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Caine looks like he can’t quite decide if Jupiter is messing with him.
“Children dress up in costumes and beg strangers for candy,” he says slowly. “And everybody’s fine with this?”
“It’s not only children.”
“Adults dress up in costumes and beg strangers for candy, too?”
“I’d give you some candy if you came to my door,” Jupiter says, walking her fingers up Caine’s bare chest. “Or maybe you could give me something.”
“I’d give Your Majesty anything you wanted,” Caine says, with a simple sincerity that takes her breath away.
They’re in bed, but they’re also tired after a long day with Jupiter’s family playing beloved daughter and her hat-wearing not-very-smiley but-definitely-still-devoted boyfriend, so things trailed off after some friendly making out (on both their parts) and light groping (that one was mostly Jupiter). Then Caine went to brush his teeth, and Jupiter checked her email on her not-space tablet, and that’s when she saw the invitation to Maddie’s party.
Now she’s trying to explain Halloween to Caine.
“It’s a night you can be whoever you want, without judgement. Haven’t you ever wanted to be somebody else?”
“If I wasn’t a defective splice who was rejected by the other pups, sold to the Legion at a loss, and trained as a tracker in a last-ditch attempt to find a use in me, I would never have met Your Majesty.”
“So that’s a maybe, then?”
Caine wraps his arms around her, cradling Jupiter back against his chest. His lips brush the top of her head. “My life is already so much more than I ever dared to dream.”
“You and me both,” Jupiter says, squeezing his thigh. His warm, solid, nearly-naked thigh. Is she really that tired?
Yes, she decides a moment later, she is. Being around her family can be exhausting at the best of times, and that’s before you throw in all of them watching Caine like they know he’s about to screw something up and they’re looking forward to finding out what it is. Jupiter dated some real losers before him.
“Let’s pretend the answer is yes,” she says, bringing up a Halloween website on her tablet. “Ooh, or we could do a couples’ costume.”
“We would be in the same costume?” Caine says, and frowns. “Like when people do plays and they’re a cow?”
“When did you see— nevermind,” Jupiter says. “No, our costumes would match. Like you’d be the cop and I’d be the prisoner, or you’d be the cowboy and I’d be the saloon girl, or you’d be a devil and I’d be an angel. Or maybe it should be the other way around,” she says, stroking one of Caine’s feathers softly. “Pity these aren’t white. Throw a halo on your head, and everybody who saw you would fall to their knees.”
“Including Your Majesty?”
“What would you do if I said yes?”
“I think there’s some bleach under the bathroom sink.”
Jupiter giggles and clicks to the next page. Pirates? Vampires? Alice and the Mad Hatter?
“Your Majesty said it’s a night to be whoever you want, right?”
“Right,” Jupiter says, looking at a sexy fireman’s costume. Caine shirtless and smudged with soot? Yeah, that works for her.
“So can’t I just be me?”
“You without the hats and bulky sweaters?” Jupiter says, thinking about it. “I suppose we could tell everybody you’re an angel werewolf. A werewolf angel? What kind of an afterlife do shapeshifters believe in, anyway?”
“Perhaps I could be a lycantant splice who was given cybernetic wings as a member of an elite fighting squad?”
“Well that just sounds silly,” Jupiter says, and kisses Caine when he rumbles.
A week later, they come home from a long day’s cleaning (Jupiter) and lurking (Caine) to find two packages on the doorstep. Jupiter picks up the large box, much to Caine’s amusement, and leaves the little one for him.
“Remember that fairytale I told you about once, with Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf? Since you didn’t seem fussed about our costumes, I decided we could be a modern version of that.”
Caine shows his fangs. “I’m the Big Bad Wolf?”
“You’re my big bad wolf, baby,” Jupiter says over her shoulder, walking into the bedroom. She dumps the box in the middle of the bed and pulls a red velvet cape out, followed by a furry grey hoodie. The hoodie has ears, but it’s not like Caine’s going to need them. “I thought you could wear this with those jeans I like, the ones that…“
Jupiter gestures.
