Content warning: Both this chapter and the next have some graphic *ahem* content, so if you're young and innocent or it's too spicy for you, don't read! If, like me, you are thoroughly depraved and have accepted the fact, then go right ahead.

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Before I know what's happening, Irei is at my side, whispering in my ear that I'm clever and brilliant and fierce and he's so, so proud of me. His dark eyes shine as he presses a drink into my hand, lifting his own in a victory toast that's only a little goading given Keth's proximity, a problem quickly rectified as he leaves the cards table and stalks off. He whispers something about having to get the ashes, but before I have time to wonder what that might mean, Yinmari Taashi turns to me and loudly exclaims "you kicked his ass!"

"Tzika!" Kemvir chides, reaching over and swatting her daughter. "Watch your tongue, Yini!"
"So I'm old enough to bless and welcome our clan and help oversee the Blood Tithe, but not old enough to say the word 'ass' or drink y'chora? Explain to me the logic there!"
"Easy," Kemvir says lightly. "The only explanation you need is 'because I said so.'"

"Iriis!" Yinmari entreats, dark eyes darting over to her mentor, who's unruffled despite the slightly frenetic energy now buzzing around the beach. Some of it is Keth's defeat at the hands of a mysterious stranger, but I can tell there's something else going on as well. I just don't know what.

"Hmm?" Iriis asks, barely looking up as she spreads fermented yeast paste on bread. The Kionaxi all seem to love it, though I think it tastes like death.

"Don't you think, as the Matriarchessa and a wielder of powerful and ancient magic, I should be allowed to say the word ass if I so choose?"

"I think you should listen to your mother," Iriis replies sagely, taking a bite of her disgusting toast.

"Why?" Yinmari mutters. "It's not like she ever listens to anyone herself."

Iriis chokes on her bread, sputtering out a laugh. "Well, Kemi, she's got you there. You've never really cared what you set fire to so long as you could profit by the light."

"But I've got you standing by with buckets of water and common sense to minimize the damage, so there's no real danger!" Kemvir replies brightly. "And if that fails, I have both Aryuul and Ishalai to talk sense into me. Or at least try. Now," she tells us, standing up, "it's time for our esteemed Matriarchessa to get to bed, and I do believe you're needed to bless the ash, Riis."

"Told you not to call me that, at least in public," Iriis rolls her eyes.

"You've told me a lot of things. Sometimes I even listen. Now excuse me, I have to get my daughter out of here. I don't care how mature she thinks she is, she is not staying for the fioníxia."

"You'd best take your foreigner home, too, Irei," a bearded man advises, but the word foreigner is said without any bite. Fondly, even. "It's liable to stop his pure Shikkan heart, and that would make us terrible hosts."

"I'm all for letting him stay," a doe-eyed woman laughs. "Think of what we might see!"

"Oh, I am," a man about my age says with a tipsy leer in my direction. "I'm thinking about it real hard."

Irei glares at him, stern as stone. "Keep thinking about him and all you'll see is my fist approaching your face at an alarming velocity."

"Oh, calm your tits, Ambassador," the inebriated man chuckles as he refills his mug of y'chora. "It was only a joke."

"Tits?" I exclaim with mock horror. "What else have you been hiding from me, Rei?"

"Wings and a tail," another man jokes.

"Oh, he only hid those at first," I return with a polite smile. "He stopped once he realized how well they pleased me. Those wings do wonders to shade pale Shikkan skin on sunny days, and you can't imagine the things he can do with his tail. You'd have to invent new words for the depravity."

Several people around us dissolve into laughter, the flirtatious drunk so amused that he slaps his hand on his knee, forgetting it's where he's rested his plate. He curses loudly when he accidentally knocks all his food into the sand. A woman at his side rolls her eyes, sighs heavily, then goes to get him more.

"Why don't we let you invent those words, hmm?" Irei asks, nudging me with his elbow, eyes sparkling with mischief. "After all, you can be quite creative with your mouth, can't you, love?"

