“You will live.” Nicodemus shocked himself with the order and the snap in his tone. A wall was cold at his back, though he could not remember moving. Maybe it had been there all along.
Bel grinned at the command but pressed on. “If you do not want me when it is over—"
“I think I will want more.” Nicodemus had to catch his breath and only then tried to consider what he meant. He had already admitted to wanting Bel’s attention, to worrying over Bel when he was gone. He had let Bel—wanted Bel to—look at him and take him as he had. More would mean…more. A large, insolent figure at the kitchen table watching Nicodemus make coffee for him. Hard bites at his hip. Warnings about the weather. Statements about the Realm no one else ever gave him. Protection. Pain. Bel in his bed. “More,” Nicodemus said again, lacking better words. “I will want more.”
He was greedy. That was what the Realm had taught him.
“You were afraid of me.” Bel scowled, human and real. “For years and just yesterday.”
Nicodemus tilted his chin up but spoke in a rush. “I think, perhaps, that it wasn’t fear that kept me from touching you for so long. Well, not fear ofyou.”
“It should be.” Bel was not appeased. He was also not entirely wrong. Many should fear Bel.
“Maybe so,” Nicodemus admitted. “But it isn’t.” And then, because the last one had been allowed and he suspected they always would have been, he leaned up to offer his mouth for another kiss.
Once again, Bel did not move. Not at first. Not until Nicodemus started to pull away, and then Bel moved his hand to the back of Nicodemus’ neck to keep him there.
“I will not be like Holt.” Bel did not growl it but his voice was low.
“Yes.” Nicodemus wished he could answer tartly, but it was simpler to kiss Bel and let himself be kissed until he could feel the bricks of the wall even through Bel’s coat. He did not want to suffer through another rut—to be suffered through—by a polite friend. Especially not after he had had Bel under starlight, rough and giving. “Bel,” perhaps it was already habit to beg, “Bel, please.” Bel kissed his mouth and down his neck, beneath his ear, then sucked a kiss where he had bitten before.
The sound Nicodemus made carried far beyond their corner of the alley. Someone in the distance slammed their window shut.
“Bel,” Nicodemus complained as Bel went back to softer kisses, “Bel, Iwant.”
Bel stopped, breathing heavy and hot over Nicodemus’ throat. “First, you must be safe.”
Nicodemus blinked and tossed his head a bit to clear it, then extracted his hand from Bel’s hair once he realized it was there. He wondered if Bel knew what it meant for him to say such things. “You love me,” he murmured as gently as he could and let Bel’s long hair curl around his wrist again. “You will not allow it to lure you.” He pulled until Bel raised his head. Then he tried to look stern. “But you may let it think it has. It might use…me. The idea of me. But you have had me, will have me, so none of that.”
“Yes, Nicodemus.” Bel gave him a deadly smile. “I’d bite you again, but you might be upset when you see the marks you already have.”
Nicodemus swallowed dryly. “I think I will thank you for them.”
Bel liked that, judging from his stillness. “I will have to tend to you before we’re done.”
Again, Bel persisted in trying to warn Nicodemus off and only succeeded in making him desire more.
Nicodemus pulled Bel’s hand to his mouth. Bel rested his thumb at the corner. His fingernail was smooth and blunt. Nicodemus parted his lips for it all the same. “Will I have long to wait?”
Bel inhaled sharply, then dragged his gaze away and lifted his head to shout to the rooftops. “Alistair!” He roared, like the boom of a cannon, as though he could manifest his Realm form whenever he wished. “Alistair Galbraith, show yourself!”
Nicodemus made a note to himself to devise a better system for the peculiari to contact each other when out of the manor. It would be useful in case of trouble, and if they had some methods already, he should know about them. It would help him keep them protected, and also relieve his mind when they were out of contact for too long. He did not like waiting for them to return.
“I don’t ever like waiting for you to come back,” he told Bel distractedly, realizing anew how much he worried for Bel, all the time. Bel ended his shouting and turned to him. Nicodemus frowned. “It’s days, sometimes, where I do not hear you or see you. Then you return with strange cologne and odd wounds. Blood on your clothes and rouge on your collar.” His chest was tight. Bel had to understand. “I don’t like it,” he said fiercely. “Not the danger, nor the rouge.”
“Lamb.” Bel actually seemed startled. He regarded Nicodemus warily, then sighed at a revelation. “Oh, you’re going to ruin me.”
A window opened somewhere close. Nicodemus jerked back and knocked his horns against the wall, wincing. Bel brightened the flame and tipped his head up before turning around.
One story above them, on the opposite side of the street that ran across the front of the alley, Alistair leaned out of a window, shirtless and scowling. Behind him was Donovan, of all people, with nothing on, but using a bit of curtain to cover his breasts. Nicodemus had had too many surprises in one night to stop to consider those two in bed together, but did stare before he caught himself.
“Belasko?” Alistair squinted, shouting back for the neighborhood to hear. “Nicodemus? What the fuck is going on?”
NICODEMUSmade coffee.
He figured he may as well have a cup despite the early hour. No one would be sleeping for some time. He was too restless, and the other two were under orders to guard him and “Keep him from getting impatient and reshaping the Earth too.” A statement that would have made Nicodemus huff indignantly, except that Donovan and Alistair had turned toward him with startled expressions, and he’d decided to keep his comments to himself for the moment.
In any event, neither of them had challenged Bel’s quietly snarled command for them to stay with Nicodemus until he returned. They were not subordinate to Bel; the agency did not run in that fashion. Nonetheless, despite the obvious questions they both had, they had simply nodded, and Bel, with a glance to Nicodemus, had made another Ring and gone back to his hunt, leaving them all at the front of the manor.
