Laz’s world was tipping again. He stumbled forward, finding the edge of the counter for balance. “So… what?” he asked, voice hoarse. “You’re just going to walk out that door because you’ve decided what’s best for us?”
“You know it is,” Dav snapped, though it lacked any vitriol. Or maybe it was directed internally. “Don’t tell me you weren’t up all night regretting what you did or wondering if you could face me again knowing how much I fucking enjoyed your mouth on my cock.”
“Don’t fucking put words in my mouth,” Laz growled back, sliding around the counter to jab a finger at Dav’s chest. “Tell me again to my fucking face, Dav. Tell me how much you loved when I swallowed your cock to the back of my throat.”
Dav stared at the spot where Lazerath’s finger indented his chest, torso rising and falling at an increasing pace. Slowly, he lifted his dark gaze, brow pinched in confusion.
“What?”
Lazerath yanked his arm back, spreading both wide. “You think I was up all night regretting putting my mouth on you? Or was it where I got harder while choking on your cock? What about when I fucking moaned feeling you slide against my length while we fucked Rosalind together?”
Dav swallowed, head shaking. “Laz, what?—”
“The only thing I fucking regret is not asking for your consent, but now that you’ve decided what’s best for us without asking for ours, I’m going to make something very fucking clear.”
Lazerath closed the distance and crushed his mouth to Dav’s.
The anger that had been churning in Laz’s gut was drowned out the moment his lips were on Dav, uncaring that he’d gone in too fast with his fangs scraping against his tongue. Because it wasn’t his tongue at all, but Dav’s immediately finding his, sweeping in and deepening the contact.
Laz groaned, hands framing his friend’s face, afraid he might try to run away again. But those were hands at his back, claws digging but never piercing as he was pulled flush against the demon.
The only thing odd about the kiss was their heights being so similar, something that struck Laz as silly when he was kissing a male for the first time in his life.
But it wasn’t just any male, was it? It was Dav, his best friend. The demon who had been there for scraped knees and hiding bruises from his father before he and Sev had finally moved out. The demon who didn’t care when Laz only lifted fists and claws in jest and cowered from any real violence. This was the demon who had protected him from the moment they met, and had thought with his foolish fucking smart brain that leaving was some fucked up form of fucking protection?—
“Fuck you,” Lazerath growled, yanking back. Dav’s eyes were glassy, blinking at the sudden shift. “Fuck you for ever thinking my life would be better without you.”
Laz didn’t know what he was doing, only that he needed to be kissing Davarox again. Needed that taste and that feel and to squish Dav’s ridiculously chiseled jaw until he got it in his head that?—
Dav was the one to pull away this time, both hands doing nearly the same squeezing on Laz’s face as he was doing to him. “You—” He gulped audibly, lips swollen and wet. “You don’t like males.”
“Unclear,” Laz confessed, arms trembling. “But I very clearly like you.”
His grip prevented Dav’s head from shaking completely. So Laz pressed his forehead to his friend’s—more-than-friend’s—and stared right into his eyes. “Actually, I love you.”
Tears slipped down Dav’s cheeks. “You?—”
“Don’t,” Laz hissed, squeezing his eyes shut. “Don’t fucking tell me how I feel, Dav. I know how I feel. I can’t explain it, but I fucking know that I love you. Not just in a friend way, and not even in an as-of-last-night way. I fucking love you, and I think it took… a lot of fucking things for me to finally notice it, and I’m sorry?—”
“Don’t apologize,” Dav choked out. His hands grasped for purchase again, like he was trying to crawl inside Laz in the same way Laz wanted to burrow into Dav. “Please don’t ever apologize. I was so fucking terrified of losing you, I just tried to ignore my feelings.”
“You and Rose really do need to work on that,” Laz said around a half-sob, half-laugh.
Dav mirrored the noise, sniffing. “That woman figures things out much faster. She’s too smart for us.”
“She fucking caught on to your obsession with me, didn’t she?”
Dav let out a wet laugh. “Fuck off. Would you have put your mouth back on me if she hadn’t caught on to you, too?”
Laz leaned back, pushing Dav’s face away. “You fucking shoved me off!”
“I was about to fucking come down my best friend’s throat when I didn’t think you liked me like that!”
Laz didn’t know how it happened, but Dav’s arm was around his neck, smothering his face into the demon’s gray, muscular chest. His feet stumbled as he tried to wrestle his way out, even though he’d never been able to do it before when they’d fucked around like this as kids. But it was freeing, and he was fucking happy, and?—
“Ahem.”
The soft clearing of a throat had them freezing, heads snapping toward the bedchamber where a small, sexy human body had leaned against the jamb, arms folded over her chest. Her brow was arched, but a smile tilted her lips as she watched them.
