Chapter Four : One Demand

Cassian

I didn't give her time to answer.

My mouth crushed hers, and she answered with a sound that tore straight through me. Fingers dug into my shoulders, then tangled in my hair, pulling me closer, desperate as if afraid I'd vanish. I lifted her onto the counter; the cake slid sideways, forgotten.

"Cassian," she gasped.

"Again."

Her hands slipped under my shirt, tracing my bare skin. I swore into her neck, her skin burning beneath my lips, her pulse racing. Six years of longing, now here she was wild, trembling, calling my name like it was hers.

"Bedroom," she whispered.

"Hold me."

Her legs locked tight around me as I carried her upstairs, teeth grazing my jaw. Halfway up, she bit my earlobe, and I stumbled, laughing rough and hard. Her breathless laugh filled the space between us real, raw.

Lucien's house. His bed. His wife.

I set her beside the bed, moonlight catching her wild hair, swollen lips, dark eyes.

The voice inside faded.

"Turn."

I slid the zipper down, inch by slow inch, skin glowing beneath my fingertips. She shivered, breath breaking as the dress slipped off, pooling at her ankles. She spun in my hands, fierce and bare.

I laid her back on pillows and took my time with every inch of her the ribs, the waist, the spot behind her knee that made her hips lift off the mattress. My mouth followed where my hands had been; she tasted like cake and heat. Every sound she made, I swallowed; every gasp, I memorized. She pulled me down by my collar; shirts vanished. Nothing left but heat, breath, and dark.

She arched against me, nails clawing my back, wetness slick between her thighs as I dragged a finger down her center. She swore into my mouth and rocked into my hand until I thought I'd shatter from holding back.

"Look at me," I demanded, voice rough, forehead pressed to hers.

Eyes wet, wide, open.

I entered her in one slow push and we both stopped breathing. She was so wet it nearly ended me. She buried her face in my neck and shook; I held her like life depended on it and began to move deep strokes that pulled another sound out of her each time our hips met. The headboard knocked against the wall in a rhythm neither of us could slow down or stop.

Then, low in her ear:

"Happy birthday."

Stillness.

A tear traced from her temple to her hair. She turned to look at me raw, fierce.

"Say it again."

"Happy birthday."

Kisses burned across her cheekbone, jawline, corner of her mouth until she was trembling again under mine. My voice cracked on nothing at all when she tightened around me one last time.

She pulled me down for a kiss that took everything left in either of us slow now but no less hungry and we stayed joined long after we'd finished moving.

Elara

Morning came in pale and gray through the curtains.

I woke slowly, the way you wake from a fever. The room was quiet. Soft light touched the ceiling. For one, two, three seconds I lay there with nothing in my head at all, just warmth and the strange sense that something was different.

Then it came slamming back.

The club. The song. The phones. The kitchen. The way he'd lifted me onto the counter. The way he'd whispered those two words against my ear, and what I'd done after.

My heart kicked so hard it hurt.

There was an arm around my waist. Warm skin against my back. A slow breath stirring my hair.

Oh my God.

I lay frozen, staring at the wall. My phone sat on the nightstand beside my wedding ring and a glass of water I'd never touched. I turned the screen over with one finger. No missed calls. No texts. Lucien hadn't come home, and he hadn't wondered where I was either.

And I had spent the night in his bed with his best friend.

I slid out from under Cassian's arm an inch at a time. The green dress lay in a heap beside the bed. My robe hung on the hook behind the door, and I snatched it down and wrapped it around myself with shaking hands. In the dresser mirror, a woman with wild hair and a mark on her neck stared back at me. I pressed two fingers over it and felt sick.

"You're up early."

I spun around.

Cassian was propped on one elbow with the sheet low on his waist, watching me with dark, steady eyes. His hair was a mess. He looked nothing like the man in the corner booth. He looked awake and warm and completely sure of himself, and that frightened me more than anything.

I pulled the robe tight. "You need to go."

"Good morning to you too."

"I mean it." I crossed my arms. "Last night was a mistake. Let's pretend it never happened."

He didn't move. He didn't blink. "No."

"Cassian..."

"No. I'm not doing that."

"We can't." My voice cracked. "It was the night I had, and I was upset, and you were there. I used you. You said so yourself. I shouldn't have done it, and I'm sorry, and if we both just forget it..."

"You weren't drunk." His voice was quiet and level. "You told me that twice. You told me you knew exactly who I was."

"That doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

"Why?" It burst out of me. "Why does it matter? For six years you couldn't stand to be in a room with me. Yesterday you were nodding at walls. Now you want me to believe this means something?"

Something flickered across his face, quick and strange. It was gone before I could read it.

"I never said I couldn't stand you," he said.

"You didn't have to."

"Elara." He sat up. "Sit down."

"I don't want to sit down."

"Then stand there and listen." His jaw tightened. "I'm not going to pretend last night didn't happen. I'm not going back to how it was, where I acted like you were a stranger and you flinched every time I spoke. That's finished."

I stared at him. I never said I couldn't stand you. I don't hate you. I never did. The words had sat in the back of my mind all night, and none of it fit.

"I don't understand you," I whispered.

"I know." He pushed the sheet aside and reached for his trousers. I turned to the window, my cheeks burning. "You don't have to. But I'll tell you what I want."

"Cassian, please..."

"Leave him."

The words landed like a stone.

"What?"

"Take action." He buttoned his trousers without looking away. "You walked into that kitchen last night and made a choice. Don't call it a mistake and tuck it away like it meant nothing. If it was real enough to take your ring off, it's real enough to deal with. Divorce him."

"I can't just..."

"Why not?"

"Because it isn't that simple!" My hands shook. "Five years. A whole marriage. I can't blow it up over one bad night."

"One bad night?" His laugh was short and bitter. "He's been cheating on you for months. He said it in front of a room full of people. He kissed another woman while they sang at you, and called you a waiting room. What exactly are you holding on to?"

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

What was I holding on to? A man who used to bring me flowers in college? A memory of a kiss under a pier in the rain? I didn't know. I only knew I couldn't stand in my own bedroom and answer that question.

"Why do you even care?" I asked, quieter. "Is it guilt? Is that what this is? Because you slept with your friend's wife and you need me to clean it up?"

"It's not guilt."

"Then what?"

He looked at me for a long moment, like a man standing at the edge of something. I thought he would say more. I waited.

"Because nobody should be treated the way he treated you," he said finally. "And because I'm not sorry."

It wasn't the answer I wanted. It wasn't the answer I expected either. Something unsteady shifted in my chest, and I hated it.

"I need you to leave," I whispered.

He nodded once and picked up his shirt. I watched him button it with steady hands. At the bedroom door, he stopped and looked back.

"I won't push you today," he said. "But I won't act like this never happened."

The front door clicked shut a minute later. I stood in the silent bedroom and pressed both hands over my mouth.