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Raphael winced a little, and he glanced off to the side. “I wish I had a good answer for that, but I don’t. I can’t reassure you, but I can tell you that I think Rian is a good person. I think he’s always genuinely cared about you. I think he’ll want you to be happy.”
“What about you?” Dmitri asked.
At that, Raphael chuckled. “I can’t say. He doesn’t owe me anything, but that’s okay. I have all I want right here.” He pushed his fingers into Dmitri’s hair and rubbed their noses together.
“Jesus,” Dmitri breathed out. “Is this what I’ve been missing all this time?”
Raphael only smiled wider. “Es ist vielleicht.”
Groaning, Dmitri pushed his face into Raphael’s neck and let himself just feel the warmth of him, the ability to touch and be touched without worry that it would be snatched away. To know he was loved—that Raphael was in love with him—and he was free to love right back.
“I guess I know what my foreign language is going to be.”
Raphael laughed and tipped Dmitri’s face up with a thumb under his chin. “I will teach you everything you need to know in my language. You take any and all classes that will make you happy.”
Dmitri let his eyes close for a long second, and he breathed in the soft, easy scent of Raphael that he’d grown so accustomed to over the last year and a half. “I never thought,” he started, but he couldn’t make the words come.
Raphael’s touch gentled, dragging down his neck, making his body warm all over. It had never been like this with anyone—he had never wanted with his entire body, never craved this way. He felt no pressure to be anyone else, to perform a certain way.
He felt cherished.
“Tell me,” Raphael murmured.
Dmitri shook his head, then shifted so he was curled against him. Raphael was smaller than he was physically, but his presence was so much larger, and Dmitri felt like he could lose himself right there in his arms. “I don’t really know what I was going to say. There’s a lot of things I never thought possible.” He stretched his legs toward the far cushion and groaned with pleasure when Raphael’s hand brushed up his back. When he moved again, he felt it—the hardness between Raphael’s legs.
They both froze, then Raphael cleared his throat and tried to shift away. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “I don’t expect anything from you.”
“I know,” Dmitri said, and for the first time ever, he knew those words weren’t a lie. The honesty in Raphael’s tone, the ferocity in his eyes, Dmitri didn’t need to look further than that. “And it’s okay. It feels nice to be wanted. And I hope you know that what I feel about you is nothing like how I feel about my friends.”
Raphael softened, his shoulders relaxing as he put his arms back around Dmitri. “Yes.”
“I’m not afraid of your sexuality,” Dmitri told him. “I’m not ready for…for exploring my boundaries, but I want to someday.”
“I will never push that,” Raphael told him, his voice low and rough.
Dmitri pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the rapid thrum of his heart. “I know. That’s why I’m not afraid.”
“I just need you to understand that this is enough. My body will react to you, but I don’t need anything else but this.” He pushed a hand up the back of Dmitri’s shirt and pressed his cool palm against the center of his spine. “Just don’t go.”
And there—that was the fear Dmitri knew his lover had. The soul-deep, crushing fear of loss because peoplehadleft him. People had abandoned him. He had been pulled away from his home, and then left on his own with words on paper that summed up no more than a pretty lie.
And when he found love again, the weakness of his partner left him out in the cold, in a country that wasn’t his. Raphael was strong enough to make it on his own. He was brave enough to put himself out there. He was kind enough to let people in—slowly but surely. He was perfect enough to deserve the love he got in return.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Raphael murmured.
Dmitri smiled, but he felt the strain of it as bits and pieces of the night before crept through the surge of happiness and contentment he was feeling in Raphael’s arms. It clung on like a heavy weight, like a promise that every good thing he might ever have would be tainted. He could move past Paxton, but the fear of what might come next threatened to choke him. He didn’t realize he was shaking until Raphael pulled his hands to his lips and kissed them.
“Sorry,” Dmitri said, the misery clouding his tone. “God, I’m sorry. I’m trying not to let it get to me, but…”
Raphael shifted Dmitri off his lap, but before he could panic about being rejected, he was pulled to his feet. “Come on. I’m going to call out for lunch, and we’re going to picnic on the bed.”
Dmitri blinked, then swiped at his cheeks which were suspiciously damp, but he followed Raphael down the short hallway to his bedroom. He’d seen it a hundred times, but never from the perspective of a man allowed to be there. Never from the perspective of a lover, a partner, a…something. All of the words felt both right and wrong, and in a strange way, it was comforting.
“Is there anything specific you want to eat right now?”
Dmitri blinked, then sighed and sank to the edge of the bed. “Just get what you can eat. I don’t really feel hungry.”
Raphael looked at him a long while, then braced himself on one crutch and headed back out of the room as Dmitri shifted up toward the pillows and reclined against the headboard. He could hear the faint murmur of Raphael’s voice as he spoke on the phone, then it went quiet. The house rang silent, free of the thump from Raphael’s crutch, and the quiet drag of his feet across the wood.
