Chapter 14
Silas
I wake up with Devin in my arms and the absolute certainty that something is wrong.
Not wrong in the obvious ways. He's here, warm against my chest, breathing slow and deep in genuine sleep.
Not the library doze, not the alert half-rest of someone who's trained themselves to surface at the first sound.
This is real sleep. Complete surrender. His hand is curled around my forearm where it crosses his waist, holding on even unconscious.
He stayed. He's safe. He's here.
But something is wrong.
My lion felt it last night, during. A moment, just a flash, where the signals didn't match.
The way he tensed at first entry, the full-body clench that wasn't just tightness but surprise.
The way he gasped when I found his prostate with my fingers, not the gasp of oh, that again but oh, that exists.
The way he came untouched with a sound of pure shock, like his body had done something he didn't know it could do.
I told myself it was emotion. Intensity. The difference between doing something with someone who matters and doing it with someone who doesn't. He said twice. A while ago. Not like this.
But my lion has been awake since 4 AM, pacing behind my ribs, replaying details I was too far gone to process in the moment.
No one's ever done that for me before. After the blowjob. I'd taken it as, what? That no one had gone down on him with that kind of attention? That was plausible. Plenty of people have sex without giving head. But combined with everything else...
I don't — I've never — When I asked if he could come untouched. He'd stopped himself, but the sentence was clear. I've never. Not I've never done it that way. I've never.
The way he held me. Not with the easy familiarity of someone who knows where limbs go, but with the desperate grip of someone who's never had another body pressed against theirs like that. Every touch a discovery. Every sensation new.
He's twenty-one. He spent his adolescence in foster care, then a shelter. When would he have had a relationship? When would he have had the safety, the privacy, the stability to be intimate with someone?
Twice. A while ago.
I close my eyes.
The morning light is gray through the window. Saturday. The library doesn't open until nine. We have time. Too much time, maybe. Too much quiet for the question forming in my chest.
Devin stirs. The way he wakes is the same as the library, the sharp breath, the flinch, the instantaneous alertness.
But this time, instead of scanning the room for threats, his hand tightens on my arm.
Confirming I'm still here. Then he relaxes, a slow unwinding that starts in his shoulders and moves down.
"Morning," he says, voice rough with sleep.
"Morning." I press my mouth to his hair. "Sleep okay?"
"Best sleep I've had in years. Maybe ever." He stretches against me, languid, content. "What time is it?"
"Just after seven."
"Mmm." He turns in my arms so we're face to face. His eyes are soft, unguarded in a way I've never seen. No mask, no careful blankness. Just Devin. "Hi."
"Hi."
"Last night was..." He ducks his head, pressing his face against my chest. "Really good."
"Yeah. It was."
I should let it go. He's happy. He's relaxed. He's lying in my arms without the usual hypervigilance, and that's a gift I shouldn't ruin with questions. Whatever happened before me isn't my business. He said twice. I should believe him and move on.
But I can't. Not because of ego or possessiveness.
Because if I'm wrong, if I misread the signals and he's fine, then asking is embarrassing but harmless.
And if I'm right, if last night was his first time and he lied about it, then something much bigger is happening between us, something that needs air and honesty or it'll rot from the inside.
"Dev?"
"Hmm?"
"Can I ask you something?"
He tenses. Barely. A fractional stiffening that I only feel because he's pressed against me. "Sure."
"Last night. When I asked if you'd done this before."
The stillness that follows is absolute. Not the comfortable quiet of reading together. The held-breath silence of someone waiting for impact.
"What about it?" His voice is even. Careful. The first hint of the mask.
"You said twice. A while ago."
"Yeah."
I wait. Let the silence hold. Sometimes silence is more honest than questions. It gives people space to fill it with what they need to say instead of what they're asked.
Devin doesn't fill it. He lies against my chest, barely breathing, and I can feel his heart rate climbing. Not the good racing of last night. The fear kind.
"Dev." I keep my voice gentle. "Was last night your first time?"
The silence stretches. Five seconds. Ten. His fingers tighten on my arm, then deliberately loosen, and I can feel the effort that takes. The conscious decision to not grip, to not give himself away with his body when his voice is doing the work of staying calm.