"Let's just say I'm learning to speak in foreign tongues," I return, hoping they think my cheeks are rosy from drink and not the memory of what Irei's tongue did to me earlier tonight. Or how he wound my hair around his hand and pulled it to angle my face up towards his, then to hold me in place, almost like a bridle.

There's more laughter. Surprised expressions melting into amused smiles.

"Bold words from Shikkan lips," a slender woman sitting across from me remarks.

"Not so," I reply cheekily. "I'm half Kamai, and I do believe my lips are a part of that half. My eyes, too."

"And your audacity, certainly," another kionaxi man remarks.
Iriis just smiles and says, "I believe his audacity is entirely his own."

"What does it matter? Either way we got to see Keth Inneswar humbled by a stranger half his age and far prettier than his own wife!"

"Call it a purification ritual," a woman with laughing eyes and bouncing ringlets jokes. "Ridding Keth of some of his pride and bullshit before the Blood Tithe. He should thank you, really."
"And we should thank you for making the night infinitely more interesting. The journey to Tayim was well worth it just to see that arrogant bastard get his ass handed to him."

"Speaking of hands on asses," a man with shaggy brown hair and ruddy cheeks throws out, "tell us how Irei got his hands on yours. You're clearly too good for him."

"Oh, he took shameful advantage of me, of course," I say sweetly, blinking my eyes so that my long lashes flutter softly against my still-pink cheeks. "I was a helpless refugee, you see, fleeing a violent revolution. My father was across the sea trading silks in Mirrenova, and I had nowhere to go, so his old friend selflessly offered to take me in. But then he just took me. Repeatedly. So perhaps it wasn't so selfless after all."

The ruddy-cheeked man throws back his head and laughs.

Irei rolls his eyes. "Oh, you beautiful little liar. That was quite the tale you spun, and maybe three words of it were true."

I raise my chin defiantly. "It was the Goddess' own truth, plainly told!"

"Truth? The truth is you seduced me," he pronounces before turning back to the table to give his own version of events. "He came into my home with flowers woven into his hair like some spirit of spring, dressed in clinging, flowing silks, and smiled so sweetly at me. He was the son of an old friend, and so I tried valiantly to be a decent man and resist him, but what was I supposed to do when he begged for my touch? What man could resist such pleasing pleading, such lovely desperation..."

"Desperation?" I snort, rolling my eyes so hard that only the whites are visible. "The first day I was here, the Minister of Finance propositioned me. The next week, Mirsi Belkau offered me an absurd sum to enter her employ. I've been mistaken for an ayadaxa more times than I can count and a Kastarsi actor tried to seduce me in the penthouse of the Kaldanza! Why would I beg for lovers when half of the island already wants to take me to bed?"

"I didn't say you begged for lovers," Irei clarifies with an arrogant smirk that's equal parts disarming and infuriating. "I said you begged for me."

"Don't flatter yourself," I reply tartly. "Youth and beauty always chase money and power. It was nothing personal."

"Diplomats can spot lies as well as they can tell them, Shira," he says, lifting a dark brow. "And you're a terrible liar. You ignored my money and the only time you cared about my position was when you were under me. It's always been personal. You didn't want the Kamai Head Ambassador; you wanted me."

"I did," I admit, letting the teasing fall away from my voice. Something in me can't bear to deny it, not in front of his clan, not even in jest. "I still do."

"Before tonight, I'd have laughed at anyone who suggested bringing a Shikkan to a kionaxi fioníxia," Kemvir says with a smirk, "but I think he would fit in just fine."

"What's a fioníxia?" I ask, but the table just titters like they're all in on the same joke. I don't want to give them the satisfaction of asking again, so I let the question drop, figuring I'll find out soon enough one way or the other.

Instead, I just look at Irei, moonlit and wind-tousled, eyes bright with liquor. And of course I want him. He's grace and strength and wilderness, just like the island that raised him. He's my heart beating outside of my chest, my blood and my breath, my home.

Yinmari Taashi's slim brown hand brushes against mine. When I turn and look at her, she smiles softly and says, "I was wrong earlier."

