Chapter 21
The train arrives at half past noon, which means the platform is packed with the lunch-hour crush of Haven's working population—humans and otherwise—all pressing toward the doors with the singular determination of people who have somewhere to be and no patience for anyone in their way.
Knox steps into the car and immediately regrets every decision that has led him to this moment.
It's standing room only. Bodies press in on all sides, briefcases and elbows and the particular brand of aggressive indifference that public transit cultivates in otherwise reasonable people.
Knox grabs a ceiling strap and braces himself as the doors close and the train lurches forward, and he has approximately one and a half seconds of relative normalcy before Dimitri steps in behind him and eliminates every inch of space between them.
Dimitri is warm. That's the thing Knox can never quite get used to, no matter how many times they end up in proximity, which is constantly, because the bond demands it.
Demons run hot and he knows this, but knowing it and feeling it are different things entirely.
Dimitri is a furnace. He radiates heat through the barrier of Knox's clothes like a banked fire, and when his chest presses flat against Knox's back in the crush of the train car, Knox feels it everywhere.
Shoulders. Spine. The small of his back where Dimitri's belt buckle digs in.
The backs of his thighs where Dimitri's legs bracket his own.
Every point of contact is a line of warmth that sinks through fabric and settles into Knox's skin, and the bond between them hums with a low, pleased frequency that makes Knox's stomach tighten.
"Crowded," Dimitri observes. His voice is right at Knox's ear, low enough that no one else could hear it over the rattle of the train, and his breath is warm against the side of Knox's neck.
"It's rush hour," Knox says. His voice comes out even. He is proud of that. "Most people take the train at rush hour. It's what rush hour means."
"Mm." Dimitri shifts behind him, and his hand finds Knox's hip.
Not grabbing. Just resting there, fingers curled against the bone, his thumb tracing a slow arc against the thin cotton of Knox's shirt.
The touch is casual. Proprietary. The kind of thing someone does when they consider the body beneath their hand to belong to them, and Knox would object to that on principle except that his body has already decided it agrees and his principles can go to hell.
The train takes a curve and the momentum pushes Dimitri more firmly against his back.
Knox's hand tightens on the ceiling strap.
He stares fixedly at the transit map on the opposite wall and tries to think about the Violet Corridor.
About Newt. About the coven they're walking into and the unknowns waiting for them and all the ways this could go sideways.
Dimitri's lips brush the shell of his ear.
"I can feel you thinking," he murmurs.
"That's generally what people do."
"Not about the mission." The hand on Knox's hip tightens, just barely, and Dimitri's thumb dips below the waistband of his pants by a fraction of an inch. "You're thinking about last night."
Knox's breath catches. He doesn't mean for it to, but the bond is a traitor and his body is worse, and the combination of Dimitri's heat against his back and his voice in his ear and the specific, deliberate pressure of his thumb against Knox's hipbone sends a pulse of want through the bond that Knox couldn't hide if he tried.
"I'm thinking about the case," Knox says.
"Liar." Dimitri's voice drops lower, barely a breath, and his mouth moves against the curve of Knox's ear as he speaks.
"You're thinking about my hands on you. You've been thinking about it since you woke up this morning with my come still inside you, and you liked it, and you didn't clean up before you got dressed because you wanted to feel it. "
Heat floods Knox's face. His neck. His chest. It burns under his skin like a fever, bright and immediate, and the worst part is that Dimitri isn't wrong.
Knox had stood in the bathroom this morning and looked at himself in the mirror—at the bruises on his hips and the bite marks on his collarbone and the particular ache between his legs that reminded him with every step exactly how thoroughly he'd been taken apart—and he had not showered.
He'd splashed water on his face and pulled his hair back and gotten dressed and told himself it was because they were in a hurry, and that had been a lie, and Dimitri had known it was a lie, because the bond had sung with Knox's quiet, shameful satisfaction and Dimitri's answering hunger and neither of them had said a word about it.
Until now.
"We're on a train," Knox says. His voice is strained. "Full of people."
"I know." Dimitri presses closer. His hips settle against Knox's ass, and Knox can feel him—half-hard already, the thick line of him unmistakable through two layers of clothing—and the bond floods with Dimitri's want, dark and heavy and absolutely unapologetic.