“‘Hug my thighs like a lover’?”
Jupiter clears her throat. “I was in a poetic mood that day, apparently.”
“I believe there was also something about how fine they make my ass look.”
“So!” Jupiter says loudly. “Those jeans, and your gravboots, and you’re all set.”
“I can do that, Your Majesty.”
Caine holds the hoodie in front of himself, glancing in the mirror. At some point, Jupiter realised that Caine takes pride in looking good for her, so she made sure she got a hoodie that would fit the breadth of his shoulders, but not be too loose everywhere else. Also, it stops a couple of inches below Caine’s waistband, because there’s no point hiding the good stuff.
Caine nods, and then he turns towards Jupiter for her approval.
“My, what big ears you have,” she says with a smile.
“All the better to hear you with?” Caine says, adorably uncertain.
Jupiter squeaks and throws her arms around him. “You remembered!”
“I was listening to Your Majesty’s story, though I admit I was a little distracted.”
Because Jupiter had been curled in his arms and stroking Caine lightly — way too lightly for him to actually get off — for about half an hour at that point. They’d been watching Once Upon a Time, and Jupiter was telling Caine about Earth fairytales during the commercial breaks, partly because she thought he’d find them interesting, but mostly because she liked talking about normal things as he got more and more worked up.
He makes such pretty sounds when he’s desperate.
Caine murmurs, “Is Your Majesty going to tell me what big teeth I have, too?”
“That’s for later,” she says with a wink. “Oh, and one other thing…” Jupiter pulls a strip of brown fur out of the box. “Every wolf needs a tail, right?”
Caine looks at the tail dubiously. Jupiter can’t really blame him — it looks cheap and nasty, which is is.
“Or…” she says.
“Or?” he says.
One of these days, Jupiter will get better at talking about this stuff, but apparently today is not that day. She gestures at the small package Caine brought in and says, “Or you could wear that. If you want to.”
Caine peels back the tape, then pulls out a small teal box. It’s similar to the one his collar came in, and he looks at Jupiter curiously before taking off the lid.
This tail looks almost real: full and fluffy before narrowing down to a point. The fur is various shades of tan and grey, and attached to one end is a small glass plug.
Caine sniffs the tail delicately.
Jupiter’s biting her lip so hard, she’s probably going to have holes tomorrow. She’ll try to eat her cereal and the milk will fall out of her mouth.
“What do I do with this part?” Caine says, pointing.
Jupiter mumbles something unintelligible. She thinks it was the word radish.
“Your Majesty?”
“It’s—“
“Oh, I see,” Caine says at the same time.
“Only if you want to,” Jupiter says softly.
Caine takes his clothes off. He looks at his ass in the mirror, and then he looks at the tail, and then he reaches into the bedside drawer where they keep their supplies. He slicks up the plug and pushes it carefully between his legs.
Oh my god, Jupiter thinks. Don’t faint now. Caine would probably rush her to the ER wearing the tail, and that would be so difficult to explain to her mother.
Caine stands up straight again, looking over his shoulder. He shifts his weight, and his tail swings a little. He rocks from side to side, and his tail swings more. When he shakes his ass, the whole thing jumps around.
Caine beams at Jupiter. “Your Majesty gives the best presents.”
“Oh,” Jupiter says, clutching her hands together in her lap. “I’m glad you like it.”
Caine twitches his ass some more, fascinated.
“Have you always wanted a tail?”
“I’ve never really thought about it. Domestic and pleasure splices frequently have tails, for aesthetic reasons, but military splices never do.”
“You’re streamlined,” Jupiter says.
“I’ve never seen a wolf splice with one, actually. Nobody’s splicing lycantants for seneschals or household staff — we don’t have the right temperament.”
“Do they splice you for pleasure, then? Because they really, really should.”
Caine ducks his head, smiling to himself.
“Lycantant pleasure splices are rare. They have to splice us as aggressive loners so we don’t mind being without a pack, and that in turn means we only appeal to a certain kind of Entitled. A cruel kind. We end up getting accidentally maimed or killed a lot.”
