I’m in a cage—withhim, but still.
He’s dangerous.
He’s fae; I’m human.
I—
A soft sound leaves me as my soul gives up. What does it matter anyway? At least these chains are so, so pleasant…if they’re even chains at all.
As though to prove how safe and free andheardI actually am, Castor…stops. He pulls back from my throat and touches his fingertips to my lips, prompting, “Love, you were going to say something?”
Well. Yes. Iwasgoing to broach thevery bad ideawe’re entertaining by lying here together like this, hyped up on hormones and feelings and stuff like that. Iwasgoing to, gently, suggest that we aren’t ready for what this sort of situation can lead to. Iwasgoing to be all kinds of reasonable and logical and level-headed.
Wasbeing the condemning word, of course.
It seems I have quite firmly left my sense in the past.
“Are you going to stay with me tonight?” I ask, instead. Like a moron with a crush on the bad boy biker man who’s a decade older and probably still living in his parents’ basement, where he does hard drugs and cusses at thirteen-year-olds in video games.
In stark contrast, like a mature, rational, and intelligent adult, Castor says, “No, darling.”
Disappointment hits me right through my stupidity.
Castor swells, blessing my lips with a kiss far more chaste than the nonsense we’ve been getting up to ever since he brought me home from the moth palace. “I’m not going to take the chance that I fall asleep with you and lose my blind in the night.” A sigh settles in his chest, against me, as he holds me so close. “I’d offer to gouge my eyes out for such blessing…but I’m not confident the—” he swears, “—things wouldn’t be back before morning.”
My stomach dips—with inexplicable flutters. “You’d gouge your eyes out for me?”
“Of course.” His tone suggests I’m silly for feeling the need to ask him such a question when the answer should be common sense.
This is bad.So bad. I’m on the precipice of falling hard for this man, because of dreadfully concerning reasons.
I say, “They…grow back?”
“Unfortunately.”
Unfortunately. Even though hecansee, he chooses not to, and he’d choose not to forever to keep me safe.
I have never been a priority. My interests and well-being have never mattered beyond how they might affect my mother’s ability to turn a profit using me. This sensation of being prioritized is heady and all-consuming. It amps up the delusion and the daze and the depravity.
Kissing his chin, I whisper, “Would you cut out your tongue for me?”
“Yes,” he replies, no hesitation, breathless.
My lips graze along his smooth jawline. “What wouldn’t you do for me?”
His mouth opens. Thoughts pass in the silence. His throat bobs with a swallow. “I can think of nothing, but I am sorely lacking in my mental capacity at the moment. Everything is just…” His nose buries itself in my neck and hair. “You.”
I’m used to being plastered in all sorts of environments that make it really feel like everything is about me. Never before has it actually been true, though. “Stay with me,” I say.
“For your sake, I cannot.”
“You wouldn’t stay awake all night for me?”
“I do not trust myself to win against weariness with the weight of you in my arms. The peace you elicit in every speck of my being lulls me toward a dangerous edge. Were I less selfish, I’d have left you hours ago. But…”
“But?”
His fingers dig into my body as he begs for a closeness that I’m not sure physical proximity can sate. “You chose me. You didn’t have to. I… I was clear, wasn’t I?”
