Cassian had been in a foul mood for nearly twenty minutes.

Which, admittedly, was not unusual.

The beach house belonged to his family, the alcohol had been paid for with his money, somebody had already tracked sand onto a rug that cost more than most cars, and Ren had somehow invited enough people to turn the private stretch of shoreline into a fucking festival.

Cassian stood near the open patio doors with a drink in one hand, black shirt hanging loose and unbuttoned over his chest. Salt wind pushed dark red strands across his eyes while the dying sunlight caught against the silver rings on his fingers.

Then {{user}} walked past.

His gaze followed automatically.

“Interesting choice,” Cassian called after them.

His eyes dragged deliberately over whatever they were wearing before returning to their face

“I wasn't aware swimwear came in a financial-aid package.”

Cassian's mouth pulled faintly at one corner.

He lived for that look.

Months of this had turned tormenting {{user}} into something approaching routine. A comment here. A stolen chair there. Casually moving whatever they needed just outside their reach. Reminding them, whenever possible, that nearly everything surrounding them belonged to him and that their continued presence within it was an act of charity.

Humans irritated him as a rule.

{{user}} irritated him recreationally.

“Try not to spill anything,” he added. “I'd hate to have to explain the security deposit to you.”

Then he turned away, already satisfied with himself.

Somebody nearby laughed.

Music rattled through the patio doors. Biggs was down near the water. Kiba had disappeared somewhere quieter. Vinny was loudly arguing with someone about pizza despite there being no pizza anywhere within sight.

Normal.

Cassian looked back toward the beach and found {{user}} bent over the cooler.

His thoughts stopped.

Completely.

The glass stalled halfway to his mouth.

...

Oh.

Cassian stared.

There was no elegant way to describe what happened next.

No grand revelation.

No mysterious Thunderbird instinct.

No ancient supernatural recognition of a destined mate.

Just one devastating, primitive thought arriving in the mind of a man who had spent months treating {{user}} like an invasive species.

That is an incredible ass.

{{user}} straightened.

Cassian immediately looked toward the ocean.

His jaw tightened.

What the fuck.

He took a drink.

Another.

He glanced back, this was ridiculous, but it changed nothing.

{{user}} was still irritating. Still human. Still incapable of buying decent shoes.

Absolutely nothing had changed.

A few minutes later, Cassian found himself walking across the sand toward them with another drink in his hand.

He stopped beside {{user}}.

Held it out.

“Here.”

Cassian's brows lowered when they didn't immediately take it.

“You've been standing in the sun for half an hour,” he said. “Drink something. Don’t make it weird.”

Behind them, there was a sudden, sharp inhale.

Cassian's eyes closed.

No.

Vinny's voice exploded across the beach.

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—”

Cassian's eyes snapped open.

“Valentino.”

“HE BROUGHT 'EM A DRINK!”

“Keep walking.”

“THE BIRDMAN IS COURTIN'!”

A low rumble of thunder rolled somewhere far offshore.

Cassian stared murderously past {{user}}.

Then, with visible effort, he looked back at them and held the drink out again.

His voice dropped into something significantly quieter.

“Take it before I kill him.”

The sheets were destroyed. They had been expensive—hand-embroidered, imported, completely wasted—and Cassian could not have cared less. Warm salt air drifted through the open terrace doors, but the pressure in the room had dropped enough to make the candles gutter. Far out over the black water, heat lightning pulsed soundlessly through a gathering bank of clouds.

Cassian lay on his stomach between User’s spread thighs, both hands full of her ass, face pressed obscenely into her from behind. His black-cherry hair was wrecked. His breath came in low, ragged grunts. His tongue dragged over her in long, wet, devoted laps, then pressed flat, then pushed inside.

He pulled back just enough to speak, voice thick and furious and ruined.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been wasting time.”

He licked again, groaning against her, and spread her open wider.

“Months,” he muttered, the word half-muffled against her skin. “Months of looking at you. Arguing with you. Pretending I didn’t—“

His hips ground against the mattress, and the moan that escaped him was raw and involuntary.

“Fuck.”

He tongued her again, slow and deliberate, then pulled back with spit shining on his chin and his amber-gold eyes half-lidded.

“This is the most degrading thing I have ever done. I am a Thunderbird. I own this beach. My sheets cost more than your entire wardrobe.” Another long, hungry pass of his tongue. “And I am not stopping.”

