Chapter Seventeen #3
Which is the opposite reaction I expected once I removed my Urzoth badge. I thought it’d open me up to claims of weakness, but actions are louder. Screamingly loud. No one questions my strength or worthiness or bravery, not now.
Well.
Almost no one.
In the player chute, my parents are standing with Reverend Drach. We’re hardly alone; cameras and reporters clog the space, everyone celebrating and joyous after the win. But the three of them are solemn, Drach glowering with his arms folded.
Bel’s waiting for me in the press area. Seb and Thio stayed near him through the game. Ilbryen, too, who was pissed Tem got the jump on her. But I’m anxious to get back to him.
He did the whole game, every cheer routine, in his demon form.
And that’s why I don’t think I’ll ever truly believe him when he says I’m the strongest person he’s ever met. Because he’s the strongest. The bravest.
He’s everything.
Head high, I cross to my parents and Drach, and don’t give them a chance to speak.
“Urzoth is no longer my patron god. I’m not going to make it a bigger PR moment than it already is. I don’t owe explanations or reasons, and going forward, I’ll represent the team on my own, with my own strength.”
My mother doesn’t seem as angry as Drach; if anything, she’s cautious.
But Drach puffs up his chest. “Is that right, Mr. Monroe?”
I don’t rise to his challenge. Don’t make myself look bigger or try to match his peacocking. “That’s right, Reverend.”
“One of Urzoth’s chosen players defeated the cult of his enemy,” Drach tries. “And Mr. Warden, this whole time, has been demonic? The church cannot let this pass without—”
“I appreciate everything you’ve done,” I cut him off.
“And everything you did for my boyfriend. Supporting someone of demonic ancestry will go a long way toward soothing tensions between the Urzoth church and Galaxrien followers, won’t it?
It’ll show that the church is about more than rivalries and violence, which is what you wanted out of this arrangement all along. ”
Drach’s mouth bobbles. His cheeks redden. “I suppose. But you cannot deny that Urzoth gave you the strength to stop the cult.”
My smile is stiff. “I won’t deny it. But I also won’t give Urzoth credit for what I did. I hope we can all move on.”
I put emphasis on the last words.
Drach bristles. Cameras flash, reminding us we’re in public, and, thankfully, Treva swoops in.
“Excuse me,” she says. “I’m sorry, but I need to pull Mr. Monroe away for interviews.”
Drach huffs and stomps off.
My parents still haven’t said anything, and my stomach sours with apprehension.
Part of the reason I put off doing this for so long is that I didn’t want to lose them. But I was losing myself the longer I held on. It feels like I can breathe again. For the first time, maybe, in almost a decade.
“Give me a sec?” I ask Treva, who smiles politely and steps to the side.
My mom’s eyes get teary and she digs in her purse to pull out—a stack of letters?
“Alexo—” She stops. “That isn’t his name, is it?”
“Bel,” I correct.
“Bel.” She sniffs and flips through the papers. “He’s been sending me letters. One a week, since our lunch.”
My brows go up. He has? Why?
She holds them to her chest. “They all gush about you. He’d tell me how strong you are, all these little things you’d do for him. And I would like to—” She stops, tips her head, her smile watery. “I’d like to understand, Orok. Can we talk about your decision?”
“I’m not changing my mind.”
Mom brushes the letters lovingly. “If you can inspire such a strong reaction in someone, I want to understand what you’ve been going through.”
My eyes drop to the letters. I trust that Bel didn’t tell my mom anything I wouldn’t want her to know about, and I’ll absolutely interrogate him about the letters’ contents later. Preferably when we’re both naked and I can make sure he knows how gods-damned grateful I am to have him in my life.
Throat swelling, I nod. “Yeah. Maybe I can bring Bel out for a visit soon?”
“Oh, I’d love that. We would. Wouldn’t we?”
She elbows my dad, who’s been watching us, but in his usual quiet way.
He grunts. “Yes, dear. Of course.”
I hug them both, letting myself gulp in a few more of those deep, cleansing breaths that I can feel through my entire body.
The next few hours are a whirlwind of interviews, photos, and PR junkets, followed by several parties Bel and I get shuttled to along with most of the team. No one bats an eye at Bel’s demon form or says anything about the cult ritual beyond Fuckers got what they deserved.
I spend every moment holding Bel as close as possible. There won’t be one photo of me that doesn’t have him in it, and vice versa. We’re a package deal, and I want any lingering cultists to know that. If they still have it in their minds to come after him, they have to go through me.
By the time Bel and I stumble back to our apartment, we’re nearly asleep on our feet. I reactivate the wards as soon as the door locks behind us, and the two of us stand in the dim foyer, staring at each other.
It’s over.
Or it might be over—we won’t know until we give the cultists a few months, see if there’s any activity. But even if there is, Bel’s out, no going back. I renounced Urzoth, also no going back.
We’re free.
Like he’s having the same thoughts, a smile glides across Bel’s face, his lip gloss flashing in the moonlight from the living room’s massive windows that barely illuminate the entryway.
His outfit’s been driving me wild—black crocheted sleeves connect across his collarbone, leaving most of his chest bare, showing defined planes of rose-gold skin, peaked nipples, and a thick silver belly chain looped under his navel.
His tail’s tucked away, and baggy black pants hang excruciatingly low on his hips.
“All night,” I start, “all night, I kept envisioning yanking those pants down and making you sit on my lap in a way that’d steal headlines from the way we already stole headlines today.”
He smirks. “Oh yeah? Why didn’t you?”
I drop to my knees in front of him. His breath cuts out in a gush.
“Because,” I say, crawling toward him across the marble floor. “While everyone better know who you belong to, only I get to see what you look like when I push into you.”
