Page 168 of The Devil May Care

Caziel doesn’t move at first. His gaze flicks between my eyes, studying, waiting, but I’m not pulling back. Not this time. I already did that once, let myself believe the lie that I wasn’t allowed to want him. Now I’ve opened the floodgates on my crush, and I couldn’t want him more if I’d met him back home. I need Caziel with every cell in my body. Something behind me coils—something alive and surprisingly warm. I jolt, twisting to look. His tail curls back on itself like it’s been caught red-handed.

“Oh my god,” I whisper, half a laugh in my throat. “It moves?”

“It has opinions,” he says, voice pained. “I do not control all of them.”

I glance down. The tail is curling lazily around my ankle like a cat, completely unbothered by propriety. Good thing I have a way with animals.

“Does it always do that?”

“It likes you.”

“Oh.” I bite my lip, heat rising in my cheeks. “Well. Thanks, I guess. I like it too.”

He looks pained. “It has a mind of its own. Just ignore it.”

“I noticed,” I say, teasing, and the tail flicks again as if in defiance. “Does it ever…is it…does it get… involved?”

His brow arches. “Involved.”

“You know,” I gesture vaguely between us, then immediately regret it. “Oh god, that’s not what I meant—”

“You did,” he says, entirely too pleased. His fangs flash in a smirk. “And for the record, no, not really. It’s more instinctive than intentional.

“Good to know,” I murmur, cheeks heating.

His hand slips to my hip, grounding me. “You could’ve asked about my horns or my skin or the mark. But you went straight for the tail.”

“It moved!” I protest. “And yeah, I don’t really have questions. You’re still you.”

His head drops forward on something that sounds like a growl. I grin and kiss him again. There’s no plan to it, no clever angle or perfect moment. Just the press of my mouth against his because I can’t keep pretending that I don’t want this. Wanthim. Not the pretense he let me see. Not the illusion I conjured. Him. The glamor wasn’t working right anyway. I knew he was hiding horns.

“You what?” He breaks the kiss, frowning down into my upturned face. I hadn’t realized I’d say that last part aloud.

“Your glamor,” I explain, looping my hands around the back of his neck, tangling my fingers in the soft hair curling against his nape. “It was fuzzing around the edges anyway. I guessed about the horns. The tail was a surprise, though.”

He exhales roughly, a sound halfway between a groan and a plea, and then he’s kissing me again. His hands are tentative at first, like he’s still braced for rejection, for me to flinch or fade. But I don’t. I tangle my fingers in the thick, dark hair at the back of his neck, drawing him in closer. He tastes like embers and something older, something aching. One hand cups my cheek. The other slides down to my waist and pauses.

“I need to know you want this,” he breathes against my lips. “Not because you’re hurting. Not because you feel like you owe me something. Because you wantme.”

“I do,” I say, chest trembling with the force of it. “I want you.”

Still, he hesitates. His thumb drifts over the hollow of my hip, reverent. “This is real, Kay.”

“I know,” I say. “That’s why I need it.”

And maybe it’s the honesty in my words, how raw and ugly I feel, how desperate I am to experience something real in a world that keeps shifting under my feet, but something in him breaks open. His mouth crashes back to mine, and this time, there is no hesitation. There’s heat. Crimson heat—not fire, not violence—the kind that sinks beneath skin and leaves a delicious burn. Caziel moves like he’s memorizing me. Like he’s waited lifetimes and doesn’t want to miss a second. Every brush ofhis hands, every scrape of fangs along my neck is a question and a worship and a vow.

It feelsnothinglike the trial.Nothinglike the forest. This is real.

I can’t stop touching him. The lines of his Embermark pulse brighter when I skim my nails over them. His horns are smooth, warm to the touch, and when I drag my fingers along his side, just above the band of muscle that’s always, maddeningly visible between the waist of his pants and his shirts, he hisses between his teeth. His hands are everywhere and nowhere all at once. Hesitant, like he doesn’t know where to start. I guide one to my waist, then up under my shirt. He groans again when he feels the skin beneath, his fingers splaying along the fabric I bound across my chest. I shiver at the warmth of his palm.

“You can touch me,” I whisper. “I want you to.”

“I am touching you.”

I roll my eyes. “You know what I mean.”

His fingers trace the line of stars inked along my hip bone.