"About what?" I ask, feeling a pang of fear. The words she spoke with her glimmering planted a fragile hope in my chest and I don't want to feel the sting of it being uprooted, destroying any hope of shade or shade of hope I might find beneath its branches.

"I said you couldn't bewitch someone unwittingly," she explains, "but you two are clearly caught in a spell, and I don't think either of you actually meant for it to happen."

"We both fought against it, actually," I admit. "He thought I was too vulnerable and he was too old, I thought Kama was just a daydream I'd leave behind in three months' time. And where I grew up, men don't love other men. Or they do, but only behind closed doors."

"Why not?" she asks, looking genuinely confused, and something warm swells in my heart alongside something infinitely bitter. How beautiful that this child who will one day lead an entire Kamai clan can't conceive of love being a shameful, clandestine thing. How ugly that I didn't get to grow up with the same innocence and tolerance.

I shrug. "They think it's wrong. That it's a sin."

She wrinkles her nose. "But why is it wrong? What's so bad about it? Who does it hurt?"

I shrug again, because how do you explain prejudice? "I suppose they think it is unnatural for men to love other men because their joining won't lead to children."

"So in your country, men only lie with their wives when they want to make children?"

"In my country, men lie with their wives as often as they damn well please," I say a little too sharply, then sigh, my tone softening. "People fear what is different, Yinmari. They flinch away from it, and then they invent rational-sounding explanations to justify that instinctual aversion. They make themselves believe they're thinking and acting logically when they're really being driven by emotions like fear and distrust."

"What would happen if you and Irei were back in your country?" she asks.

I laugh, the sound a little bleaker than I expected. "My family is very traditional. We're also wealthy and powerful. If they saw me hand in hand with another man, whoever he was, I'd be disinherited. My reputation would be ruined forever."

"It's like being clanless, then," she says thoughtfully. "Xanharxin. Your family turns away from you, but they say you brought it on yourself, and you have no reputation because you are godless."

"In most religions, god made man, but man also makes god. We decide what is holy and what we cast out of hallowed ground. We declare this decent and that depraved. In Kama, Irei's divinity seeks out mine, and our union is itself an act of reconciliation. A recognition of the god within us both. In Shikkah, we would be taunting the Goddess by defying her natural order. Our relationship would be a tragedy and a parody."

"Then I understand why you left," she says, looking solemn and sounding far older than she is. "Your country seems like an ugly place."

"It is," I agree, suddenly feeling a million miles away from the lantern-lit beach, the music and laughter and the tantalizing scent of roasted boar slathered in foreign spices. The sand beneath my feet burns, as if it's been heated all day by the pitiless desert sun. "It's xenophobic and judgmental and stiff as freshly starched cloth. But it's beautiful, too. Rich and storied and sophisticated. And people there would say that it's just as ugly to cast out a child deemed godless because of their mother's folly."

Yinmari looks contemplative and a little disturbed. Unmoored, maybe. "It seems like more black magic, doesn't it, that both can be true at once? Like tasting bitterness and sweetness in the same bite."

I shrug, half-regretting that darkening look on her face. That existential confusion the truth won't soothe because the truth put it there in the first place. "Perhaps. Perhaps it's just human." Then I smile at her and say, "but this is a party, so perhaps we should put the bitterness aside and focus on the sweetness, yes? And anyways, a little witch need not concern herself with human affairs."

"Little witch, huh?" she repeats, a small smile interrupting the tight line of her lips. "Whatever you say, Ayadaxina." Her smile quickly becomes a smirk, and the playful trouble in her eyes swallows her serious, contemplative side whole. And I'm glad to see it. After everything Irei has told me about his clan, I have a feeling the Matriarchessa will need a bit of her mother's teasing wildness to buoy her spirits against the darker undercurrents of old pain and distrust.

Irei overhears her flippant comment and chokes on his y'chora, wiping his mouth on his sleeve as laughter shakes his shoulders. Kemvir Taashi smothers her smile and chides, "Yini, mind your manners."

"I don't have any," Yinmari throws back, chin lifted high in defiance. "I am your daughter, after all."

