“Oh, it’s not going to result in me climbing into your bed.”
Nesta snickered, victory achieved, and had reached the stairs when he crooned, “You’ll climb into mine.”
She whirled toward him, foot still suspended midair. “I’d rather rot.”
Cassian threw her a mocking smile. “We’ll see.”
She fumbled for more of those sharp-edged words, for a sneer or a snarl or anything, but his smile grew. “You have three minutes to get ready now.”
Nesta debated chucking the nearest thing at him—a vase on a little pedestal beside the doorway. But demonstrating that he’d gotten under her skin would be too satisfying for him.
So she merely shrugged and walked through the doorway. Slowly. Utterly unaffected by him and his swaggering, insufferable boasts.
Climb into his bed, indeed.
Those pants were going to kill him.
Brutally, thoroughly kill him.
Cassian hadn’t forgotten the sight of Nesta in Illyrian fighting leathers during the war—not at all. But compared to the memory … Mother above.
Every word, every language he knew had vanished at the sight of her striding past, straight-backed and unhurried as any noble lady presiding over her household.
Cassian knew he’d let her win that round, that he’d lost the upper hand the moment she threw him that little shrug and continued into the hall, unaware of the view it presented. How it made every thought beyond the most primal eddy out of his mind.
Settling himself required the entire three minutes she was downstairs. The Mother knew he had enough to deal with today, both with Nesta’s lesson and beyond it, without descending into thoughts of peeling those pants off her and worshipping every inch of that spectacular backside.
He couldn’t afford distractions like that. Not for a million reasons.
But fuck—when had he last had a satisfying roll in the sheets? Certainly not since the war. Maybe since before Feyre had freed them all from Amarantha’s grip. Cauldron boil him, it had been the month before Amarantha had fallen, hadn’t it? With that female he’d met at Rita’s. In an alley outside the pleasure hall. Against a brick wall. Quick and dirty and over within minutes, neither he nor the female wanting anything more than swift release.
That had been more than two years ago. It had been his hand ever since.
He should have scratched that particular itch before deciding that living in the House with Nesta was a good idea. She was hurting and adrift and the last thing she needed was him panting after her. Grabbing her arm like an animal, unable to stop himself from drawing near.
She wanted nothing to do with him. She’d said as much at Winter Solstice.
I’ve made my thoughts clear enough on what I want from you.
A whole lot of nothing.
It had cracked an intrinsic piece of him, some final resistance and shred of hope that everything they’d endured during the war might amount to something. That when he spilled his heart to her as he lay dying, that when she’d covered him with her body and chosen to die alongside him, she’d chosen him, too.
A stupid fucking hope, and one he should have known better than to harbor. So that Winter Solstice night on the icy streets, when he knew she’d only shown up at the town house to get the money Feyre had dangled in exchange for making an appearance, when she’d asserted that she wanted nothing to do with him … he’d thrown the present he’d spent months hunting down into the frozen Sidra and then busied himself with quelling the growing dissent amongst the Illyrians.
And he’d stayed away from her for the intervening nine months. Far, far away. He’d come so close to making a stupid mistake that night, to laying his heart bare for her to rip out of his chest. He’d hardly managed to walk away with some semblance of pride. Over his cold, dead body would she do that to him again.
Nesta emerged, her braided hair now coiled across the crown of her head like a woven tiara. He made a point not to look beneath her neck. At the body left on display. She needed to gain back the weight she’d lost, and pack on some muscle, but … those fucking leathers.
“Let’s go,” he said, his voice rough and cold. Thank the Cauldron for that.
On the veranda beyond the dining room’s glass doors, Mor landed, as if plunging from the thirty feet above the wards was nothing. For her, Cassian supposed it was.
Mor hopped from foot to foot, rubbing her arms and gritting her teeth, and gave him a look that said, You owe me so big for this, asshole.
Nesta scowled, but slung on her cloak, each movement graceful and unhurried, then aimed for where Mor waited. Cassian would fly them both out beyond the wards’ reach, then Mor would winnow them to Windhaven.