Cassian’s mouth dropped open. He looked like Daizell had slapped him for a second, the colour rushing to his face, then he said, ‘Well, yes – no . . . That is, I see what you mean, but one can’t disavow responsibility. It was my duty to keep the ring safe, and I lost it.’
‘You can take responsibility for that. Youhave. What you can’t do is magic the thing back onto your finger by sufficient application of guilt.’
‘If I could, I’d have retrieved it days ago.’
‘I believe that. Look, I don’t think we’ll find the man, but there’s a decent chance he pawned or sold the ring straight away, as we said at the start. And it’s the ring you want, yes? So we take tomorrow to recover our energies, and then we retrace our steps to where we know he was, and try the pawn shops, and find out how one gets in touch with sellers of stolen property. We’ll keep looking as long as you like. No stone unturned.’
‘Yes,’ Cassian said. ‘Yes, that’s a plan. Thank you, Daize. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
Daizell did his best not to glow. He very much liked the feeling of being useful, and knew a powerful desire to earn it by finding this blasted ring. ‘I’m sure you’d manage, but I’m glad I can help.’
They smiled at each other across the food, warmth lighting Cassian’s sun-and-rain eyes, and another bit of Daizell’s fool heart slipped out of his control. Tonight was going to be agony.
Chapter Eight
This time, he woke up with Cassian not just in his arms, but between his legs.
Daizell had to take a moment. Cassian’s nightshirt had ridden up, and Daizell was wrapped around him, arm over his chest, face in his shoulder, thigh over his hip, and prick – with a serious case of morning wood – pressed against his bare arse. At least the thin cloth of Daizell’s nightgown was between them. He’d fucked people less intimately than this.
They hadn’t, had they? He rapidly checked his memory but no: they had not drunk to excess, they had gone to bed in a perfectly decorous manner, and apparently they’d woken up spooning like lovers. Or, at least, Daizell was spooning, and Daizell had woken. Cassian was breathing lightly. If he was still asleep, Daizell might be able to peel himself off without the man feeling like he’d been violated in the night.
Daizell didn’t know what the devil he was doing in his sleep these days. He knew himself to be tiresomely mobile and very prone to outflung arms, because he’d had plenty of complaints, but he’d never woken up in this sort of tangle with a bedmate of convenience, as evidenced by the fact that he still had all his teeth. He needed to do something about this. Unfortunately, he had a very good idea why his sleeping body wanted to wrap itself around Cassian, and a lowering suspicion that he’d need the co-operation of a waking body to mend matters.
This was not the time to consider that. He needed to extricate himself without disturbing Cassian, and he needed to do it prick first because nobody wanted to wake up to someone else’s unsolicited erection. If he could somehow inch his hips back and away, this wouldn’t be quite so disastrous.
He took a second to listen to Cassian’s breathing, so that he could judge his movements. It was soft, shallow and even. Just like the other night. When they’d talked.
Oh Christ, he was awake.
Daizell’s stomach plunged. What could he do now? Simply apologise? Treat it as a joke? Behave as though he thought Cassian was asleep, and they could pretend this hadn’t happened? Pretend he’d just woken up himself, with a lot of yawning?
No, wait. If Cassian was awake, why was he just lying there? Was he panicking? He didn’t feel as though he was panicking, and Daizell could feel a lot of him at this moment, much of it bare skin. He couldn’t possibly—
Daizell called upon every bit of nerve he had. ‘Cass?’
Silence. Then, quietly, ‘Yes.’
‘I, uh. I seem to be—’
‘I know.’
‘Would you like me to move?’
Another silence. Then, almost inaudibly, ‘No.’
Daizell stared at the back of his neck, the curve where it met a slim shoulder. Cassian was warm and delightfully solid, and the word ‘yielding’ was in his mind now. ‘Um. To be clear, do you want me not to move, as in “don’t move away”, or not to move as in “don’t make any further advances”? Not that this was an advance, as such, I just woke up like this, but for the sake of clarity and also decency, or at least good behaviour – I’m going to stop talking, but which was it?’
‘I think I’ve forgotten the question,’ Cassian said, and there was a tremor in his voice that might have been nerves or laughter or both, and which was extremely emboldening, much like the very comfortable way Daizell’s prick was fitting against his neat, firm arse.
‘I could stay still,’ Daizell said. ‘Or I could get away from you. Or I could . . . neither stay still nor get away.’
‘Don’t get away.’ Cassian’s voice was a whisper, a charm. ‘But if you don’t want to stay still, I shouldn’t want to make you.’ He shifted back a touch as he spoke, pressing into Daizell, who took a moment to pray he wasn’t dreaming. Cassian, in his arms, rubbing against him, sleepy and perfect. ‘You do move around a lot.’
‘I’m restive.’ Daizell slid his leg along Cassian’s thigh, just to see, and almost choked at the light touch of exploring fingers meeting his skin, moving delicately up. ‘Oh God. Cass. Is this—?’
‘This is perfect,’ Cassian murmured. ‘Just like this. Or . . .’ He reached backwards and tugged at Daizell’s nightshirt.
Daizell yanked it up, bunching the fabric above his waist, then shifted forward. That put them skin to skin, his prick explosively hard now. Cassian inhaled sharply, and breathed out with unmistakable relish. Daizell let his own hand drift downwards, across smooth chest and soft stomach, down to coarse curls, and then his questing fingers found what they sought, and he wrapped his hand around Cassian’s stand with a pulse of intense satisfaction.