The smile wins out, softening Kemvir's features. "Disrespectful wretch," she declares, but it sounds like a term of endearment.

"She's right, you know," Matriarch Iriis adds conversationally. "You were a disgraceful hellion, Kemi. Some people say you had to get married twice because you needed two sets of hands to pull you back from the edge before you did something incredibly stupid."

Kemvir's smile just widens. "They're probably right. Perhaps both of my marriages weren't incendiary gestures at all, but selfless attempts to protect the kionaxi clan from my particular brand of unbridled fervor."

"Unbridled terror is more like it," a man I don't know adds in a low voice. Kemvir kicks his foot under the table and he grunts.

"Anissi should've thrown me a party instead of losing her head. It was for the good of the clan, after all."

"Anissi would slit your throat in your sleep if she didn't love that little girl of yours so much," Iriis pronounces. "Now stop picking at the scabs on old wounds and enjoy the party."

"What if picking at the scabs on old wounds is how I best enjoy the party?" Kemvir asks sweetly.

"Then you're gross," Yinmari answers with unwavering conviction.

"She's right, you know," a lilting voice teases. A woman I haven't seen before walks up behind Kemvir and wraps her arms loosely around her, then squeezes with obvious affection. "I, for one, find you absolutely revolting."

"Shira, meet my wife, Ishalai Tolvei."

I smile and introduce myself, curious about the woman who married the lit firecracker that is Kemvir Taashi. I expect her to be equally incendiary given her radical change of allegiance during Kemvir and Anissi's political war. After all, it takes balls to run away with your own sister's greatest rival just as she's poised to take over the Matriarchy. But Ishalai Tolvei doesn't look like she has claws; if anything, she seems like the angel to Kemvir's playful fiend. Her face is delicate, half of it taken up by wide, dark eyes that make her look much younger than she is. The rest of her features are soft and sweet, her petite form draped in a crumpled dress of pale blue.

She bends down and brushes a kiss against Kemvir's head, then straightens again, smiling softly. And somehow, the gentleness of that one touch makes it all make sense. There was no fire and venom to her rebellion, no declaration of war, only a sinking beneath the unbearable softness of her love for Kemvir. She, too, was bewitched unwittingly, and she probably tried to resist it for her sister's sake. But love makes liars of us all, it seems, and here she is, looking at Kemvir like she's the brightest fire burning, the most brilliant star in the sky above us.

The way I look at Irei, and the way Irei looks back at me.

"Perhaps I'll go get Ari, and we'll drag you to the sacred lake and dunk you in," Ishalai says with a soft lisp. "The Matriarchessa and her glimmering saw through to your black heart, and it's only right we at least attempt to wash you clean again, though the dead one knows it's an exercise in futility."

"Don't you try to use my own child's glimmering against me!" Kemvir growls, scowling, but a smile tugs at the edge of her lips. "And if you and Ari try to dunk me in the lake, I will drown all three of us together for spite. In a generation or two, they'll sing plaintive ballads about our tragic love story."

"Greatest tragedy of my life so far," Ishalai agrees, moving back swiftly when Kemvir's elbow jabs backwards, looking to connect with her side. She just laughs, leaning down and pressing another kiss to the top of Kemvir's head. "And also the deepest joy, h'yanamei." My Kamai is shit, but I'd bet money that's the feminine form of Irei's pet name for me, h'yonmi. My little one.

Kemvir grins up at her. "I'm totally telling Aryuul you said that. That I've brought you the deepest joy you've ever felt. His masculine pride will love that, I'm sure."

"You forgot the tragedy part, Kemi."

She shrugs. "It can't be that great of a tragedy, then, if I've forgotten it already!"

And then a laughing Ishalai sits down in Kemvir's lap and kisses her with a fierceness I didn't think she possessed. A claiming kiss, a marking kiss, a proving kiss- in short, a challenge.

"Ugh, both of you are gross!" Yinmari announces loudly. "Can't you do that at home like normal people?"

