But his hands know.
His hands are careful in a way that goes beyond training and enters something else, something Knox has been avoiding naming for days. He traces the edge of a closing furrow and spreads salve into the last of the deep punctures, and his touch is so gentle that his own throat aches with the tenderness of it, and he realizes, with a quiet horror that settles into his bones, that he is not just treating a wound. He is caring for Dimitri. He is sitting on his couch with a demon’s arm in his lap and his fingers in a demon’s flesh and the care pouring through his hands is not clinical. It is not professional. It is personal, deeply and irrevocably personal, and the thing Knox has been refusing to name is staring him in the face.
He cares about Dimitri.
Not in the abstract, dutiful way a Templar cares about the creatures in his charge. Not in the detached way a healer cares about a patient. Knox cares about what happens to this demon.He cares whether Dimitri is in pain. He cares whether Dimitri sleeps, whether Dimitri eats, whether the burns on his arms are healing. He cares about the sharp grin and the bitter laugh and the ancient, wounded thing that lives behind those red eyes and lashes out at everything that comes close because the alternative is letting someone in.
The realization terrifies him.
It terrifies him because Dimitri is a demon, and Knox is a Templar, and this is not a gap that caring can bridge. It terrifies him because the angelic rejection is grinding through his blood and the bond is a leash on both of them and the only path forward is severance, separation, two people walking away from each other and never looking back. It terrifies him because Knox has spent eighty years keeping people at a careful, measured distance, not because he doesn’t want them close but because closeness has always been a risk he couldn’t afford, and in the span of four days a demon with sharp teeth and sharper words has gotten closer than anyone Knox has allowed in decades.
He tries to keep it out of the bond. He tries to tamp it down, to fold it up the way he folds up pain, to tuck it somewhere Dimitri can’t reach. But his hands are still on Dimitri’s arm, still spreading salve with that terrible gentleness, and the bond is wide open between them, and Knox knows he’s not being careful enough because Dimitri’s jaw is clenched and his good hand has curled into a fist against his thigh.
Knox glances at that fist. At the clawed fingers pressed into the fabric of his pants, the tendons standing out beneath the skin, the controlled tension of a creature who is receiving something through the bond that he doesn’t want and can’t stop. Dimitri’s red eyes are still on Knox’s face, but the expression has changed. The studying intensity is gone. What’s left is something raw and cornered and furious, the look of an animal that has been shownkindness and doesn’t know whether to accept it or bite the hand offering it.
Knox thinks about how strange it is. That someone who hates him this viciously, who has called him half nothing and unwanted, who has punched him and pinned him and threatened to destroy everything Knox tries to protect, could also refuse to hand him to Ruby’s daughters. Could watch Knox’s back during every fight they’ve stumbled into, covering his weak side without being asked. Could put a hand on the small of Knox’s back to steady him when the angelic rejection made him stumble on the street, the touch so brief and so careful that Knox almost thought he’d imagined it. Could hold his throat without tightening. Could sit here on this couch with his arm in Knox’s lap and his jaw clenched and his fist white-knuckled against his leg and receive Knox’s feelings through the bond with the rigid endurance of someone being burned alive for the second time.
Hatred and possessiveness shouldn’t live in the same body. They shouldn’t be able to coexist. But Dimitri contains both, and Knox is not foolish enough to confuse one for something it isn’t. Dimitri wants him. Knox can feel that much through the bond, has felt it since the warehouse, in the way Dimitri’s eyes track him and the way Dimitri’s hands find excuses to land on his skin and the way the bond hums with heat every time they’re close. But wanting is not caring. Dimitri is a demon. Demons want things the way fire wants fuel, to consume them, to use them, to burn through them and move on. The possessiveness isn’t tenderness. It’s ownership. Dimitri doesn’t want Knox safe. He wants Knoxhis,which is a different thing entirely, and the fact that Knox’s chest aches at the distinction is his problem, not Dimitri’s.
He is caring about someone who will never care about him back. He knows this. He has known it since the warehouse, since the first time those red eyes found his across a burning circle andthe attraction hit him alongside the certainty that nothing good could come of it. Knox has spent eighty years being practical, and practical means acknowledging when a feeling is real and also futile and holding both truths in the same hand without letting either one cut him.
Both truths are cutting him. He keeps his hands steady on the wound and doesn’t let it show.
He finishes the wound. The flesh has closed, new skin stretching pink and raw over mended muscle, and Knox smooths the salve along the final edges with his fingertips and pulls his hands away.
“Done,” he says. His voice is rough. He clears his throat. “It’ll be tender for a day or two, but the acid is neutralized.”
He stands. The separation is immediate and clarifying, cold air rushing into the warm space between them, and Knox gathers the medical supplies and carries them back to the bathroom. He puts everything away. He washes his hands. He washes them again. He stares at himself in the mirror, flushed and tired, green eyes too bright, and tells himself to get it together.
He opens the bathroom door.
Dimitri is in the hallway.
Knox’s breath catches. His back straightens, his weight shifts to the balls of his feet, the instinctive full-body response of something small that has just come face to face with something large in a confined space. The hallway is narrow, barely wide enough for one, and Dimitri fills it the way he fills every space he occupies, completely, overwhelmingly, his red eyes catching the dim light. He’s standing exactly where he stood on their first night. Close enough that Knox has to tilt his chin up to meet his gaze.
“It seems unwise,” Dimitri says slowly, “to harbor a demon when you could just as easily destroy him.”
Knox meets his eyes. “I thought you said you were too strong for me to kill.”
Dimitri’s mouth curves. Not quite a smile. Something with edges. He leans in, and Knox’s breath goes shallow, and the hallway shrinks to the width of the space between their bodies.
Dimitri lifts one hand. A single finger, clawed and careful, finds the line of Knox’s jaw and traces it. Slowly. From the hinge below his ear to the point of his chin. The claw whispers against Knox’s skin, light enough to leave no mark, deliberate enough to leave no doubt. Knox’s face is burning. His heart is hammering. He can feel Dimitri’s satisfaction through the bond, warm and dark and savoring.
But Knox doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t break eye contact. Because the thing about predators is that they only have power if you run, and Knox has never run from anything in his life. And because he can feel exactly what Dimitri is feeling through the bond, the satisfaction and the hunger and the wanting, and there is no tenderness in it. There is heat and possession and the pleasure of a creature that has cornered something and is taking its time, and Knox should be repulsed by it, should be grateful for the confirmation that Dimitri’s interest is exactly what he thought it was, and instead the wanting pours through the bond and meets Knox’s own and the combination is devastating.
“I have a feeling,” Dimitri murmurs, his finger pausing at the point of Knox’s chin, tilting his face up a fraction, “that knowing that wouldn’t stop you from trying.”
Knox stares up at him. Green eyes into red. And the realization from the couch is still sitting in his chest, warm and terrifying, and Dimitri’s claw is on his chin and Dimitri’s body is inches from his and the bond is singing between them, and Knox wants to close the distance so badly that his hands are shaking at his sides. He wants it even though he knows what Dimitri’s wantingmeans and what his own means and that they are not the same thing. He wants it anyway. That’s the worst part.
“I’m going to bed,” Knox says.
His voice is steady. His pulse is not. He slides sideways, out from under Dimitri’s hand, his shoulder brushing the demon’s chest as he passes, and the contact sends a jolt through the bond that they both pretend not to feel.
Dimitri lets him go.
Knox walks to his bedroom. He closes the door. He leans against it, presses the back of his head to the wood, and breathes.
Through the bond, faint but unmistakable, he feels Dimitri lean against the hallway wall on the other side.
