A Court of Mist and Fury (61 page)

He paused mid-bite, then lowered his fork. “I heard every word between you. I knew you could take care of yourself, and yet … ” He went back to his pie, swallowing a bite before continuing. “And yet I found myself deciding that if you took his hand, I would find a way to live with it. It would be your choice.”

I sipped from my wine. “And if he had grabbed me?”

There was nothing but uncompromising will in his eyes. “Then I would have torn apart the world to get you back.”

A shiver went down my spine, and I couldn’t look away from him. “I would have fired at him,” I breathed, “if he had tried to hurt you.”

I hadn’t even admitted that to myself.

His eyes flickered. “I know.”

He finished eating, placed the empty tray in the corner, and faced me on the bed, refilling my glass before tending to his. He was so tall he had to stoop to keep from hitting his head on the slanted ceiling.

“One thought in exchange for another,” I said. “No training involved, please.”

A chuckle rasped out of him, and he drained his glass, setting it on the tray.

He watched me take a long drink from mine. “I’m thinking,” he said, following the flick of my tongue over my bottom lip, “that I look at you and feel like I’m dying. Like I can’t breathe. I’m thinking that I want you so badly I can’t concentrate half the time I’m around you, and this room is too small for me to properly bed you. Especially with the wings.”

My heart stumbled a beat. I didn’t know what to do with my arms, my legs, my face. I gulped down the rest of my wine and discarded the glass beside the bed, steeling my spine as I said, “I’m thinking that I can’t stop thinking about you. And that it’s been that way for a long while. Even before I left the Spring Court. And maybe that makes me a traitorous, lying piece of trash, but—”

“It doesn’t,” he said, his face solemn.

But it did. I’d wanted to see Rhysand during those weeks between visits. And hadn’t cared when Tamlin stopped visiting my bedroom. Tamlin had given up on me, but I’d also given up on him. And I was a lying piece of trash for it.

I murmured, “We should go to sleep.”

The patter of the rain was the only sound for a long moment before he said, “All right.”

I crawled over the bed to the side tucked almost against the slanted ceiling and shimmied beneath the quilt. Cool, crisp sheets wrapped
around me like an icy hand. But my shiver was from something else entirely as the mattress shifted, the blanket moved, and then the two candles beside the bed went out.

Darkness hit me at the same moment the warmth from his body did. It was an effort not to nudge toward it. Neither one of us moved, though.

I stared into the dark, listening to that icy rain, trying to steal the warmth from him.

“You’re shivering so hard the bed is shaking,” he said.

“My hair is wet,” I said. It wasn’t a lie.

Rhys was silent, then the mattress groaned, sinking directly behind me as his warmth poured over me. “No expectations,” he said. “Just body heat.” I scowled at the laughter in his voice.

But his broad hands slid under and over me: one flattening against my stomach and tugging me against the hard warmth of him, the other sliding under my ribs and arms to band around my chest, pressing his front into me. He tangled his legs with mine, and then a heavier, warmer darkness settled over us, smelling of citrus and the sea.

I lifted a hand toward that darkness, and met with a soft, silky material—his wing, cocooning and warming me. I traced my finger along it, and he shuddered, his arms tightening around me.

“Your finger … is very cold,” he gritted out, the words hot on my neck.

I tried not to smile, even as I tilted my neck a bit more, hoping the heat of his breath might caress it again. I dragged my finger along his wing, the nail scraping gently against the smooth surface. Rhys tensed, his hand splaying across my stomach.

“You cruel, wicked thing,” he purred, his nose grazing the exposed bit of neck I’d arched beneath him. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you manners?”

“I never knew Illyrians were such sensitive babies,” I said, sliding another finger down the inside of his wing.

Something hard pushed against my behind. Heat flooded me, and
I went taut and loose all at once. I stroked his wing again, two fingers now, and he twitched against my backside in time with the caress.

