Chapter 29
The door slammed. Sound ran the corridor, hard and final.
Kylix stepped in alone, soaked in sweat and smoke and a buzz of slow-burning liquor. The sweat clung to his neck, his coat steamed faintly from the rain. Gold-threaded embers clung to the fabric, worked into the black, seamless. He didn’t even shrug it off. He let it hang.
The night had bled him dry again. Outside, the storm still rumbled low across the city, distant thunder rolling, a threat left open.
No Bekn. No bodies. Just shadows and static and one more missed chance. And now it was late. And he’d stayed out too long. Let himself think too long. Let himself drink just enough to make it worse.
It left him scraped out. Breath thin. Chest tight.
Anger followed quickly, sharp and clear.
Attica had slipped through his fingers again, the same bastard who had drugged him, made him black out, left him humiliated.
It made his jaw ache and his hands shake.
He wasn’t done. Not until Attica paid for it.
He would save those prisoners, that Dariux boy, and end every one of the people who stood in the way.
His gloves creaked when his fists closed. He didn’t want comfort. He didn’t want forgiveness. He wanted something he could hold. Bruise. Bite. Bleed for. He needed to take it apart before it took him with it.
“Mirel,” he called, but the house was eerily quiet. His darae was most likely asleep, though Kylix felt a faint hum in their bond suggesting he wasn’t. Kylix walked up the stairs and headed for their bedroom. The bed was empty.
“Mirel?”
He wasn’t in the bathroom either. Kylix’s hands fisted, the alcohol a pleasant buzz crossing with the opium puffer. His eyes went dry, his incisors itched. His cock hardened in his pants. A faint static buzzed under his skin as the Dariux responded, restless.
“Where the fuck are you, little darae?”
He wasn’t inside the house.
Kylix got to the roof. The Waltr greeted him with silence. Its curved walls flickered in reflection. No frost. No warmth. Only Mirel…
The bond flared. The itch turned to burn.
“Good Light, baby. You have no fucking clue what trouble you’re about to get in.”
Standing across the room stood Mirel.
He had his wrist looped in the same chain Kylix had once used to bind him as a prisoner, collarbone sharp as glass under thin fabric.
He wore a thin sleeping gown, half-open at the waist, the loose folds barely clinging to his hips.
His hair was a soft, golden mess, longer than Kylix remembered, falling into his eyes like he didn’t care who saw him.
That sharp nose, that cut of lip always caught between silence and defiance.
Eyes like sun through ice, watching him, waiting.
And that throat, long, pale, exposed, always too delicate for how strong he really was. Waiting.
Mirel blinked slowly. His voice came quiet, rough at the edges. He didn’t speak often. But when he did, it was to get what he wanted. “Maybe I want the trouble. Maybe I like when you lose control.”
Kylix stared.
The bond thrummed.
And something in him snapped.
He crossed the room fast. Didn’t speak. Didn’t ask. Just took him, fingers dragging Mirel by the jaw, mouth claiming, biting.
The first touch was rough, then desperate. Heat and cold met, metal met water and a hiss rose between their skins.
Kylix tasted salt and rain on Mirel’s throat. It grounded him more than any drink. The city storm still pulsed in his blood, every heartbeat felt like thunder looking for somewhere to strike.
He dragged his mouth lower, biting until Mirel’s breath broke, then catching it again with a softer kiss that almost undid him.
“You should hate me for this,” Kylix said.
Mirel’s hands found his face, palms cold, fingers shaking. “I never could.”
That answer hurt worse than silence. It left no place to hide.
The Waltr’s glass mirrored them in split fragments, fire in one curve, frost in the other. He watched their reflections blur as breath fogged the surface. He thought of how easily things vanished when heat met cold.
Mirel moved first this time, hooking a hand at Kylix’s belt, pulling him close until their chests met. His lips brushed a question that didn’t need words.
Kylix answered with motion, not mercy. Every thrust was penance, every gasp proof of life. His hands gripped too hard, Mirel’s nails raked his back. The sound of it filled the Waltr until there was no storm, only them.
When it broke, Kylix collapsed against him, breath shaking. The frost spread again, thin and spidering over the glass beside their faces. Each vein of white caught a flicker of flame from the lamps.
“You burn and I follow,” Mirel whispered.
Kylix looked up at him. “You freeze and I still burn.”
They stayed that way, forehead to forehead, until their breathing evened. The silence wasn’t peace, but it was close enough to pretend.
Outside, lightning flashed. For an instant, the whole city lit white. Kylix saw their reflections again, two figures caught between elements, fire bright on the glass, frost veined beside it.
But Mirel didn’t resist.
