The Firefly’s Burden

“There are hungers grief can imitate so well that even the person suffering them stops knowing which ache is speaking.”

From Winter Court Medical Notes on Bereavement and Bond Distortion

His hand is still high on my thigh. My dress half off. His shirt open. I’m in his lap facing him, my knees on either side of his hips, my fingers dug into his shoulders hard enough to feel the muscle under them.

The city burns gold through the curtains.

Cassie hits the bond.

Love. Bright. Fierce. Mine.

I go still.

I’m not getting what I want from her tonight.

It lands cold and clean. Right through me. His thumb presses once into my thigh. He feels it. Of course he does. His mouth leaves my skin. He looks up at me and waits.

I look back.

Then I kiss him like I mean it.

His mouth opens under mine at once. One hand at my waist. The other sliding up my bare thigh slow enough to make me feel every inch of it. Silk catches under his knuckles. My breath breaks into his mouth.

I don’t look away.

Good mouth. Good hands. Too calm.

My fingers go into his hair and pull. Hard enough this time that he actually gives me something for it, a low sound I feel in his chest where my breasts brush his skin. My whole body jumps at that. His hand tightens at my waist. The other moves higher.

The silk of my panties drags under his fingers.

Air.

Then his hand.

Warm.

I suck in a breath so sharp it hurts.

He doesn’t rush. Of course he doesn’t. He just keeps kissing me while his fingers move once. Then again. Barely there. Just enough to make my hips jump against him.

Gods.

I make a sound into his mouth I don’t like.

He likes it.

Of course he does.

His thumb strokes again, slower, firmer, and I break the kiss just to breathe. My forehead hits his. My fingers knot in his hair. I can feel him watching me from inches away, can feel the space where he’d smile if he were meaner about this.

The bond flares.

Cassie.

Love. Concern. Want. The shape of her still reaching for me.

Pleasure goes down the bond before I can stop it. Heat. Shame right behind it. My stomach twists.

No.

No no no.

Love answers back so fast my eyes sting.

I move against his hand anyway.

I hate myself for that.

I hate myself and I do it again.

His free hand slides up my spine, warm palm over bare skin, holding me steady when my body tries to chase the touch too fast. His mouth brushes mine once, twice, not enough to distract me, just enough to keep me there with him.

“Look at me,” he says.

I do.

That’s the worst part.

I stay right there in his face while his thumb presses harder and the first real wave of it goes through me. My mouth falls open. My breath hits his cheek. My nails bite into his shoulder through the last of his shirt.

Gods.

He sees everything.

Every stupid little break in my face.

Every breath.

Every time my hips twitch before I mean them to.

I want to hate that. I can’t think hard enough to do it.

His fingers shift. Not faster. Worse. Better. My whole body jerks. I make another sound, smaller this time, and bite it off against his mouth.

He kisses me through it. Deep. Slow. His hand between my thighs keeping that same awful pressure while his mouth takes whatever noise I make and swallows it down.

The room goes hot and soft around the edges.

My dress is bunched at my waist. My thighs are open around him. His hand is exactly where I need it and I hate him for knowing that already. I hate how easy my body is under his hands. I hate the bond. I hate the city. I hate Cassie not being here. I hate wanting her while I’m in another man’s lap with my mouth on his and my whole body turning traitor.

I want out.

I want out of myself.

One hour.

One goddamn hour.

My forehead hits his again. “Please.”

He doesn’t ask for what.

Thank gods.

He just watches me and moves his hand again.

That’s it.

My back goes tight. My fingers slip in his hair. My mouth opens right there against his, breath shaking, and I can’t stop looking at him because he told me to and because somehow that matters now.

The bond hits bright.

Cassie.

Love. Mine. Not here.

It tears straight through me.

My hips rock helplessly into his hand. His grip at my waist closes hard enough to hold me there while his thumb keeps going, steady, relentless, exactly the same, no mercy anywhere in it now. I’m shaking. Actually shaking. I can feel it in my arms, in my stomach, in the way my knees press into the mattress on either side of him.