"We aren't normal people, love," a man with soulful gray eyes and wispy dark hair tells her in a soft, measured voice. "Your mother is a force of nature, your father was fool enough to get in her way, and your stepmother was crazy enough to try and save them both. And you, my chick, are our Matriarchessa with the glimmering at your fingertips. None of that is normal in the least."

"Good," Yinmari returns through a yawn, "normal would be boring. We might be crazy, but at least we're interesting."

The man who has to be Aryuul Sula laughs in a rich baritone and pulls his daughter into his arms, ignoring her squawk of distress as she's lifted into the air and settled against his broad chest. She protests vehemently, demanding in a haughty tone that he put her down right this instant because the Matriarchessa is not carried around like a babe in swaddling clothes. But she's clearly tired, and so her voice lacks its usual vigor, her eyes their sparks. She settles into his arms, melting into his chest, all the while tiredly murmuring threats of violent retribution for subjecting her to such indignity. Even those trail off after a moment, and then the Matriarchessa with the glimmering is gone, and there's just an eleven-year-old girl cradled lovingly in her father's strong arms.

I don't know if she's asleep or just closed to it when Aryuul looks down at the two women, still entwined, and smirks. "Issi, why are you sitting in Kemvir's lap?"

Ishalai blushes slightly, but her answering words are defiant. "The bench has no cushions. Kemvir's thighs get to job done, though."

"You bet they do," Kemvir purrs, and Ishalai blushes, standing up and smoothing her skirt.

"Aww, now I'm cold!" Kemvir protests.

Ishalai lifts one eyebrow and tells her to "go find a coat."

"Alright, wives," Aryuul says, with an air of playful authority, "it's almost time for the fioníxia to begin and Yini needs her rest before the ceremony tomorrow. So..." he trails off.

"So," Ishalai continues, "it's time for us mannerless, disgusting Taashi beasts to return to our den." She fixes her gaze on me and smiles warmly. "It was nice to meet you, Shira. You really should come to the ceremony tomorrow. Or just come to our house for a cup of y'xala."

"You're too kind."

She laughs. "You made Keth Inneswar eat his pride for dinner instead of the roast boar. I've been trying to do it for years and have never managed half of what you did in a handful of days. For that alone, I'd pour you out a glass and toast you."

"Magnificent. Apocalyptic," Kemvir embellishes as she stands up and gathers her things. "May our descendants immortalize the moment in song so his humiliation lives on."

We do toast, then. Aryuul cradles Yinmari in the crook of one strong arm and raises his glass in the other. "To the continued unity and prosperity of the Kionaxi clan."

Kemvir snorts. "That's boring, Ari." She raises her own glass just a little higher than his and loudly proclaims "to the foreign minx who finally put Keth Inneswar in his place. Our hero."

Irei raises his glass a little higher than hers. "To falling in love with the wrong people at the wrong times. To paths that are not easy, but honest."

Ishalai lifts her glass. "To paths not chosen but forged. May they take us on adventures and still always lead us home."

Then they all look at me, and I think for a moment before thrusting my own y'chora high and saying in a bold voice, "to the glimmering we cannot see, but feel. To the homes we make with the people we choose."

Ishalai smiles warmly. "That's so sweet."

"And to the hell we bring those who try to take those choices away from us," I add with a darker grin. Who says you can't be both beautiful and bloodthirsty?

After the Taashi menagerie heads home for the evening, we drink and play cards. I've never been particularly good at holding my alcohol, and I feel a tingling, buzzing warmth suffuse my limbs and a pleasant haze soften my mind. An opportunist challenges me to a game of Marrowbones, thinking I'll be too inebriated to beat him, but he sheepishly apologizes after I hand him his ass on a silver platter complete with a clever garnish of his own tears.

Then someone bets me I can't watch two rounds of a game called tanismin and win the next. They lose that bet, of course, and then finding a game I can't win becomes a game in itself. I usually hate being the center of attention, but I don't mind it tonight. Those who challenge me threaten and brag and exaggerate, but they're just having fun or testing their skills. They're not looking at me like I'm less than them, like I'm other. If anything, winning the game of Marrowbones against Keth gave me a shine of credibility. Several even ask me for tips.