He didn’t yield, either.
The spark was already in him. His breath came harder, pulse unsteady, as if something inside had already caught fire. The Dariux didn’t sleep in him either. Not tonight.
No, tonight he let it happen.
And Kylix hated how much he needed that.
Mirel pressed his nose to Kylix’s throat and inhaled slowly, dragging his breath in deep. “You smell like regret,” he whispered. He didn’t say it to hurt, just to name what clung to the air.
Kylix shoved him against the glass, just enough to make it rattle.
“I almost burned the whole district.”
“I know.”
“I thought he’d be there. I thought I fucking had him.”
“You will.”
Kylix growled low in his throat, pressed his forehead to Mirel’s.
“But I fucking didn’t. I’m not drunk enough to forget it. And not sober enough to stop myself from taking you apart for it.”
“Then take me apart,” Mirel said. “But don’t pretend it’ll fix you.”
He stepped away then, quiet, measured, backing toward the far wall of the Waltr.
Kylix blinked.
“You’re running?”
“Not running,” Mirel murmured, looking over his shoulder. “You want the chase. That’s what you need right now, isn’t it?”
He raised his wrist.
The chain that had once kept him leashed snapped with a cold crack, frost blooming outward, freezing the copper clean through until it fractured and fell away in pieces.
Mirel stood free.
And he waited.
Kylix smiled slowly, his jeweled incisors flashing as the fire stirred under his skin. “Oh, you’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?”
Mirel didn’t reply, just walked one step further, backlit by the storm.
They stood in silence, predator and prey locked in ritual tension.
Kylix unbuttoned his coat and let it fall.
“You think I won’t pin you down and make you feel every second of what I’ve carried tonight?”
He slipped off his gloves next, tossed them aside. His fingers flexed, hungry.
Another step. Mirel didn’t flinch.
“You think I won’t worship you with my tongue and punish you in the same breath?”
He pulled open the first few buttons of his shirt. The gold at his throat caught the light.
Mirel’s lips parted, a flick of tongue over incisor, frost-blue flicker in his right eye.
Kylix licked his own fang. “You think I won’t make you scream?”
He shrugged off the shirt, bare now to the waist, fire-lit skin gleaming in the Waltr glow.
Then he lunged.
Mirel gasped as Kylix caught him mid-step, spun him, shoved him against the curved glass wall of the Waltr. He didn’t hesitate. Dropped to his knees.
Kylix dragged the sleeping gown up, baring Mirel’s thighs. He paused, breath catching, then muttered with a crooked grin, “Where the fuck did you get this thing?”
Mirel’s lips parted, breath shaky. “Cyprian.”
Kylix chuckled darkly, then mouthed up the inside of one thigh, biting softly, sucking bruises there. Then licked a hot path to the center.
Mirel’s cock was already hard, straining, the soft fabric of his underwear soaked through. Kylix mouthed him through it, slow at first, wet and deliberate. He let his tongue trace the curve, pressing in with just enough pressure to make Mirel twitch. The scent of him hit hard.
Kylix growled, low and hungry, his breath fanning hot against Mirel’s hip.
He hooked his fingers into the waistband and dragged the underwear down slowly, inch by inch, the soft fabric catching slightly on Mirel’s thighs.
Skin revealed inch by inch, pale, smooth, flushed darker near the base.
The leaking tip left a glistening smear along his stomach.
Mirel’s cock bounced free, red at the crown, wet.
Kylix let his breath fan over it before he moved.
He licked the bead from the slit, first a flick, then a slow drag that circled the crown, teasing the ridge before tasting him again. The flavor made his cock throb in his trousers.
“Fuck,” Mirel gasped, hand curling against the glass.
Kylix wrapped a hand around the base, squeezing gently as he dragged his tongue down the underside, tracing the vein with a slow, filthy moan. Then he took him in, deep, wet, merciless.
Mirel jolted. His back hit the glass. His hips twitched.
Kylix swallowed him to the root, cheeks hollowing with every pull. His tongue flicked under the shaft with each descent, then circled the slit like he wanted to memorize the taste. His other hand pinched a nipple through the gown, rolling it until Mirel moaned outright.
“Sensitive,” he muttered between sucks. “Fucking perfect.”
Mirel whimpered, legs trembling. “So good, feels, feels so good.”
Kylix hummed around him, the sound deep and deliberate, letting the vibration roll through his throat and into Mirel’s core. He could feel every twitch, the jump against his tongue, the quiver in Mirel’s stomach under his palm. One hand rolled his balls, slow and certain, as the pressure built.
“Please… Kylix…”
Kylix pulled off with a slick pop. His lips were swollen, chin damp.