by Sara Thorn
He isn’t going to hit me.
I came to a stop directly in front of him, and he glared at me as if he were an irate child.
“What are you doing?” I asked with a frown.
“Having a party,” Cassius snarled at me with no shortage of sarcasm. “Now get out of my way.”
“Are you drunk?” I asked. I couldn’t believe he would be doing anything like this while sober.
“Damn you, Mara, no, I’m not drunk!” he shouted. The other vampires and fae alike seemed to be shocked at the revelation that he had only been pretending to be intoxicated.
“Then what the hell is wrong with you?” I shouted back.
“These people are wrong with me, the fae. I hate them, and I want them to leave!” Cassius was now screaming at the top of his lungs, which only terrified all of his servants further and elicited higher-pitched shrieks of amusement from the vampires.
I stepped closer to him and grabbed the hand he was about to use to throw another glass.
“You don’t hate the fae,” I said in a quieter and calmer voice. “These are your people, all of them. The fae and vampires alike. Although this particular group of vampires seems more suited to being in Athan’s court than in yours, they should really learn some manners. You’re setting a bad example.”
“I don’t give a shit what kind of exampled I’m setting.” Cassius dropped the glass to the floor and twisted his hand free from my grasp. Then he grabbed me by both wrists and yanked me so harshly and tightly toward him that let out a small shriek out of shock. “I don’t care about any of these people here, not even you.” He held me painfully tight with my wrists up against his chest as he glared into my eyes and spat his words at me as if they were daggers.
“That’s not true,” I whispered. My voice was trembling.
“It is true,” Cassius growled. “Run back to your fae friend, maybe he will take care of you now.”
But even though he commanded me to leave, he didn’t let go of my wrists. I felt his chest heaving against me and saw his glassy, wet eyes reflect the light in the room. His clenched fists shook around my wrists, and the muscles in his jaw twitched as if he were trying to keep a cataclysm from escaping.
Oh my God, I thought as I stared at Cassius, who was trying to keep himself from crumbling in front of a room full of guests. This whole scene isn’t because he doesn’t care about anything; it’s because he does. He’s jealous of the fae…of Quinn.
“Leave!” he snarled as he let go of my wrists and threw them back toward me.
The entire room was silent as they watched what I would do, or what Cassius would do to me if I didn’t obey him.
“No,” I said, unmoved from my spot.
Violent emotion swept across his face. “I am commanding you to leave at once!”
I straightened my back and locked eyes with him. “No. I don’t care what you do; I will not leave you, Cassius.”
He froze for a minuscule second as his eyes widened in what could have been fear, or anger, or something else entirely.
And then, in front of everyone here…the fae, the vampires, possibly even some of Athan’s spying goons, Cassius plunged forward and grabbed my face in his hands as he pushed his mouth against mine so forcefully that it nearly knocked me back. Completely unrestrained, his tongue wound frantically around mine as though he were trying to tether himself to me. A low roar of gasps and hysteria grew among the onlookers, but Cassius paid it no attention.
When he pulled his mouth away for us to catch our breath, a tumultuous and impassioned look came over him. He clasped my hand and pulled me alongside him as he strode out of the main hall, ignoring the people calling after him who demanded an explanation of what had just happened.
As we walked hurriedly through the tunnels, Sen stepped out with Quinn alongside her to make sure I was all right.
“Where are you taking her?” Quinn called at Cassius.
Cassius didn’t stop to answer or even shout a response over his shoulder. He just kept walking as if he hadn’t heard Quinn at all.
“Mara,” Sen called after us.
“It’s okay,” I tried to look over my shoulder to say to her. “I’m okay, everything is fine.”
“It doesn’t look fine,” I heard Quinn say just before Cassius turned us toward his bedroom.
Cassius was a storm when we got to his room, and he slammed the door closed behind us. Even the fire in the hearth seemed to be fueled by his volatile, emotional state as the flames stretched higher in the hearth than I had ever seen them do before. He let go of me and stood facing me in the center of the room.
“I can’t do this,” he said with a voice that was still louder than his usual demeanor.
“What can’t you do?”
“This…any of this. I can’t want you, yet not have you. I can’t be a ruler, yet not rule. Look at me, this is tearing me apart; I can barely think straight. You’re tearing me apart.”
I felt my heart begin to beat wildly out of control as if it were trying to burst out through my chest.
“What is it that you want?” I asked him as I tried to calm myself from becoming drawn into the unrelenting feeling that plagued me every time I was near him, even a time like this, as he was spiraling past reason.
“I want you,” he said. His voice sounded like a broken plea, and the yearning in his eyes made me feel everything all at once. “I want you; I want to have you in every possible way that I can have you. I want to rule and reclaim my land and the people I mistakenly turned my back on until you opened my eyes and showed me what I was always meant to do. I keep trying to suppress my feelings and ignore the thoughts that have infiltrated every corner of my mind, but I can’t do it any longer. I need you, Mara…and it’s killing me.”
Chapter Nineteen
Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.