Jupiter sighs. “Every single thing I hear about Entitleds just makes me hate them more.”
“Your Majesty is proof that not all Entitleds are bad.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking right now,” Jupiter says lightly, making it a joke, but there’s things that go through her head sometimes when she looks at him like this, when he’s so open and vulnerable with her, and all she wants to do is claim him as her own. In every way she can.
Caine is shaking his ass in the mirror again.
Jupiter lurches to her feet. “I’m going to go have a shower.”
“All right, Your Majesty,” Caine says absently. He reaches behind himself and strokes his tail.
Jupiter slams the bathroom door shut.
Caine glances up when Jupiter walks into the room. He growls, low in his throat.
Yeah, that’s the reaction she was hoping for.
Jupiter smooths her blue gingham dress down. It falls to mid-thigh, and she’s wearing over-the-knee socks and cute little heeled maryjanes. She pulls the red cloak over her shoulders and puts her wallet and phone in the picnic basket she’s using as a purse.
“Ready to go?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Caine stands and turns to put his space tablet on the table, and his tail swings into view.
“How…” Jupiter says. She hadn’t gotten around to explaining that part.
“Did you know the base and the tail have embedded magnets?” Caine says, and Jupiter nods. “Turns out, they’re very strong. They even work through fabric.”
“So you’re, like. Still wearing it?”
“You mean inside me?” Caine says, guilelessly.
Jupiter swallows. “Yes.”
Caine’s lashes dip downwards. “Perhaps Your Majesty would like to check for herself.”
Jupiter strolls across the room, her heels echoing off the floorboards. Caine straightens unconsciously, clasping his hands behind him like a soldier awaiting inspection.
Jupiter puts one palm on his waist, then runs it back over the hard curve of his ass. When she cups the base of Caine’s tail, she can feel the flat glass disk beneath his jeans.
Jupiter squeezes, and Caine whimpers softly. Damn, that’s hotter than it has any right to be.
Jupiter twines her free hand up the back of Caine’s neck and pulls him down for a kiss. Caine makes a startled moan, and then he opens his mouth for her, letting her take whatever she chooses, as sweet and giving as always. Jupiter walks them backwards towards the front door, because she’s half-inclined to push Caine onto the floor and see what other sounds she can coax out of him as she plays with his tail.
His tail. Attached to a plug. That’s nestled inside him.
Jupiter yanks open the front door. “Let’s go before I do something we both enjoy, like… hello, Mrs Lieberwitz!”
“Hello, Jupiter,” Mrs Lieberwitz says, twisting her key in the door opposite. “Hello, Caine.”
Caine nods and says, “Ma’am.”
Mrs Lieberwitz had looked at Caine suspiciously when they moved in, especially when she found out he and Jupiter weren’t married. “We don’t like trouble in this building,” she said to Jupiter, as Caine went downstairs for another pile of boxes. Mrs Lieberwitz was wrapped in a houserobe so shiny, Jupiter was scared she was going to accidentally set fire to it with her cigarette.
Mrs Novak, standing the next doorway down, had nodded. “And that man looks like trouble with a capital T.”
Only in the good way, Jupiter thought, but what she said was, “He’s a sweetheart, I promise.”
“Hmph,” Mrs Lieberwitz said. “We’ll see,” but the following week, Mrs Novak’s good-for-nothing grandson tried to kick her door down in the middle of the night for her social security cheque. Caine dealt with it like it was nothing, and now all the little old ladies in the building adore him and bake him cookies and flutter their falsies at him as he moves their heavy, old-world furniture around. Jupiter suspects some of them spy on him as he lifts weights on the roof, too, but if Caine can give them a momentary thrill, what’s the harm? When Jupiter’s eighty, she’ll be lustily watching Caine work out, too.
“Don’t the two of you look nice,” Mrs Lieberwitz says now. “Of course, in my day a skirt that short meant you were a streetwalker. But times have changed, I suppose.”
“A streetwalker?” Caine says, frowning. “But doesn’t everybody here walk on the—“
“And you have a great night!” Jupiter says. “Don’t put any rat poison in the candy.”