“You can do better than that,” he says, voice low against my mouth.

I could kill him.

Instead I come.

Hard.

My whole body locks and then breaks. I stay right there in his face when it hits, eyes open for the first second of it, then squeezed shut because it’s too much, too bright, too sharp. My hands clamp down on his shoulders. My mouth falls against his. I hear myself make a sound and don’t know what it is. The pleasure tears through me in hot, mean pulses, enough to empty my head clean out for a few blessed seconds.

Nothing.

No city.

No hotel.

No bond.

No Cassie-shaped ache under everything.

Nothing but that.

Then breath slams back into me all at once. My forehead drops to his. My body is still trembling. His hand is still between my thighs. His other hand still spread hot and steady over my waist, holding me there like he knew exactly what I’d do when it hit.

I can’t think.

Good.

My whole body locks and starts to break, and before I can even get all the way through it he moves.

One hand still hard at my waist.

The other gone from between my thighs.

Then his mouth at mine, deep enough to steal the sound out of me while he shifts under me and I feel the first blunt push of him at my entrance.

Gods.

My eyes fly open.

He’s already watching me.

Still too calm.

Still right there.

I’m still coming when he starts to press in.

The pleasure is too bright already, my body tight and shaking around it, and that only makes the stretch hit harder. Hot. Full. Enough to turn the whole thing mean for one sharp second. My fingers wrench in his hair. My mouth breaks from his with a sound I don’t recognize.

Too much.

Too good.

His hand slides up my back, holding me steady when my body jerks. The other stays locked at my hip. No rush. No fumbling. Just pressure. Steady. Certain. Letting my body open around him while the aftershocks are still running through me and making every nerve feel stripped bare.

I can’t even breathe right.

My forehead hits his.

My thighs shake around his hips.

He keeps going.

Not hard. Not yet. Just deeper. Slow enough that I feel every inch of it. Every inch worse than the last in the exact way that makes worse start curdling into better before I can decide whether I hate it.

Gods.

My mouth is open against his. Breath in pieces. His name almost there and not there because I don’t want to give him that and my body doesn’t seem especially interested in what I want anymore.

The bond flares again.

Cassie.

Love. Bright and fierce and mine and so wrong here, right now, while another man is opening me up in his lap and my whole body is still shaking from the orgasm he dragged out of me with his hand.

Pleasure tears down the bond before I can stop it. Heat. Shame. Fullness now too. The awful intimate reality of it, all of it, rushing out of me raw and uncontrolled.

No.

My stomach knots.

Love answers back so fast it hurts.

I almost stop.

I almost do.

Then he seats himself all the way in one slow, final push and the thought blows apart.

My whole body jolts.

My head drops to his shoulder for half a second, not away, just there because there is nowhere else for it to go. My fingers dig into him hard enough to leave marks. I can feel him everywhere. Warm. Full. Deeper than I was ready for and exactly bad enough to be good.

He doesn’t move.

Not yet.

He just holds me there and lets me feel it.

That might be the cruelest thing he’s done so far.

Because now there’s no room left in me for anything but him and the aftershocks and the shape of my own body trying to decide whether this is pain or relief or both. My breath keeps catching. My thighs keep trembling. My pulse is in my teeth, my wrists, between my legs, everywhere.

He lifts his head just enough to look at me.

I look back.

Still calm.

Still perfectly sure.

His thumb brushes once over my hip. “There.”

I hate him.

I hate how wrecked I already feel.

I hate that some part of me wants to stay right here forever if forever means not having to think.

He kisses me again before I can say anything stupid. Slow this time. Slow enough that I feel the stretch of him inside me every time I shift my mouth against his. Slow enough that my body starts to melt around the fullness instead of fighting it. His hand leaves my hip long enough to drag the last of the silk down my legs, then comes back, palm warm over the small of my back, keeping me close.

I move first.

I don’t mean to.

One shallow roll of my hips. Just enough to feel what changes.

Everything.