The fingers he’d spread over my stomach began to make idle, lazy strokes. He swirled one around my navel, and I inched imperceptibly closer, grinding up against him, arching a bit more to give that other hand access to my breasts.

“Greedy,” he murmured, his lips hovering over my neck. “First you terrorize me with your cold hands, now you want … what is it you want, Feyre?”

More, more, more
, I almost begged him as his fingers traveled down the slope of my breasts, while his other hand continued its idle stroking along my stomach, my abdomen, slowly—so slowly—heading toward the low band of my pants and the building ache beneath it.

Rhysand’s teeth scraped against my neck in a lazy caress. “What is it you want, Feyre?” He nipped at my earlobe.

I cried out just a little, arching fully against him, as if I could get that hand to slip exactly to where I wanted it. I knew what he wanted me to say. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of it. Not yet.

So I said, “I want a distraction.” It was breathless. “I want—fun.”

His body again tensed behind mine.

And I wondered if he somehow didn’t see it for the lie it was; if he thought … if he thought that was all I indeed wanted.

But his hands resumed their roaming. “Then allow me the pleasure of distracting you.”

He slipped a hand beneath the top of my sweater, diving clean under my shirt. Skin to skin, the calluses of his hands made me groan as they scraped the top of my breast and circled around my peaked nipple. “I love these,” he breathed onto my neck, his hand sliding to my other breast. “You have no idea how much I love these.”

I groaned as he caressed a knuckle against my nipple, and I bowed into the touch, silently begging him. He was hard as granite behind me,
and I ground against him, eliciting a soft, wicked hiss from him. “Stop that,” he snarled onto my skin. “You’ll ruin
my
fun.”

I would do no such thing. I began twisting, reaching for him, needing to just
feel
him, but he clicked his tongue and pushed himself harder against me, until there was no room for my hand to even slide in.

“I want to touch you first,” he said, his voice so guttural I barely recognized it. “Just—let me touch you.” He palmed my breast for emphasis.

It was enough of a broken plea that I paused, yielding as his other hand again trailed lazy lines on my stomach.

I can’t breathe when I look at you.

Let me touch you.

Because I was jealous, and pissed off …

She’s mine
.

I shut out the thoughts, the bits and pieces he’d given me.

Rhys slid his finger along the band of my pants again, a cat playing with its dinner.

Again.

Again.

“Please,” I managed to say.

He smiled against my neck. “There are those missing manners.” His hand at last trailed beneath my pants. The first brush of him against me dragged a groan from deep in my throat.

He snarled in satisfaction at the wetness he found waiting for him, and his thumb circled that spot at the apex of my thighs, teasing, brushing up against it, but never quite—

His other hand gently squeezed my breast at the same moment his thumb pushed down exactly where I wanted. I bucked my hips, my head fully back against his shoulder now, panting as his thumb flicked—

I cried out, and he laughed, low and soft. “Like that?”

A moan was my only reply.
More more more
.

His fingers slid down, slow and brazen, straight through the core of
me, and every point in my body, my mind, my soul, narrowed to the feeling of his fingers poised there like he had all the time in the world.

Bastard. “
Please
,” I said again, and ground my ass against him for emphasis.

He hissed at the contact and slid a finger inside me. He swore. “Feyre—”

But I’d already started to move on him, and he swore again in a long exhale. His lips pressed into my neck, kissing up, up toward my ear.

I let out a moan so loud it drowned out the rain as he slid in a second finger, filling me so much I couldn’t think around it, couldn’t breathe. “That’s it,” he murmured, his lips tracing my ear.

I was sick of my neck and ear getting such attention. I twisted as much as I could, and found him staring at me, at the hand down the front of my pants, watching me move on him.

He was still staring at me when I captured his mouth with my own, biting on his lower lip.

Rhys groaned, plunging his fingers in deeper. Harder.

I didn’t care—I didn’t care one bit about what I was and who I was and where I’d been as I yielded fully to him, opening my mouth. His tongue swept in, moving in a way that I knew exactly what he’d do if he got between my legs.

