ACOMAF (Rhys's POV)

When I Lick You (Chapter 48)

To say the inn where we were staying was cramped would have been an understatement, but there it was. The attic room given us was tiny, Feyre was grumpy as hell from training, and I was horny as fuck from flying her here against my chest through the wind and rain.

The encounter with Lucien seemed to have triggered something in us both that even the Court of Nightmares and Starfall had not managed. I thought about how Feyre had looked with those powerful wings gliding out of her back the entire flight to the inn, trying not to drop her in my anxiety as we flew.

But we both felt it. The shift . A primal sensation building between us, the final missing piece that would undo the tension we shared. I was done pretending with her that it didn't exist anymore. The lone bed boldly staring at us from within four tightly packed walls of the inn, too narrow and dingy to house what I felt for Feyre, seemed to throw that realization back in our faces.

"I asked for two," I said automatically, my hands thrown up in surrender over the threshold to the room.

Feyre seemed to be thinking along the same lines as she didn't dare move within the room. "If you can't risk using magic, then we'll have to warm each other," she said, a blush immediately overtaking her frozen cheeks. "Body heat," she spat out, but not before a smug look had crept onto my face. "My sisters and I had to share a bed - I'm used to it."

"I'll try to keep my hands to myself."

"I'm hungry."

So am I , I thought, but not for that kind of nourishment.

"I'll go down and get us food while you change." Her brows rose in genuine curiosity. The danger of where this night might lead had us both thrown off our game. "Remarkable as my own abilities are to blend in," I explained, "my face is recognizable. I'd rather not be down there long enough to be noticed."

My fingers were agitated as they worked on pulling the cloak over my wings. I wasn't even inside the room yet and already it felt suffocating. There was no way I could let myself lose control with Feyre here in this miserable den, far from what I'd hoped it would be. Muscles screamed at me as I stretched for the fastening to cloak myself, the result of a long day exposed to the rough elements raging outside. It made all the things my body needed feel so out of reach.

I caught Feyre staring, a glazed look in her eyes studying me intently. Darkness brooded over my body while my fingers worked, a darkness that was annoyed and angry at my limitations, but Feyre was drinking it in like fine wine.

"I love it when you look at me like that," I said, my voice low and aching.

"Like what?" she asked.

"Like my power isn't something to run from. Like you see me." Her words at the Court of Nightmares came back to me, warming my skin against the chill in the room.

You are good, Rhys. I see you.

And she'd meant it too.

"I was afraid of you at first," Feyre said and I smiled because I knew it wasn't true.

This mask does not scare me.

"No, you weren't," I countered, finishing up the hood of my cloak. "Nervous, maybe, but never afraid. I've felt the genuine terror of enough people to know the difference. Maybe that's why I couldn't keep away."

The intimacy of this fact threatened to tip me over and I darted away from her and our cramped quarters before she could say anything. As I waited for our food to be drawn up, I tried not to think about the layers of damp clothing she would be removing floors above me, sticking to her skin and hair, her nakedness against the sheets as she sat on the bed and removed her moistened undergarments to change. I shuddered the thought away before it could get the better of me by adding her newly fashioned wings to the equation.