"Does it matter?" he asks.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because if it was, I would have wanted to know. Not to stop. I wouldn't have stopped. But to know."
His breathing changes. Faster, shallower. The beginning of something that might be panic.
"I'm not angry," I say quickly. "I'm not — Dev, look at me."
He pulls back enough to meet my eyes. His face is sliding toward the careful blankness, the customer-service mask, the protective shell he built in foster homes. But it's not fully there yet. Underneath the mask, his eyes are bright with tears.
"It was," he says quietly. "Last night was my first time."
The words land in my chest like a stone dropping into water. Ripples spreading outward, touching everything.
"All of it?" I ask, even though I already know.
"All of it." His voice is barely audible. "The — everything. Everything you did. I'd never — none of it."
I close my eyes. Open them. He's watching me with the expression of someone waiting to be told to leave.
"Okay," I say.
"Okay?"
"Give me a minute."
He starts to pull away, the instinct, the retreat, the walking-away skill he's been perfecting. I tighten my arms around him. Not trapping. Holding.
"I'm not going anywhere," I say. "Neither are you. Just give me a minute to — I need to think."
"About what?"
"About the fact that you lied to me."
He flinches. A full-body thing, like I struck him, and the sight of it almost makes me take the words back. But they're true and they need to exist in the room.
"I know," he whispers. "I know I lied."
"Why?"
"Because —" His voice cracks. He swallows, tries again. "Because if I told you I'd never done any of it, you would have stopped."
"I wouldn't have —"
"You would have." His eyes are fierce now, the mask cracking in the other direction.
Not into blankness but into something raw and desperate.
"You would have said we should wait. You would have been kind about it.
You would have held me and said all the right things and we would have fallen asleep without — and I couldn't. I couldn't let that happen again. "
"Again."
"The wall, Silas. On the sidewalk. You pulled away because I was too young, too inexperienced, the imbalance was too much.
And I — you were right, maybe, about some of it.
But you were also wrong. Because I knew what I wanted.
I knew who I wanted. And the only thing stopping me from having it was the truth about how much I hadn't done. "
His words settle around us. The morning light has shifted, warming the room by degrees.
"So I lied," he continues, quieter. "I said twice because twice sounded experienced enough to not trigger your — your thing.
Your responsible thing. The thing where you decide I'm too fragile and pull back.
" His jaw tightens. "And it worked. You didn't stop.
And it was — Silas, it was everything. It was more than I imagined.
You were so careful and so good and I wanted every second of it and I don't regret it. I don't."
"But?"
"But I took your choice away." His voice drops to nothing.
"You didn't get to decide what you were doing.
You thought — you thought I'd done it before.
You thought you were just another time. And you weren't. You were the first everything.
The first mouth. The first — all of it. And you didn't know. Because I lied."
The room is quiet. His heart hammering against mine. My lion, silent for the first time in weeks. Not pacing, not purring, just listening. Paying attention.
"You're right," I say. "I didn't get to choose."
He closes his eyes. A tear slides sideways across his temple and into his hair, and the sight of it cracks me open.
"But Dev, the reason you lied. That's on me."
His eyes open. Confused.
"The wall," I say. "I stopped kissing you and said you turned twenty-one yesterday and you heard, what? That you were too young? Too vulnerable? Too much of a risk?"
"That the imbalance was too much. That what I hadn't done made me too — that it tipped things too far."
"Yeah." I exhale. "And I taught you that. In one sentence on a sidewalk, I taught you that being honest about your inexperience would cost you the thing you wanted. So you stopped being honest."
"That's not your fault —"
"It's not about fault. It's about consequence.
" I pull him closer, tuck his head under my chin.
"I was trying to be responsible. Careful.
I was thinking about power and age and what it means to want someone who has less than you.
And those are real things. But the consequence was that you learned to edit yourself around me.
You learned that the full truth was too dangerous. "
He's crying silently. I can feel it, the wetness against my chest, the slight tremor in his shoulders. Not the kind of crying that wants comfort. The kind that happens when someone names the thing you've been carrying and suddenly it's too heavy to hold alone.
"I should have told you," he says.
"Yes."
"I was afraid."