The sound that comes out of me this time is smaller. Meaner. His mouth curves against mine.

Of course.

His hands tighten. One at my back. One hard on my hip. Guiding the next movement, smaller than I want, slower than I want, and somehow that’s worse. Better. My whole body is so lit up from the first orgasm that every little drag of him feels sharpened, every inch of friction turned bright and immediate and impossible to think around.

I keep my eyes on him because if I close them I’ll think of Cassie and if I think of Cassie I might break in a way I can’t put back together tonight.

His gaze stays on my face.

On my mouth.

My eyes.

Every stupid little crack in me.

The room is too warm. My skin is damp. My dress is somewhere on the floor. His shirt hangs open. The city keeps burning gold through the curtains and none of it feels real except his hands and the slow measured drag every time he moves me over him again.

Again.

Again.

Gods.

He is good.

Too good.

Not tender. Not sweet. Not trying to turn this into anything except exactly what it is. Relief with teeth in it. Relief I can ride until I stop feeling hollow for a little while.

My hands slide from his shoulders to his jaw. Then back into his hair. I kiss him because I need something to bite down on besides the sounds trying to get out of me. He gives me his mouth and his hands and that same infuriating control, and my body keeps opening wider around him with every slow roll until I stop being able to remember why I wanted to hold anything back at all.

The bond hums low and hurtful under all of it.

Cassie.

Love.

Mine.

I can’t touch that right now.

I can’t.

So I let him pull me farther into the rhythm instead, let the fullness and the friction and the warm controlled way he’s holding me drown out everything except the next breath, the next movement, the next pulse of pleasure still flickering under my skin from where he made me come before he ever even got inside me.

My forehead drops to his again. My breath breaks against his mouth.

He holds me there.

Moves me once more.

Slow.

Deep.

And my whole body clenches around him so hard I make a noise I would hate if I had enough room left in my head for hate.

His mouth is still on mine when it changes.

Not the rhythm. Not yet.

His body.

Tightening under my hands. Breath catching once, low in his throat. His grip on my hip going hard enough to hold. I feel it before I understand it, the way everything in him gathers and goes intent all at once, the way his control narrows instead of breaking.

Then he drives up into me deeper and I know.

My fingers wrench in his hair.

His name almost comes out of me and doesn’t. I bite it back against his mouth. Too late. He feels the way my whole body tightens around the warning. The way I know what’s coming and can’t decide whether I want it or hate it or both.

He gives me one more slow, brutal roll of his hips. Then another. The pressure turns white-hot and wrong and good and too much all at once. My forehead hits his. My breath breaks. His hand at my back spreads wider, pinning me close enough that there’s no room left anywhere between us.

And then he comes.

I feel it.

Heat. Sudden. Deep. Pulse after pulse of it inside me while his mouth stays on mine and his whole body goes taut under my hands. The sound he makes is low and rough and small for how big he feels in that moment, and something sick and bright twists through me because of course even this feels too intimate, too real, too much body, too much consequence.

My whole body jerks around him.

The aftershocks of my orgasm are still there, meaner now, tangled up with the hot unbearable reality of him finishing inside me. My nails dig into his shoulders. My thighs shake. I make some ruined sound into his mouth that I would hate if I had enough space left in me to hate anything properly.

The bond flared so hard it almost blinded me. Cassie. Love first, always, bright and fierce and mine and so, so wrong right then. Then everything else went with it before I could stop it. Pleasure. Shame. Fullness. The awful intimate fact of another man inside me, coming inside me, while I was still lit up and open and too far gone to hold anything back from the bond. It all tore out of me raw. No, no no no, and love answered back anyway. Love and concern and that horrible impossible tenderness that never stopped, even when I wanted it to. The shape of her turned toward me so sharply I could have cried from it. I almost did.

