Chapter Text
A fire crackles in the hearth.
Inej registers the details in pieces. Warmth licking at her skin, the earthy scent of smoke. The irregular, teasing sound of wood popping.
Shadows dancing across the hard lines of Kaz’s face.
She steps toward him, feeling her brows pull together in confusion.
In contrast, his expression is calm, controlled.
Open.
The sight puts her on edge, fingers twitching toward her knives. Kaz is a thousand things, all at once, none of them open. He’s a swirling shadow, a whispered story, easy to fear and impossible to hold. He’s a mercurial mind in a starved body, powered by unquenchable thirst. For kruge, for revenge, for recognition in his city. For the chance to face a problem only he can solve.
For … something else, now.
Something else entirely.
“For once, don’t disappear. Just stay.”
The words are as smooth as river-worn pebbles, rolling along her skin and leaving goosebumps in their wake.
She takes another step forward.
There is a flicker of something in his expression —determination? greed?— that disappears before she can decipher its meaning.
The moment lingers like a held breath, a tense string that's moments from snapping. The fire crackles on merrily, its shadows the only thing that moves between them.
Kaz doesn’t look down or turn around. He doesn’t step away, cover himself, show her his back for fear of what she might read on his face. He simply looks at her.
He allows her to look back.
She thinks, as she stares, that it is no wonder she likes sharp things. Every inch of him is sharp as her knives, from his cheekbones to his jawline to his searing wit. His clothing is starched and buttoned to the throat, every hair in perfect place on his head. He’s all angles and he knows it—he uses it—hanging his reputation on the threat that his edges will draw blood. The only softness she can find is in his eyes, holding hers so she can watch as that new thirst blooms.
The sight leaves her breathless. Starving for more.
As though reading her mind, he starts to move.
The slow drag of her knife from its sheath at her waist is maddening. She feels it through the fabric of her vest—the blade’s caress, then a naked emptiness that makes her shiver.
He removes the second just as slowly, his eyes darting down to watch himself work before flicking up toward her once again.
He’s certain. He’s confident. It’s a look she’s seen on him before: when he’s scheming or fighting or watching puzzle pieces of his creation fit neatly into place. It’s a look she likes on him, one she works to maintain as she executes his well-laid plans as flawlessly as she’s able.
It’s a look she’s never seen quite like this.
Slowly, he removes his gloves.
Her eyes widen at the sight, breath shaking past her parted lips. His hands are slim and long-fingered, as pale as moonlight against midnight-black leather. They do not tremble, do not shake. He’s perfectly calm as he places his gloves beside her knives on the mantle.
It’s armor, she thinks. Armor shed for one another.
Inej doesn’t allow herself to think what that might mean. She doesn’t allow herself to think that he’s finally determined to lay it all bare, to work past the demons that hold him so she might find comfort in his arms. She doesn’t allow herself to picture it—ruling the Barrel as a queen at his side, or stealing him away from this wretched island for her own. She doesn’t allow herself to hope for anything beyond this moment; this perfect moment in which she’s standing face-to-face with a gloveless Kaz Brekker, who looks at her like he’s never been more certain of anything in his life than the desire to be right here.
“May I?”
She looks down to realize that his hand—his bare hand—is hovering at her waist, fingers outstretched toward her.
It’s curious: there is no hesitation, no sharp stab of fear at her core. She searches herself for it, the familiar instinct to run when a man comes too close; the tight knot that unfailingly leaps to life within her stomach, even when all that’s on the table is one of Jesper’s bone-crushing hugs.
She thinks there’s more than that on the table now, and yet the fear does not come.
Her answer is so quiet she’s hardly certain she’s spoken at all.
“Yes.”
He holds her gaze as his hand finds her waist, then slides to the small of her back. She draws in a breath, their bodies meeting at the hips, waist, chest. Her eyes dart down toward the slash of his mouth, and between them she can feel his heart beating like a war drum in his chest, holding a smooth, steady tempo, keeping time like a finely tuned clock.
