Arkady sprawled back against the pile of pillows stacked against the headboard. He stretched his arms out over them, muscles pulled tight over his shoulders and across his chest, and tilted his head. The dark, heavy mantle of his aura draped over the bed like a cape, hungry but patient.
“Undress me,” he said with a lazy wave of his hand in the direction of his groin.
It wasn’t an order, but it wasn’t a request either. The expectation was obedience. It galled Cash—a part of him had never quite ousted his mom’s early lessons about apple pie, the constitution, and equality—but it also twisted his libido like a wet rag.
It was a sucker punch of wet, sticky hunger, and his shallow principles didn’t stand a chance in hell against it.
“What did your last servant die of?” he groused in a halfhearted attempt to preserve his usual attitude.
Arkady smiled that odd unguarded smile that escaped him sometimes when he wasn’t being his mother’s son or the epitome of a good Prodigium vassal. It wasn’tnice—it was cocky with a tilt of smug bastard—but it was Arkady’s own.
“Satisfaction,” he drawled out and spread his legs apart.
“Asshole,” Cash said. Any edge there might have been to the insult was muted by the fact he had already started to crawl up the bed.
The leather was skintight, thin enough that the slant of Arkady’s hipbones and the crease of his groin were outlined in glove-soft black. It stretched over the thick, interested bulge of his erection, notquitetight enough to see every ridge and vein. That was okay. Cash had a good memory.
He straddled Arkady’s lap, the hard jut of leather-wrapped cock pressed against his ass, and leaned in to lick the sticky spill of brandy off his chest. The sparse coating of light brown hair tickled his lips as he laved the sweet, heady liquid off Arkady’s skin. He felt Arkady’s chest hitch as he sucked in a ragged breath, the thud of his heart fierce.
Openmouthed kisses left a damp trail on Arkady’s skin as Cash worked his way down. He flicked his tongue over Arkady’s nipple, the taut, coppery bud of it tight at the attention, and then caught it between his teeth. That got him the groan he’d worked for—a ragged sound that scraped out of Arkady’s chest as he let his head fall back.
“I know you too,” Cash taunted as he lifted his head. He teased the slick bud between his thumb and fingers, tender flesh hard and hot, until he got another gasp for his efforts. Gold flushed over Arkady’s chest and into his throat as he arched up into Cash’s touch. “In case you’d forgotten.”
Arkady caught his breath and undraped one arm so he could tangle his fingers through Cash’s hair. He tugged until Cash had to crane his neck awkwardly to look at him. Then he dipped down to kiss the taste of himself off Cash’s mouth. The kiss was spiced with a bite, Cash’s lower lip caught briefly between sharp teeth.
“The only one who’s forgotten anything,” Arkady murmured, “is you, with how to unfasten my trousers.”
He shoved Cash away lazily and stretched out under him, the play of muscle and scale under his skin not quite in sync as he waited. The show of laziness would have been more convincing without the unsteady rise and fall of his chest and the cage of his aura as it stirred around them.
Cash swallowed and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.
“My bad,” he said. “I was looking for your shirt.”
“You took too long to get back.” Arkady shrugged as he tucked one arm behind his head. “I had to start without you.”
The lure bobbed in front of Cash’s nose, but for once, he didn’t take it. If Arkady wanted to fight about Yana, he could wait.
“And look at the mess you made,” he said instead as he trailed his fingers down Arkady’s flat, tight stomach. The long bands of muscle tightened under the not-quite caress, skin pulled tight over them. Cash dipped a finger into Arkady’s navel and licked the last drop of brandy off it. “I guess that’s why you need… help.”
He swallowed themethat had almost escaped his tongue. It scratched reluctantly on the way down. That would have been….
Revealing.The thought rolled through his head as he felt that odd moment where his monster and the rest of him were in sync. It was a jibe and realization rolled into one. It wasn’t true in any real sense—Cash was useful right now, he wasn’t necessary—but he’d always wished he were, hadn’t he.
“I suppose I do,” Arkady agreed with him, his voice guarded. “Why else would you be here?”
A braver monster would have asked what that meant. A stupider one might have assumed almost anything.
Unfortunately, Cash was neither. He wasn’t built for bravery—wisps lured their prey to their deaths for a reason—and he was smart enough to know he might not like the answer.
Coward, his monster reminded him smugly as it slid away from him.
Cash pushed all that doubt to the back of his mind—let the monster have it for snacks—and focused on what he did know. That Arkady’s cock wasn’t going to free itself.
“Well, right now,” he said as he picked at the silk laces that crisscrossed over the fly. Monsters knew zippers existed, but they weren’t classy. The less you accommodated the human world, even if it was in stupid, small ways like how to do your pants, the more respected you were. In theory. The knot came loose under Cash’s fingers, and he tugged impatiently at the slick fabric strips. “I’m here to fuck you. I thought we’d cleared that up.”
Arkady’s laugh was a low, dark sound that belonged at a midnight crossroads as he ran his own hand down lazily over his stomach. “You’re just taking so long,” he teased. “I thought you’d changed your mind.”
The silk strips tangled around Cash’s knuckles, tight around his fingers, so he gave up and just snapped them. Arkady made a rough sound of approval in his throat. He hitched his hips up off the bed to let Cash drag them down over lean thighs.
