Page 114 of Crowned By the Fae King

Cass' growl shivered through the room.

Laying it on a bit thick, there? I teased through our bond. Aloud, I said, "It's just a necklace, splendor."

This is me restraining my—

Cass' mental voice cut off with sudden finality as Talien snapped the latch closed. Every sensation from him vanished. All my skin went hot, then cold, my stomach lurching as if I'd been chucked off a cliff. Cass? I asked silently, reaching for him through the bond.

It was like plunging my metaphysical hand into a bucket of ice water. I recoiled from it. My hand reached up to touch my throat, to touch the collar, he'd put a collar on me, leashed me like an animal—

A hand settled on my back. Cass' hand. Nothing changed. I didn't feel him. I didn't feel anything but brittle cold when I reached for him again on reflex, the edges of my being shattering away into silence.

"Are you trying to make me jealous, lioness?" he said in a low growl. He tucked my hair behind my ear. "I could have gotten you opals."

Right. The game. We were playing a game—trying to make Talien misstep, trying to keep our Court and people safe. I made myself smile up at him. "You didn't, though," I said, managing to sound flirtatious instead of freaked out. "If you don't keep your Queen adorned in style, don't bite when your dukes take care of her."

Cold. Cold. It was so cold. I kept reaching, kept leaning into that contact, kept finding icy teeth instead of Cass.

I made myself look over my shoulder; made myself flash a reckless smile at Talien, as if I was delighted by the gift. "Do I look as lovely as you hoped, your grace?"

He put his hand over his heart and bowed, eyes never leaving mine. "As lovely as a dream, your majesty."

Affection

Imade it through dinner via sheer force of will. Cass didn't stop touching me, and that helped: his leg against mine, his hand on my back, his fingers laced through mine. I learned the boundaries of my confinement quickly, and kept myself contained. I'd gotten so used to there being no distance between the two of us. Being cut off from him felt a whole lot like getting dumped into Faery for the first time, with an impenetrable barrier between me and my family.

It fucking sucked.

We stayed the requisite amount of time, eating dinner with our honored guests and retiring to a fancy sitting room to drink dessert wine and play games. Pelleas and Yllana drifted off first, with the excuse of needing to work on my dress; Ace left soon after, looking thoughtful. By that point, Tarra was straddling Tech off to the side, and Cass didn't have a lot of tolerance for one-on-one with Talien even when our duke didn't have a collar of opals around my neck.

After one barely-disguised barb too many, I begged off, letting Talien kiss my knuckles with a laugh before Cass swept me back to his staging room through a magic palace door.

Cass peeled the opal necklace off of me the instant we crossed the threshold. He dropped it into the laundry bin with a sound of disgust and shucked his fancy jacket in after it, shrouding the necklace from view.

I started laughing, which only seemed to make him more disgruntled. He stripped me of my dress without so much of a by-your-leave, leaving it in a heap on the ground, and carried me into the bedroom like he was a caveman and I was his stolen bride.

"Really, Cass?" I said, naked save for the knives and laughing so much I could barely get the words out.

He dumped me onto the bed and flopped down after me, hitting the mattress so hard I bounced. A second later he had his heavy thigh slung over me and the rest of his body wrapped around me. He even had a wing dropped over me like a shield, hiding me from sight.

"I hated that," he growled. "Seeing you in those. Feeling nothing where you're supposed to be."

I wiggled back up against him. It took me a moment to relax back into the magical rapport we'd built. My instincts kept expecting the cold vampirism of the opals instead of the warmth of my soulmate, but inch by inch, I crept back into him.

Cass shuddered, hard, and then relaxed, all the tension running out of him like water. There you are, he whispered into my mind.

Total relaxation came with the sound of his voice. He was there. He'd always been there, on the other end of the line. It had only been a bad connection, like a phone call cutting out in the mountains.

H-I, I wrote on my arm.

His hand splayed across my stomach. The back of his thumb grazed the underside of my breast, sending a spike of lust between my legs to make my clit throb with demand. "Hi," Cass said in a low voice, his breath scudding across the shell of my ear. His tongue followed his breath in a hot stripe.

I gasped from the touch, my back arching and hips pressing back against his stomach. He sprawled closer, putting his stiffening cock up against the back of my thigh.

"Oh," I breathed. All my attention fixated on the thick bar of his erection as it pressed against me. "Oh, holy fuck, Cass."

He rumbled his pleasure, a sound more akin to a happy tiger than a man. He nuzzled closer, his lips brushing against my throat, and swept his thumb across my peaked nipple. It shot another jolt of pure lust straight to my groin.

Cass shifted, settling himself more firmly against my thigh. "I wasn't intending to be so flagrantly needy twice in one day, but after that trial, I'm feeling inclined to indulge," he said. His warm mouth pressed against the soft skin beneath my ear in a gentle kiss. "How do you feel about some romantic cuddling?"

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