Thalia flipped off her blanket, and Cassius raised a brow. “Everything all right?”
“It’s too hot,” Thalia whispered. Her heart rate rose, and she couldn’t say why. Maybe it was the fact that Cassius’s eyes had gone to her throat. “Are you … are you still cold?”
Cassius offered a small smile. “I told you, my body may be hot, but my insides always feel as though they’re coated in ice.”
Thalia made a face. “What stops it?”
Cassius’s eyes darkened. She barely breathed as his hand reached out, brushing a strand of her hair from her neck. “Usually I can get warmed up if I think about something … arousing.”
“Like what?” Thalia whispered.
Cassius’s fingers didn’t leave her neck. “Like thinking of you.”
Thalia shifted closer, the heat of his body transferring to her. “And what do you think about?”
Cassius smirked, his fingers trailing down her neck to her arm. “I think about what it would be like to make love to you now. How four years may have changed a lot of things, but the way we were together never will.”
Thalia closed her eyes, the image of him thrusting inside her making her burn.
“I think about those little noises you make,” he said quietly. “How you gasp every time I put my mouth around your breast. The way you clench when my fingers are inside you.”
Thalia shuddered, imagining the feel of his teeth scraping against her nipple.
“You have no idea what it’s like, Thalia.” He let out a low chuckle. “How your jasmine perfume makes me feel feral. Makesme want to peel those tight pants off you and worship every inch of you.”
Thalia opened her lids, finding his stare dark. His hand hadn’t left her arm, but she trembled, need filling her with such desire that she nearly cried.
“And when you look at me like that,” Cassius got out, his eyes slowly lifting to hers, “it takes everything in me not to take you right here. To fuck you until we both forget who we are and what we’re doing.”
Thalia swallowed, the growing ache between her legs so great she had to clamp her thighs together.
“I beg you, please don’t.”
Thalia jerked, all sense of heat dying as Keegan’s words floated across the fire. Mortification speared through her as she realized what she and Cassius had been doing—the words they’d been speaking.
Cassius cast a glare across the fire even as he chuckled. “Prick.” He turned back to Thalia, his features now dancing with amusement. His features softened at her embarrassment. “Keegan’s just jealous that he doesn’t have a pretty face to stare at.”
“I have a mirror for that,” Keegan said over his shoulder.
Cassius snickered and Thalia’s lip twitched as she lay back down, pulling the blanket up once more.
Cassius settled down beside her. He reached across the space, his fingers entwining with hers. “Get some sleep,” he said, his voice low.
Thalia nodded, forcing her lids to close, Cassius’s hand a steady weight in her palm.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Perden shone like a lost jewel hidden among shadows.
It stood on the precipice of a waterfall, a citadel rising high against the mountainside—an entire kingdom, really—as if it had been stuck there by some giant hand. A bridge spanned the waterfall, the water flowing under it until it disappeared into a misty basin.
“Holy gods,” Thalia murmured as Cassius nudged Feryena onward.
The stone bridge stretched at least six wagon-widths across, and mist met her face despite how high they were.
“Is this the only way to get to the city?” Thalia asked, the roar of water humming in her ears.
“There’s three entrances into Perden,” Cassius rumbled. “This is one. One down in the basin, although you have to climb thousands of stairs to reach the top. And then one that leads from the other side of the mountain to the sea.”