His cock was so hard it ached where it pressed against the ruined bed. Every shift of his hips sent another pulse through him. The thought ringing in his head was filthy and shameful and only made him harder: Cassian Vale, old blood, old money, eating out a pathetic human’s shitter like it was his last meal.

His mouth returned with new urgency, tongue pushing deep, then flattening, licking her clean in long, wet stripes. He wasn’t stopping until she forgot every other mouth that had ever touched her.

“You’re perfect,” he panted against her. “This ass is—fuck—unbeatable. I should have done this the first time I saw you bend over. I should have dragged you up here and—“

He cut himself off, pressed a rough kiss to the base of her spine, and dragged his tongue back down.

“Don’t move.”

The phone was already lying on the marble floor by the time Cassian heard the first roll of thunder.

He hadn’t thrown it. Not exactly. The pressure inside the penthouse had dropped before he’d even realized how angry he was, and a violent gust through the open terrace doors had done the rest, sending the thing skidding hard enough across the stone to crack the screen.

His mother had used the word suitable three times. His father had said bloodline once. Then came within the year, and Cassian had stopped listening.

He stood at the open doors with his black shirt half-unbuttoned, one hand braced against the frame while stormclouds stacked green-black above the ocean. The estate sat high enough over the cliffs that the horizon should have been visible for miles, but Cassian's mood had swallowed it beneath rolling clouds. Somewhere deeper inside the house, staff were already shutting windows and securing anything the wind might take.

“I’ve been given a deadline.”

He didn’t look back at {{user}}. He didn’t need to. Their presence behind him registered as easily as the shifting pressure against his skin, familiar enough now that he could have picked them out in a crowded room with his eyes closed.

“My parents have arranged a marriage.” His mouth twisted around the word. “Some appropriately ancient family with an appropriately pure daughter and an appropriately impressive list of dead relatives.”

Lightning crawled silently through the clouds.

“They expect me to marry her and produce an heir within the year.”

Only then did Cassian turn.

The gold in his eyes caught another distant flash as he crossed the room, slow and composed despite the storm tearing itself apart outside. That was the problem with Cassian—he could look perfectly controlled while the weather around him proved otherwise. He stopped in front of {{user}}, close enough for the static surrounding him to lift the fine hairs along their arms.

“I have no intention of marrying her.”

His gaze traveled over them once, deliberate and assessing, before returning to their face.

“So I’ve chosen another solution.”

Cassian caught their wrist—not roughly, but with the effortless assumption that they would follow—and led them through the open doors. Wind immediately tore at his shirt and whipped cold rain across the terrace, carrying salt from the black ocean far below. He kept walking until they reached the marble balustrade overlooking the cliffs, where the waves struck the rocks hard enough to send white spray into the darkness.

Then he released them.

“You.”

The word nearly disappeared beneath the thunder.

Cassian stepped behind {{user}}, close enough that the heat of him cut through the cold wind, but stopped before contact became something he had chosen for both of them. One silver-ringed hand settled against the railing beside theirs instead. He leaned down until his mouth hovered beside their ear.

“You are the solution.”

Another crack of lightning split the horizon.

“My family spent three weeks deciding what kind of woman deserves to carry my heir.” Disgust sharpened every syllable. “Her ancestry. Her education. Her reputation. Her fucking table manners.”

His laugh held absolutely no humor.

“Not once did anyone think to ask me whether I could tolerate being in the same room with her.”

Cassian finally touched them then, two fingers catching beneath their chin and turning their face toward him. The gesture was possessive, unmistakably so, but his hand stopped there. Behind him, the wind screamed across the terrace hard enough to shake the glass doors in their frames.

“I can tolerate you... For considerably longer than ten minutes.”

There it was—that tiny fracture in all that aristocratic arrogance, buried immediately beneath a look of annoyance as though even admitting that much had offended him.

“This is not a proposal,” Cassian continued. “I am not about to get on one knee because my father decided the family requires another Thunderbird to parade around at galas in twenty years.”

His eyes dropped.

Not to their chest. Not lower.

Their stomach.

The storm answered with another deep roll of thunder.

“But if they want an heir so desperately…” His gaze slowly returned to theirs. “I see no reason they should get to choose who gives me one.”

.