He was still inside me when the world came back. Not all at once. Pieces first. The lamp. The gold stripe of city light on the carpet. My dress on the floor. His shirt hanging open. My own breath, ugly and thin. His hand still at my back. The hot wet fullness inside me beginning to change from abstract to physical. My stomach flipped. He broke the kiss at last and looked at me. I looked back because I couldn’t seem to do anything else. My forehead was still touching his. My hands were still caught in his shoulders. My whole body trembled in ugly little pulses left over after too much pleasure. He did not look wrecked. Flushed, yes. Warmer. Mouth darker. Eyes heavier. But not wrecked. Not soft. Not dazed in the way boys get dazed when they think coming inside you means the moment now belongs to them in some accidental emotional way. He looked satisfied.

That was worse.

His thumb moved once against my back, not soothing, just there. “You feel better,” he said quietly, and it landed like a slap. Not because he was wrong. Because he wasn’t. My face burned so fast I wanted to claw it off. He felt the change in me immediately. Of course he did. He shifted just enough to look down between us, then back up, one hand sliding from my back to my waist like we were already past the part where he needed to be careful with me. I hated that too. I hated that he was acting like this was settled. I hated that my body was still warm and loose and stupid from coming so hard I’d almost lost my mind. I hated the wet heat inside me, the slow beginning trickle of it, the fact that I knew exactly what that meant now. I hated the bond. I hated myself. I hated that Cassie was still there, still loving me through it, while I sat in another man’s lap and felt filthy all the way through.

I moved to get off him and his hand closed on my hip. Not rough, not enough to hurt, enough. “Wait.” The word was soft. I froze anyway. His fingers spread over the curve of my hip and held me there while his eyes stayed on my face. There was no panic in him, no little-boy uncertainty, no reach for a joke, no reach for comfort. He was already too sure of himself for any of that. “I have to…” I started, and didn’t even know how to finish it. Move. Clean up. Throw up. Cry. Call Cassie. Set the room on fire. He shifted his hand from my hip to my jaw, two fingers under my chin, and tilted my face back toward him when I tried to look away. “Don’t,” he said. Heat climbed up my neck. Don’t what. Don’t move, don’t flinch, don’t go ugly on him now that the room was mine again and I had to live in it. His gaze dropped once to my mouth, then came back to my eyes. “That face.”

I jerked my chin out of his hand. “Don’t do that.”

His mouth curved a little. Not kind. Not cruel either. Just knowing. “Do what.”

“Act like you know me.”

His eyes stayed on mine. “I know enough.”

My stomach dropped, fast enough to make me hate myself for how quickly it landed, because yes, he did. He knew I had come apart in his lap. He knew I was sitting there shaking and overheated and full of him and already trying to crawl away from what it meant. He knew I had wanted out of myself badly enough to let him do exactly what he wanted with me. He knew the exact shape of my vulnerability because I had just given it to him with my whole body.

I finally got off him. My knees nearly buckled when my feet hit the floor. The room tilted for half a second, not badly, just enough to make me put a hand on the mattress before I straightened. Warmth slipped down the inside of my thigh immediately, slow and humiliating and real, and I closed my eyes against it. The bond pulsed. Cassie, love so fierce it hurt, concern sharper now, something else under it too, something like grief or fear or the beginning of both. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear her feeling any of this. I pressed one hand flat to my stomach like that could somehow hold me in. It didn’t. Nothing did.

Behind me, the bed shifted softly. He stood. I heard fabric, buttons maybe, the quiet sounds of a man who did not feel wrecked enough by what had just happened to need a minute before becoming elegant again. Of course. My bra was somewhere. My dress was on the floor. My panties were half down one leg. I looked at the dark silk twisted on the carpet and felt a fresh wave of disgust hit so hard it almost made me dizzy. I did this. I wanted this. I let him. And for a little while, gods help me, it worked. That was the part that made me feel sick. Not that it happened. That it worked. A whole hour, maybe not even that, with less ache in me, less noise, less Cassie-shaped emptiness eating at the middle of everything. Just heat and body and the bright mindless relief of not being myself for a little while.

I wrapped my arms around myself because suddenly I didn’t know what else to do with them.

“Don’t hide now,” he said.

