Page 59 of Crowned By the Fae King

"So let's keep sex off the table," I said, keeping my voice casual.

Cass went fully rigid, not a single feather shifting. "Forever?" he asked, his deep voice thready.

"Until we decide otherwise while under full possession of our faculties, sure." I pushed myself up and sauntered over, a wicked hunger wetting my mouth. "You're breaking the palace into pieces trying to act like you're all calm and collected. Maybe most people think that's because you have too much power to keep control of it, but you're dumping your feelings into me, too. I know better."

"I don't intend to," Cass started.

I laughed softly. "Yeah, no shit. I get the impression you'd like to stop having feelings altogether, but that game never ends well. You need to learn how to relax, and I," I said, settling my hands on his hips, "want to touch you."

He shuddered. The snakeskin leather between us did nothing to hold us separate. All his want flooded into me, hypersensitive yearning that went far beyond mere horniness. "Quyen," Cass said in a warning tone, halfway to a moan. The wilted flowers on the side table next to the wall started blooming, lifting their heads and going from yellow to vivid red and red-violet, petals fanning out into fanciful shapes and long vines spilling onto the table.

A smile tugged on the corner of my mouth at the showy display. "You gave me permission to touch you, splendor," I pointed out.

He only shuddered again, making a low sound of pleasure.

I kept one hand on his hip and used the other to write S-T-I-L-L-O-K-? across his feathers.

His wing spread in an invitation. Y-E-S, he wrote on his hand.

I smiled and dragged my fingers back across the cool metal of his feathers, then settled my hand back on his hip. "Here's my rules," I said, sliding my thumbs to the dimples of his hips, over his pants. "No kissing of any kind. No purposeful grinding or sexual touching. Underpants on. Even if we get turned on, this isn't about sex. It's about touching." I leaned to the side and exhaled across his feathers to make him shiver. "Be a good fae and tell me you'll respect my decision."

"Quyen, of course I will," he said in a rush. The vines on the table curled up like they'd been burned. "Gods, do you think— I know I forced you to feel my pleasure for those first weeks, but I didn't mean— I wouldn't have—"

I rested my head against his spine and huffed out another soft laugh. "You need to relax, Cass," I said again. "Give up a little bit of that iron control. Let the chips fall where they may."

"I hurt people when I do that." He shuddered. The darkness of the words scudded across me, heavy with sorrow and guilt. "I've hurt a lot of people just by existing. Including you."

"You haven't hurt me, and you're not going to," I said, stepping around his wing so I could take his hand. "Come on." I tugged him towards the bed in the consort's room, which was only marginally smaller than the main one and definitely bigger than the one he was using. "Let's cuddle."

His brow furrowed, but he followed me across the room, not making me fight for it. "Cuddle."

I laughed and hopped onto the bed. "Yes, cuddle. Don't tell me you've never snuggled up to someone else before."

Cass got onto the bed carefully, moving like he thought he was going to break it with his weight. "I haven't," he said quietly, not looking me in the eyes. "Not as an adult. After sex, sometimes, for a few minutes, but usually not. And not without that."

My heart cracked open. It felt worse than getting stabbed in the chest, a wrenching sensation that made me want to pant in pain. "You're five hundred years old," I said, horror seeping into the words.

"Five hundred twenty-nine," he said. His ears dropped down into a pose of self-consciousness, and he didn't look up at me. "I couldn't safely touch anyone in any… intimate way… for more than three hundred years. And after…" Cass swallowed. "You know how strongly I affect people I'm touching skin-to-skin when I'm emotional. None of my partners have sought that out. My control isn't good enough. I'm not sure my control will ever be good enough."

"How many?" I asked, trying to be gentle instead of angry. It was a losing battle. "And am I going to need to go read your Archangels the riot act?"

He breathed a laugh and finally looked over at me. "Vad is very sexual. It's not as if we didn't touch when we were together, but it was always… well, sexual." My cheeks warmed from his embarrassment for a moment, before he controlled his physical reaction. "With Dani and him, it was just the once, and it's not as if they abandoned me after. She and I don't have a romantic relationship. You don't need to yell at them on my behalf."

I flopped down onto my side with a grunt. "Alright, fine. They're off the hook. But what about the rest of them?"

"All six of them?" he asked, trying and failing to sound flippant. Cass sounded shy, instead, almost ashamed, as if he thought I'd mock him for his lack of experience. Eight people was hardly virginity—but spread over five hundred years? Even with three hundred years blacked out, that was a lot of time to be celibate.

"Yes, all six of them." I held up my hand and gave him a come-here gesture. "One would be bad enough. Six is borderline egregious."

Cass shifted closer, his weight sinking into the mattress. When it became obvious that he wasn't going to initiate the cuddling part of cuddling, I rolled onto my other side and stuck my back up against his warm chest, tugging his arm over me.

He shuddered with pleasure, his fingers tightening on mine. Physical sensation flooded into me from the contact: the tension in his spine, the careful pace of his breathing, the iron control keeping his desperate hunger for physical intimacy from showing in a hard line against my thigh or the pounding of his heart.

A flush of pale pink washed up along the wallpaper. Flowers bloomed from the stylized vines, opening like morning glories at dawn, slow and subtle.

"Tell me about them," I said, making myself relax against him despite the tension he kept radiating into me, watching the flowers. "The six people who wouldn't give you something as simple as this."

He dropped his face to my hair. His hot breath warmed my scalp as he breathed against me in that measured cadence, as if I wouldn't be able to tell anyway that what he wanted to do was wrap his entire body around me and never let me go.

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