Page 22

Chapter 22

Frost

Without another word on the cash, or the man at the brothel, or the terrifying thing he’d said, Kit led us back to the car, which sat unmolested on the same corner where we’d left it not half an hour earlier. He waited just long enough for everyone to climb in before starting the car and pulling out.

He drove for an hour, but so far as I could tell, it was a lot of driving in circles. Heading down random narrow and one-way streets without using his turn indicator, and then losing us in the traffic of Verisa’s main drag, a road that was no less than five lanes going each way, and even at nearly three in the morning was packed with enough traffic that one had to wait to change lanes.

I was rather glad I wasn’t the one behind the wheel, let alone trying to drive . . . however it was Kit that was trying to drive. I assumed he was trying to make sure we weren’t followed, but I didn’t know the logic behind it all. I just knew that even on the day he’d told Mother to fuck off and left us for good, I have never seen my brother as serious as he was right then.

When we arrived back in the hotel, he hustled us into the elevator and then through the hall, and the moment he laid eyes on Ember waiting for us in the central area of the suite, he turned and closed the door behind him, then locked it. And proceeded to lock every single one of the deadbolts on the door.

I’d thought they were overkill when we’d checked into the place. Big metal bolts up and down the door, and the door itself heavy enough that it couldn’t be the usual hollow thing found in every hardware store.

Suddenly, I worried that maybe the deadbolts weren’t enough.

When Kit was done, he turned and looked to Caspian, who was still standing there next to me, watching him.

“I’m sorry, but your father is dead. He’s been dead for a week. There was nothing you could ever have done.”

Caspian swallowed, then again, blinking rapidly. “How—” his voice broke on the word, but the idea came across just fine. How did Kit know?

“There’s only one way this could have happened. He died with Janelle. She called Rachel and told her and let your aunt’s people carry him off without telling anyone. She demanded a payoff for helping, thinking she was going to use it to start a new life. Or maybe just score more drugs, since I suspect that’s one of the things she and your father did together. I found the paraphernalia in her jewelry box.”

“Fuck me,” Ember whispered behind us.

Caspian listed sideways into me. He wasn’t surprised.

The expression on his face told me that in part, he’d been expecting this outcome for most of the time his father had been missing.

That didn’t make it any less heartbreaking.

I wrapped an arm around his shoulder and turned us both toward the bedroom we were sharing. At best, he needed a shower and to sleep. If he could sleep.

Neither Kit nor Ember said a word as we left the room.

“Shower?” I asked him as we got into the bedroom.

Absently, he nodded. Then he lifted his head, seeming to come out of a trance, and nodded again. “Yeah. Yes. I stink. We’ve been in a dozen smoky buildings tonight. It’s gross.” Then he turned and looked me dead in the eye. “Join me?”

And how could I say no to that?

I felt blood heat my cheeks, and I could hear it rushing in my ears, but I nodded. “Okay.”

“You don’t have to,” he hedged. “You don’t owe me anything. I’m okay with you saying no, I just?—”

“I don’t want to say no,” I said, leaning forward to press my lips lightly against his.

This was where we’d been headed for days, after all. We’d just been so wrapped up in the immediacy of the search for Dane, the need to try to save a man that had already been dead, that there hadn’t been time to think about kissing. About showers together.

Without another word, he unhooked his sling and tossed it away, and then he was undoing the catches on my jacket, and a moment later, he was peeling it off me, letting it drop to the floor. “You look incredible in this, by the way. I could barely take my eyes off you all night.” His voice was quiet, subdued, but entirely sincere. He even offered a tiny self-effacing smile. “I know, not what I ought to be thinking about. But it’s been a really bad week, and you’re . . . so incredibly hot.”

I couldn’t help smiling back at that. “I want to say thank you, but I feel like that might make me less hot.”

