"I know," I whispered, holding him tighter. I'd never heard Lorenzo sound like this.
"But I don't want to lose you more." The words came out strangled. "If it's me or you tomorrow, if Constantine makes us choose—" His breath hitched again and wetness spread across my skin where his face pressed against my throat. "I can't lose you. I just found you. We just—"
"Hey." I cupped the back of his head, fingers threading through his hair. "Don't. We're not doing this."
"But if something happens—"
"Then we face it together." I pulled back enough to tilt his face up, forcing him to look at me. Tears tracked down his cheeks, catching thedim light. "You hear me? Together. No heroics. No sacrifices. We both walk out or neither of us does."
His eyes searched mine, still wet, still terrified. "You can't promise that."
"No," I admitted. "But I can promise I'll fight like hell to make it true."
He made a sound that was half laugh, half sob, and buried his face back against my neck. The tears kept coming, but quieter now, his breathing gradually evening out as I held him. My hand moved in steady circles on his back, the way my mother used to do when I had nightmares as a child.
The shaking lessened slowly, my presence apparently enough to quiet the worst of it.
I shifted us slightly, pulling the sheet over our cooling bodies, arranging us so he was mostly draped across my chest with my arms locked around him.
"Sleep," I murmured against his hair. "I've got you."
His breathing deepened gradually, the tension finally bleeding from his muscles as he surrendered to exhaustion. I stayed awake longer, memorizing the weight of him, the sound of his breathing, the way his heartbeat felt against my ribs.
Just in case.
I woke up hard.
Not unusual. Morning erections were a biological reality I'd learned to ignore through years of practice. What was unusual was the warm body pressed against my chest, the steady heartbeat under my palm, the fact that my cock was trapped between us and every shift of Lorenzo's breathing sent friction sparking through my nervous system.
We'd gone to bed together. On purpose. Like it was the most normal thing in the world. Like we’d done it a hundred times and might do it a hundred times more.
Gray light filtered through the ranch windows, which were splattered with raindrops. Small voices drifted up from downstairs. The voices of children, I realized. The children we’d saved.
I looked down at Lorenzo, who’d draped his whole body across mine. His face was tucked into the space between my shoulder and neck, breath warm against my throat. I leaned down and breathed in his scent of burnt sugar, coffee, and sex while my other hand traced down his spine to where the sheet pooled at his hips. I could keep going. Could map every inch of him the way I'd wanted to last night but hadn't had the patience for. We'd been too desperate, too hungry,too aware that this might be our last night alive. As if we could fuck away the fear, the pain, the possibility that we both might die.
Lorenzo shifted in his sleep, pressing closer. His leg moved higher between my thighs, and the pressure against my cock made me want him all over again.
Every morning could be like this if we win, I thought, and tightened my arms around him.
I tried to imagine a world, ten years from now, where we might wake up tangled together like that in our own home, a world where the children who woke us were our own and not strangers I’d wronged. It was the first time in nearly twenty years I’d let myself think about a future that didn’t include prayers and mass and daily penance for having survived my mother and brother.
His fingers flexed against my ribs, and his leg pressed harder between mine, grinding against my erection with enough pressure that I had to bite back a sound.
His lips turned up in a smirk, though he didn’t open his eyes. “Someone’s eager for round two.”
“More like round six,” I corrected. Or was it seven?
Lorenzo's eyes opened then, gold-flecked brown meeting mine with a mischievous smirk. "We could make it seven."
I wanted to. God, I wanted to roll him onto his back and lose myself in him one more time before we had to face what was coming. But the voices downstairs were getting louder, and we still had a twelve-hour flight across the Atlantic to catch.
"We have to get up," I said, even though my body was screaming the opposite. "Our flight leaves soon."
The heat in his eyes dimmed. "Right. The labyrinth."
Neither of us moved for another few heartbeats. We just stayed tangled together, breathing the same air, pretending we had more time than we did.
Then Lorenzo pulled back, and the loss of his warmth made my chest ache. He sat up, the sheet pooling around his waist, and I got a full view of the damage we'd done to each other last night. Bite marks darkened his shoulders and neck. Scratches raked down his back where my fingers had dug in. Bruises in the shape of my hands colored his hips.
