“Of course,” Zane stated. “All of me, in fact.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Kazimir barely tamped down the urge to stick the knife through a person he’d considered sort of a friend all this time. “If you’ve done anything to him—”
“We just talked.” He adjusted the collar of his shirt like the arrogant asshole that he was, moving onto the cuffs of his sleeves after.
“About?”
The smile Zane gave him was the one he usually reserved for the ring, just before he was about to break the rules and cause his opponent injury. It was one of the very few times the real himever shown through, and had always elicited both curiosity and unease in Kaz.
“Things you’d rather we not speak about,” he replied. “You better run along, Kazimir. If you leave him stewing too long on our conversation, I fear he’ll turn on you, and nothing, not even that magic dick of yours, will be able to lure him back.”
“What’s your problem?” Kaz couldn’t think of a single reason for Zane to be doing this. “Why would you go out of your way to try and screw me over?”
“That.” Zane finally moved away from the wall, jabbing a finger at the center of Kaz’s chest. “It’s always about you. You can never separate yourself from your delusions of grandeur long enough to take note of the people around you.”
Kazimir frowned, still not sure where all of this was coming from.
“What’s my problem?” Zane’s voice dipped low. “You always seem to forget that I’m the same as you. We’re Devil’s, Kazimir. And Devil’s always collect their dues. Why would I go out of my way to screw you over? Tit-for-tat,baby.”
“I’ve never—”
“We had a good thing going,” Zane cut him off. “A thingyouinitiated. Then you had to go and bring her into the mix.”
Her? Who…
“Lyra?” Okay, now he was really confused. “Aren’t you like, secretly in love with her?” He was pretty certain that was the case, had been certain when the Heir Imperial had come to him asking for a favor for her birthday.
She and Zane had already hooked up on their own once or twice before, as she’d put it, and she was curious to see how he was with other bedpartners. Both he and Zane had been in the midst of their role-play era and had already agreed their next game would be a rape fantasy, wherein Kazimir initiated whenever and wherever he wanted. The unknown was supposedto help Zane cope with the stress of finals, and he’d been the one to suggest it even. Kaz had merely added another player into the mix.
“You stated clearly that you didn’t care about whether or not we had an audience,” he reminded. “Not to mention, you weren’t angry after the fact, and that whole thing brought you and Lyra closer. Now you’re trying to tell me you’ve held a secret grudge all this time? Why didn’t you just fucking say something?”
“Because whenever I slept with you things got confusing for me,” Zane replied. “You’re a self-centered, entitled asshole, but you’re phenomenal with your dick.”
Kaz wasn’t sure if he should thank him or not. Instead, he said, “I thought we were friends.”
“We are.”
“You’re a psycho.” He’d heard that before, though usually directed at himself.
“How’s it feel when the shoe is on the other foot?” Zane asked before checking his multi-slate purposefully. “You’ve just wasted ten whole minutes. Want to take bets? I know you love that sort of thing. Five thousand coin says he walks out on you just like your mommy did.”
Kaz froze. “What did you just say to me?”
“What, you’ve been sticking it in me for four years and two months,” Zane drawled. “Did you really think I wasn’t playing around with your insides as well? The Machiavellianism comes straight from your dad—an early part of your inheritance, in a way, no?—but the rest? Developed over time from childhood trauma, most notably, being abandoned by your mom.”
Usually, Kaz was too guarded to share details of his sordid past, or how much he actually loathed his father. There were very few occasions he ever felt relaxed enough to even want toacknowledge that, let alone open up about it with another living being.
After sex was typically one of them, and as the years had passed, Zane had at least felt like a safe enough ear to listen whenever it got too heavy to carry and Kaz had felt the urge to unload.
Mistake, clearly.
“You were the last to see her,” Zane continued. “Begged her to stay. What’d you do again? Grabbed onto her legs, right? But you weren’t strong enough to keep her and no matter how many words you used, it wasn’t enough to get her to change her mind. That’s when you learned you can’t convince people to do what you want by being kind and honest.”
He’d said that last part to Zane, too, verbatim.
“Yeah,” he agreed, trying to get a handle on his anger before he did something they’d both regret. “And I stand by it. Look what beingkind and honestwith you got me?”
Zane motioned with his chin down at the weapon still clutched in Kaz’s hold. “A knife in the palm of your hand?”