The softest, most grasping whimper flutters in his throat.
He backs up until his spine hits the guestroom door. In this position, on my hands and knees, my head’s level with his chest; I duck so I can bury my face against his belly, right over that chain.
I take it in my teeth and tug gently.
He still smells like apples. Faint, but it’s there. Beneath it, he smells like him, like soap and the fresh, clean scent of his skin. The aroma has a snarl building in me, something feral that’s been brewing since the pearl broke and alerted me that he was gone.
And suddenly, everything I’ve been compartmentalizing—he was taken from me; he got hurt; he almost died—avalanches over me, a frigid, breath-stealing assault.
Tears sting my eyes. “They took you,” I say into his skin. It’s barely sound, a vibration if anything.
But Bel hears. He strokes his fingers through my hair. “You saved me.”
I seize his hips, yanking him up the wall so I can drop hard, open-mouthed kisses in a band across his waist. He squeals and scrambles at my head for balance, those squeals breaking into moans as I scrape my teeth over his sharp hip bones, more consumption than kiss.
His hips thrust and his torso arches, that rhythmic, sexy-as-fuck dance for me.
“Orok,” he pants. “Want you. Please. N-need you.”
Gods, we both need it. Both need this coming together—it’s falling out of him in pleas; it’s breaking out of me in hunger.
“Shh.” I look up at him, supplicant and devoted. “I got you, sweetheart. Let me worship you.”
He whimpers and presses back into the wall, a tremor rolling across his skin as he fights not to squirm.
I lower him long enough to hook my fingers in his pants and peel them and his boxers off, lifting first one leg, then the other to get rid of his shoes, too.
His tail thwacks against the floor, and he’s hard and leaking already, his body shivering despite the heat waving off us both; it’s the energy of the day releasing, I know.
I’m shivering, too, hands shaking as I skate my fingers up his bare legs, his muscles wound and distinct in his lean thighs.
Ravenousness burns in the pit of my stomach, my throat bobbing on a grating swallow.
I’m hit with a myriad of wants so potent I get dizzy—want to wrap him in my arms, hold him for days; want to impale him on my cock so our bodies meld; want to devour him, feel every part of him connect with every part of me until I can truly accept that he’s safe now. He’s okay.
He got taken from me.
I heft him in my arms again, bracing him on the wall so his cock is level with my face, so I can be here on my knees for him. His tail twitches and wraps around my thigh; I love that outward sign of his unraveling. Want stripes of his bruises all over my legs.
I pull his hard length into my mouth and he croons, belly rippling, one hand going up to grip the guestroom door. “Orok, yes, yes, oh my gods—”
My cheeks hollow and I suck, hard, constricting the pressure around his dick and bobbing my head in a punishing rhythm. The hunger, the want, the fear and sorrow and grief are all driving me now; I’m kerosene-saturated and aflame.
Need him to come. Need him to feel good. Need him to fall apart in my mouth so I can taste him and hear those noises, see that dance.
He’s okay. He’s safe, he’s okay.
Bel cants into me, aborted thrusts that twist into rolls.
That chain, his lip gloss; he catches and sparks in the low moonlight, the barest wisp of his usual solar flare.
It burns me the same, a caustic natural disaster I greedily let mark me.
Cut me open in a decade, two, and there’ll be a ring carved into my soul from him.
I suck harder, running my tongue around his length. Bel’s hips jerk and spasm, mouth dropping open, throat elongating as he comes with a frantic wail. That sound shudders through me, stroking over my raw nerve endings like his fingertips gliding through my hair, calming, reassuring.
I ease him out of my mouth, keep hold of him as I climb his body with kisses on his stomach, his pecs, his collarbone, his jaw. He hangs in my arms, sated and limp, letting me truly worship him now, letting me drink my fill.
“So good for me,” I whisper into his temple. “Giving yourself to me. Dancing for me. You’re perfect.”
A low whine is his response, his eyes fighting to open, his breath slowing.
“You love me,” he mumbles. “Tell me.”
I bite his neck, tongue the spot as he wilts. “I love you. I love you so much, Bel.”
“And?”
“And,” I nuzzle his jaw, “you’re mine.”
His jaw stretches as he smiles. “Yours. Forever.”
Forever.
It isn’t a flippant hope now.
It’s a fact.
Morning News: “Welcome to One Shot, your number-one source for the latest in pro rawball news. I’m your host, Diamanda Blacktalon.
With me today, after his long journey to find the eternal flame of the Lizard People, is Vaknox, now the Reigning King of the Lizard People of Tesh, Purveyor of Fire and Ash, He of the Sun, Chosen of Chaxloakka.
Vaknox, I cannot begin to tell you how glad I am to have you back. ”
*lizard hissing noises*
“Aw, I missed you, too! I know you’ve kept abreast of everything going on in the rawball world, but there’s one thing you wanted to talk about in particular, isn’t there?”
*lizard hissing noises*
“Exactly—Orok Monroe not only helped stop a Galaxrien cult ritual during the rawball championship game, it now turns out that he’s funding an entire new mental health program with Thrive Children. Swoon! There is no way for him to be any sexier, let me tell you.”
*lizard hissing noises*
“Oh, I know, Vaknox, I know—he’s locked down! Can you believe our own Beauty has been half demon this whole time? I have to ask: Do you think he’s really the descendant of Galaxrien Vossen?”
*lizard hissing noises*
“Wow, Vaknox, well said. Well said indeed. We’ve got to go to a break, but romance is blooming on the Hellhounds for a second time: superstar offensive rogue Marlow Keel is dating team captain and defensive tank Aaron Harsaf! An in-depth look when we come back!”