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 and more a claim, teeth and tongue and the sharp edge of wanting that Dimitri has been burying for days.
Knox’s back hits the wall. Dimitri doesn’t remember moving them, but they’re there now, Knox pressed flat against the plaster and Dimitri pressed against Knox.
Knox is compact and lean and warm beneath Dimitri’s hands, and Dimitri’s body covers his entirely, and the bond between them is wide open and singing with a feedback loop of sensation so intense that Dimitri can’t tell whose arousal is whose. It doesn’t matter. It’s theirs.
He picks Knox up.
It’s easy. Obscenely easy. His hands find Knox’s waist, his thumbs spanning the narrow taper of it, and he lifts, and Knox makes a sound that goes straight to Dimitri’s cock, a sharp intake of breath followed by a low groan as his legs wrap around Dimitri’s hips and his weight settles.
Knox is light. Knox has always been light, and the wrongness of that is something Dimitri has filed under concern, but right now it means he can hold Knox with one arm and use the other to push off the wall, and Knox’s legs tighten around him and his mouth finds Dimitri’s again and Dimitri carries him through the apartment with his tongue in Knox’s mouth and the bond screaming between them.
They make it to the hallway. Barely.
Dimitri’s patience, which was never substantial to begin with, gives out somewhere between the living room and the bedroom door.
He presses Knox against the hallway wall and grinds against him, and the friction is blinding, the heat of Knox’s body against his, and Knox gasps and his head drops back against the plaster and his throat is bare and Dimitri puts his mouth on it.
Not gentle. He drags his teeth along the tendon in Knox’s neck and feels the vibration of Knox’s moan against his lips and the bond carries the sensation to both of them, doubled, and Dimitri’s hips roll forward on instinct.
He starts pulling off Knox’s clothes.
The shirt goes first. Dimitri tears it, because his claws are still partially extended and his fine motor control has completely abandoned him, and the fabric parts along the seam and falls away and Knox’s chest is bare and Dimitri’s mouth goes dry.
He has seen Knox shirtless before, in the moonlight, at a distance.
Up close, with Knox flushed and panting and wrapped around him, it’s something else entirely.
The lean muscle, the pale skin, the way the flush has spread all the way down to his stomach.
Dimitri flattens his palm against Knox’s sternum and feels his heartbeat hammering beneath his hand, and then his thumb brushes Knox’s nipple and Knox jolts.
The reaction is electric. Knox’s entire body tightens, his legs clenching around Dimitri’s hips, his fingers digging into Dimitri’s shoulders, and through the bond Dimitri feels a spike of pleasure so sharp it makes his vision blur.
He looks down. Knox’s nipple is hard under his thumb, the skin around it flushed and sensitive, and Knox’s face is turned to the side, eyes squeezed shut, his lower lip caught between his teeth.
Dimitri grins. It is the grin of a creature that has just discovered a weapon.
“Oh,” he says, low and delighted. “Oh. That’s interesting.”
“Shut up,” Knox manages, but his voice is wrecked and his hips are moving in small involuntary circles against Dimitri’s stomach and the bond is broadcasting exactly how much that single brush affected him.
“Sensitive,” Dimitri murmurs, and rolls his thumb across the nipple again, slow and deliberate, watching Knox’s face as he does it.
Knox makes a sound that is not quite a moan and not quite a whimper but somewhere devastatingly in between, and his back arches off the wall and his fingers claw at Dimitri’s shoulders.
Dimitri leans down and replaces his thumb with his mouth.
Knox comes apart.
Not literally, not yet, but the composure shatters.
The discipline, the iron control, the steady green eyes and the even voice, all of it cracks open as Dimitri’s tongue circles the hard nub and his teeth catch the edge and Knox is writhing against him, his hips grinding forward, his cock hard and straining against the fabric of his pants.
Dimitri can feel everything Knox feels through the bond, the wet heat of Dimitri’s mouth on his skin amplified and reflected back, and the feedback loop is devastating.
