“I’ll tell you if you ask,” Arkady tempted as he licked the bruise on Cash’s throat. “All the details.”
Cash snorted and moved his hands away from the scar. He reached down between their bodies and fumbled at Arkady’s trousers. It was just a button and zip. He knew how they worked, or he had five minutes ago. Arkady laughed against his neck and shifted his weight up onto his knees so he could reach down and unbutton.
“I don’t need to know that badly,” Cash said. He pushed Arkady over onto his back—all black and honey sprawled out on the sheets—and crawled on top of him. His cock ached, thick and tender under his jeans, but it deserved it for getting him into this. Cash pinned Arkady by the shoulders and leaned over him until he could feel the tickle of breath against his cheek. “And don’t creep into my fantasies again.”
Arkady looked amused. He stretched under Cash with a lazy flex of muscle just to make the point that he chose to stay where he was. For now. “You know I couldn’t unless you want me to.”
Yeah, Cash knew that. It just annoyed him more… because how come he never had before? He just glared at Arkady instead of asking that, andthis timeit was Arkady who kissed him—a quick hard brush of lips and teeth.
Cash shoved him back down, although he knew he couldn’t enforce it. He tightened his fingers on Arkady’s shoulders.
“This isn’t a thing. Once Ellie’s back—” Cash stopped himself and edited the statement. It was important to word things carefully in the Abascals’ employ. Cash had almost forgotten that. “After the wedding, things go back to normal. I’m not back, I’m notstaff.Deal?”
That was the magic word. Arkady’s monster swam up and peeked through the stained glass of his eyes. Scarlet threads tipped with gold needles bled through the dense black of his aura as it flared out around them.
“Deal,” Arkady said, his voice rough as gravel as he caught Cash’s hips in his hands and pulled him down. The hard, insistent ridge of his cock pressed against Cash’s ass. “After my sister is married, we’ll go back to how it used to be.”
Cash swallowed hard. He knew there would be a sting in the tail. There was always a sting in the tail. The betrayal might help Cash stick to his word.
“This will end badly,” Cash said as he pressed a kiss into the hollow of Arkady’s collarbone. His mouth lingered for a second as he scraped his teeth gently along the sharp arch. The temptation to leave his own mark on Arkady, to chew a Cash-shaped bruise onto the tanned skin, itched in the hinges of his jaw. He didn’t. He never had. “You know that, right?”
Arkady shrugged under him.
“I know,” he said. “But not yet.”
Fuck it. Every monster parent knew that when the kid was at camp, it was time to play. Cash got to play with all this.
He reached down and slid his hand into Arkady’s trousers and wrapped his fingers around his cock. Arkady arched his hips up into the touch, a low, hungry sound rough and raw in his chest as it clambered up into his throat.
“Casper,” he said raggedly. “Hell. You feel good.”
His cock was thick and heavy. The satin-fine skin creased under Cash’s fingers as he gripped the base and felt the pulse of it. It felt as stupid and inevitable as the first and the last times they’d crawled into bed together. Cash tightened his grip to drag a groan out of Arkady and shifted his weight back.
“I could—”
The bell rang. It had been a decade since Cash had heard it, but he’d spent nearly as long answering to it. He’d been a hungry kid with no other options—the Abascal Hotel didn’t have vending machines, and the chef wouldactuallyeat you if he caught you in his kitchen—and his reaction was still a Pavlovian compulsion to answer the summons.
He scrambled half off the bed before Arkady grabbed his arm and pulled him back down. A heavy, slightly too-hot arm draped over his back and pinned him in place. He sprawled out on top of Arkady with ill grace as his stomach rumbled, reminded that a packet of Funyuns and the dull misery of a cheap motel’s day residents weren’t much of a meal.
“Like you said,” Arkady said against his throat, lips curved in a smirk, “you’re not staff now, Casper. You’re a guest, and that means you enjoy mother’s full hospitality with the rest of us. Jeans and a T-shirt that smells like me aren’t going to cut it.”
No. Belladonna had never been impressed when Cash turned up anywhere with Arkady’s scent on him.
“If you want me to get changed,” Cash said, “you better let me up. Your mother does hate to be kept waiting.”
This time Arkady let him scramble off the bed.
Chapter Six
CASH SHRUGGEDhis jacket on and raked his fingers through his hair to pull it back from his face. It was only long enough for a stubby ponytail, but it would have to do. Donna hated long hair on men. Or women. She considered anything more than half an inch a temptation for lice.
The adjoining door opened, and Arkady let himself in. He looked lean and dangerous in black, with a dull-red leather waistcoat that exaggerated his lean waist buttoned over a fine linen shirt. A few subtle bits of gold glittered on the waistcoat and around his wrist—enough to satisfy Donna’s idea of what wealth looked like.
He looked Cash up and down and frowned. “You look like a banker,” he said. “Change.”
Cash scowled at him.
“And you look like a funeral pimp,” he said. “It’s fine. Donna knows what I am.”