She blinks, furrowing her brow as a memory surfaces. Grabbing Kaz in the alleyway earlier that day, his back to her front as she hauled him away from the press of the crowds. She felt his heartbeat then, too: a panicked, rapid staccato that stuck with her long after she’d left him. It was fast and erratic. It was strong, its rhythm nearly bursting from his skin.
It was nothing like this.
Why wasn’t it anything like this?
Before she can ask him, his gaze tears from hers and flits toward his other hand. With maddening slowness he raises it, grazing her cheekbone before settling it on her jaw.
His skin is warm and soft, his touch gentler than a breeze. She thinks of these hands, delivering brutal punches and tightening around the length of his cane before a vicious swing. She thinks of them dealing cards with lightning swiftness, sneaking in another pair of aces too quickly for an onlooker to catch. She thinks of them thieving, wrapping around valuables in picked pockets or galleries or the stately homes of merchants, a wild grin breaking out across his face as he takes each treasure as his own.
He does not grin now.
He inhales calmly —so calmly, more calmly than she’s ever seen Kaz do anything— and tips his head forward, leaning down toward her.
Her heart jumps in her chest. Her breath quivers, her body shaking with a nearness she’d never let herself crave. He’s going to kiss me, she thinks, something hot and heavy settling in her core with the realization.
He’s going to kiss me.
Once again she notices the lack of anxiety, the fear that does not sing through her blood. He is going to kiss her, and she is going to like it. She is going to want it, crave it, need it. He’s going to kiss her, and she’s going to be his. By his side when he needs, at his beck and call, forever dreaming about the taste of his lips.
It should scare her.
Why doesn’t it scare her?
It is only when his breath fans across her lips that she realizes.
“This isn’t real.”
Kaz pulls back. Blinks.
For the first time his face creases, the tiniest of puckers appearing between his brows.
“We’re here, Inej,” he whispers, his voice too soft, too smooth. “I want you.”
The words slither down her throat, coating her stomach and settling heavy between her legs. I want you. I want you. I want you, Inej.
She can admit here, in the confines of dreaming, how much she’s yearned to hear them.
She can admit here, in the confines of dreaming, that he would never say them.
His hand applies a gentle pressure to the small of her back. She allows herself to be drawn back in, to revel, for a moment, in the miracle of his nearness.
His nose brushes hers, and she cannot quite believe that he is so close. Tilting his head slightly to accommodate, he parts his lips and looks down at her own open mouth. Blood rushes in her ears, her body trembling as a pool of something molten gathers in her core.
He’s going to kiss me.
It’s surreal. It’s not real. She knows that now, with the same certainty that she brings to her air walking, her spying, her faith. It’s not real, but it feels it, every exhale from his lips like a caress against her skin. It’s not real, but she wants it in a way she taught herself not to want anything anymore.
It’s not real, but maybe it could be her reality, if only for a moment.
This isn’t real.
I want you.
Giving in is as easy and satisfying as sliding into a warm bath.
She tilts her head forward, and their lips connect.
His kiss is as gentle as his touch, and it takes only moments for her to go crazy with it. Crazy with the thought that Kaz Brekker fights like a demon and kisses like an angel, crazy with the idea that his gentleness is a gift just for her. Crazy with wanting more, and wanting it now.
She deepens the kiss, her hands rising up to grasp the lapels of his coat. At her back he feels his fingers dig deeper, his bicep flexing as he pulls her tighter to his chest. All the while his words swirl around them, burrowing into her skin and running through her veins.
I want you, I want you, I want you.
He’s said it before, although not so plainly. He’s said stay with me. He’s said it would bring me comfort to know you are near. He’s said she’s been a great help or she’s one of a kind or she’s necessary, needed, a key member of his team.
But not that she’s wanted.
Not that he wants her.
He repeats it now, speaking the words directly against her lips. “I want you, Inej. So much.”
Her mouth opens on a whine and his tongue darts inside, a moan escaping her the moment it comes in contact with her own. She scrapes his bottom lip between his teeth and he smiles, pulling back slightly.
"Vicious,” he whispers before diving back in.
