Then Dimitri is moving. Rolling Knox onto his back, rising above him, one hand still on his hip and the other braced on the mattress beside Knox’s head. His red eyes are blazing in the morning light, and his dark hair is mussed from sleep, and the horns curving from his temples catch the sun, and his expression is furious and tender and complicated in a way that Knox cannot parse.
“Maybe I wasn’t clear earlier,” Dimitri says.
His voice is low and rough with sleep and something underneath the sleep that is darker and more deliberate. He leans down until his mouth is at Knox’s ear, and his breath is warm, and his hand slides from Knox’s hip to the flat of his stomach, fingers splayed, possessive and grounding.
“You’re mine, angel.”
Knox’s breath catches. The wordangeldoesn’t sting this time. It doesn’t land on the nerve Dimitri has been hitting for days. This time it lands somewhere else entirely, somewhere low and warm, and the way Dimitri says it is not a weapon. It is a claim. It is the same word spoken with an entirely different mouth, and Knox’s body knows the difference even if his brain hasn’t caught up.
That is the only admission Dimitri makes and then his mouth is on Knox’s throat and whatever tenderness lived in the declaration is gone, replaced by teeth and intention, and the void dissolves and what floods through the bond from Dimitri’s sideis not devotion spoken aloud but devotion enacted, dark and heated and ravenous.
Dimitri kisses him. It’s slow and thorough and deliberate, a methodical exploration of Knox’s mouth that saysI have time and I intend to use it,and Knox opens for him because he has no choice and no desire to make one.
Dimitri’s hand slides down Knox’s stomach, slow and purposeful, fingers tracing the line of muscle beneath his navel. Knox’s cock is already hard, aching from the closeness and the bond and the three words still ringing in his chest, and when Dimitri’s fingers wrap around him loosely, barely a touch, Knox’s hips jerk off the mattress.
“Look at you,” Dimitri murmurs against his jaw. “Already this desperate and I’ve barely touched you. All that composure, all that discipline, and one hand on your cock and you’re shaking for me.”
Knox makes a sound that is not quite a protest and not quite agreement. Dimitri’s grip tightens, one slow deliberate stroke that drags a gasp from Knox’s throat, and Dimitri’s smile against his neck is sharp and satisfied.
“Tell me what you want,” Dimitri says. His thumb drags across the head, slicking precome down the shaft, and Knox’s fingers twist in the sheets. “I want to hear the holy Templar beg.”
Knox grits his teeth. He has forty years of composure and he is going to hold onto it, he is going to maintain some shred of control, he is not going to give Dimitri the satisfaction of—
Dimitri’s hand stops.
Knox nearly sobs.
“I can do this all morning,” Dimitri says, conversational, his hand loose and still around Knox’s cock, his mouth at the hinge of Knox’s jaw. “I can keep you right here, right on this edge, hard and leaking and desperate, until you give me what I want. Ihave a millennia of patience, angel. How long do you think yours lasts?”
Knox’s composure cracks. “Please.”
“Please what?”
“Touch me. Fuck me. I don’t—just—please.”
The words come out ragged and desperate and nothing at all like the composed Templar he usually is, and through the bond Knox can feel Dimitri’s reaction to hearing them, a surge of heat and satisfaction so intense it makes Knox’s vision blur.
“There he is,” Dimitri says, low and dark. “There’s my angel. Begging so pretty for a demon’s cock.”
He reaches between Knox’s legs. The dark magic slicks his fingers with that body-warm frictionless heat, and he works Knox open without mercy and without rush, two fingers sinking in slow and deep, curling against the spot that turns Knox’s vision white. Knox’s back arches off the mattress and a sound tears from his throat that he doesn’t recognize.
“Tight,” Dimitri says, his voice rough, his fingers buried inside Knox. “So fucking tight, even after last night. Your body wants to keep me out and let me in at the same time, and isn’t that just like you.” He scissors his fingers and Knox gasps and Dimitri adds a third, stretching him wider, and his mouth drags down Knox’s throat while he works. “You’re going to take all of me again, and you’re going to feel it for days. Every time you sit down, every time you move, you’re going to remember my cock inside you and the sounds you’re making right now, and you’re going to get hard in that fucking coat and no one will know why except you and me.”
Knox is shaking. He is beyond speech, beyond composure, beyond anything except the feeling of Dimitri’s fingers inside him and Dimitri’s voice in his ear, and through the bond the wanting is enormous, shared, a loop that feeds itself, and beneath Dimitri’s filthy words Knox can feel what Dimitri isn’tsaying. The three words were the admission. Everything else, the control, the deliberate destruction of Knox’s composure, is Dimitri’s way of saying it again without saying it, because Dimitri will strip Knox bare with his hands and his mouth and his voice before he will strip himself bare with his words.
Knox understands this. He doesn’t need the words. He has the bond, and the bond doesn’t lie, and what the bond is carrying right now from Dimitri’s side is so vast and so unguarded that Knox’s eyes sting.
Dimitri withdraws his fingers and Knox whines at the loss. Dimitri’s hands find his thighs and spread them wider and he lines up and pushes in, slow and steady and relentless, and Knox feels every inch, the stretch and the fullness, and his hands find Dimitri’s arms and hold on.
“Fuck,” Dimitri breathes, fully seated, their hips flush. “You feel incredible. You have no idea what you look like right now. Spread open on my cock with your hair everywhere and your pretty mouth open. Every demon in this city wants what I have and none of them will ever get close.”
He starts to move. Not the frantic wall-fucking of last night but something deeper, long slow thrusts that drag against Knox’s inner walls, and Dimitri’s pace is maddening, controlled, designed to keep Knox on the edge without letting him fall.
“You walk around in that coat,” Dimitri says, rolling his hips and making Knox gasp, “with your mace on your hip and your hair in that ponytail and everyone sees a Templar. A soldier. Something untouchable.” His rhythm picks up, not faster but harder, deeper, and Knox’s nails are digging into his biceps. “They don’t know what I know. They don’t know how you sound when you’re desperate. How you taste. How you feel when you come apart around me.” He leans down, his mouth at Knox’s ear. “That’s mine. All of it. Only mine.”
Knox’s eyes are wet. He blinks and a tear slides down his temple into his hair, and it’s not the words, it’s what’s underneath them, what the bond is carrying, the unspoken thing Dimitri is pouring into him with every thrust and every breath that he will never say out loud because sayingyou’re mineonce was the most Dimitri has ever given anyone and Knox understands that and it breaks him open.
Dimitri’s hips snap forward harder, the control fraying, the deliberate pace giving way to urgency, and Knox wraps his legs around Dimitri’s waist and takes him deeper and they move together, matched and desperate, the bond building toward a crest.
