Pretty Perfect Toy -- A Temptation Court Novel (Temptation Court, Book 2) (22 page)

Success.

What the hell does
that
even mean right now? The goals I’ve always been so sure of—the stability, the respect, the power, the domination—all seem like shadows through rice paper. Fuzzy…and fragile.

So what the fuck do I do now?

What is
real
anymore
?

“Hey.”

The musical whisper tickles my chest, clanging me free from the dark meadows of my mind. I hum in soft gratitude before dipping a kiss onto Ella’s forehead. “Hey.”

“You all right?”

Snort. “Pretty sure that’s my line, woman.” I stroke into the dip of her waist—ordering my cock to stand down when observing the dark marks persisting on the silk of her skin. “After treating you like my caveman rag doll…”

She turns her face up, doing that delectable lip-biting thing. “In case you did not notice, the doll did
not
mind.”

I let her make her way up, accepting the full pressure of her lips, letting her velvet tongue have its juicy way with mine for a long, wet kiss.
Fuck.
At once, my blood turns up the tempo on the drum machine, and I’m ready to show the doll how I want to keep time again.

“Ahhh Christ,
armeau
.” With a dark moan, I brace her shoulders and set her back. “Any more of that, and you’ll have me bargaining with God for an early Christmas.”

“Christmas?” Her nose crunches.
So fucking adorable.
“Whatever for?”

I lift a lazy grin. “Because boys get to play all day with their toys on Christmas.”

She flashes a mock glare. “Well, not on Arcadia.”

I return a real one. “Bunch of buzz kills.”

“We call it The Holiday. There are still decorations and toys for the children, and lavish parties given at the central villa of every region, with the biggest at the Palais in Sancti—but during those celebrations, the children are expected to give back to their communities in some way. Many participate in plays or musical performances. Some paint ornaments that are displayed on the trees. Groups of the older children form teams, and go out into their towns to help clear trails, or maintain the natural forests and beaches.”

“And what did you do?” I ask it quietly while finger-combing her hair with slow strokes.

She gives her bell-like laugh before teasing, “What do you think?”

I smirk. “Why can I readily imagine you in an elf’s hat, with a hundred different organizational journals in your cute little hands?”

Her brows dance. “My Holiday journals were the rage. You should have seen them…”

“I can only imagine.” I keep the laugh from it, unwilling to mar even one nuance of her glow. My nobility earns me a tighter twist in my gut.
Hell.
Watching her speak about Arcadia, with pride and affection brightening her eyes more by the second, only clarifies how much she likely longs to return already. Despite her parents’ obsessive ambition, she has forged a meaningful life there. A vocation. A future.

But you can give her a future
here.

Oh yeah? Doing what
? Being
what
?

My girlfriend? My convenient little toy?

And how long will
that
last?

She can go to school. Get a dozen degrees in whatever subjects she wants.
She’s already obscenely smarter than half the college graduates I have met in the Court Enterprises HR department. Student visas are easy enough to renew, so she can stay as long as she wants—

No.

She can stay as long as
you
want.

And after it was all said and done, where the fuck would it get us?

Because as full as she fills my soul, there is no room for her in my life. There’s no room for
anyone,
goddammit. The keel is balanced just fine without it.
I’m doing just fucking fine.

“Cassian?”

“Hmmm?” I issue the answer at once. Her prompt hasn’t startled this time; every awareness in my system has kept totally attuned to her. Treasuring every fucking second with her.

“What is it?”

I don’t answer right away. I
do
wait for the better part of a minute, letting the beat of the rain inject some needed peace to my thoughts—and libido. “Just calming the beastie,” I finally reply.

“So
now
we are all right with ‘beastie?’”

“Perhaps.” I buss her nose. “The cute and castration might have its purpose…in
this
case.”

She retaliates by biting
my
nose. “Dare I ask what case might that be?”

“The case where I try to hold off from fucking you again.”

“Oh.” Biting still looks like her plan—in different ways. “But…where’s the fun in that?”