Mrs Lieberwitz snorts. “Like I can afford rat poison on what the government is giving me,” she says. “Razor blades, maybe,” but Jupiter can see the big bowl on the table behind her, filled with candy for the neighbourhood kids.
Their little secondhand Civic is down in the parking lot. Caine gets into the driver’s seat carefully, then shifts around before sitting back. He makes a sound that curls low in Jupiter’s belly, and she grips the picnic basket in her hands.
“Is it the tail?” Caine says softly. “Or is it what it’s attached to?”
Jupiter can’t quite meet his gaze. “We’re going to be late.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Caine says. He’s smiling to himself as he puts the car in gear.
Maddie lives in a big old farmhouse about an hour out of the city. A swarm of bees starts circling around them as they get out of the car, and Jupiter tries subtly to wave them off.
“Jupiter!” Maddie says, as they walk up the front porch.
Jupiter gives Maddie a long hug. For a moment, feeling Maddie’s familiar arms around her, Jupiter wishes she could tell her everything. About space. About Caine. About that whole Recurrence of a Dead Queen thing. Jupiter’s life has become amazing over the last couple of months, but it’s also become lonely. And she really hates lying to her friends.
Jupiter gives Maddie a final squeeze and steps back. “This is Caine.”
“I can’t believe how real those fangs look,” Maddie says, checking Caine out. “And your tail is so life-like!”
“I know, right?” Jupiter says. She reaches up and stokes the sensitive tip of Caine’s ear, and he swallows. “It’s almost like he’s a real wolf.”
When they go inside, Maddie’s husband Johnny is bringing in a big platter of burgers and hot dogs from the grill. Soon Jupiter’s surrounded by people: old classmates who want to catch up, and local pals she hasn’t seen for ages. She chats to her friends as she fixes a burger for herself and one for Caine, then goes to find him. He’s staring at the dessert table.
“Tiny cakes!” Caine says, when she reaches him. “Do you think I could take some now?”
“Sure,” Jupiter says.
Caine fills his plate, then reconsiders and slowly puts one back. “Is this still too many?” he whispers.
Jupiter looks down at the half a dozen cupcakes circling his burger. “We’ll pretend they’re for both of us.”
“Okay,” Caine says happily.
A lot of things have changed since high school. They’re older, they’re (hopefully) wiser, and there’s a lot more wedding bands than Jupiter remembers from even a year ago. A dozen small children are running underfoot, too.
Yeah, a lot of things have changed — but some things haven’t. The party soon separates, the women sitting on the back porch or playing with their kids in the garden, the men huddling around Johnny’s fixer-upper car. It’s one of those huge old things with round headlights, and he’s been Real Close to getting it working for six months now.
Caine is standing down there with the men, holding the bottle of beer that somebody handed him. Johnny spirited him away soon after they finished eating, with a “Jupe said you were ex-military. You must be good with cars, right?”
Jupiter wasn’t sure how the one followed the other, but Caine had nodded. “Not cars, but I know a bit about engines. I could take a look.” He turned towards Jupiter. “If Your— Jupiter wouldn’t mind.”
“Your Jupiter,” she said, leaning over to kiss him. “I like the sound of that.”
From her seat up on the porch, Jupiter watches Caine bend over the engine. Really, those are the best jeans. She should buy him half a dozen pairs and throw out all his other ones. Caine peers at this and that, then says, “What happens when you start her up?”
Johnny turns the key. The engine splutters.
“Yeah, it looks like the…” Caine says, turning towards Johnny. The rest of his words are lost on the wind. “Give me a bit.”
Caine peels off his hoodie and drapes it casually over his shoulders, hiding the shape of his folded wings under his tank top, and leans in with a wrench. He spends a long while fiddling with something, then indicates Johnny should try again.
The engine splutters some more, then slowly catches. It sounds like an asthmatic lion chasing down a very sprightly antelope, but it’s running.
“Good with his hands,” Maddie says, wiggling her eyebrows, and Jupiter laughs.
“You have no idea.”
