“Nesta,”the Bone Carver murmured. “Nes-ta”

Once, to Nesta Archeron, a whole afternoon spent in bed would've looked like a pile of books, a pot of tea, and—if she could brave the outside successfully—a fat, decadent pastry from the bakery on the corner.

Silent. Peaceful. Solitary.

Now, her recreation is decidedly more… well.

Not that.

"Gods, I could taste you all day."

Cassian skims a hand over her hip as he presses a thousandth kiss to the soft inside of her thigh, tickling. Nesta yelps, swatting at him.

"Greedy."

"Can't help it. Eternity isn't long enough for everything I want to do with you."

Shifting, she readjusts the pillow so she can watch him run his nose up the valley where her leg meets her lower stomach, humming appreciatively.

This romaing is common for him in the wake of their passion, Nesta's found. She traces the scar on his eyebrow, earning a wink. The kind that once would've infuriated her, her anger a hot iron from the forge.

She traces it again, hoping for another.

Solstice being what it was—a personal low, in Cassian's words—it took a fair share of yelling and groveling before they could speak without a locked door between them. That was followed by a few more months of mercurial and halting progress, culminating in a kiss stolen in the alley behind the Wolf's Den just as winter thawed into spring.

They've never really parted since then. Only circled closer and closer, so that now, in summer's long middle stretch, Nesta and Cassian are entwined as lazily and completely as the jasmine climbing her balcony trellis.

It's heaven. It's sin. It's surprisingly normal by this point, which is, for Nesta, the most unfathomable part of it all.

There's only one problem.

No one else knows yet.

The nosy twits will find out eventually, of course. But these last two months of sneaking around have been too velvety and delicious to let pass them by. During the days, they're each others' almost-forgotten heartbreak, a subject to be dodged when someone pokes the wound.

But once the sea swallows the sun…

"Mother, Nesta, I swear I could get drunk off you."

Cassian's grown more fervent in his roaming—he's dangerously close to the place that makes her sanity spin out.

Nesta yanks on his hair until he looks at her. "Then you'd crash into a chimney when you fly back to the House."

His chuckle rumbles against her skin like summer thunder, dark and lush. Nesta used to hate how much her stomach flutters when he laughs at her jokes. When he smiles at her like that, like he's standing before a door he can't wait to open.

"Just wait, you'll be begging again soon enough."

"I was not begging," Nesta snaps, knowing fully that she had, just a few minutes prior, definitely been begging.

Please Cass please let me—oh, please I need—pleasepleasepleaseplease— 

She can't help it. He makes her crazy. He makes muscles move under her skin, makes her feel power and surrender all at once.

He smirks as if she's shouting her thoughts to the world.

"Poor you, having to endure being worshiped."

The open door to the balcony creaks in a growing breeze. Sensing Cassian about to dive back between her legs, Nesta scoots up to rest against the headboard, and crosses her arms.

"You say that like it's fair. But I never get my turn," she protests.

"You're a fucking handful, you know that?"

"Then it's a good thing you have big hands."

The interlude of their symphony is coming to a close, and she feels the crescendo towards the next crash growing. But today, Nesta isn't sure. Something about her bedroom looks wrong, like the dressing gown on the back of the door belongs to someone else.

"I want my turn," she repeats, and it's the only thing that feels true. "It's my turn."

Cassian pushes back onto his knees, confused.

Lazy sunbeams shift over his wings when he does, illuminating the fractured, angry scars that span them like lighting.

They make her stomach flip. Nesta looks away quickly, ashamed.

The memories still find her in the small hours. His body beneath hers in the wood, broken, straining to rise. For some reason, remembering always make her fingers go numb.

She clenches the sheets, trying to get the feeling back. Those are dark thoughts and dark places she wants to leave behind.

Especially when her lover proves he's very much alive by crawling up the length of her body, huge wings blocking the yellow haze.

They fall into each others' mouths again, Nesta lost in the swirl of it until Cassian strokes the delicate skin on the back of her thigh. At the same time he tastes a sensitive spot near her collarbone, and she arches into both sensations, soft linen under her bare back.

"You're such a cat," Cassian observes between kisses.

"How's that?"

He runs a slow finger down her thigh again, breaking out into a grin when Nesta arches again.

"Very clear about where you want to be petted."

"You're not."

The prove her point, she goes for the same spot he's touching her, the curve of her stomach beneath her navel now. His muscles jerk beneath her hand, and he twists away, laughing nervously.

"Maybe I prefer to do the petting."

Smug, annoying—Nesta searches for the right insult to goad him into slipping up. But Cassian's grin only grows.

She wants to make his sanity spin out the way he does hers.

Cassian shivers when she drags her nails down the curve of his shoulder, the plane of his chest.

"Here, kitty." She makes her voice syrupy, how Feyre talks to the children at her studio. "Here, kitty kitty."