Sure enough, she starts to undulate with purpose. As her elegant curves entice me in about a hundred new ways, she starts sliding a hand down my chest. Trails the notch bisecting my abs. Slips beneath the sheet, which is already a fucking party tent with a main pole that’s all too happy about her approach…

Before she’s halted. By my resolved clamp of a grip.

Determination I
almost
lose, when she girl-growls with sexy-as-fuck force. Follows it with a kittenish snort. “Buzz kill.”

I work to mellow her ire by pulling her wrist up to my lips. “Believe me,
favori
, the master of ceremonies will be just as ready for the show in a few minutes.” I bask in the laugh, however reluctant, that earns me from her. Lower another kiss to her, this time with soft thoroughness, before letting my chest rise and fall on a long breath. “Right now…I think we need to talk.”

Shit.

I really just went there.

And brace myself for the fallout.

Sheltered island girl or not, no way has the woman hung out with Kate Robbe a dozen times and not been educated about the importance of
we need to talk
. That truth is confirmed in the tiny knit of her brow, before she pushes up and murmurs, “All right.”

Like a lot of women in her place, she sets her chin bravely. But unlike a lot of those women, the stress over her eyes dissolves, while its focus steadies. For a moment, I allow myself to be floored by that. Despite the anxiety she’s learned from Kate, she’s clearly chosen to listen to
me
first. To know that if I was going to “talk” with her like
that
, it wouldn’t be with her thigh snuggled on my cock, her breasts pillowed against my chest, and a lot of my come still warm in her body.

After another deep breath, I decide to just dive in. “I think we should talk about last night.”

Ella folds her hands atop my left pec. Rests her chin on them with a look that’s damn near impish. “Before or after you ensured I would never look at the back of the bedroom door the same way again?”

I grunt while twirling her hair around a finger. Brilliant shades of sienna and strawberry flow across my skin, even in the room’s watercolor light. “Well, get used to it—because you’re moving back in here.” I tug on the strand, mandating she pay even closer attention. “I’ll not spend another night apart from you.” Press my lips hard, debating about adding the rest. “We’ve wasted too much time already.”

Debate over. For better or for worse.

At first, goddammit, it really feels like the latter. My chest knots as her whole face tightens, and a grimace pushes at her skin like a swimmer trapped beneath ice.

She is everything except my ice.

Everything that has brought the sun back to my world.

The innocence I’d written off as lost. A wonderment I might have never had. And a fire, in my body and in my heart, I never knew I
could
have…

I need to tell her.

My sweet
armeau…
how do I even begin to tell you
?

At the very least, I can get out what was on the original agenda—yeah, from just five minutes ago—before she
had
to mention that heaven of penetrating her in two places at once. I’ve had less cataclysmic distractions, of course. Shit like hurricanes and emergency plane landings.

“Deal,” she finally replies—attempting to bring her game face with a finishing smile. It climbs nowhere near her eyes, and I blame myself. Mentioning our ticking time clock was a moron-level call. “I shall be happy to be your roomie again.”

I trail fingers to her face, making sure she feels the happiness in my touch. Press them in a little before pressing on. “Then you need to know that last night…how I behaved after we were together…”

She compels me to stop by forming her hand over mine. Pushes her cheek against our twined fingers. “Last night…was completely okay, Cassian.”

I twist free from the hold. Straighten against the headboard. “You’re
okay
with what happened?” She might as well have said two plus two equals sixteen. She couldn’t have been “okay” with that bullshit. Someone like Amelie Hampton would be “okay” with it—because a bitch like that wouldn’t have really cared in the first place. Because nobody, in a very long time,
has
cared…

Holy shit.

By punching out the damn shower, did I also cross the line of Mishella’s patience? Is she letting me off the hook because she’s too fed up to even
extend
the hook?

Christ. That makes as much sense as my warped mental bookkeeping. “Fed up” usually doesn’t come with a suggestion to appear on national TV together—or to seal the deal by “rehearsing” with your cock between her legs.

You’re getting as irrational as a girl, dammit. Pull it together and think.

That’s the moment I look at her.

Really
look.