Irei puts himself in charge of keeping score, keeping us honest, and keeping track of our often-creative bets. He tells me that as the night goes on, it's tradition for the wagers to grow increasingly absurd. At first, it's coin or a fine pocket watch, but by the time I've had my fourth- or perhaps fifth or sixth- mug of y'chora, someone has bet the shoes on their feet. Another man, not to be outdone, bets the shirt on his back. When he loses, his opponent throws it gleefully into the bonfire, leaving him bare-chested and shivering in the night breeze.

Things only go downhill from there. When a broad-shouldered man wagers a particularly juicy piece of gossip, the woman to his right offers to reveal who invented the salacious story in the first place. A smirking girl bets a blindfolded dance and ends up careening around the beach in the clumsy arms of a laughing, drunken man, narrowly avoiding catching the hem of her dress on fire. A young boy offers a snail he found on a cattail that he swears is named Anissi. Iriis hides her laughter behind her hand, plucks the gooey thing from the child's fingers, and returns him to the greenery.

A grandmother bets a song. When her voice rises high and clear, others join in, until the lyrics grow raunchy and everyone dissolves into laughter. A little girl in soft pink bets a kiss, which she delivers to her uncle's cheek with a loud smack. The tipsy man who flirted with me earlier bets a night in his bed, and someone takes him up on the offer on the condition that he's not in it. A brave, or perhaps stupid, man even bets his hair. When he loses, his opponent gives him the worst haircut of his life. I tuck my own long locks behind my ear in horror and sympathy.

When I look over at Irei, his head is thrown back in laughter. That nervous tension he carried earlier in the night has dissolved, and he's not holding himself apart or above the people around him. He's not thinking about Markiri, or Keth Inneswar's judgmental words, or his stilted relationship with a clan that's just now healing after decades of rifts. I don't think he's thinking at all, and for Irei Nara, that's a minor miracle. The man who notices and analyzes everything is gone, and in his place is someone who's feeling instead, pink-cheeked and loose and lovely.

A few people look at him with surprise on their faces, and I intuit that he's usually more aloof. On guard, perhaps, against those remaining factions of the clan that say he's not a true kionaxi because his mother was cast out before his birth. It just feels like a particularly rowdy night at Imiko's, and I'm so happy to spend it with the man I love, not the inscrutable mask he so often wears. There's a truth to this night that goes far beyond the impossible words Yinmari Taashi gave to me. I can't see the glimmering, but perhaps I can feel it, connecting me to these people in a way that goes far deeper than a single night's amusement.

I feel the island thrumming through me like a second heartbeat. I've thought of myself as a Shikkan refugee hiding in Kama, but tonight, I begin to feel like I'm just as much Kamai as I am Shikkan. That the comments Irei makes about island ore in my blood aren't just idle talk, but truth. I feel like I'm digging deeper into myself, and instead of finding sand and dunes and the blazing orange of the desert sun, I'm finding loamy soil and grandfather trees and clan gatherings on lakeside beaches. And Irei, of course. Always, always Irei.

My desire for him is a collision of white fire and black magic, of tenderness and madness, salvation and ruin. Does he know what he does to me, languidly stretched out across the bench like that, eyes bright as stars, dark hair blowing in a night wind that carries his laughter to my waiting ears? There's just so much of him, so much life and strength and fuck, I want to touch him.

He lifts a hand, gesticulating as he tells some ridiculous story, the movements elegant and defined despite the alcohol he's imbibed. He looks younger, looser, and perhaps it is bewitchment after all, because the need to touch him is suddenly almost unbearable. I debate sitting down in his lap like Ishalai did to Kemvir, but I don't think I'm that brave yet. So instead, I take his hand and pull him after me, towards the dark shade of the dense woods, moving with an urgency that has him stumbling after me.

"What's wrong?" he asks, worry creasing his dark brow.