In my twenty years of life, in all of the experiences that led to me becoming the woman that I currently was, embedded within the ties that I had to my own world, within the relationships, sexual partners, and friendships that I had up until this point, there was nothing that I could pull from to help me understand what I was feeling in this exact moment.
I wasn’t scared. I didn’t care that Cassius was half-human or half-vampire, or even that he was half-out of control. I didn’t know what had happened or what was continuing to happen between us, but I knew this—we weren’t able to resist each other no matter what we did. Everything pulled us back to each other like planets violently crashing into each other’s orbits. And I couldn’t stay away from Cassius any more than he could stay away from me.
I stepped close to him as he stood there, baring his soul to me, and cupped his jaw in the palm of my hand. I tilted my head up to kiss him and ran my tongue slowly along the inside of his mouth as I felt his ragged breath against me. I need him, too, and it wasn’t until this exact moment that I realized how much that was true.
“Cassius,” I whispered as I pulled my mouth away but lifted my head near his face so that our noses were still touching. “Have you ever made love to a human before?”
I could see his shoulders rise and fall as he struggled to keep his breathing steady and his body still. “No,” he answered. “And I’m not sure what would happen if I did.”
There was no turning back for me now, not even if I wanted, too, which I didn’t. It was too late for me to try to pull myself back from what I felt—I wanted him.
I slid my hand down his torso, and when I got to the top of his jeans, I kept going. His body quaked beneath my hand as I felt the swelling desire pushing against his jeans, and a quiet groan escaped his mouth as he couldn’t help but push back against me. I started to undo the buttons, but Cassius touched his hand to mine before I opened the fabric that kept him physically contained.
“Are you sure?” He forced the words out between his panting and parted lips.
“Yes.”
My single word released all that was left of the boundari
es between us. With reckless abandon, Cassius picked me up and carried me over to the bed without taking his tongue from my mouth even as he lay me down onto my back. The clothes were too much of a separation between our bodies for even a moment longer, and he made quick work of pulling every stitch of fabric off of me in a swift movement that sent them flying across the floor.
As he leaned back up onto his knees to pull the shirt over his head, I unfastened his pants. As he pulled them off, I saw for the first time the hard, physical want that he had for me, and I was blinded by the longing I felt to have him inside of me. Cassius came down over me and held his weight on his knees and elbows as he kissed me and looked openly into my eyes. I tried to keep my body still as I laid beneath him, but I writhed in passionate angst and wrapped my thighs around his torso, urging him against me.
“Are you afraid?” he asked, as he made one last attempt at self-control.
“I cannot be afraid of you,” I said. “There is no room for fear where there is love.”
Cassius looked at me as if I were a deity that mattered more to him than his own salvation. With unbridled intensity, he pushed between my thighs and into my body, and I was immediately overwhelmed by the sensation of being finally satiated. He moved inside me with a steady strength that lit all of my senses aflame as he kissed me, and I felt overstimulated to the point of bliss. Every part of my body felt him within me and pressed against me.
I never knew sex to be like this before. Then again, I had never had sex with an immortal Dhampir before. But even that didn’t explain the feelings that swelled in both my body and my heart. I could suddenly feel the coursing blood rushing through my veins. I could taste the sweetness on his tongue. I could feel the hot throbbing of his body deep within me. It was as if every sensation I had ever thought to imagine was suddenly amplified. Time was lost, and this time I was glad that it was. When my body couldn’t hold on to the precipitous feeling of delight any longer, I unraveled around him, and Cassius released himself to me with a moan that I was sure everyone in the tunnels could have heard.
Cassius collapsed onto me, and I ran my fingers through his hair that stuck to his forehead with sweat. I thought we would then lie together, that Cassius would roll onto his back and pull me onto his shoulder, and we would rest our bodies in the aftermath of the bliss we just shared. But instead, something still resonated within me, and a heat continued to grow, a physical anomaly that had never happened to me before…I wanted more. As if on cue, Cassius lifted his head and rested his chin against my chest as he smiled wantonly at me.
“Again?” he asked as he grinned widely at me.
“Can you even—”
He didn’t pause to answer me; instead, he slowly pulled himself up above me and then, wrapping an arm under my back, flipped me over until he was against the bed, and I was sitting on top of him. I could see why he had no need to answer me. The answer to whether or not he could continue was very, very apparent. Cassius scooped his hands beneath my thighs and lifted me just slightly up enough to sit down onto him. And when I did, and his body once again filled me, I was in ecstasy as we moved against each other. I rocked my hips back and forth against his body and discovered how much I loved to make him moan with pleasure as his eyes rolled back in his head.
“Promise me,” I said as I leaned forward to kiss him while he continued to slide inside of me, “that this will always be how we are together. Promise me that we won’t be apart or on opposing sides ever again.”
“I promise,” he said.
When our bodies had finally demanded that we rest, I laid curled inside the nook of Cassius’s shoulder with my face resting against his chest as he stared into my eyes. The soft blankets were pulled up over our waists, and the flickering fire had now calmed enough to match the rest of the candlelight in the room.
