Chapter 21 Chase #2
I didn’t notice until Sagitta mentioned it, but in this moment, my being felt truly mine. I was privileged to experience this moment alone, without somebody else in my head. Just like my normal life before all this. Except Sagitta was still here.
He was here, and he liked me, and he liked our relationship, whatever it was...
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Me.”
“Good.”
Fuck, that praise made my cock ache every single time.
Sagitta chuckled. His voice was liquid and smooth, and the warmth of his breath across my back made me gulp. “You’re so cute like this, Chase. Like a puppy dog.”
My head was spinning.
“Your cock just twitched in my hand. You’re really enjoying this.”
I let out a muffled sound of horny frustration. I needed to finish soon or I’d lose my goddamn mind. But I also never wanted this to end. Fuck getting a job. I just wanted to be praised and jerked off by my boyfriend forever.
Boyfriend...?
Sagitta grunted and readjusted. I nearly passed out when I felt the hot length of his dick resting against my ass.
“You’re a good boy, but you’re naughty, too. You got me hard again,” he teased.
He shuffled to wrap one hand around his own cock while still stroking mine. By now, I was short circuiting. I had to remind myself to breathe.
“Should I come on your back, Chase? Mark you as mine?” Sagitta asked.
I nearly lost it.
“Yes, fuck,” I cried. “Please, I want to be yours.”
His strokes sped up, both on my cock and his own. “You’re mine,” he said raggedly. “I’m going to paint your back with my load.”
“Fuck,” I whined, so high it was barely audible. I was close, too close.
Sagitta pressed his forehead against my back. His breaths came out in hot, heavy puffs. His movements were frantic now.
“I’m going to put that collar on you, Chase,” he promised, desperate and hungry. “I’m going to collar you and come all over you, and you’re going to belong to me forever.”
I lost it. Shock waves of pleasure rolled over me. My vision cut to black as I cried out, seeing stars. My cock kept twitching and jerking as I shot my load against the wall. Time slowed as the waves kept coming, and when those finally ended, the aftershocks made me gasp for air.
Sagitta grunted, finishing with a hiss and a muttered curse. I shivered as I felt him unload onto the curve of my lower back. The thick warmth of it slid down until it trickled into my crack.
Fuck, that was hot.
After he came, Sagitta slumped against me as he caught his breath. A few minutes passed before either of us could speak.
“So much for the shower, huh?” I asked, grinning over my shoulder.
But Sagitta still had his forehead pressed into my shoulders and his face was hidden beneath his black hair.
“You okay?” I asked.
He raised his face. He looked terribly, adorably flustered.
“I cannot believe I said all those things,” he mumbled, flushing at the mere insinuation.
I burst out laughing. “Yeah, you’ve got a filthy mouth on you. I like it, though.”
“I could tell,” he replied with a smirk.
I blushed, smiling back at him. Then I was overcome by the powerful urge to kiss him. I twisted the top half of my body so I could reach his lips. They were soft and addicting. If I wasn’t utterly spent, I would’ve gotten excited again.
When we broke apart, his eyes were heavy with emotion and satisfaction, but crystal-clear, like he knew what he wanted with one hundred percent certainty. I wondered if mine looked the same to him.
“By the way, were you serious about the collar?” I asked.
Sagitta made a strangled sound. “I—I don’t know. Do you want me to be?”
My heart did a weird flip at the idea.
“I mean... I wouldn’t mind,” I admitted. “Maybe, like... at home.”
Sagitta shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Stop. I can’t get turned on again. This hedonism is far too much.”
“Aw, are you sure? It’s not like we have anything better to do.”
He glared at me.
I put up my hands. “Joking, I’m joking.”
Sagitta sighed and started getting dressed for real this time. “I’m glaring because I’m tempted to agree with you. But two orgasms in one morning is enough.”
I pouted playfully. “Even if it’s keeping the demon at bay?”
“Yes. Maybe.” He buttoned up his shirt and cleared his throat. “It’s not really an exorcism if we have to fuck every second of every day, is it?”
A long sigh drawled out of me. “I guess not.”
You hearing this, Faust? I asked in my mind. The mental words seemed to echo, like I’d spoken into an empty room. He didn’t respond.
“It’s weird. He’s really not here,” I told Sagitta. “I still can’t believe he was telling the truth about disliking sex.”
“Me neither,” Sagitta admitted, looking thoughtful.
As the post-orgasm bliss faded, harsh reality trickled back.
This fairy tale I was living wasn’t going to last forever.
Sagitta was only supposed to stay with me for a week until the demon was gone.
But the days were running out. What would happen if Faust wasn’t gone by the end of it? What if he never left?
Or worse—what if Faust vacated my body and Sagitta abandoned me to return to his normal life? Wasn’t this all just a job to him anyway?
My heart flipped inside out with anxiety.
“Don’t take too long getting dressed. I’ll make breakfast,” Sagitta announced as he left the bathroom.
“I’m—I’m gonna clean the wall.”
He snorted from the other room. “All right.”
I closed the bathroom door.
When I was alone, I called out in my mind: Faust. Come back.
A long moment later, he said, “I’m getting mixed messages, dear.”
The sound of his annoying, flamboyant voice flooded me with relief.
“I don’t know what to do. I’m freaking out,” I whispered.
“Yes, showers can be quite difficult. Here, I’ll walk you through it. First, we turn on the water—”
“You know that’s not what I meant, you fucking asshole,” I hissed under my breath.
A crumb of sympathy entered Faust’s reply. “Ooh, touchy today. What happened, Chase? Was your two-day-long fuckfest bad for your nerves?”
