“Rabbit stew, if the cook’s to be believed.”
“I could have lived without hearing that,” I said, and Rhys grinned. That smile tugged on something low in my gut, and I looked away, sitting down beside the food, careful not to jostle the tray. I opened the lid of the top dishes: two bowls of stew. “What’s the other one beneath?”
“Meat pie. I didn’t dare ask what kind of meat.” I shot him a glare, but he was already edging around the bed to the armoire, his pack in hand. “Go ahead and eat,” he said, “I’m changing first.”
Indeed, he was soaked—and had to be freezing and sore.
“You should have changed before going downstairs.” I picked up the spoon and swirled the stew, sighing at the warm tendrils of steam that rose to kiss my chilled face.
The rasp and slurp of wet clothes being shucked off filled the room. I tried not to think about that bare, golden chest, the tattoos. The hard muscles. “You were the one training all day. Getting you a hot meal was the least I could do.”
I took a sip. Bland, but edible and, most importantly, hot. I ate in silence, listening to the rustle of his clothes being donned, trying to think of ice baths, of infected wounds, of toe fungus—anything but his naked body, so close … and the bed I was sitting on. I poured myself a glass of wine—then filled his.
At last, Rhys squeezed between the bed and jutting corner of the wall, his wings tucked in close. He wore loose, thin pants, and a tight-fitting shirt of what looked to be softest cotton. “How do you get it over the wings?” I asked while he dug into his own stew.
“The back is made of slats that close with hidden buttons … But in normal circumstances, I just use magic to seal it shut.”
“It seems like you have a great deal of magic constantly in use at once.”
A shrug. “It helps me work off the strain of my power. The magic needs release—draining—or else it’ll build up and drive me insane. That’s why we call the Illyrian stones Siphons—they help them channel the power, empty it when necessary.”
“Actually insane?” I set aside the empty stew bowl and removed the lid from the meat pie.
“Actually insane. Or so I was warned. I can feel it, though—the pull of it, if I go too long without releasing it.”
“That’s horrible.”
Another shrug. “Everything has its cost, Feyre. If the price of being strong enough to shield my people is that I have to struggle with that same power, then I don’t mind. Amren taught me enough about controlling it. Enough that I owe a great deal to her. Including the current shield around my city while we’re here.”
Everyone around him had some use, some mighty skill. And yet there I was … nothing more than a strange hybrid. More trouble than I was worth.
“You’re not,” he said.
“Don’t read my thoughts.”
“I can’t help what you sometimes shout down the bond. And besides, everything is usually written on your face, if you know where to look. Which made your performance today so much more impressive.”
He set aside his stew just as I finished devouring my meat pie, and I slid back on the bed to the pillows, cupping my glass of wine between my chilled hands. I watched him eat while I drank. “Did you think I would go with him?”
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.