"You're thinking about how hard I fucked you this morning. How I made you beg for it.”
"Dimitri—"
"You're thinking about how you came so hard you couldn't see straight." Dimitri's teeth graze his earlobe, barely a touch, and Knox's knees almost buckle. "You're thinking about how I told you that you were mine."
Knox closes his eyes. His hand is white-knuckled on the strap and his heart is hammering and he is, mortifyingly, getting hard on a public train at half past noon on a Tuesday.
The bond between them is a live wire, buzzing with the feedback loop of Knox's arousal feeding Dimitri's satisfaction feeding Knox's arousal, and it spirals tighter with every word out of Dimitri's mouth, every brush of his lips against Knox's skin, every deliberate press of his hips.
"You're a pest," Knox says. It comes out breathless and unconvincing.
Dimitri laughs. Low, warm, genuinely delighted, and the sound moves through Knox's body like something physical.
It settles in his chest and Knox feels it all the way in his toes.
Something unlocks behind his ribs that he didn't know was locked.
Something softens that he didn't know was hard.
Because Dimitri's laugh is rare, and it is warm, and there is nothing sharp about it.
No cruelty. No edge. Just affection, naked and unguarded, and it makes Knox's heart do something stupid and unsalvageable.
"Your pest," Dimitri murmurs against his ear, and Knox's chest aches.
The train announces their stop.
Knox has approximately thirty seconds to will his body into compliance before the doors open, which is not enough time, but the rush of cool air as passengers disembark helps.
He steps onto the platform and the crowd disperses around them, heading toward exits and escalators, and Knox focuses on walking normally and not on the way his pants feel too tight or the way Dimitri's hand is still on his hip guiding him through the crowd.
They make it to the street. Knox takes a breath of fresh air and tries to clear his head. The Violet Corridor stretches ahead of them, and they need to find Thornfield Row, and Knox needs to be focused, because they're walking into a coven's territory and—
Dimitri grabs him by the wrist and pulls him sideways.
Knox stumbles, catches himself, and finds his back against the brick wall of an alley that smells like rain and old stone.
Dimitri is in front of him immediately, one hand braced on the wall beside Knox's head, the other still on his wrist, and his red eyes are dark with hunger and his mouth is curving with the kind of smile that means Knox is about to lose every rational thought in his head.
"We have somewhere to be," Knox says.
"We do."
"We're looking for Newt."
"We are."
"So why are you—"
Dimitri kisses him.
It is not a gentle kiss. Dimitri doesn't do gentle kisses, not really, not the way Knox has read about in books or imagined in the quiet parts of his life when he let himself imagine anything at all.
Dimitri kisses like he fights, with intent, with purpose, with the specific goal of taking Knox apart and finding out what's underneath.
His mouth is hot and demanding and his tongue sweeps against Knox's bottom lip and then inside, tasting, claiming, and his hand releases Knox's wrist to slide up his chest and close around the side of his neck.
His thumb presses against Knox's pulse. His fingers curl into the hair at the nape of Knox's neck.
He tilts Knox's head back and deepens the kiss and Knox makes a sound that he will deny later, a sound that is small and desperate and embarrassingly close to a whine, and the bond detonates between them.
It's the feedback loop. The thing they discovered last night that neither of them can control, every sensation shared, amplified, reflected back.
Knox feels Dimitri's hunger as clearly as he feels his own.
Feels the way Dimitri's chest tightens when Knox responds.
Feels the possessive satisfaction that floods Dimitri's veins when Knox's hands fist in the front of his shirt and pull him closer instead of pushing him away.
They feel it together, simultaneously, each feeding the other, and the result is a crescendo that makes Knox's vision blur and his thoughts scatter and his hips push forward against Dimitri's thigh of their own accord.
Dimitri breaks the kiss long enough to look at him. Knox is breathing hard. He knows his face is flushed, knows his lips are swollen, knows he looks wrecked and wanting and Dimitri is drinking it in with those red eyes like he's committing it to memory.
"We're in an alley," Knox says. "In the middle of the day."