Beneath her hands that war drum heartbeat carries on its steady rhythm, its pulse the only discordant note in their twisted symphony. Her own heart flutters like hummingbird wings, as though its speed could make up for his solidity.
The hand at her jaw slides back, tangling in her hair. She doesn’t know when it came undone—falling loosely from her head rather than coiled into her braid—but the new style allows him to gather some in his fist, pulling lightly, just enough for her to get the picture and tilt her head back.
He kisses a line down her face, her jaw. When he reaches her exposed throat he pauses, a question in the air.
“Go on,” she urges, unable to fathom stopping.
His lips are smiling when they meet her skin.
The world whirls around them, the setting changing. Suddenly she’s no longer standing but lying beneath him, squirming from his ministrations at her neck.
They’re still clothed, just less so, her vest and his jacket lost somewhere in the abyss. His arms are a cage, one elbow by each ear, and his shoulders obscure her line of sight. Her hands are tangled in his hair, mussing its perfection so that strands hang down in front of his intense eyes. She can hear him moaning—low, quiet noises that reverberate against her skin—as his hips roll against hers, his hardness evident with each press.
Still, there is no fear.
No fear, no fear, no fear. She clings to the idea like a lifeboat, and with it the dangerous hope that someday it will be her truth.
No fear as Kaz’s teeth find a sensitive spot near her collarbone and a moan punches out of her. No fear as her hands fumble at the buttons of his shirt. No fear as he leans back, taking his time to remove the garment.
Her mouth goes a little dry as she watches. The firelight flickers now not only off the edges of his cheekbones, but each sharp line from his shoulders to his hips. His body is scarred and lean, corded with muscle that flexes with his movements.
She reaches out a hand.
“May I?”
Her question is an echo, his answer a repeated refrain.
“Yes.”
She touches him gently, running a finger over his collarbone and down the very center of his chest. It rises and falls with even breathing—not labored like her own—and his face betrays nothing as her hands explore.
Not real, his composure reminds her. None of this is real.
Her palm presses against the ridges of muscle at his stomach. She holds it there a moment, looking at his peaceful features and counting the time in his slow, even breaths. How would this go, if it were real? Would Kaz pant and gasp alongside her? Would his heartbeat give him up, a traitor with loose lips? Would he look at her with hunger—not peace—in every inch of his sharp face?
Would he say to her—
“I love you,” the Kaz in her dream interrupts. “I have always loved you.”
Her lips part, eyes widening, heart twisting in her chest. Not real, she tells herself. Not real.
“We’re here, Inej,” dream-Kaz repeats, his voice as smooth as silk. “We’re here.”
She can’t bring herself to believe him. She can’t bring herself to do anything but voice a desire, give an order she already knows he’ll readily accept.
“Kiss me.”
Kaz obeys.
Inej loses herself in the slide of their lips together, the roll of his hips like an ocean current against her shores. He adjusts his angle so that the bulge beneath his trousers hits her exactly where she’s sensitive, where wetness is already growing. It makes her dizzy, breathless, thinking not of reality but desire, the unfamiliar rush of wanting that pushes everything else to the periphery.
“That’s it,” Kaz whispers. “Let go.”
Kaz Brekker has never let go of anything in his life, but she knows better than to question the order. Her thoughts melt inside her head, dripping down her spine and settling at its base.
They stay like that for what feels like forever, writhing in time with Kaz’s strange, even heartbeat. In the moments between kisses Kaz murmurs encouragement, praise far beyond what he’s ever been known to give.
“That’s perfect,” he says as she tilts her head back, exposing her neck to his lips.
“Just like that,” he offers as her hips thrust up to meet his.
“You’re beautiful,” he compliments when her eyes flutter open, stealing a glance at the placid planes of his features.
His words overwhelm, sending her rationality heavenward. She swears—a single fuck punctuating the room’s heavy air—and his grin is so sharp it could scar.
“I love that,” he murmurs, a hand returning to her hair. “When you swear for me.”
Inej tries to find a reply, lost in the heavy cloud of lust that’s descended in her head. Before she can he continues, giving voice to her wildest desires.