I turned so fast it was almost ugly. He was standing a few feet away, shirt half-buttoned, watching me with that same composure that had gotten me into the car in the first place. His hair was a little wrecked now. There was a red line at his throat where I’d bitten him. That was all. He looked good. Better, if anything, like he’d settled deeper into himself. I despised him for that too. “I’m not hiding.”

His eyes moved over me once. The bra hanging loose. One stockinged foot still tangled in the silk of my underwear. My arms tight across my middle like I could make myself smaller by wanting hard enough. That small almost-smile again. “Of course not.”

My face burned. Cassie hit the bond again and this time the love in it was so strong it nearly folded me. I could feel her trying to reach me through whatever she was feeling on her end, trying to steady me, trying to love me hard enough to bridge something neither of us seemed able to cross that night. The shame got teeth. What if I’d ruined it now. What if I’d ruined myself. What if I’d gone too far somewhere invisible and now I was standing in a hotel room half-dressed and dripping another man down my thigh and I was not worthy of her anymore. The thought landed and kept landing. My stomach turned over hard.

I bent, grabbed my dress, dragged the silk up too fast and too crooked and didn’t even care that I was wrinkling it. My hands were shaking. I hated that he could probably see that. He said my name just once. “Mira.”

I looked up.

He had buttoned enough of his shirt to look dangerous again instead of bare. His cuff was still undone. His mouth still a little swollen. He looked like the kind of man who had never once confused sex with softness unless it suited him. “I’m not one of your boys,” he said.

I went very still.

The room sharpened around the words. He watched me take them in, watched the way they landed. There was nothing accidental in his face now, nothing loose. He knew exactly what he was saying. Exactly what drawer he was opening in me.

My throat hurt. “Excuse me.”

“You heard me.”

I had. Not one of your boys. Not Nate. Not Friday. Not some eager human regular grateful to be chosen and stupid enough to turn routine into hope. My pulse went hot and ugly in my wrists. I should have laughed at him. I should have told him he was awfully confident for a man who had just met me. I should have left. Instead I stood there with my dress crushed in my fists and felt the awful truth of it hit where it was meant to hit.

He knew exactly who I was.

Not the titles. Not the public version. Not just Eversea or the princess or the girl in the perfect dress. He knew what kind of pattern I was in. He knew I’d had others. He knew enough to separate himself from them on purpose. That should have terrified me more than it did. It did terrify me. It did something worse too, because some broken, humiliated part of me liked hearing it. Liked that he thought he was different. Liked that he said it like he expected me to agree. I hated myself all over again.

His gaze dropped to the silk bunched in my hands, then to my face. “Get dressed.”

The words were calm. Not caring. Not kind. Just a direction. My whole body reacted before my pride caught up. That was its own humiliation. I yanked the dress up over my head too fast. The silk snagged. My hair got caught. My earring pulled. I swore under my breath and fixed it with angry hands that were still not steady. Warmth slipped down the inside of my thigh again. I went cold with shame.

His eyes stayed on me. Not helping. Not looking away. Not giving me the mercy of pretending this wasn’t happening. It wasn’t aftercare. It wasn’t tenderness. It wasn’t even cruelty yet. It was worse. It was being seen messy and left there.

The bond pulsed with love so hard my eyes stung. Cassie. My wife. My girl. Still there. Still turning toward me. Still loving me through it. And all I could think was that if she saw me right then, really saw me, saw the way I was dressing too fast and hating myself and still half-throbbing from how good it felt, she would know exactly what I’d become.

No.

That wasn’t fair. That wasn’t true. That was the shame talking. It didn’t matter. It felt true.

By the time I got the dress back over my hips and dragged the zipper up with clumsy fingers, I was breathing too hard again. Not from pleasure now. From the ugly after of it. From all my thoughts slamming back into place at once, full Mira back and furious and raw and humiliated enough to want to skin myself alive. He was still watching. One cuff done now. The other in his fingers.

“Better,” he said.

I stared at him. Not a thank you. Not are you okay. Not stay. Not go. Just better, like I had been restored to the version of myself he preferred to speak to.