God, he was irritating. But my fear won out. I needed somebody, anybody to talk to.
“I don’t know if it matters if you’re exorcised or not, but Sagitta’s going to leave at the end of all this,” I whispered. “He can’t. I don’t want him to go back.”
“Is that a hint of yearning I hear?”
I was starting to get desperate. “Yes, okay? Can you just answer me like a normal person?”
“Do demons have personhood? Never mind. Why don’t you tell all this to Sagitta instead?”
I bit my lip. “Because...”
Because the thought of him turning me down scared the living shit out of me.
Since Faust could read my mind, I didn’t need to say it out loud.
Faust sighed wistfully. “Humans are so adorable. You’d let that man shoot his semen all over your ass, and you won’t even have a conversation with him.”
“Oh, my god. Please shut up.”
“I think it’s fairly obvious what Sagitta thinks of you. If only you weren’t so stupid, my dear Chase.”
“Watch it,” I grumbled.
But as his words sank in, my heart fluttered. Was I too oblivious to notice how Sagitta really felt?
“By the way, I’m mad at you,” Faust huffed.
“What? Why?”
“You insinuated—again—that I’m the source of your big fat crush. And worse, you actually believed that pedant when he claimed Sagitta’s feelings for you were because of me. Me! You have some nerve, Mr. Man.”
I’d never get used to being scolded by a demon inside my own mind, even when he had a point.
“Sorry,” I murmured. “Cygnet got under my skin and I just second-guessed everything. I don’t think you’re that kind of guy. Demon. You know.”
Faust sniffed. “Thank you. I accept your apology.”
That meant that my feelings, and Sagitta’s, were all our own. There was no blaming somebody else. I had to figure this out myself.
But then I realized something else. If Cygnet was wrong about Faust’s influence, what else was he wrong about?
He insisted that Faust had to be killed. That all demons did. But I didn’t agree with that. And now that I knew Sagitta’s feelings for me, and vice versa, had nothing to do with Faust, I felt more confident that the exorcist brothers were both working off some outdated information.
My stomach growled.
This is a lot of sex and thinking done before breakfast. I’d better go eat...
After throwing on a pair of pants, I stepped out, but remembered I hadn’t fed Demetrius yet. I went to pinch a few predator bites into his tank, chuckling as he swam up to the surface to gobble them up.
“Sorry, had to feed D,” I told Sagitta as I joined him in the kitchen. It smelled amazing, as usual. “Hey, that reminds me. Who takes care of the fish at the temple?”
“Cygnet and I.”
My brows rose. “Cygnet does, too?”
Sagitta smiled as he plated the French toast. It was Hong Kong style, pan-fried with peanut butter in the middle and mind-blowingly delicious.
“Remember what I told you about our father? He passed on his love of fish to both of us,” he explained.
“We never saw the aquarium shop in Thailand, but growing up, we had an outdoor goldfish pond in our backyard. Cygnet and I would take turns feeding them.” A wry smile pulled at the corner of Sagitta’s mouth.
“Once, when Cygnet was six, he chased away a heron trying to eat our goldfish. It was hilarious. The bird was taller than he was.”
I smiled. It was difficult to imagine Cygnet, with his cold and haughty attitude, tending to the care of living things. Then I realized it was unfair of me to characterize him as only one thing. He was Sagitta’s family, and despite all their drama, they clearly cared about each other.
“Your dad sounds like he was a great guy,” I said gently. “I wish I could’ve met him.”
Sagitta’s eyes lit up with a mix of warmth and grief, but the warmth was stronger. “Me, too. Now eat before it gets cold.”
I’d wolfed down half my French toast before Sagitta put his utensils down, looked straight at me, and asked, “Do you seriously have a business degree?”
I snorted through my mouthful of delicious fried bread and peanut butter.
After I swallowed, I said, “Yup. Clearly it did me a lot of good.”
I expected Sagitta to laugh along with me, but instead he looked thoughtful.
“Chase, you’ve asked me this many times. But now I want to know what you want.”
I shrugged, cutting off another piece of toast. “To not be possessed?”
“I mean after that. How do you want to spend your life?”
My fork paused on the way to my mouth. I lowered it to the table. My heart suddenly started racing. What exactly was he asking me?
“Um...” My cheeks grew hot. “Honestly?”
“Yes. Honestly.”
As my heart hammered, my mouth went dry. I licked my lips.
“I want to be with you,” I rasped.
Sagitta jerked, sitting ramrod straight in his seat as if I’d pinched him. His jaw dropped, but no sound emerged. After a few seconds, he stammered, “I—I meant for a job.”
“Oh.” Heat pounded in my head like a hammer striking an anvil. “Um. That was embarrassing.”
Faust burst out laughing harder than I’d ever heard him laugh. He sounded like he was rolling on the floor of my mind, absolutely fucking losing it.
I dragged my hands down my face. I couldn’t even be embarrassed in peace.
Faust cackled so loudly that I didn’t hear the scrape of Sagitta’s chair or his footsteps until he was right in front of me, prying my hands off my face and pressing a kiss to my lips.
My surprised squeak was muffled by Sagitta’s soft mouth against mine. I felt dizzy with hope and joy. He stayed there for longer than I expected, kissing me tenderly. He tasted sweeter than usual. I couldn’t get enough of him.
When he pulled back, his ears were red and his eyes were half-lidded.
“Well.” He cleared his throat. “Now can we talk about your job?”
I swayed in my seat, grateful to be sitting down. “Yeah.”
There was a mischievous spark in Sagitta’s eyes. “I have an idea.”