And snap together the sweet understanding in her voice with the new, somber cast of her gaze. And here I was, thinking her eyes had darkened because of the twilight-tinged rain…

“Shit.” I hiss it slowly through my teeth. It’s not the damn rain.

“Do not be upset,” she counters. “I was concerned. I did not know where you were or what you were doing. Your mother—”

“Just took it upon herself to spill the once-upon-a-time about Damon?”

“Since she thought it might explain why you drove your fist through a glass door instead of
talking
to me about it?” She jerks up, taking a swath of the sheet with her. “Then your answer is
yes,
Cassian—she thought ‘spilling’ was likely a good call.”

I push up as well. Jack my head against the headboard, elevating my sight line enough to glare down my nose. “So you two had a nice little ‘girl chat’ about it all?”

Her nostrils flare. “‘It
all
?’” She pulls up higher, canceling my advantage—which wasn’t working anyway. “I did
not
share that you had left me naked and dazed in the very spot in which you just fucked me, if that is your insinuation.” Yeah;
really
not working. “I
did
tell her that I was confused and concerned—and knew you were hurting because of something beyond what happened to Lily and your baby.”

She concludes it with a rough breath, seeming to comprehend what a fucked-up mess it all is, now gathered together and spoken aloud. Her ire gives way to a stare that nearly implores—and impacts me like a hydrogen bomb. With just as blinding a force, it explodes—and rains self-incrimination on me.

“Dammit, Ella.” I reach for her. Not necessary. She’s already on her way, face softening right before her body does, molding back against me…bringing the sun again.

“I’m sorry,” I mutter into her hair. “You shouldn’t have had to hear it from my mother.”

She sighs against my chest. “But it is her story to tell too.”

“Not if it rips her apart to tell it.” I tug on her leg, fitting her tighter to me, and thank her for it by running soft fingertips along the crest of her thigh. “Having to talk about the loss of one’s child…” Before I can help it, my hand stops. My fingers claw into her skin, directly proportionate to the sting behind both eyes. “Ah.
Fuck
.”

“Ssshhh.” Her own fingers curl into my hair. Yank down my head until she can press my lips to the soft, warm comfort of hers. “Sssshhh. You have already been through that fire, all right?” Her fingers trace the tops of my eyebrows. “Is it any wonder you did not wish to do it a second time in the same night?”

I jerk back by a couple of inches. Palm the firm curve of her nape. “So you get it? I’m forgiven?”

“There is nothing to forgive, Cassian.” Her tawny brows hunch in. “Your psyche tipped to overload and you reacted the only way you have ever given yourself permission to, probably since the day Damon died. You ran and hid, then lashed out at something inanimate and painful.” The brows arch up as she tips her head, gaze so clear it’s like getting sliced by a pair of blue diamonds. “I wager there are still a few walls at your school and old apartments bearing a certain boy’s fist imprint.”

“Well, shit.”

I grumble it after searching her stare again…truly wondering about the cutting diamonds. At the same time, she sets free a soft giggle.

“I am that right with the honey?”

“Right on the money.” I yank her in for a quick kiss. “But yeah, you—
shit
.” It bears repeating. Big time. “You didn’t tell Mom that part, did you?”

Her lips purse. “Only because I did not connect it until now.”

“Good.”

“She is your mother, Cassian. She likely knows.”

I scowl harder. “You’re probably right…dammit.”

She soothes me with another small kiss—though the buss isn’t enough. I spread my fingers into her hair while wrapping my bandaged hand around her waist, tangling our tongues and lips into deeper, hotter connection, before descending back to the pillows with her in tow. As the rain falls harder, we kiss and devour, taste and lick, adore and appreciate, until there’s no air and we end up breathing the essence of each other…

The only air I need.

Several mind-blowing minutes later, she drags up and away, her lower lip caught beneath a smile that says she clearly questions her sanity in letting me go for even a few inches. I grin back, arrogant as fuck about the observation. And humble as hell.

A nuance that does
not
go unnoticed by
her
.

Tracing a deceptively casual line down the center of my chest, she releases her lip and raises her chin. “Cassian Cameron Jonathan…”