Maddie leans in. “Yeah?”
“He’s…” Jupiter says, and pauses. “You know how there are some men who are pleasant enough out of bed, but once you get in there, it’s like you’re not a person any more? Just body parts?” Maddie nods. “He’s like the complete opposite of that. After all those terrible men I’ve been with, my stupid broken compass, well. It’s nice,” she finishes. “Really, really nice.”
The two of them watch Caine pointing at something in the engine, the setting sun gleaming off his broad, freckled shoulders and making the golden hairs in his beard glow. Johnny nods, then claps Caine on the back companionably.
“Also, he’s built like a fucking mack truck,” Maddie says.
“Doesn’t hurt,” Jupiter says, and the two of them clink bottles.
The sun is completely gone by the time Caine walks up onto the porch.
“Everything okay?” Jupiter says.
Caine nods. He looks around, then sits down beside Jupiter’s seat.
“Oh, no,” Maddie says. “Let me get Johnny to get a chair for you. We have some more under the house.”
“I’m good,” Caine says. “But thank you.”
“Okay so,” Jupiter’s high school friend Sasha says, getting some more beers out of the cooler and passing them around. “Did I tell you all about Angela? She’s pregnant again.”
“Again!” Jupiter says. “Didn’t she just have twins?”
“Yeah, and Chris has been away a lot on business this year. A lot,” Sasha says. “If you get what I mean.”
Jupiter gasps.
Caine leans his head against Jupiter’s knee. She reaches down and absently pets the velvet nap of his hair.
“I mean, I don’t know if I can blame her,” Sasha says. “Have you met that husband of hers? That man has the personality of a block of cheese, and I’m not talking like a nice gouda or a camembert here.”
“Yeah, but cheating…” Jupiter says.
“A woman got needs,” Sasha says.
Jupiter can feel Caine relaxing beneath her hand. She wraps her palm around the back of his neck, not sure if he’d want her to do this here, and his head drops on a sigh. His thumb is rubbing tiny circles around her anklebone.
Half an hour of gossip later, Caine rouses himself. He smiles up at Jupiter and mouths, “Bathroom.”
Jupiter feels warmth in her heart as she watches him heading back into the house. Warmth in other places, too, seeing his ass move and the way his tail is swinging behind him. When she sits back in her chair, she realises Maddie and Sasha have been staring after Caine, too.
She’s worried they’ve realised there’s something a little unusual about her boyfriend, but then Sasha laughs, self-consciously, and says, “Wherever did you find him?”
“He rescued me from a fire,” Jupiter says. “Kind of.”
Sasha fans herself with her hand. “Note to self: set something on fire. Maybe my pants.”
Jupiter laughs.
“Seriously, we’re so glad for you, Jupe,” Maddie says. “After all those losers you dated, you deserve somebody good.”
“For real,” Sasha says.
“Aww, you guys,” Jupiter says. “Group hug!”
By the time Caine returns, Sasha’s playing with her daughter in the garden, and Maddie’s busy hostessing. He looks at the empty chairs, then sits down on the porch beside Jupiter again.
Jupiter leans over to kiss him. “Is your tail getting uncomfortable?”
“No, Your Majesty,” Caine says. “That was not why I needed to use the facilities.”
“Good,” Jupiter says, standing. She holds out her hand to Caine and says, “I want to show you something.”
She leads him up to the third floor, where at the end of the hallway is a small bedroom with an even smaller balcony. Jupiter pushes the door open and steps out into the cool night air.
The sky is spread above them like a blanket scattered with diamonds.
“I used to come up here when I was in high school. Away from the lights of the city, it was the best place to see the stars.”
She leans back against Caine, and he wraps his arms around her.
“I never thought I’d have the chance to see it up close one day. And I never thought I’d meet somebody like you. I don’t know what’s more amazing.”
Jupiter hesitates, but it’s long past time to say what’s in her heart.
“You’re the love of my life. I know you can’t say it back, and that’s okay. I just wanted you to know.”
Caine breathes deeply as he scents her. “So that’s what it is,” he says. His voice is filled with wonderment.
