A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses #4) by Sarah J. Maas

“It’s not a demand if both sides want it,” she said. “And I just worried you … didn’t enjoy it as much as I did.”

“You think I haven’t sought you out because I didn’t enjoy myself?” When she said nothing, he braced his hands on either side of her and leaned in to whisper in her ear, breathing in her scent, “I enjoyed myself too much. I’ve thought about it for days and days.” She shivered, and he smiled against the soft shell of her ear. He loved this—seeing that icy exterior crumble, seeing how he affected her. “Have you been touching yourself at night, thinking about it like I do?”

Nesta’s chin dipped in the barest of nods, and from the corner of his eye, he spied a flash of her teeth as she bit her bottom lip. “Have those sweet little fingers felt as good as mine?”

Her breathing hitched, but she wouldn’t answer. He knew she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. He nipped at her earlobe, drawing a gasp from her. “Well?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’d have to see again.”

“Hmm.” Cassian lowered his mouth, pressing a kiss beneath her ear. His cock hardened, already aching against his pants. “Shall we do a little side-by-side comparison?”

She whimpered, and he crawled onto the bed, straddling her legs. His blood pounded through every inch of him, in time to the pulse in his cock, and he pulled away from her neck to find her eyes bright with desire.

The world quieted, and she stared and stared at him as he slowly pulled the blankets down to her waist. Her nightgown was rucked up her thighs, and he ran a hand over one of them, thumb stroking the sleek muscles building there. “Why don’t you show me how you touch yourself, Nesta? And then I’ll remind you how I touch you.” He bared his teeth in a wicked grin. “You can tell me what feels better.”

Her chest heaved, her pebbled breasts peeking through the nightgown. His mouth watered, body trembling with the restraint needed to keep from putting his mouth over them.

She seemed to read every line of his body, his desire. Her eyes glinted with molten fire. “While I … touch myself, you are forbidden to touch me.” A feral smile. “And forbidden to touch yourself.”

His skin heated, stretching too tight over his bones. “All right.”

Cassian waited for her to nestle into the pillows, but she grabbed the hem of her nightgown to pull it over herself, bunching it into a ball before chucking it to the floor.

Every thought eddied from his mind as she half-reclined there, utterly naked, those beautiful breasts peaked and waiting for him, her silken flesh near-glowing. And between her legs … She drew her knees up slightly, spreading them. Baring herself.

Cassian made a low, pained sound. Her pink sex gleamed—its heady, seductive scent beckoning. He needed to taste it, to feel her on his tongue, on his cock—

“No touching,” Nesta purred, because his hand had been drifting toward his cock, desperate for any sort of relief from the sight of her open and bare, the faelights gilding her.

His breath rasped in his throat—and then vanished entirely as Nesta slid two delicate fingers down her body. They stopped atop that bundle of nerves, circling slowly.

Her breathing turned uneven, but she watched him observe her as she made another circle, and then moved lower. A slow, torturous slide down her center before her wrist curved, and she dipped her fingers into herself.

Cassian groaned, hips bucking a bit where he knelt, and she cut him a reprimanding look. He stilled, unable to think about anything other than her two fingers as she slid them into herself again, and moaned. They emerged shining with her wetness, and he might have been panting as she plunged them into herself a third time, deep and slow.

“This,” she breathed, her fingers beginning a slow, steady pump, “is what I do when I think of you every night.”

If she so much as touched him, he’d come. But he growled, “Do it harder.”

She shivered as if his words were a physical touch, and obeyed. They both groaned this time, and he found himself saying, “Please.”

He didn’t know what it meant—only that he needed to touch her.

Nesta smiled at him with feline amusement. “Not yet.”

She drove her hand between her legs again. “I imagine you taking me, over and over again. Rough, like we did before.” He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but stare at her hand, her pleasure-hazed face. “I imagine you less patient than you were the first time, just thrusting into me, all the way.” She echoed her words with a swift plunge of her fingers.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he got out, praying to the Mother and the Cauldron to maintain his sanity.

“You won’t hurt me.” Her other hand teased that bundle of nerves. “I want you unleashed.”

Cassian made a low noise of need.

She huffed a wicked laugh. “Do you want to watch me come? Or do you want to taste it?”

“Taste.” He’d beg on hot coals for one lick of her.

She spread her legs wider. “Then have at me, Cassian.”

His name on her lips was his undoing. He gripped her thighs and spread them wide, and then his mouth was on her, licking her from base to apex in a long, luxurious slide.

She moaned, louder than the first time, and he only grabbed her legs again, hooking them over his shoulders as he buried his face against her.