Lying fucking asshole.
Flix Fulmini was many things, but absent-minded wasn’t one of them. There was no way he’d forgotten about Aneski, and no matter how hard the asshole tried to convince him as much, he refused to believe it.
Right?
Right.
Ish.
“Fuck!” He shot to his feet and kicked the stool he’d been sitting on clear across the room, closing his eyes when it clattered against the wall, knocking down someone’s hanging canvas. If he’d scratched it at all, he’d feel terrible.
“Whoa!” Rex appeared in the doorway just in time to witness his outburst, grimacing at him as he went to pick up the fallen piece. "What the hell, man?”
“Sorry,” Aneski mumbled. He ran his hand through his slightly curly ginger hair, scowling when he realized too late that there was still wet clay smeared over his palm. “Damn it.”
“First, you slipped up at the hideaway, and now this.” Rex replaced the canvas. “You’ve let him get to you, man. Didn’t you swear you weren’t going to let that happen?”
He should deny it, at least try to save face, but Aneski didn’t even bother. Rex was one of the few people in his life who really knew him; hell, he was the only one he’d trusted enough to let in on this asinine plan. There was no point in denying what they both already figured out.
Aneskihadlet Flix get to him.
“Is it because he wasn’t wrong?” Rex prodded. “About us having gotten lucky?”
There was no way either of them would have been able to kidnap the Brumal member otherwise. There’d been more to the plan, of course, but it’d still been shaky at best. After years of planning, Aneski still hadn’t been able to come up with anything seamless that would guarantee his capture of his brother’s ex.
And the number one suspect in his brother’s murder case.
And Ani’s first love.
Fuck.
“We were too obvious,” Aneski said. He’d tried to start them off small. They’d kept Flix locked up with no contact for the first few days, carefully monitoring him from the small camera set in the corner of the room they’d converted into a cell fit for containing a Devil. It’d been easy though, since Flix hadn’t woken once in that timeframe.
He’d started to worry even, had called in Bridger and spilled his guts about it all due to panic he’d somehow killedFlix or permanently put the man in a coma. From the very beginning, Ani had been too close to this. Time apart was meant to have hardened him against his old feelings, but whenever he was alone in the same room with Flix…Whenever he forced him to moan and writhe…All those old wants and needs came back tenfold.
“That’s not on me,” Rex argued. “I followed your lead. I even looked the other way while you sexually—”
“You might not have looked,” Aneski cut him off, “but you certainly like talking about it. I get it, you’re not happy with the way I decided to approach this. Noted.”
“I just don’t get why it’s relevant.”
“Someone like Flix wouldn’t succumb to typical torture methods.”
Rex quirked a brow. “Right, so you decided to spend a small fortune on rotating beaded dildos and locking anal plugs in order to make him talk. Because breaking a couple of his bones wouldn’t have done the trick, but letting him get off several times a day will. Sure.”
“He only gets to come once.” Aneski blew out a breath when his friend’s gaze only hardened at that. “Fine. It sounds crazy when you say it out loud.”
“That’s becauseit iscrazy.” Rex made his way over, stopping a couple of feet away so they were no longer speaking across the room.
They were alone and there wasn’t another class due to use the studio space for at least an hour, but that didn’t mean someone couldn’t walk in at any given moment, and the last thing either of them wanted was to be overheard talking about the kidnap of a Brumal member, let alone one of the Devils of Vitality.
“You’re still grieving, even after all of these years, and I get that,” he tentatively began, carefully choosing his words asAneski waited with less patience for him to get to the point. “But you aren’t thinking straight.”
“If you thought this whole thing was stupid, why did you agree to help me in the first place?” Aneski snapped. “I would have asked Gannon.”
Gannon Fisher had grown up with them and was the second closest person to Aneski. His first matter of business as soon as Aneski had taken over the Shepards had been to raise his friends’ status within the gang. He needed people he could fully trust around him, and those were few and far between.
Still, he probably wouldn’t have asked him to help with this, and they both knew it. Rexton was just nice enough not to point it out.
