Knox says nothing. His jaw is locked and his hands are at his sides and his heart is hammering and the bond is carrying all of it across, every ounce of the want he has been hiding, exposed and naked between them.
“How desperate do you have to be?” Dimitri breathes. He’s close enough now that Knox can feel the heat radiating off his body, can smell the smoke and sulfur underneath. “How lonely, how starved, to want a demon? To lie in the dark and ache for something that wants only to take you apart? Do you know what I am, Knox? Do you know what my kind does to things they want?”
Knox’s throat works. The words land on every nerve the last two days have left raw, every insecurity he has carried since thebedroom, the rejection and the void and the belief that he was caring about someone who would never care about him back. Dimitri is confirming everything Knox told himself.Something that wants only to take you apart.Not care for. Not keep. Take apart.
Dimitri grabs the front of Knox’s shirt.
His fist twists in the fabric, claws extending, pricking through the cotton and into the skin beneath. Knox feels the sharp points dimple his chest, not breaking skin, not quite, but close enough that a single flex of Dimitri’s fingers would draw blood. The demon hauls him forward until they’re inches apart, until Knox can see the individual flecks of darker red in those ember irises, until Dimitri’s breath is hot on his face.
“You’re disgustingly naive,” Dimitri snarls. “Trusting a demon. Letting a demon into your home. Falling asleep with a demon in the next room. Falling unconscious in a demon’s arms.” His claws press harder. A pinpoint of pain blooms on Knox’s chest. “You should be terrified of me.”
Knox looks up at him.
He looks at the fury and the fear and the claws in his shirt and the red eyes that are too bright and too close. He hears the words Dimitri just said,something that wants only to take you apart,and he hears them alongside the memory of Dimitri cupping his face with such devastating gentleness that Knox’s heart had cracked open. He hearshow desperate do you have to bealongside the memory of Dimitri stepping in front of him in a dark alley without thinking, of shadows filling the walls andminepouring through the bond. He hearsyou should be terrified of mealongside the memory of arms catching him before he hit the pavement, a hand behind his head, a heartbeat against his cheek, fast and terrified.
Dimitri’s words say one thing. Everything else about him says another. And Knox has spent years reading the distance betweenwhat people say and what they mean, and right now the distance is so vast it could swallow them both.
Knox exhales. It comes out shaky, because his body is still weak and his heart is hammering and Dimitri’s claws are in his skin and his want has been laid bare between them and Dimitri just called him desperate for it. But his voice, when he speaks, is steady.
“Did you carry me home?”
Dimitri’s face goes white.
The fury stutters. Knox watches it happen, watches the rage falter in the way a flame falters in a sudden wind, watches something naked and exposed flash across Dimitri’s features before the demon can catch it and shove it back down. His grip on Knox’s shirt doesn’t loosen, but the claws retract a fraction, and his red eyes are wide, and for a moment he looks less like a predator and more like someone who has been caught doing something he can’t explain.
Knox reaches up and wraps his hands around Dimitri’s wrists.
The contact sparks. The electricity is there, same as always, racing through the point of connection and lighting up every nerve between them. But Knox doesn’t flinch. He holds on. His hands are smaller than Dimitri’s, his fingers don’t fully close around those broad wrists, but his grip is firm and sure and unmistakably deliberate. He can feel Dimitri’s pulse beneath his thumbs, fast and frantic, completely at odds with the mask of fury on his face.
“I’m not worried about you breaking me,” Knox says quietly.
Dimitri stares at him. The bond is a maelstrom, fury and fear and want and the thing that cracked open in the alley when Knox fell, and Knox can feel all of it, and he holds Dimitri’s gaze and lets him feel that Knox can feel it. No hiding. No pretending. No void and no wall and no careful distance. Just the truth, laid bare between them in the morning light.
Knox has spent the last two days believing that Dimitri does not care about him. He has told himself that Dimitri’s wanting is consumption, not tenderness. He has told himself he is caring about someone who will never care about him back, and he has held that belief with both hands and used it as armor against the thing growing in his chest.
He was wrong.
He knows it now the way he knows his own heartbeat, because the bond is stripped bare between them and what he can feel from Dimitri’s side is not hunger and not ownership and not the impersonal possessiveness of a demon claiming a prize. What he can feel is terror. Dimitri is terrified of losing him. Dimitri carried him home and took off his boots and put his mace on the nightstand and stood at the window all night, and the fury is not anger at Knox. It is anger at a universe that made Knox fragile enough to fall and Dimitri helpless enough to be destroyed by it.
“You should be,” Dimitri whispers. His voice is cracked. His eyes are burning. His claws are fully retracted and his hands are just hands now, fisted in Knox’s shirt, holding on.
“I’m not,” Knox says.
Dimitri’s anger flares. It surges through the bond, hot and desperate, one last attempt to burn away everything that’s building between them, and Knox can feel it for what it is now, not a wall but a plea, not fury but surrender dressed up in armor because Dimitri has never surrendered and doesn’t know how to do it without making it look like a fight.
And then Dimitri pulls Knox to him and kisses him.
It’s not gentle. Dimitri’s hand releases Knox’s shirt and slides to the back of his neck, fingers threading into blond hair, gripping, tilting Knox’s head back. His other arm wraps around Knox’s waist, spanning it, pulling Knox flush against his chest, and his mouth finds Knox’s with a precision that leaves no room for accident or ambiguity. The kiss is fierce and consuming andunapologetic. It is not gentle but it is not cruel, and the bond between them detonates, the electricity and the wanting and the fear and the longing and every feeling they’ve been hiding from each other for days colliding in a single, annihilating point of contact.
Knox gasps against Dimitri’s mouth. And then his hands are in Dimitri’s hair and his body is pressed against Dimitri’s and he is kissing him back with everything he has, with every ounce of the caring he tried to hide and the wanting he tried to bury and the days of hurt he swallowed, and the bond sings between them, whole and bright and unbroken, and Knox kisses him back.
Chapter 18
Knox kisses him back and Dimitri’s brain goes offline.
Not slowly. Not in pieces. The whole thing just stops, every thought and calculation and defensive mechanism shutting down in sequence, because Knox’s hands are in his hair and Knox’s mouth is open against his and Knox is kissing him with a desperation that pours through the bond in waves of heat and wanting and something deeper, something that has been locked behind all of that discipline and is now pouring out of him with the force of a dam breaking.
Dimitri makes a sound against Knox’s mouth that he will deny until the end of time. It’s low and rough and involuntary, pulled from somewhere in his chest that he didn’t know had a voice, and Knox swallows it. Knox’s fingers tighten in his hair, nails scraping against his scalp, and Dimitri’s hand at the back of Knox’s neck slides up into that loose blond hair and grips, tilting Knox’s head back, deepening the kiss until it’s less a kiss andmore a claim, teeth and tongue and the sharp edge of wanting that Dimitri has been burying for days.