Dimitri sucks hard and Knox cries out, loud and ragged, the first truly unguarded sound Dimitri has ever heard from him.
Dimitri pulls back just enough to speak against Knox’s skin. “You’re so fucking responsive,” he says, and his voice is rough and low and awed. “All this time under that coat and that composure, and all it takes is—” He flicks his tongue across the nipple and Knox’s whole body shudders.
“I will hit you,” Knox pants, but his hands are pulling Dimitri closer, not pushing him away, and through the bond Dimitri can feel how desperately Knox wants more, how the wanting is so big it’s almost painful, and Dimitri is drunk on it.
He shifts Knox’s weight to one arm, which is absurdly easy, and uses his free hand to work open Knox’s pants.
Knox helps, one hand leaving Dimitri’s shoulder to shove the fabric down his hips, and Dimitri pushes them the rest of the way along with everything underneath, and then Knox is bare against him, hard and leaking and flushed from his chest to his hairline, and Dimitri takes a moment to just look at him.
Held up against a wall in a narrow hallway, blond hair loose and tangled, green eyes blown black with want, his compact body on display and his cock curving up against his stomach, wet at the tip, and Dimitri has lived a forever and seen everything and nothing, none of it, has ever compared to this.
“You’re gorgeous,” Dimitri says, and means it with every cell in his body. “You’re the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen, and I have seen everything.”
Knox’s flush deepens. Through the bond, Dimitri feels the compliment land, feels the surprise and the pleasure and the ache of being seen, and Knox’s green eyes are bright and wet and looking at Dimitri with an expression that would bring a weaker man to his knees.
Dimitri works a hand between them. His fingers find the cleft of Knox’s ass and slide down, and Knox’s breath catches, his thighs tightening around Dimitri’s hips.
Dimitri pauses, his fingertip resting against Knox’s hole, and feels the flutter of muscle and the spike of nervous anticipation that floods the bond.
“Breath,” Dimitri says against Knox’s jaw. “I’ve got you.”
He reaches for his magic. Not the shadows, not the darkness he uses in combat, but something older, something body-warm and slick, a low current of demonic energy that he channels through his fingertip and lets it ease the way.
The magic coats his fingers in something warm and frictionless, and Knox gasps at the sensation, and Dimitri pushes inside.
Knox is tight. Incredibly, impossibly tight, his body clenching around Dimitri’s finger as it slides in to the first knuckle, and the heat of him is extraordinary.
Through the bond Dimitri can feel both sides of it: the stretch from Knox’s perspective, the burn that fades quickly as the magic works, and from his own the velvet grip of Knox’s body around his finger.
He works it deeper, slow and careful, and Knox’s head drops back against the wall and his mouth falls open.
“That’s it,” Dimitri murmurs, pressing a kiss to Knox’s throat. “Relax for me. Let me in.”
Knox’s body softens around him. Dimitri adds a second finger and Knox groans, low and broken, his hips tilting to take them deeper.
Dimitri scissors his fingers, stretching him open, and the magic keeps everything slick and warm and Knox is rocking against his hand now, fucking himself on Dimitri’s fingers with small desperate movements, and the sounds he’s making are obscene.
Little hitched breaths and bitten-off moans and Dimitri’s name, whispered, half-formed, spilling from his lips between gasps.
“Look at you,” Dimitri says, and his voice is wrecked, stripped raw by the feedback loop of sensation pouring through the bond. “The holy Templar. On my hand. Making those sounds. If your Order could see you now.”
“Dimitri,” Knox breathes, and the way he says it, low and broken and needing, almost finishes Dimitri right there.
He pulls his fingers free and Knox whines at the loss, and the sound is so plaintive and so unlike anything Knox has ever produced that Dimitri has to press his forehead against Knox’s shoulder and breathe for a moment.
He shoves his own pants down, freeing his cock, and it’s aching, hard enough to hurt, and he channels the magic again, slicking himself, and lines up at Knox’s entrance.
He pushes in. Just the head.
They both stop breathing.