The Devil's Favourite Obsession

Cixi knew Cassian was making sense for himself. And of course, he has seen every part of her body, and she didn’t understand why she was feeling shy... During their intimacy, she didn’t feel shy, so why was she feeling all of a sudden so conscious... why?

”It will be truly cruel of you not to let me admire your perfect curves, Cixi.” And her cheeks burned.

She let the sheet go.

The cool air hit her skin. Cixi’s hands flew to cover herself instinctively, arms crossing over her chest, knees drawing up.

But Cassian was already lifting her. His arms slid beneath her back and her legs, and he rose from the bed with her cradled against his chest as though she weighed nothing at all.

Cixi grabbed his shoulder with one hand. ”I can walk.”

”I know.”

”Then put me down.”

”No. I know you must be in pain.”

Cixi was taken aback. Was he considering her?... For real?

She looked at his face from below. The jaw. The cheekbones. The dark hair falls across his forehead. From this angle, with the dim lamplight catching the planes of his face, reminding her how perfect he was.

Her heart hammered. She pressed her face against his neck to hide it.

Cassian carried her across the bedroom. His footsteps were light against the marble floor. When they reached the bathroom door, he did not stop. He did not shift her weight to free a hand. He did not even lean forward to turn the handle.

The door opened by itself.

It swung inward slowly, silently, as though an invisible hand had pushed it from the other side.

Cixi’s head snapped up from his shoulder. She blinked and stared at the door. Then at Cassian. Then at the door again.

”How did...”

”You were saying something about superpowers?” he remarked casually.

Before she could respond, the bathroom revealed itself.

Steam. Warm, fragrant, curling through the air like silk ribbons dissolving into nothing.

The gasp arrived in the bathroom with the small, honest unguarded sound of a woman who had not, in any private estimate of her own previous experience of bathrooms, ever seen a bath that had been prepared this way for her, and who could not, in the equally honest estimate of her own previous experience of being prepared for, hide the gasp before it had left her mouth.

”How,” she said, very softly.

”How what, Cixi?”

”How did the bath — when did — Rose petals...? When? Who? I did not see —?” When was the bath prepared? And by whom? She had many questions. And yet she did not have the clean sentence available.

Cassian, who had been watching her face since the gasp had left it, set her, very gently, on her bare feet on the warm stone floor beside the long edge of the bath.

He kept one hand at the small of her back.

”Do you like it?” he asked. ”You are the first woman for whom I have prepared the bath.”

She looked at the rose petals on the water. She looked at the slow, soft curls of steam rising up from the surface. She looked at the long warm length of the bath, and the warm stone floor under her bare feet, and the long quiet panelled walls, and the small careful arrangement of soft folded towels that had been set, by someone, at the long bench beside the bath. She felt, in the private corner of her chest that had spent twenty-three years not being prepared for, the uneven warmth of having been prepared for.

She did not know what to do with it.

She let Cassian guide her, with the slow, patient pressure of his hand at the small of her back, down the two shallow stone steps that led into the long bath.

The water was the exact temperature she had not, until the moment her foot touched it, known a bath was capable of being. The rose petals shifted around her ankles and her calves and her knees as she descended into the water, slow and pale and unconcerned, in the unhurried way of small floating things that had been waiting for her without knowing they had been waiting.

Cassian watched her and then followed her in.

He stepped behind her. He drew her, very gently, against the long warm bare line of his chest, with her back against him and her head leaning into the warm hollow at the curve of his shoulder, and the water rose slowly up around the two of them until it lapped, soft and warm, against her collarbones.

He kissed the side of her neck.

Once. Slow. Considered.

Then he settled himself against her, and rested his mouth at the small private place behind her ear, and spoke very softly against the warm skin there.

”Now ask me what you want to know.

Cixi’s eyes closed. She tried to remember what she wanted to ask while he was seducing her.

The warmth of his chest behind her, the warmth of the water around her, the warmth of his mouth against her earlobe. She tried to gather her thoughts. She tried to remember the questions that had been burning inside her skull for hours.

She opened her mouth.

”How did we get from the car to...”

His fingers, beneath the water, began to move. They traced a slow, gentle circle against her inner thigh. Light. Almost absent. As though his hand had wandered there of its own accord and had decided to stay.

Cixi’s sentence evaporated.

”From the car to what?” Cassian murmured against her ear. His voice vibrated through her skull and down her spine.

She swallowed. ”From the car to... this room. We were driving, and then we were in your bed. Our bed.” She corrected herself before he could. ”How did you...”

His fingers drew another circle. Wider this time. His lips parted against the back of her neck, and he pressed a kiss there, just below her hairline, while sliding her hair over one shoulder to expose the skin he wanted.

Cixi’s breath stuttered. ”You... how did you carry me through the Palace without...”

Another kiss trailed below at the place where her neck met her shoulder. His fingers moved higher on her thigh.

”Without?” he prompted.

”Without anyone...” Her voice thinned. She pressed her lips together, fought through the fog his hands were building in her head, and pushed the sentence out. ”Without anyone seeing you or me remembering anything?”

”Good,” Cassian murmured. ”You completed the sentence.”

”A car,” he said, ”is a moving room. A bedroom is a stationary room. The transition between the two is, by every account of the architecture of this city, a matter of geometry.”

”That is not an answer.”

”It is an answer.”

”That is a metaphor.”

”It is also an answer.”

”Cassian...”

”You think I am not an ordinary human?” He questioned her.

Cixi nodded her head.

”Who do you think I am?” Cassian asked, his voice a mixture of challenge and allure.

He gently cupped Cixi’s firm breast, his hands working seamlessly as he began to massage her. The heat between her legs surged once more, lingering even after her sixth orgasm.

She couldn’t believe how her body betrayed her with each touch of Cassian’s hands. Breathless, she leaned back against his shoulder, desperately trying to maintain her sanity amidst the overwhelming sensations.

She gripped the edge of the bathtub. Rose petals gathered against her wrist. ”You are the lust demon,” Cixi replied in a whisper, annoyed.

Cassian chuckled.

”Hmm, I wouldn’t deny you, sweetheart.”

”Is that an answer?” Cixi asked, biting her lip as Cassian’s thumb began to make slow circles around her nipple. A soft moan escaped her lips. ”W-what are you... doing?”

”Making you wet, Cixi. That’s what a lustful demon does.”

Cixi held Cassian’s hands to stop him. In response, Cassian bit her neck.

”Ouch!”

”Don’t stop me!”

”Then answer me.”

”What if I am the demon?” he inquired, a playful edge to his voice. ”What if what you said is true—a lustful demon? Would you believe it?”

”At this point, I would believe anything,” Cixi replied, her tone laced with acceptance.

After encountering the Grim Reaper, curses, and witnessing death itself, there was little left that Cixi wouldn’t accept as truth. ”But there is one thing I would not believe if you claimed to be an angel,” she added with a faint smirk.

Cassian chuckled lightly in response. ”Oh! No, Darling, I am not an angel. I am the Devil.”

Cassian gently turned her face toward him before capturing her lips with his own. The kiss was firm yet tender.

His other hand trailed down her body, fingers gliding over her skin until they reached the soft wetness between her legs. A gasp slipped from Cixi’s lips at the sudden contact, her body arching instinctively toward him.

As he explored her, his touch ignited every nerve ending, sending waves of pleasure coursing through her.

”Do you want this?” he murmured, his breath hot against her ear, adding a delicious tension to the air around them. Cixi could barely respond, her mind clouded with a mix of longing and anticipation as she nodded slightly, her body yearning for more.