He undresses me first. Careful but not tentative. Shirt over my head, his hands mapping my chest like he's memorizing the topography. His mouth follows his hands. Collarbone, sternum, the place below my ribs that makes me twitch.
"Sensitive," he murmurs. Does it again. I twitch again. "Very sensitive."
"Dev —"
"I'm exploring. You explored me. Both times. Let me —" His mouth moves lower. "Let me learn you."
I let him learn me. His hands and mouth moving with the focused attention he gives everything. Books, espresso, arguments about fictional wizards. He catalogues my responses the way he catalogues everything: methodically, thoroughly,with the quiet satisfaction of someone who likes understanding how things work.
When his mouth reaches my hip, I make a sound that's embarrassingly close to a growl. My lion, surfacing, wanting. Devin looks up and grins.
"There's the lion."
"Sorry —"
"Don't apologize. I like the lion." His fingers trace my hip bone. "The lion is the one who noticed me first. In the library. Before you even knew why."
"He noticed you."
"What did he say?"
"This one."
"And now?"
"Now he says a lot of things I probably shouldn't repeat."
"Tell me one."
"Ours."
The word settles between us. Devin's hands still on my skin. The apartment quiet around us. No pride downstairs, no Jason in the kitchen, no Knox in the next room. Just us. His space. His rules.
"Yours," he confirms. Then he pulls his own shirt off and the rest of his clothes and he's above me, bare in the streetlight, and I stop breathing.
He's beautiful. Not in the way magazines mean it. In the way that particular people are beautiful to the particular people who love them. Narrow shoulders. The ribs still slightlytoo visible, though Jason's cooking is helping. The scar on his collarbone from something he hasn't told me about yet. The line of dark hair below his navel. All of him, unedited, in his own apartment, choosing to be seen.
He prepares himself. Reaches for the supplies I brought, because I am nothing if not practical, and does it himself, watching my face while he opens himself up. The sounds he makes are deliberate, unfiltered. The no-editing policy applied to sex.
"You're going to kill me," I manage.
He smiles. "Ready?"
"Dev, I've been ready since you said 'come here.'"
He sinks down onto me. Slow. Controlling the pace, the depth, the angle. His hands on my chest for balance, his thighs tight against my hips. The sound he makes when he's fully seated, low, shuddering, a sound of arrival, echoes in the empty apartment.
"Oh," he breathes. "That's — from this angle —"
"Yeah?"
"I can feel everything. Every — god, Silas." He rolls his hips experimentally. We both groan. "How does that feel from there?"
"Like I'm going to last approximately thirty seconds if you keep moving like that."
"We have all night." He rolls again, finding a rhythm. His head tips back, his throat exposed, and in the blue-white light from the window he looks like something from the books he loves. Otherworldly, luminous, too beautiful to be real butreal anyway. "We have all night in my apartment with my door locked and no one is going to hear us."
"No one?"