“You can smell love?”
“I can smell it on you,” he says. “Actually, you’ve been smelling this way for a while. I just didn’t know what it was.”
Caine goes down to one knee, and Jupiter turns around. He bends his neck gracefully, like a knight swearing fealty, then leans forwards until his forehead is pressing against her chest.
“Jupiter,” he says, like her name alone is everything.
She puts her finger under his chin, lifting his head, and kisses him.
There’s a porch swing in the corner. Jupiter settles down between Caine’s legs, and they relax together, swinging gently as they watch the sky above.
Jupiter’s pretty sure when Aunt Nino said she was destined for great love, she didn’t mean with a half-human, half-wolf splice with aftermarket wings and a penchant for cake. But she would’ve been wrong.
Jupiter finds Caine’s hand and puts it on her knee. Caine’s thumb skims up the inside of her thigh, feather-light.
He makes a questioning sound.
Jupiter tips her head back on his shoulder. “Yes,” she says, and Caine presses the pad of his thumb between her thighs. He rubs her slowly as Jupiter sighs. Caine pushes his other hand up over her ribcage, cupping her breast as he presses kisses beneath her ear, and Jupiter arches languidly against him. She feels like she could stay like this forever, alone with nothing but the stars and the slow heat of Caine’s hands on her body.
The door to the bedroom opens. Caine’s fingers are suddenly in folded her lap, sweet and chaste.
“Hey,” Jupiter says quietly, as Maddie comes out into the moonlight. “I was just showing Caine the amazing view. Remember when we used to come up here and look for comets?”
“You used to look for comets,” Maddie says. “I just liked using the cold as an excuse to get Johnny to put his arms around me.”
“Well, it worked,” Jupiter says, and Maddie smiles.
“The party’s winding down, so I’m just looking for stragglers before we turn in.”
“Sorry, we can go,” Jupiter says, but Maddie’s already waving her off.
“You know you’re always welcome.”
“Caine’s exhausted, poor thing,” Jupiter says. “Long day, long drive.”
Caine looks at Jupiter, and then he looks at Maddie. He fakes the fakest yawn that was ever faked.
“So exhausted,” Jupiter says, petting his thigh.
“Stay as long as you like,” Maddie says. “That ol’ swing’s seen a lot worse than cuddling. In fact, didn’t you and Tommy Morelli used to come up here the summer before senior year and…“
Jupiter coughs. Loudly.
“…look at the stars together?”
“Yes,” Jupiter says. “We used to look at the stars.”
“Goodnight, Jupiter,” Maddie says. “Goodnight, Jupiter’s terrible-at-faking-yawns boyfriend.”
“Goodnight, Maddie,” Caine says, sounding quite awake, as he is.
Maddie chuckles and pulls the door shut.
“Tommy Morelli?” Caine says, nudging her with his nose.
“My first real boyfriend, I guess? He had half a dozen siblings, and I shared a room with Mama and Nino, so we became very fond of visiting Maddie’s grandparents that summer. They used to go to bed at 9pm and let us teenagers have the run of the place, which was pretty cool of them. They must’ve known the kinds of things we got up to.”
Caine is pressing soft kisses to her collarbone. “And what kinds of things did you get up to?”
“Exactly the kinds of things you’re thinking we did.”
“So very bad sex?”
“Because all sex before you was bad?” Jupiter says, laughing, and then she thinks about it. “Well, it certainly wasn’t as good as sex with you. But nothing has been.”
She can feel Caine smiling against her skin. “That’s not what I meant, Your Majesty, but thank you. I just remember what it’s like to be young and, uh, horny, as you would say, and having no real idea what I was doing.”
“Yeah, there was a lot of fumbling. And three months later he cheated on me with a cheerleader with a huge rack,” Jupiter says on a sigh. “To be fair, she was also really smart — she ended up at MIT on some kind of scholarship or something — but it was probably the rack that won him over. Tommy bought me a push-up bra for my birthday. With hindsight, I should’ve seen that as a clue: I love you, here’s something to make you totally different!”