He shook his head. “Nope. It’s part of why you are hot. No pretense. No scheming. No lies. Just the truth. Simple. Sweet.” He reached up and ran his fingers across my lips, then yanked the shirt up over my head. Clearly the cast on his forearm wasn’t holding him back too much. He was barely tall enough to reach above my head, and I had to help him by leaning forward, but when I was shirtless, he looked so darn pleased with himself, I couldn’t say a word.

Or maybe it was just Caspian’s presence that took my breath away.

It did. I’d always thought that was one of those figures of speech I didn’t quite understand, but instead, it was a simple fact that I’d never experienced before. I’d wanted people before, been in a position to consider intimacy. But no one before Caspian Sunrunner had been actually breathtaking.

I was glad I hadn’t slept with any of the others.

This was special.

Caspian was special.

Maybe the timing wasn’t ideal, but he was right. This was the first time we’d been in the same room together that there was no reason to be in a hurry. All I had to do right now was take care of him.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t filled with doubt about my ability to do precisely that. Maybe I didn’t know how, but if I floundered, Caspian would tell me. He’d guide me.

I started on the buttons of his shirt, and he leaned into the touch, especially when I got it open, and for the first time, we were touching skin to skin. He pressed his cheek into my chest even as he reached for the zip of my trousers. “How are you just as beautiful as I thought you’d be? It never works that way.”

“No one has ever called me beautiful before in my life,” I informed him. “So perhaps you simply have different standards than other people.”

He snorted at that. “No, I’ll bet you just intimidate most people. You’re huge, and you’re smarter than them, and your mother and uncle are the Moonstriker. They’re probably all shaking in their boots just to be in the same room as you.”

“But I’m just?—”

“Perfect,” he interrupted. “Don’t tell me you’re not. I know in practice no one is, but it’s hyperbole. It’s . . . I like you a lot. I think everything about you is great. Right now it’s infatuation. Even the things that might frustrate me sometimes in the future, like how you struggle with hyperbole, are great. Don’t fight that, just be happy that right now, everything is rosy.”

“I . . . also think that everything about you is wonderful,” I admitted. “You’re beautiful and clever and kind. And a good driver.”

He laughed at that, shaking his head as he pressed his fingers under the band of my trousers, sliding them along my ass. “See? That’s what I’m talking about. A good driver. No one has ever given a damn about me being a good driver before. But you care about things like that.”

I bit my lip, shrugging. “Your driving was . . . sexy. You’re confident. Smooth. Practiced.”

Somehow, that clumsy disaster of a statement changed everything.

The laughter in his eyes disappeared, replaced with a heavy, hooded expression that screamed of lust.

Lust for me .

Never once in my life had I experienced that. He was so beautiful with those deep reddish-purple eyes and his plush lips and his . . . everything. Every part of him was like it had been intentionally designed to be perfect.

Perfect for me.

So I leaned down and captured those lips with my own. We hadn’t eaten in hours, only drinking some tea in Mr. Berents’s office, and he tasted faintly of that, but mostly, it was Caspian. His tongue thrust against mine, a gentle parody of the act I was reasonably sure we were building up to, exploring my mouth with enthusiasm I’d never realized was possible in a kiss.

Kisses before had always been hesitant, fumbling things in dark rooms, trying to hide from the prying eyes of peers and family. This was all-consuming and perfect, hot and sweet and once again, breathtaking. It was like all that was Caspian was designed to leave me sweaty and panting and pathetic.

Fortunately, I found that I didn’t mind all that much.

Neither, it turned out, did he.

“Fuck me, you’re so hot,” he muttered, shoving the skintight trousers down. Honestly, the things were almost more leggings than proper, full pants. Still, Caspian’s determination worked, because a moment later they were on the floor, and he was staring at me. At all of me, bared before him. “So hot,” he repeated, staving off my oncoming panic at being seen naked for the first time since I’d been a small child. He leaned in and kissed my neck, then pulled back, making a face. “Shower. We need a shower. We both smell like smoke.”

I responded by finishing stripping him naked and well, if he thought I was hot, I worried the man had never seen a mirror. He was like a piece of ancient art, a statue of the perfect man carved from marble by an artist who saw only beauty in every line of his form.

