Chapter 2 #2
"I don't care if it's the cock of God himself.
That witch bound us together, and you just tried to bless me, and the blessing went through me and came back to you, because whatever you do to me you do to yourself now.
So congratulations. You are the first Templar in recorded history to exorcise himself. I hope it was everything you dreamed."
The Templar's jaw tightens. "This is not possible."
"And yet…."
"Soul bindings require intent, ritual, consent—"
"Or blood freely given and an eager witchling with a spellbook he couldn't read.
Which is exactly what happened, if you recall, because you rolled up your sleeve and told him to cut you open.
" Dimitri lets his voice go flat and vicious.
"You volunteered. You put your blood on the floor of a summoning circle and let an amateur witch chant over it from a book radiating enough dark energy to set off alarms across three planes. This is your fault."
Something flashes across the Templar's face.
Guilt. The beginning of it, anyway, the first fracture in the wall.
Dimitri feels it land in his own chest, unbidden and unwanted, a stone dropped into water he didn't ask to carry, and the ripples of it spread outward through his ribs and settle into places they have no right to be.
He can feel the Templar's guilt as though it were his own, and it is warm and heavy and suffocating and Dimitri hates it.
He shoves the feeling away. It isn't his. None of this is his.
The Templar sets his jaw. He rolls onto his stomach, gets his hands under him, pushes to his knees.
His left hand comes up again, the blessing rings flickering weakly, four guttering sparks of silver light, and Dimitri can see the determination hardening behind those green eyes, the stubborn, pig-headed, teeth-gritted refusal to accept what is plainly and obviously true, and he would find it admirable if it weren't about to get them both kicked in the ass again.
"Oh, for fuck's sake—"
The Templar lunges.
Dimitri catches his wrist.
It’s years of instinct that sends him forward, the kind that moves the body before the brain has time to object.
His hand closes around the Templar's clothed wrist before the blow can land.
He twists, shifts his weight, and drives the Templar backward onto the concrete, pinning his arm above his head.
The Templar hits the floor hard and Dimitri follows him down, one knee on either side of his hips, his free hand braced flat against the man's chest. The gray coat spreads beneath him.
The blond hair is fully loose now, fanned across dirty concrete in a spill of pale gold, and those green eyes stare up at Dimitri with fury and pain and something underneath both that makes the grip in his chest pull taut and hum.
Oh, but he is pretty.
The thought arrives with a violence that Dimitri is not prepared for.
He is kneeling over a Templar. One of the Order's holy soldiers, consecrated and anointed, practically soaked in divine light, and the man is pinned and flushed and breathing hard beneath him with his pulse jumping in his throat and his hair spread out on the floor and color in his face.
Dimitri's hand is on his chest and he can feel the man's heartbeat through the fabric, fast and hard, and the angle is so enticing, and something in Dimitri that is older than Haven is drinking this in like a fine wine.
What a pleasure it would be to corrupt something this clean.
To take all that light, all that polished righteous goodness, and peel it back in layers until there was nothing underneath but skin and heat and desperation.
To put his mouth on the fine curve of that throat.
To get his hands underneath that coat. To find out if the Templar is this pretty everywhere, if the flush goes all the way down, if he'd arch up or press back or just lie there and take it with those green eyes blown wide and his lip caught between his teeth and Dimitri's name in his mouth, not as a curse but as a prayer.
Dimitri does not know if he wants to fuck this man or devour him. The distinction feels increasingly academic.
His thoughts are interrupted by the man wrapping a leg around Dimitri's hip and throwing him.
The world inverts. Dimitri's back hits concrete for the second time tonight, the air punches out of his lungs, and suddenly their positions are reversed.
The Templar is on top of him, knees bracketing his ribs, one hand fisting the front of Dimitri's shirt, the other pulled back with a clenched fist.
Dimitri catches it.
His hand closes around the Templar's fist, skin to skin, and the world goes white.
Something bright and burning scorches down Dimitri's spine, electric and vibrant, a shock that comes from the first time they’ve made actual contact.
Not through gloves or fabric or the medium of a spell.
Skin on skin for the first time, and it is searing.
It races through Dimitri's body and buries itself in that place beneath his sternum and it burns, and it is not pain and it is not pleasure but something in the space where those words collapse into each other, and Dimitri has lived a millenium and been touched by countless hands and fucked and fought and fed and none of it, not once, has felt like this.
Blondie feels it too. Dimitri knows because the man's eyes go wide and his breath catches and color floods his face, a deep vivid flush that starts at his throat and climbs his cheeks, and his hand is still in Dimitri's grip, and neither of them is pulling away, and for one suspended, airless second they stare at each other and the warehouse is gone and the pain is gone and there is nothing in the world except the point where their skin meets and the bond between them singing with a frequency that turns Dimitri's thoughts to something less violent for once in his life.
The Templar pulls free before Dimitri can examine that in any real way. He staggers off Dimitri and puts distance between them, as much distance as the pull will allow, which is not much, and stands there with his chest heaving and his fists clenched and that flush still burning across his face.
Dimitri stays on the floor. He needs a moment.
He is never going to admit that, not to this man, not to anyone, not under torture or threat or the promise of anything in any realm, but he needs one.
Because the ghost of the Templar's skin is still burning through his palm and his thoughts are scattered and something in him is pulling toward the blond man with a hunger that should be familiar and instead is unlike anything he’s ever felt before.
Dimitri breathes. He drags himself back under control, or something that approximates it, and then he feels it.
Something beyond the binding. Beyond the pull.
Beyond the inconvenient and infuriating attraction that is going to be a problem he doesn't have the patience or the desire to solve.
There is something else at the Templar's core, buried deep beneath the training and the coat and the blessing rings.
Something that shines. Not as a metaphor.
Dimitri can see it, or sense it, or taste it at the back of his throat, bright and clean and ancient.
Something divine. Something that predates the Order, the Templar, the body it's living in.
Something that doesn't belong in a mortal frame any more than Dimitri belongs in a chalk circle.
The realization hits him.
And it's not a blessing this time, but it burns just as badly.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."
The Templar frowns. "What?"
Dimitri pushes himself upright. He is shaking and he tells himself it's rage and he is mostly right.
He stares at the Templar, at the glow he can now see pulsing faintly beneath the man's skin, at the light that burns behind those impossible green eyes, and he feels something twist in his chest that is equal parts fury and horror and a terrible, bone-deep revulsion.
"That novice hedge witch," Dimitri says slowly, every word bitten off and spat out, "bound me to a fucking angel."