Nesta inches her hand lower, wanting to trace the scar on his side from his near-evisceration. Lower.

But Cassian's faster. He snatches her wrist.

"Nice try, sweetheart."

Twisting, Nesta tries to free her wrist. His grip is loose but unyielding, so her arm just swings lamely back and forth, accomplishing nothing.

She needs to touch him. Nothing matters more than her fingers in the soft, wiry hair on his chest. Than following the line of each muscle, as if she can assure herself he's actually here.

Here, warm—alive. Not leaned against a rotten log, bleeding out on the bleak, barren soil of her homeland.

His mouth drops open in protest, but immediately closes again when Nesta presses her lips to a scar on the side of his thumb.

One on his wrist.

Another.

Another.

"Mother, Nesta, what are you on?"

"Am I hurting you?"

Cassian looks like he isn't sure as he lets go. Something new and faint hums inside her, like a wavering note from a street band five blocks off.

"Of course not. It's fine. I'm fine," he says, not at all convincing.

"Well, that's obviously a lie."

Every one of her nerves is jumping, all her thoughts chanting touch, taste, take. There's no time, a girl in her mind screams, there's no time.

"I just—"

The breeze blows her gauzy curtains inward, billowing.

"I don't know what you're doing," Cassian confesses.

Stillness follows in the wake of his words—the curtains settling, Nesta blowing a steady breath out. Whatever frantic thing has been flying around inside her lands, even the bees in the jasmine taking respite for the moment.

"It's your turn, Cassian. Let me."

"Nes, you don't have to."

"I know I don't. I want to."

She tugs gently on his shoulders, to bring him to her, but Cassian doesn't budge.

"Woahhh, alright."

"No?"

"I mean, yes, it's—" He laughs once, likely at himself. "I don't know the rules."

"Then tell me. Whatever you want."

Cassian looks around the room, as if the answers hide in her pile of unfolded laundry, the council of teacups lining her dressing table. His gaze alights on the book on her nightstand, which they'd been inspired by the night before.

"Would you just, uh…" He swallows. Can't look her in the eye for some reason. "Would you run your fingers through my hair?"

A purveyor drags his cart by on the street below—tinctures, likely, from the clink of bottles—Nesta tries not to laugh in his face. Not because it's ridiculous, but—

"That's it?"

Cassian frowns, perturbed.

"Is it my kitty turn or not?"

Instead of answering, Nesta beckons him to lay on top of her. Cassian acquiesces, barely. He props himself up on his elbows, hovering oddly, so that only his curls touch her skin.

"All the way," she chides, satisfaction blooming when he huffs but finally lowers all the way. "That's a good kitty."

Cassian sighs, deep and shuddering.

She starts slow. Nesta brushes the hair from his eyes, smoothing it back.

She feels the boy in him bury his nose further against her chest and give another shaky sigh. She feels the male in him lightly stroking the back of her arm, as if seeking reassurance she still wants his touch.

Outside, the afternoon turns restless, But in the sanctuary of her room, Nesta gets lost in the rhythm, the feel of soft strands sliding between her fingers, the scratch of her nails against his scalp.

Cassian's body grows heavy by increments, sinking into her, and Nesta's just about to ask how much of him is left before a gentle snore drifts up to her.

He's asleep.

Head pillowed on her breasts, Cassian is so soundly asleep that she'd swear he's been drugged.

 Yet softer. She strokes the curl that hangs in front of his ear. Cassian hums, arching into her touch.

The sky's is grown darker out the open balcony doors. Grey clouds are rolling in from the bay, the prickle of impending lighting charging the air and making the arms on her arms stand up.

A clap of thunder shatters the silence. Nesta would swear the boom rattles through Velaris' very bedrock.

Cassian jolts awake. The open door bangs against the side of the building.

"Shit. I'll close that, stay here."

Nesta doesn't know why sadness makes a home in her chest watching him wrestle with the latch. A strange ache, like she's nostalgic for someone else's memory.

She didn't want it to be over yet.

But his eyes find hers at once when he secures the door at last, rain pelting the glass panes. The storm rushes over Velaris on one great rush, like a thunderbird from the old legends swooping overhead, wings booming, lighting crackling from its plumage.

Cassian drags the blanket over both of them when he returns to bed. There's so much of him—his skin's smoky ink, the fretful calligraphy of scars. Nesta wants to hold all of him at once, so much she nearly mourns the physical impossibility.

But her mourning turns to confusion as Cassian returns to where he'd been before.

"I hope it's alright if I…" he trails off. Shallow breath fans across her collarbone.

"I didn't want it to be over yet."

Later, she'll wonder what god was looking down on them that day. Whose hand sent the bolt of lightning that illuminates Cassian's secret smile when he looks up at her.

Nesta threads her fingers back through his hair, holding him to her. The shadows of rain trace the scars.

Nesta smiles.

Cassian sleeps.

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