"You're not touching me right now," I say, turning to flash him a devilish smile. He barks out an amused laugh, following where I lead, and soon we're running together, winding through the dense trees and laughing like fools. Branches tear at our clothing and fern fronds tickle our skin, streaking their dewy wetness across our ankles and thighs.

The night is beautiful, the starlight filtering through the canopy in silver shards that make my pale hair almost glow. Fireflies flicker nearby, brief flashes of gold piercing the dark woods. Small animals scurry deeper into the underbrush, fleeing our careless feet, as an owl hoots mournfully overhead.

All of it pales in comparison to Irei. Irei, with his dusky hand in mine, his fine coat streaked with dew and torn slightly by errant thorns, his trousers and shoes flecked with dirt we've kicked up. When I turn to face him, he's got leaves tangled in his dark, wavy hair like a crown. I smile, thinking of the boy who bravely held a stick sword in his fist and declared himself the King of Flat Rock before jumping into the cool river below. Tonight, he reminds me of some pagan god, wrought from saltwater and the stone forming the Kamai shore, or perhaps from the wood of an ancient tree like tel'ev axi.

Perhaps I've come to the woods to worship, then. But if I venerate the god in him, I plan to claim the man beneath as well. His mortal skin is disheveled and moon-drunk and mine, and I need to touch it, to connect with him under the honesty and intensity of this night. I'll offer my fealty, and then take my due.

I stop us suddenly, turning and slamming him up against the rough bark of the nearest tree, my lips fusing to his with bruising intensity. He devours me just as hungrily, his calloused hands fisting in my long hair and holding me in place. I groan into his open mouth as his tongue slicks against mine, thrusting forward over and over again until I'm shivering in his arms. Before I can catch my breath, he wraps my hair tighter around his fist and pulls down, forcing my chin higher so he can kiss down the column of my throat, tasting the salt of my skin and the smoke of now-distant bonfires.

I usually don't mind ceding control when we kiss. Sometimes he fists my hair and uses it like a bridle, holding me in place or, more often, pulling me closer. Others, he thrusts his tongue into my mouth slowly, rhythmically, not picking up speed until I'm moaning with pure need. He cages me in with his big body and devours me with brutal intensity or dizzying decadence and I take it, all of it, reveling in the loss of control. Giving all of myself to someone else and trusting them to keep it safe, or to ruin me in only the most delicious ways. Letting my entire world narrow to his lips and his hands and the black magic he makes between them, bewitching me, owning me.

But I've won every single game I've played tonight, and I'm not about to acquiesce, however sweet it might be. Tonight is anything but usual; tonight, I'm making a scene. I'm choreographing this dance between us instead of following where he leads. He just doesn't know it yet.

So I tell him the only way I can. I push forward, grinding his back against the tree's rough bark, no doubt further damaging his fine coat. I don't give a fuck, ignoring his grunt of surprise in favor of pulling his tongue into my mouth and suckling. Then biting at his lip, answering his hungry growl with one of my own, and together, we are wolves. We are howling at the moon and rutting in the dirt and fuck, did skin ever feel so glorious beneath reverent fingers? Did two animals ever tangle together so perfectly?

But there are still clothes in the way, and human skins, and I snarl as I tear at his pants, dropping to my knees in front of him as I tug at the lacing of his breeches. He's straining against the fabric, hard and vital and practically pulsing when I take him in my fist, stroking once from base to tip before leaning forward to take him in my mouth. As the breath shudders out of him, as his hands dig into my shoulders like a drowning man grappling for shore, the salt of the sea echoed by the tang of his skin, I revel in his loss of control.

"Amshira, stop," he grits out between clenched teeth, "not here."

I smirk. "What? Why?"

"Someone will see."

"Don't be silly," I reply with an amused snort. "We're nowhere near the beach and these woods are dense. No one will see a thing. And since when are you shy, anyways?"

A dark shape runs past us and I yelp. Between the low light and its speed, all I saw was a blur, but it was a definitively human-shaped blur. "Tell me that was just a really small deer, Irei," I murmur.

"That would be the harbinger, little one. They're as human as we are." He grins down at me. "The fioníxia is beginning."