Valac’s mouth quirked. “Much. As long as they continue to ingest it, they’re basically immortal. They don’t age.”
“Holy shit,” Julian breathed. “So I won’t age while I have your blood in my system?”
“Yes. For a few weeks.” Valac opened his mouth to say more and then shut it quickly, eyeing Julian with an intensity that made him squirm.
Julian didn’t have to hear the words. If he wanted more of Valac’s blood in a few weeks when this dose wore off, Valac would be happy to supply it. And this time, Julian would be awake.
Clearing his throat, he nodded at the glass of water on the metal tray beside him. “Is that for me?”
Valac barely glanced at it. “Yes. One of the humans brought it in here. The scarred one. He said he was very thirsty after he lost a lot of blood from a stab wound, so he thought you would want it.”
Luke. That had to be Luke Morgan. They’d tried to kill him, too. It looked like they were part of a very exclusive club now.
“They probably have questions.”
“They don’t matter,” Valac said. Then he sighed. “Actually, that isn’t true. But explanations can wait until you’re ready. You should rest.”
“I don’t want to rest. I need to…” He needed to go home. He needed to check on his house, go pick up his car from where he’d left it at the restaurant. Call his boss at the shopping center and try to explain why he didn’t show up for his shift. Put the piecesof his life back together after the paladins tried to take it from him.
“There will be time for all the things you need to do,” Valac said. “You can’t do any of them if you faint because you’re still weak.”
Weak. He was weak. Because they’d tried to kill him. As far as they knew, they’d succeeded. They didn’t know he had a demon friend who’d swooped in and saved him from the brink of death.
Friend? Is that what he and Valac were? That didn’t seem like a strong enough word to encompass everything they were to each other.
No. He could think about that later.
Julian pushed himself upright. “I’ll endure. I can’t just lay here while the rest of the world goes on. I have too much to do.”
He pushed back the bloodstained blankets with a grimace. Hopefully they weren’t completely ruined. His clothes, on the other hand, were a different matter. There was no salvaging them. Soaked in dirty water and tacky with blood, he cringed just looking at himself. Scooting to the edge of the bed, he pulled his shirt overhead and let it fall to the floor.
“They brought you some clothing,” Valac said. His glowing eyes were glued to Julian’s chest.
There were definitely more important things to worry about, but Julian had never been more aware of his own physical flaws. In the weeks since he’d left the guild, he’d stopped training. That combined with the cheaper meals and general lack of sleep had taken a toll. He’d lost some of his muscle mass. His collar bones and ribs were more visible than ever. Gone was the muscular warrior. He was just a skinny, stressed-out waiter now. He was a shrimp compared to Valac, who stood tall, broad and imposing, his pale body on display and swept with artful black lines that undulated like waves across his skin.
But Valac looked at him like he wanted toeathim. Like Julian was water and he’d been stranded in the desert. Slow heat flowed through his body as the tension crackled between them, like a wire drawing tight. Julian’s lips parted, because he couldn’t seem to draw in enough breath. He felt Valac’s gaze like a physical touch, raking down his body and back up, learning every divot and curve.
“Valac,” he rasped, and the glow of his eyes met Julian’s, burning dark with want.
“Yes,” Valac said, as though answering an unspoken question. “Here.” He stood, leaving a vacuum of space beside Julian as he crossed to the cot across from his own, where clean clothes were folded and stacked. “These are for you. I believe they are Alex’s. He said you and he were closest in size.”
“Yeah, yeah, I was not blessed with height.” He maintained that five-foot-eight wasn’tshort, but he was often the shortest in every room, and it was no different here at the skating rink. Valac downright dwarfed him.
“I think you’re perfect,” Valac said simply, handing him the clothes.
Julian huffed out a laugh, unable to hide the way his face flushed at the compliment. “I’m beginning to think you’re biased.”
“No more than the others are biased in favor of their own humans.”
That drew him up short. Right. Valac said Julian washis. It was one thing to hear that in a dream when his days were filled with self-imposed isolation and soul-gnawing loneliness. Everyone wanted to feel wanted, after all. It was another thing entirely to hear it while he was awake, coming from a demon he barely knew outside his dreams, who was the most otherworldly being he’d ever laid eyes on. What did it really mean for him? For hissoul?
Shaking those thoughts away, he focused on the task in front of him. Getting dressed. Thanking the Sentinels for their help. Picking up the scattered pieces of his cobbled-together life. One thing at a time. He pulled the clean shirt on and unbuttoned his jeans. When he stood to push them down his legs, Valac was there, helping steady him when he wobbled. When he sat back down to remove them, Valac followed him, taking a knee. With a gentle touch, he tugged Julian’s jeans from his lower legs and cast them away.
Julian’s face burned. Sitting in his boxers with a beautiful man on his knees before him, his body took notice. Valac’s hands were impossibly warm, soft but firm, guiding Julian’s ankles into the clean joggers one at a time. He stood, his hands on Valac’s sturdy shoulders. Doing so almost brought them flush, and he felt the heat of Valac’s breath on his stomach. His hands followed the waistband around, the backs of his thumbs dragging up Julian’s hamstrings and over the swell of his rear, pressing too firmly to be anything but intentional. A quiet sound left Julian’s throat, and Valac looked up the long plane of Julian’s abdomen to meet his eyes.
“I want you to make that sound for me again,” Valac said, slipping a hand under the front of Julian’s T-shirt and pushing the fabric up. “Later. When you’re feeling better.” He pressed a kiss to Julian’s exposed stomach, and Julian could expire on the spot. It was a good thing he’d experienced severe blood loss, or he would be having a serious problem right now.
Valac stood, and Julian went from staring down at him to craning his head back to look up, up, up.
