No one so much as looked at him.
Luna hadn’t exaggerated. The whole of the Horned City was completely unaware of his presence, and a wild sort of liberation barreled into him.
He was invisible.
He wasfree.
She stopped beside Thad where he was dancing between a female Brand vaguely recognized and the male warrior from before, their damp bodies grinding sensuously together.
“Watch this!” Luna shouted over the pounding drums and spun on his cousin, sticking her tongue out with an explosiveblegh!as her fingers splayed in the air like claws.
Brand threw his head back and laughed. It was like she wasn’t even there.
Mischief sparkled in her eyes. “You try it!”
He couldn’t possibly resist.
Looking around, he found Vann dodging Nyri’s flailing arms. Brand dug deep, finding a part of himself he’d thought long dead, and blew the wettest, longest raspberry he could muster right into his brother’s oblivious face.
They disintegrated. Brand could hardly breathe for laughing so hard, and Luna was clutching her stomach, gasping beside him.
It only got better.
Before he knew it, she was pressed against him. Luna dragged her hands up the curving line of her body and throughher hair, ruffling the mass and dislodging some of the trilliatum he’d left for her to use, before throwing her arms in the air. She swayed against him, mirth painted across her face as she moved with the steady drumbeat.
Brand let his hands hover over her, trying to find the same rhythm within himself. Tried to harness that untamed, unfettered quality she had. If he could just?—
“Like this,” she said, raising up on bare toes to murmur in his ear. “Feel the music, feel me through the bond, and follow.”
There was no judgement as she placed her hands on his hips, forcing them side to side with the beat. Moving to his shoulders, she coaxed them into harmony with the rest of his limbs. At last, she lifted his arms towards the sky as she’d done, her fingers teasing down their length to rest on his waist.
And he did. He felt it. Felt her feeding it into him from her very self.
Grasping on to the crackling energy between them, Brand let his bodymove.
Hours, they were like that. Hours, locked together in a perfect imitation of what their bodies would be doing later. They teased and touched, letting it be the foreplay it was as the rest of the crowd devolved into its own abandon.
Sweaty and achy, Brand’s gaze wandered over Luna’s head, trailing over the crowd until it landed on his cousin—watching as Thad’s jaw went slack, his partners tangled around him and pressing mouths and fingers against his skin.
Over Faldir wrapped against a Fae’s back, his hand disappearing down the front of her skin-tight dress as she reached behind to grasp his horns.
Hedda, with an entire group surrounding her, begging with lips and hands to be one of those she took to bed with her.
More and more couplings plastered themselves together as the night wore on, releasing the last dregs of restraint and lettingtheir bodies go, and Brand knew he couldn’t take it another minute. Anothersecond.
He bent to Luna’s ear, his teeth latching onto the lobe as he dipped both hands down to her hot center. “I think it’s time we left.”
She stopped moving, except for the heaving rise and fall of her chest, and twisted to peer into his eyes. “I think you’re right.”
Overcome by something he couldn’t name, he softly growled, “Lift the spell, little moon.”
Confusion twisted her brow. “You want me to…”
His fangs punched down, his Demon rising to the surface and obliterating any remaining restraint. “Lift the spell. I want all of the Montrealm to see me here, with you.” He emphasized his words by grinding against her lush arse. “To fucking watch as we leave and I take you to bed.”
She licked her lips, waving her fingers. Those dancing in their immediate vicinity startled, but he ignored them as he swept her off the ground and into his arms.
Brand didn’t even register the cheers as they sounded behind him, already well on his way to the portal on the far side of the square.