“I love everything about you.”
Inej can’t help her next words, nor their pathetic, quavering tone. “You do?”
Kaz’s eyes go soft, his hips growing still. “I do. I love your swearing; your violence and your piety. I love your stubbornness, your pride. I love your lips—” he pauses to kiss them, one soft touch of his mouth on hers, “—and your eyes. Your hands, your soul, your intelligence, your grace.”
With every word the realization comes back, hitting like a punch to the gut. This is not real.
It’s not real that Kaz loves her face or her hands or her grace. It’s not real that he loves her violence and piety in equal measure.
It’s not real that he loves her at all.
He’s still speaking, telling her in that low, calm, wrong voice, “I’ll buy you wild geraniums, so many you can hardly—”
“I need you,” she interrupts breathlessly, desperate to go back to the ignorance she found buried beneath desire.
The tiny crease between his brows reappears. “Need me to what?”
A thousand answers fly through her mind. Need you to stop talking. Need you to kiss me again. Need you to be real, to come back with me when I wake and never leave.
It is—she knows with crushing certainty—an impossible wish. Her brain flashes back to the way she could let her thoughts melt beneath the press of his thrusting hips, how pleasure held back the onslaught of despair.
“I need you to fuck me.”
This time, Kaz’s smile is slow.
The world tilts again, colors running together and dripping like paint on a canvas. When it settles her surroundings come back in pieces. His bed is the first thing she notices, the one from his now-destroyed room at the Crow Club. She then registers his spine, resting against the headboard, and her knees, bracketing his hips. She realizes that she's on his lap, her hands braced on his bare shoulders. They’re naked and she’s moaning and he’s—
He’s inside her.
Saints, he’s inside her.
He’s inside her and it’s a fullness so good she can barely think. It causes no panic, no flashbacks or desires to flee. He’s calm, too, words of encouragement bubbling from his lips like water in a stream.
“So good, love, just like that.”
She realizes with a start that she’s moving, grinding her hips down over him in tight little circles. Each one presses him against a place inside her that makes her gasp, her breathing coming in fast little pants as she works to pick up the pace. The movement of her chest seems to distract him, eyes falling to her breasts as his teeth work his bottom lip.
She knows his question before it comes.
“Can I—”
“Yes.”
Kaz leans forward slightly, dipping his head to take one nipple into his mouth. She groans when he makes contact, the feel of his tongue on her sensitive skin enough to send her spinning. His hand comes up to splay out against the small of her back, steadying, as though he’d read her mind.
Which, she supposes, he had. He is her mind, traitorously playing out her long-held desires in vivid, startling clarity.
Not real, a voice in the back of her head whispers. Not real.
She screws her eyes shut and rides Kaz harder to get through the feeling. He responds beautifully, his head dropping back against the headboard with a low thud as he lets out a long, slow groan.
“Perfect, Inej. Perfect.”
It is perfect, a moment too perfect to be anything but fantasy. His strong arms reach around her again, hugging her body tight to his for a moment before moving, sliding her off of him and rolling them so she’s on her back.
He’s no longer inside and she groans at the feeling of emptiness he leaves in his wake.
He pauses, flashing her a heartfelt smile before leaning down to give her one last long, slow kiss. A moment of calm at the eye of the storm.
“I love you,” he breathes and she bites her lip to keep from returning the sentiment to a figment of her imagination.
He doesn’t seem to mind. Just adjusts his weight to one arm, reaching the other down so he can line himself up with her.
“May I?” he repeats, so polite even with the head of his cock pressing against her slick entrance.
For a long moment she doesn’t reply, curious to see what it will take to make Kaz Brekker beg.
Perhaps in real life it might have been more difficult, but here in her dream the answer comes quickly. It's not long at all before his face crumples a little, his brows drawing together and lips pursing into a pout.
“Please, Inej.”
She holds firm, waiting until she hears the three words that she’s waiting for. The ones that started it all.
“I want you. Please.”
“You have me.”