“A push-up bra?”
Jupiter gestures. “It shoves everything in and up.”
“And this is considered sexy?” Caine says.
Jupiter lifts one of his hands to her mouth, kissing his palm.
“Who was your first time with?” she says. “Somebody in the creche?”
“Oh, no,” Caine says. “You don’t fool around with your littermates. That would be like you and Vl—“
“Don’t say it.”
“It was in the Legion. I never really fit into my squad, so I used to spend a lot of time in the grounds around the training facility, supposedly honing my tracking skills but really just keeping out of everybody’s way. One day, far out near the fences where nobody ever goes, I ran into another trainee. She was spliced with something like a leopard, and she’d been rejected by her pride, too.”
“Why?”
“Too many spots.”
Jupiter looks at Caine, trying to work out if he’s serious.
“There’s a certain way every splice is supposed to look. An ideal form. But they say splicing is more an art than a science, and sometimes things go wrong no matter how hard the splicer tries. Thea had so many spots, she was nearly black all over, the same way I turned out half-albino. Nobody really understands why.”
“And her pride rejected her for it?”
“When you look wrong, it doesn’t take much for people to decide you are wrong. Little things that would be brushed off as mistakes in anybody else become proof you never should’ve been allowed to leave the creche.”
Caine breathes quietly, and then he wraps his arms more firmly around Jupiter’s waist.
“I don’t want to overstate our relationship. We weren’t dating, the way you would use the word. We barely knew each other. And I became certain, afterwards, that she deliberately sought me out because she thought I could help her.”
“What did she want your help with?”
“She ran away. One of my first Legion assignments was to track her down, actually.”
“And?”
Caine shrugs. “I couldn’t find her.”
“Mm-hmm,” Jupiter says.
“I really did try. As is typical for new trackers, I had a little drone camera following me, and my trainer could find no fault with either my techniques or my methods. Thea was just very good at hiding her tracks.”
“Perhaps somebody who knew a lot about tracking gave her some tips.”
“Perhaps,” Caine says, smiling slightly when she looks back at him. Jupiter leans further into the cradle of his arms.
“The night before Thea left, she kissed me. I suspected, by then, what our friendship was really about, but she was nice, and I think she genuinely liked me on some level, and, well. Like I said: young and horny.”
“Did you go down on her for hours, or did your affection for that come later?”
“I think the whole thing lasted about fifteen minutes,” Caine says with an embarrassed snort. “But I did do that, yes, and she seemed to enjoy it.” He puts his hand on Jupiter’s knee, broad and warm. “Did you like telling Tommy what to do in bed?”
Jupiter tries to think back. It was only seven or eight years ago, but it feels like another lifetime.
“Kind of, I guess? There were certain things I knew I enjoyed — being on top, holding his wrists down on the pillow, telling him to lick this or touch that. I don’t think he was really into it, but he probably went along with me because, hey, teenage girl willing to have sex with him.” She puts her hand over Caine’s, twining their fingers together. “It wasn’t until I met you that I let myself think about this stuff, really. About how what I want isn’t quite the norm.”
“I bring it out in Your Majesty?”
“God, you really do. You make me feel so turned on and yet so safe at the same time.”
“Safe?” Caine says. “Oh, as a guard?”
“Safe because you never judge me for what I want.”
“Why would I judge Your Majesty for wanting to have sex with me?”
“For the ways I want to have sex with you, sometimes.”
Caine makes a puzzled sound.
Jupiter pushes her foot against the ground. The swing rocks hard beneath them, and Caine’s breath catches against her skin.
“What’s up?” she says lightly.
“When you do that, it’s— my tail, it’s— Your Majesty knows what it’s doing.”
“Rubbing inside you?”
“Yes,” Caine whispers.
Jupiter rocks the swing again.
“Does it feel good?”
Slower, softer. “Yes.”
Jupiter rocks the swing again.
“Can you scent what it does to me thinking about that thing inside you?”