I blinked at the notion for a moment, confused by my own line of thought, but just as fast, shook it off. Shower. He was right, I could smell the stale cigarette smoke between us, lingering on my skin, and it needed to go. So I swept him up into my arms and carried him into the bathroom. He stopped me long enough to get the supplies he’d procured, plastic to cover his casted arm and keep it from getting wet, and for a moment I wondered if this was the best idea. Shouldn’t we wait until he was better before?—

He leaned up and kissed me when he was done taping the thing up, then shook his head. “Stop that. It’s just a tiny break, and the cast doesn’t even come up to my elbow. It’s inconvenient, but it doesn’t even hurt right now. So stop thinking about it.”

He reached out to start the shower, laughing because apparently my concern for him was amusing. I was hard-pressed to mind, though, when still smiling, he leaned in and kissed my lips again.

“I’m glad you’re here. I mean, I’m glad you’re all here, I don’t think I could have done any of this without all three of you. I’d probably be dead if I’d tried to fix this on my own. But I’m especially glad you’re here.”

To think, if I’d done what I usually did and asked Mother for permission, I wouldn’t have gone. Just the thought lanced through me, painful to contemplate. I could have lost two of my siblings, and Caspian, and any possible future with him as well.

“Well I am here,” I said, determined and stronger than I’d ever been before. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

We climbed under the steamy water together, and took turns soaping each other up, Caspian determined to wash my hair even with only one hand, and me taking special care trying to rub some of the tension out of his shoulders.

When we were both clean and soaking wet, he dropped to his knees while still standing in the middle of the shower. Licking his lips, he looked up at me. “Can I suck you?”

How the hells was I supposed to answer that? “Yes?”

He chuckled at my confusion, but in a moment, he was serious again, leaning in to lick up the tip of my shaft. It shot an electric zing through my whole body, surprisingly like I’d stuck my finger in a light socket—something I unfortunately had experience with—and forced me to lean hard against the tile wall, bracing my feet against the opposite side of the tub.

A moment later, he was working his mouth down onto me, and I could barely breathe. This, then, was perfection. It was one of those moments you held in your mind your whole life, remembering that once, you had precisely what you wanted in all the world. Caspian Sunrunner on his knees in front of me.

He looked up into my eyes as he swallowed my cock down, the contact brazen and sexy in a way I hadn’t even known possible before experiencing it. Beneath that, I could see his good hand on his own cock, stroking hard and fast.

That was what did it. What truly took my breath away and made me gasp his name, losing myself in the sensation. I let my head fall back against the tile, picturing his hand on himself. He was so turned on by the moment, so hard, that he was touching himself as he sucked me.

He moaned around me, the vibrations traveling across my skin and making it light up with sensation, electric and shocking and like no session of self-love had ever been. Taking myself in hand had always been fine, and I’d assumed it was similar to what sex would be, but it simply . . . wasn’t. His tongue curling around my cock, the moan trapped in his throat vibrating its way into my skin, all the way to my bones.

The image burned into my mind of Caspian: wanton, naked, with the steamy shower pounding water down onto him, his hand flying over his own cock so fast that it was a blur. His eyes squeezed shut in ecstasy.

Suddenly, I had to see it again. I opened my eyes and looked down at him. Sure enough, his own eyes had slipped closed, and he was reveling in the movement. The slide of wet skin on skin as he arched up into his own hand, moaning with his mouth stuffed full of my cock . . .

When the moan increased and his body tensed, his cock spurting with the first stripe of his release, my own body spasmed as well, the electric tingle spreading from my balls through the whole of me as I came, hot and wild, down his throat.

He continued to swallow around me until it stopped, then fell back against the other side of the tub, breathing heavily. “Fuck that was so hot. I can’t wait to fuck. You want to be on top, or bottom, or . . .”

I reached down and grabbed his hand, tugging him up to his feet but letting him rest against me. “With you? I want to try everything.”