No sooner are the words out of her lips before Kaz is pressing inside. Inch by inch, so slowly Inej wants to scream. His cock drags along the place inside her that makes her gasp, and he hums a soft noise of approval at the sounds she’s making as it does. When he’s finally all the way in he pauses, checking in with a whisper.
“You okay?”
Inej nods, uncertain that she still has the ability to form words, and Kaz—Kaz—
Kaz fucks her like a man with something to prove.
It’s an onslaught from the beginning, Kaz’s pace relentless as he drives his cock hard and so, so deep. Inej’s head snaps back with the force of her pleasure, leaving her feeling like prey exposing her throat to the predator. His thrusts are stones thrown into a pool, landing with a splash and sending rippling waves through her long after they’re gone.
"So good," Kaz grinds out, as though she's the one driving him insane.
Her arms wrap around him, nails digging into the scarred skin of his back.
“Kaz,” she moans, unable to say—to think— anything else. “Kaz, Kaz.”
“That’s right, darling. Say my name.”
“Fuck, Kaz.”
A dark, quiet laugh curls like smoke around her ears.
He drives into her, wiping her mind clear of any thoughts about dreams and reality, fear and wanting and hope. Clearing her thoughts of anything but his name, his love and her desire and the way they are able to make one another feel.
“Kaz,” she whines, toes curling as pleasure rumbles through her.
“Inej,” he replies.
In her name she hears his contentment, his commitment and adoration. She hears a future opening up before her, one where she can keep the Bastard of the Barrel forever by her side. She hears certainty, the knowledge that together they’ll face the impossibility of it, that they'll tear the world apart to find and defend their happiness.
“Inej.”
Kaz brings a hand to her jaw and swoops down, his mouth crashing against hers. His lips force hers open, his tongue darting inside. Inej coughs a little, choking on it, and tries to pull away. But his grip is iron, unyielding.
Fear comes back for her in a rush.
“Inej.”
His mouth is glued to hers, his tongue pressing in even as his voice rings out around her. She struggles to breathe, sputtering against his lips as she presses on his shoulders with all her strength.
“Mmph!”
“Bite down, Inej.”
His voice is whetted, its sharp edges returning to replace the smooth, eerie calm. She hears the stress and frustration in his breathless rasp, an echo of the way he speaks to her when jobs go sideways, when bullets litter the air around them and punches fly their way.
“Inej!”
She bites down, Kaz’s tongue changing texture as she does. It grows soft and fluttery and mobile, tiny insect legs crunching sickeningly between her teeth as she kills and eats the butterfly.
Butterfly…
Reality comes back in a rush, dream-Kaz disappearing from above her as though made of sand, taken by the wind.
She remembers poison leaking through the pipes of the Disciple’s house. Falling into a dream, so swiftly that reality clung to its edges, making her believe in myths of her own creation. Wylan’s voice, breaking through the silence, instructing Tolya to place a butterfly in Kaz’s mouth, suspecting it may act as an antidote.
Kaz crawling his way to save her the moment he woke up.
Her eyes fly open, finding Kaz on his knees before her. His gloves are on, the seams of the leather scraping against her chin where he still has a hold. His eyes are wide, chest heaving as he tears away his hand and leans back.
For a moment the only sound is their panting exhalations.
Quietly, he says, “No one heard you.”
Her mind flicks back to the final moments of her dream, moaning Kaz’s name again and again as he drove her to the edge with wild, feral thrusts.
The real meaning of his words sinks in slowly. No one else heard you.
Her stomach twists at the implication.
But he holds her gaze, does not look away. Even as his hands begin to tremble with the belated reaction to her closeness. He simply puts one hand over the other, holding them in his lap as he stares with his chin held high.
She wishes she could read the emotion churning behind those wide, staring eyes. She wishes she knew what he was thinking, if he was happy or horrified to hear his own name moaned from her lips, cementing the knowledge that he lives in her dreams. She wishes—
Inej closes her eyes. Wishing is what got her here in the first place. To indulge in more would be a fool's errand.
“Thank you,” she says finally, opening her eyes.
He nods, just once, and moves to stand.
It takes Inej a few minutes to follow.