“I don’t want to hide anymore,” I said to him. “I want to stay with you, whether it is here in your room, or at the festivities, or on your visits to other places. I want to be at your side.”
“That will be difficult,” Cassius sighed. “Everyone saw what happened tonight. They saw me lose control, and they know that you are more than any weakness I could have ever had in the past. They will not make this easy for us, especially not Athan and his followers. They will see my attachment to you as a way to exploit me, and it will put you in danger.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I’m not afraid of being in danger.”
Cassius laughed. “You are the bravest human I have ever met, braver even, than most vampires and other immortals that I know. Is there anything at all that you are afraid of?”
“I’m afraid of not being with you.”
The look on Cassius’s face changed from playfulness to a solemn wonderment. “Then you will never not be with me,” he answered.
“And what about everyone else?” I asked.
“Screw them.”
I smiled. I felt truly at home now, in this supernatural world that didn’t belong to me. I felt at home with him. “What about your rule?”
Cassius made a face that looked like a precursor for not wanting to discuss the matter. But I wasn’t letting him off the hook this time. All walls were down, and he would need to talk to me about such things.
“You need to usurp Athan and regain control over your rightful rule,” I said.
Cassius sighed, but then he agreed. “I know I do. I have avoided it for more years than you have been alive. But now, I see things differently because you saw me differently than I saw myself. I no longer fear becoming the monster my father was because I know that if I have you by my side, that won’t happen. I owe it to my people, and to the fae, and to all of Mystreuce, to regain my rulership and rid the world of Athan’s corruption and misuse of power.”
“I agree. I also think you might owe the fae an apology before you go about taking over the world,” I said.
“Yeah, that was pretty awful of me to do tonight.”
“We all do awful things sometimes,” I said. “Someday, I’ll tell you about the awful things I have done.”
Cassius looked at me, curiously. “I can’t imagine you doing anything awful,” he said.
That is a conversation for another day, not tonight.
We lay in bed for a long while, sometimes in silent reverie and sometimes in conversation about how Cassius would go about reclaiming his power. In between planning and playing devil’s advocate, we talked about how we were going to manage to keep me safe and how he would handle addressing the questions that would surely flood onto him once we stepped out from the bedroom. In one of the moments of pause, I heard a small scratching noise coming from the door. I looked over and saw a folded note being pushed between the bottom of the door and the floor. When I leaned up onto my elbow to get a better look, Cassius leaned against my shoulder to see, too.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said as I pulled the blanket off and walked over to the door. I bent down and lifted the folded paper in my hands as I opened it to read.
“What does it say?” Cassius asked suspiciously.
There was only a single sentence scrawled across the paper, which I read to him aloud: “I’m so sorry, Mara.”
If I had turned around, I would have seen the petrified and furious look on Cassius’s face, but I was too busy trying to figure out what the note meant and why the fingerprints looked like the yellow dust I had been grinding in the fae quarters several weeks ago. It wasn’t until Cassius was standing behind me with clothes in his hand for me to put on, that I realized we were in trouble.
“What is it?” I asked, feeling a pit sink into my stomach when I saw the urgency in his face.
“The note is from Quinn,” he said as he shoved the clothes into my hands. “Get dressed now.
“Wait, how do you know the note is from Quinn?” I asked.
“Mara, get dressed, please.”
I did as he said.
“I know the note is from Quinn,” h
e answered once I started to put my clothes on, “because he is the only one who would apologize to you for what the fae are about to do.”
“What are they about to do?” My thoughts were dizzying as I pulled on the boots that Cassius was tossing to me. “Wait,” I said, remembering what Sen had hinted at in Quinn’s room. “An uprising?” I asked. “Are the fae revolting against you now?”
“Yes,” he answered. “I imagine that’s exactly what they’re doing. They won’t hurt you,” he said as he came and put his hands on my shoulder when he saw how fearful I was becoming. “It’s me they want, not you. They don’t have anything against you, so you’ll be safe. We just need to get you out of the crosshairs.”
“No,” I shouted. “You promised. We stay together.”
“Mara, don’t be ridiculous. This is an easy choice. I’ll come to find you as soon as I quell things here.”
“Not a chance. We stay together.”
“Fine,” he huffed as he saw that he wasn’t going to win this argument.
I was hurt that Quinn would do this to us…to me. I understood the need for the fae to rise up against the vampires, but I had hoped that he and Sen would have brought us onto their side of things before it happened. Cassius would have stood with them, if only they’d have given him a chance. Although after the party incident, I can see why none of the fae would ever trust Cassius again.
“If I can just get to Quinn and Sen, to talk to them and explain things, they’ll help us. They’ll help the other fae see that we are all on the same side and that we can work together to overthrow Athan. He’s the real enemy to them, not you.”
“That’s not going to happen, Mara. The fae have been waiting for this rebellion for a long time, and honestly, I can’t say I blame them.”
“We have to try to get to them,” I said. “I know that they’ll listen to us.”
“We’ll try.”
I stood near the door and waited as Cassius rummaged through some drawers and jammed a few things into the pockets of the leather jacket he quickly put on.
