He cut himself off the moment he and James locked eyes.
“Cream, no sugar,” James said.
“Right. Right.” Cassian blinked a couple of times. “I forgot. Yes. Coffee.” Clearing his throat, he stepped back into the room. “Come in.”
James flashed the cabin steward a friendly smile before slipping into the room. Balancing the saucer and cup in his left hand, he immediately closed the door behind him.
“Sorry,” he said, turning to face Cassian. “I wanted to see you.”
Cassian let out a contented-sounding hum.
“Don’t ever be sorry for that,” he said, his previously sleepy voice now becoming slightly husky.
James tried not to like it too much.
Cassian took the coffee from him. When he lifted the cup off of the saucer, it revealed the pool of light-brown liquid there, and he sneered at it. Immediately, James’s stomach lurched from seeing Cassian’s reaction. Overcome with the pitiful, ever-present urge to please him, James took the saucer back, intending to clean it somehow. But then James realized that he only had his one handkerchief with him (which he wanted to keep clean seeing as it was only five forty in the morning) and there were no other pieces of rogue cloth nearby. Determined to follow through, he brought the saucer to his lips and slurped up the spilled coffee right off of the saucer. He smiled to himself, feeling foolishly proud, when he lowered it.
“Fixed.”
He handed the still-wet-but-now-coffee-free saucer back to Cassian, who stared wordlessly for a couple of seconds before starting to chuckle.
“Sometimes I have the fleeting thought that you’re spoiling me.”
James’s stomach fluttered. He’d like nothing more than to spoil Cassian. Now and forever. Until the end of time.
“But then, I realize something,” Cassian continued, his mouth curling into an impish-looking smile.
“Is it...” James paused to think. “Is it that you’re Cassian Penn Livingston, and therefore, because of who you are and what you are owed, you cannot possibly be spoiled?”
Cassian laughed that haughty yetplayful laugh of his. “Precisely.”
Stomach still fluttering madly, James exhaled a shaky laugh himself. “I beg to differ.”
“Do you?” Cassian asked, raising one of his eyebrows.
“Yes,” James confirmed, his stomach now in his throat, his heart slamming into his rib cage with every wild beat. “Because I think that I could... spoil you.”
Cassian’s smile faltered as James’s statement reverberated off the walls of the stateroom.
“James,” Cassian said.
His voice was hungry and exhausted and pleading and loving and reproachful. All at once.
Gazing into Cassian’s beautiful brown eyes, the sound of his own name echoing in his head, James felt his cheeks warm, and he nearly fell to his knees to beg for forgiveness. Forgiveness for being so brazen and so improper, though whether he wanted that forgiveness from Cassian or from God, he wasn’t sure. Worse, though, James wanted to fall to his knees for other reasons. Reasons that were wicked and wonderful. Reasons that could only lead to more spoiling.
James and Cassian stared at each other for a while, and then James spun around in a little circle, raking his hand through his hair while wondering where his head had gone. He had come here to try to have a conversation about thissomethingthat was between them. He’d come to make things right. But it seemed like all he was capable of was continuously nudging both of them closer and closer to oblivion.
“I... oh, God, I’m sorry,” he said. “Something is wrong with me.”
“Nothing is wrong with you.” Cassian exhaled a soft sigh. “Or, if there is, then something is wrong with me, too.” He gestured toward the bed. “Let’s sit.”
James’s heart was thundering in his ears as he followed Cassian across the room. He said a silent prayer that they could make it through their time together without breaking in the plush-looking mattress in a horrible, magnificently sinful manner.
Cassian is engaged. Cassian is engaged. Cassian is engaged.
Over and over, James repeated these words to himself, hoping to etch them into his soul, for maybe their presence there would somehow revive the sense of morality he’d once had that he must have either buried or left ashore.
James sat still while Cassian sipped his coffee. Eventually, Cassian held it out for him.