His fingers plunged in and out, slow and hard, and my very existence narrowed to the feel of them, to the tightness in me ratcheting up with every deep stroke, every echoing thrust of his tongue in my mouth.

“You have no idea how much I—” He cut himself off, and groaned again. “
Feyre
.”

The sound of my name on his lips was my undoing. Release barreled down my spine, and I cried out, only to have his lips cover mine, as if he could devour the sound. His tongue flicked the roof of my mouth while I shuddered around him, clenching tight. He swore again, breathing hard, fingers stroking me through the last throes of it, until I was limp and trembling in his arms.

I couldn’t breathe hard enough, fast enough, as Rhys withdrew his fingers, pulling back so I could meet his stare. He said, “I wanted to do that when I felt how drenched you were at the Court of Nightmares. I wanted to have you right there in the middle of everyone. But mostly I just wanted to do this.” His eyes held mine as he brought those fingers to his mouth and sucked on them.

On the taste of me.

I was going to eat him alive. I slid a hand up to his chest to pin him down, but he gripped my wrist. “When you lick me,” he said roughly, “I want to be alone—far away from everyone. Because when you lick me, Feyre,” he said, pressing nipping kisses to my jaw, my neck, “I’m going to let myself roar loud enough to bring down a mountain.”

I was instantly liquid again, and he laughed under his breath. “And when I lick
you
,” he said, sliding his arms around me and tucking me in tight to him, “I want you splayed out on a table like my own personal feast.”

I whimpered.

“I’ve had a long, long time to think about how and where I want you,” Rhys said onto the skin of my neck, his fingers sliding under the band of my pants, but stopping just beneath. Their home for the evening. “I have no intention of doing it all in one night. Or in a room where I can’t even fuck you against the wall.”

I shuddered. He remained long and hard against me. I had to feel him, had to get that considerable length inside of me—

“Sleep,” he said. He might as well have commanded me to breathe underwater.

But he began stroking my body again—not to arouse, but to soothe—long, luxurious strokes down my stomach, my sides.

Sleep found me faster than I’d thought.

And maybe it was the wine, or the aftermath of the pleasure he’d wrung from me, but I didn’t have a single nightmare.

C
HAPTE
R

49

I awoke, warm and rested and calm.

Safe.

Sunlight streamed through the filthy window, illuminating the reds and golds in the wall of wing before me—where it had been all night, shielding me from the cold.

Rhysand’s arms were banded around me, his breathing deep and even. And I knew it was just as rare for him to sleep that soundly, peacefully.

What we’d done last night …

Carefully, I twisted to face him, his arms tightening slightly, as if to keep me from vanishing with the morning mist.

His eyes were open when I nestled my head against his arm. Within the shelter of his wing, we watched each other.

And I realized I might very well be content to do exactly that forever.

I said quietly, “Why did you make that bargain with me? Why demand a week from me every month?”

His violet eyes shuttered.

And I didn’t dare admit what I expected, but it was not, “Because I
wanted to make a statement to Amarantha; because I wanted to piss off Tamlin, and I needed to keep you alive in a way that wouldn’t be seen as merciful.”

“Oh.”

His mouth tightened. “You know—you know there is nothing I wouldn’t do for my people, for my family.”

And I’d been a pawn in that game.

His wing folded back, and I blinked at the watery light. “Bath or no bath?” he said.

I cringed at the memory of the grimy, reeking bathing room a level below. Using it to see to my needs would be bad enough. “I’d rather bathe in a stream,” I said, pushing past the sinking in my gut.

Rhys let out a low laugh and rolled out of bed. “Then let’s get out of here.”

For a heartbeat, I wondered if I’d dreamed up everything that had happened the night before. From the slight, pleasant soreness between my legs, I knew I hadn’t, but …

Maybe it’d be easier to pretend that nothing had happened.

The alternative might be more than I could endure.