“Yes,” Caine groans, and Jupiter twists her hand in his hair and kisses him. She pulls herself up and over his lap, sitting down on his thighs, catching all the sounds he’s making in her mouth and tasting them on her tongue.
Jupiter unties the laces on the bodice of her dress, and Caine nuzzles his way between her breasts as Jupiter works on his fly.
He’s so warm beneath her hands, so warm and hard and eager. Caine runs his fingers up her thigh and eases her knickers to the side, stroking her gently. She’d only have to shift forwards and she’d be taking him inside, but Jupiter’s never been able to go from zero to sixty with just a couple of kisses.
She strokes Caine’s cheek with the pad of her thumb. “I’m afraid I’m going to need a little more first.”
“Your Majesty should not apologise,” Caine says. “It will be my pleasure.”
There’s no doubt he means it, but a minute later, as Jupiter hooks her knees over his bare shoulders and crosses her ankles in the space between his wings, she thinks that she’s never been with a man who cared so much about her pleasure before. Caine kisses his way along her inner thigh, and then he lifts his head.
Jupiter shifts her hips closer.
Caine grins, but he doesn’t move.
“Caine?”
Caine grins more, waggling his head in the most adorable way.
Jupiter giggles and says, “My, what big teeth you have.”
Caine leans in, murmuring, “All the better to—“ The rest of his sentence is muffled against her.
He licks her slowly as Jupiter rocks up against him, using the momentum of the porch swing. Her arms are stretched along the rear of it, and she leans her head back, watching the stars until Caine makes her soar above them.
“Oh,” she says, arching hard. “Oh, yes.”
Jupiter slides off the chair. She pulls her dress up over her head, and immediately feels Caine’s arms wrap around her waist. His mouth presses kisses across her hips and belly.
Jupiter takes a moment to admire the glory of Caine Wise, kneeling naked in the moonlight, his wings splayed out across the balcony behind him. If she stretches, she can just see the tail resting by his ankle.
“Hi, sweetheart,” she says, stroking his hair.
“Your Majesty,” Caine says, looking up at her with so much tenderness, it takes her breath away.
“You ready?”
Caine sits down, then helps Jupiter climb back into his lap. She shifts her weight a couple of times, working out exactly how to get the chair rocking smoothly.
Jupiter lets the swing do most of the work, pushing Caine inside her, nudging the tail inside him. Mostly, she watches his face in the moonlight and the way the pleasure moves across it, slow and wondrous like an eclipse. It took a long time to convince Caine that his enjoyment mattered to her, that it was as important to her as her own, and she loves how unguardedly he allows himself to experience it now.
When she comes again, it’s more fireflies than fireworks, a heartfelt glow warming her from the inside out.
“My love,” she whispers, tucking her head against his shoulder.
“My queen.”
His wings slowly curve around them both.
The house is dark and still. Jupiter looks at Caine, shirtless and buttoning his jeans.
“We wouldn’t want to wake them,” she says.
Caine sweeps her into his arms. He jumps up over the balcony railing, then glides them down to the garden below.
Jupiter hands him his tank and hoodie, and Caine folds his wings up again before pulling them on. When his head emerges through the fur, Jupiter’s there to kiss him.
Caine makes a quiet, pleased sound.
Jupiter takes his hand as they walk around to where they parked their car. “How’s your tail feeling?”
“It’s fine, Your Majesty, but I’ll probably be ready to remove it when we get home.”
“Sure,” Jupiter says. “No problem.” She twirls her picnic basket in her free hand, trying to seem casual and probably fooling no-one as she adds, “How would you feel about wearing it again sometime?”
“Are we attending another party?”
“No, at home, when it’s just the two of us.”
Caine looks down a moment, and when he looks back, it’s with that lovely shy smile of his. “I could do that for Your Majesty.”
“But would you like to do it?”
“Yes,” Caine says. “I would.”
“So what did you think of your first Halloween?” Jupiter says, as Caine pulls their car out onto the highway.
“It was pretty good,” he says. “Although I should point out that nobody gave me any candy.”
“I gave you all my candy, baby,” Jupiter says, and Caine huffs in amusement.