Knight paused; he’d been about to do just that.Really, now?Saint could feel his eyes on his shoulder blades, making his skin tingle.
Yes.
Are you sure?
Yes.
It made him feel ridiculously sexy as Knight watched him moisturise. And if he took his sweet time massaging the cocoa butter onto his skin, who was going to check him?
Fuck. Why did he feel like he was giving a strip tease when he was putting clotheson? And his plain old cotton pyjamas, at that.
By the time he was done, they were both breathing slightly heavily, and Saint was impossibly more than half-hard. Knight the Dog seemed to have tuckered himself out and was curled up on his dog bed, eyes closed, content.
Knight reached for him when he came to the bed, eyes intent.
Saint crawled into his lap to straddle his thighs, cupping his face and joining their mouths. Knight let out a pleased grunt, his hands cupping the round globes of Saint’s ass and squeezing.
They kissed, over and over, so deep and so hard it was as though they wanted to disappear into each other’s mouths. Their tongues tangled, breaths mingling hotly, and they didn’t stop even when they were both trembling and gasping.
“Food,” Saint rasped between kisses.
Knight smiled against his mouth, the movement making Saint’s lower belly flutter madly. He gave Saint one more kiss, soft and sweet.
They were both flushed as they pulled apart, their lips swollen and glistening.
Knight floated over their bowls of ramen as Saint adjusted his position beside him, pressing his thigh to Knight’s, wishing he could somehow imprint all that warmth radiating from the demon’s body onto his soul. When Knight’s wing draped around him, tail curving almost possessively around his hips, his entire body gave a giddy little shiver. It felt like he was in the cinema and his boyfriend had just sneakily but not so sneakily placed an arm around his shoulders.
His laptop was already open and waiting, paused on an animated movie they’d planned to watch.
“Oh, yeah. In all the excitement of yesterday, I forgot to help you with finding the demon community in Arehjia like I promised. Shall we do that after the movie?”
“Yes, please. Thank you.”
“No need to thank me.”
Knight leaned over to plant a kiss on his shoulder. He pressed play. If Saint had had wings, they would have fluttered.
“Who is she, by the way?” Saint asked about two hours later. They were done with their food and their movie, and Saint had typed up “demon community in Arehjia” and had unsurprisingly gotten a few hits. “The, uh, demon you’re looking for.”
He guessed he didn’t sound as nonchalant as he’d hoped because Knight sounded amused when he said, “She’s a friend.A good friend. When I stumbled upon the nicquiri community, she’d been the newest member. I guess we bonded that way. Then she began to sneak off to the human world.” He snorted out a brief laugh. “She was a lot braver than me.” He sounded a cross between heartbroken and wistful.
Not wanting to stir bad memories by asking probing questions, Saint said lightly, “I mean, I think you’re plenty brave yourself.”
“Maybe.” He glanced at Saint, his melancholy fading for a bit, replaced with a warm smile. Saint stopped typing and turned to face him, giving him his full attention. “But I never went for what I wanted. I never even tried to contemplate if Icouldwant—I was afraid to dream of anything other than what I had because I didn’t want to lose the community. Demons aren’t wired the way humans are, you know? Because we feed on emotion, we literally need community to survive, or we eventually wither away and die.”
“So, it’s not really about bravery, then, is it?” Saint replied softly. “It’s about necessity. You did what you had to to survive.”
“Yeah, butyouhad the courage to leave—to forge your own path.”
Saint huffed. “Yeah, but it wasn’t really about courage, though.” He thought back to those days. He didn’t remember feeling brave; he remembered feeling like he was going to die. Wasn’t it funny how he’d never experienced the violence of his church first-hand, yet the thought of leaving had filled him with so much terror? If they were just as innocuous as any other church, why had he felt so afraid to leave? He’d felt like the punishment for leaving was death, when there was no evidence of anyone saying or threatening that. He’d justknown.Thatthought had been the final nail in the coffin to cinch that he might indeed be in a cult.
“It was me balancing my need to live against my need to survive. I had to think about how, if I left, I would lose everything. My family. My friends. My home. I had to think that if I did leave, it might beworse, that I wouldn’t survive, that I might come crawling back, that I’d learn everything they’d said about the “outside” world was true, and I wouldn’t last a day on my own. And if I did come crawling back, the punishment for defecting would be severe. I thought about all that, and I had to take a gamble on my happiness. And while I wouldn’t change it for the world, it doesn’t mean I’m any braver than those who actively choose to stay because they see that as the only way they can survive.”
Knight was watching him with soft eyes.Kiss me.
His eyes widened when Saint obediently leaned in, and Saint huffed out a laugh.Did you forget we still have this thing on?
This thing? It’s called a telepathic link.
