Knox's hands come to his chest. Smaller than his own but sure, steady, unbuttoning Dimitri's shirt with a methodical attention that shouldn't be erotic but is. The bond hums between them as Knox pushes the shirt off his shoulders, and his fingers trace the line of Dimitri's collarbone, his chest, the place where the witch's holy fire had scarred him and Knox had reached through the blaze and pulled him out. The scar is faded now, barely visible, but Knox's fingers find it every time, and every time he touches it something passes through the bond that Dimitri can only describe asfierce.
Knox undoes his belt. Pushes his own pants down. Steps out of them and into the shower, and Dimitri watches the water hit his skin and run in rivulets down his back and over the curve ofhis ass, and finishes undressing with rather less composure than Knox had managed.
He steps into the shower behind Knox and the hot water hits him and it's good, the heat of it sinking into muscles that have spent the better part of the day tense and coiled, but it's not as good as the feeling of Knox leaning back against him. Knox's back to his chest. Knox's wet hair against his shoulder. Knox's body, warm and slick and pliant, settling into him like a key into a lock.
Dimitri wraps an arm around his waist. He presses his mouth to the side of Knox's neck, where the water runs in hot streams over his pulse point, and tastes skin and sweat and something underneath that is purely Knox—bright and faintly electric, the divine thread in his blood that used to make Dimitri angry and now just buzzes in his blood, a frequency he's become attuned to.
"How long before you start worrying about him again?" Dimitri murmurs against his neck.
"I haven't stopped," Knox says.
"I know." He tightens his arm around Knox's waist. "He's going to be fine."
"You don't know that."
"No. But I'll kill anything that proves me wrong, so the outcome is the same."
Knox huffs a breath that might be a laugh. He turns in Dimitri's arms, water streaming down his chest, and looks up at him with those green eyes. His hair is plastered to his forehead and his shoulders and he looks younger like this, softer, stripped of the composure that holds him together during the day. He looks like what he is: someone who has spent his life fighting and protecting and standing between the world and the things that want to eat it, and who is very, very tired, and who has chosen to rest here. With Dimitri. In this tiny bathroom with the bad waterpressure and the steam on the mirror and nowhere to be and nothing to kill.
Dimitri cups his face with both hands. Tips it up. Kisses him.
The kiss is slow, unhurried. This is Dimitri learning the shape of Knox's mouth like he has all the time in the world, which he does now, because the bond is sealed and the debt is paid and no one is dying and they have this. They have each other. They have time.
Knox makes a soft sound against his mouth, something quiet and unguarded, and the feeling that comes through the bond is so nakedly, devastatingly tender that Dimitri has to break the kiss and press his forehead to Knox's because it's either that or do something unforgivable like say something sincere.
"Dimitri," Knox says.
"Shut up."
"You're feeling things."
"I amalwaysfeeling things. I'm feeling the water. I'm feeling the tile. I'm feeling your bony elbows—"
Knox kisses him again and the deflection dissolves.
Dimitri's hands slide down Knox's sides. Over his ribs, his waist, the jut of his hipbones that Dimitri has memorized by now, the specific feeling of them under his palms. He grips Knox's hips and pulls them forward against his own, and they're both hard already—the bond feeding arousal back and forth between them like a current—and the slide of Knox's cock against his in the hot water makes them both exhale sharply.
"Turn around, angel," Dimitri says.
Knox holds his gaze for a moment, his eyes dark and wanting, mouth swollen from kissing, water running down his chest, and then he turns. Presses his palms flat against the tile. Drops his head between his arms, and the line of his spine is gorgeous, every vertebra visible under wet skin, and the water runs down the center of his back and over the curve of his ass and Dimitrihas to take a breath because even now, even after everything, the sight of Knox presenting himself like this—trusting and open and willing—hits Dimitri somewhere primal and permanent.
He drops to his knees.
The tile is hard and wet and he doesn't care. His hands grip Knox's hips, pull them back, and he presses his mouth to the base of Knox's spine and works his way down. Slow. Deliberate. Kissing and tasting every inch of slick skin, water running over his lips, until he reaches the cleft of Knox's ass and Knox's breathing has gone ragged above him.
He licks a slow, flat stripe over Knox's hole and Knox's entire body shudders.
"Fuck—" Knox's voice breaks, his fingers curling against the tile.
"There's that mouth," Dimitri murmurs, and spreads him wider with both thumbs, and puts his tongue to work.
He eats Knox out like it's the last thing he'll ever do. Slow at first, teasing—long, flat strokes of his tongue interspersed with pointed, precise flicks that make Knox's thighs tremble and his breath come in stuttered gasps. The bond is a live wire between them, and Dimitri can feel what Knox feels—the slick heat of his tongue, the vulnerability of being spread open, the sharp spike of pleasure every time he pushes inside—and feeling Knox's pleasure on top of his own is dizzying. He groans against Knox's skin and the vibration makes Knox jerk forward with a choked sound.
"Stay still," Dimitri says, and his grip tightens on Knox's hips, holding him in place, and Knox whines—an actual whine, high and desperate—and pushes back against his mouth.
Dimitri pushes his tongue inside and Knox's knees buckle. He catches himself against the wall, one hand slapping the tile, and the sound he makes reverberates off the bathroom walls, loudand uncontrolled andwrecked, and Dimitri feels it go straight to his cock like a punch.
He works Knox open with his tongue, patient and thorough, until Knox is shaking and dripping and making sounds that are barely words anymore—fragments of Dimitri's name interspersed with profanity that would scandalize the entire Templar Order. The water streams over both of them, hot and relentless, and Knox is close. Dimitri can feel it through the bond, the pressure building at the base of Knox's spine, the tightening in his stomach, and Dimitri pulls his mouth away.
