

Here's ⚜️part I ⚜️_⚜️ part II⚜️

By @lilithsaur