Something hot and mean flashed through me. Good. Anger. Better than drowning. “Don’t,” I said.

He tilted his head slightly. “Don’t what.”

I laughed once, sharp as glass. “Pretend that was for me.”

His mouth curved again. Small. “It wasn’t.”

The honesty hit harder than comfort would have. Of course it wasn’t for me. It was for him. For the room. For the line he was already drawing. For the difference he wanted marked between himself and the others. I could feel it now, even through the shame, the game starting under the surface, the claim in the calm, the way he had already begun separating himself from the boys, the girls, the pattern, the mess. Making a place for himself above it instead of inside it. And the worst part was that I could feel how vulnerable I was to exactly that right then. Because I was hurting. Because I was ashamed. Because it had been good. Because for a few minutes I wasn’t empty.

The bond hummed with Cassie’s love and my own self-loathing until I couldn’t tell which one was making it harder to stand there. I bent for my shoes because I needed the movement, the grounding, the indignity of doing something practical before I came apart in some even uglier way. One shoe, then the other.

When I straightened, he was close again.

Not touching. Just there.

I could smell him. Whiskey. Skin. That darker heat under everything. It made my stomach tighten in a way I resented with my whole soul. His fingers brushed one strand of hair off my shoulder, light, brief, deliberate enough that every nerve under my skin noticed anyway.

“This face,” he said quietly, “you lose it when you stop apologizing to yourself.”

I froze.

My breath caught halfway in. There it was. Not full cruelty. Not yet. Just enough. Enough to get under the skin. Enough to make the next time hook deeper. Enough to make some part of me want to prove him right, or wrong, or both.

My face burned again. I should have left. I should have. Instead I stood there and let those words hit places already raw.

The bond pulsed with Cassie’s love. Mine. Home. Wife. Everything. And I stood in another man’s room in a wrinkled dress with my mind finally all the way back online and knew, with sickening clarity, that whatever else that night was, it had given him exactly what he needed too. A crack. Something to get his fingers into.

He stepped back first.

That somehow felt like the final humiliation.

“Go home, Mira.”

Not kind. Not dismissive. Certain. Like he already knew there would be a next time. That certainty crawled under my skin and stayed there.

I picked up my phone with hands that still were not steady. The screen was full of Rori and the bond was full of Cassie and I was full of shame and the fading ghost of pleasure and the awful cold knowledge that part of me already hated how much I was going to remember this. I walked to the door.

My hand was on the knob when he spoke again.

“Friday is for the boy.”

I went still.

The room went very quiet behind me. Heat flashed through me so fast it was almost clean. I turned my head just enough to look back. He was standing where I’d left him, one hand in his pocket, shirt buttoned now, cuff neat, face unreadable.

He knew.

Of course he knew.

Not everything. Enough.

His gaze held mine. “Try not to confuse your habits.”

My stomach dropped. Not because I understood all of it. Because I understood enough. The claim. The line. The separation. The assumption that he got to name the shape of my life now that he had been inside it once.

I should have told him to go to hell. I should have.

Instead I opened the door and left before I could say anything that sounded weaker than silence.

The hallway was cooler. The carpet softer. The elevator too bright. My reflection in the mirrored wall made me flinch that time. Dress back on. Mouth still dark. Hair worse. Eyes brighter and uglier and too much like a girl who got exactly what she wanted for ten minutes and now had to live with herself after.

The bond wrapped around me before the elevator reached the lobby.

Cassie.

Love. Worry. The shape of her still reaching. I nearly folded in half from it.

I love you, I sent back, wrecked and immediate and true enough to hurt.

Love answered at once.

That almost made it worse.

Because I did. Because she did. Because I still left that room with another man inside my skin and his words under it.

The lobby doors opened. Gold light. Marble. Rain smell at the glass. I got my phone out with shaking fingers and texted Rori before I could think better of it.

Coming back.

Then I walked out into the wet midnight air feeling like I’d been hollowed out and filled back in with the wrong thing.