“He had his hands on you in front of everyone. Like he had any fucking right. And he did it like he’d done it before.” His fingers twitched against Levi’s skull. “Has he done it before?”
“It’s the game,” Levi said quickly, still gripping Asher’s shirt. “They’re NPCs, Asher, they have backstories that aren’t—”
“I heard them, Levi. Through the wall. I heard every word.”
Oh god.
“It’s not real,” Levi said, and he could hear how desperate it sounded. “None of it’s real. I’ve never — Asher, youknowI’ve never—”
“Our bodies reset when we die, Levi. He doesn’t get to be your first, do you understand me?” Asher snapped. “He doesn’t get to be anything to you. Nothing. I’m yours, and you’re mine. That’s it.”
“You’re my first, always,” Levi said quickly, because it was true and because Asher still had him pinned, and he didn’t want to find out what would happen if Asher decidedright nowwas the time to be his first again. “No one has touched me like that except for you. You know that.”
He watched the muscles in Asher’s jaw jump as they locked eyes, then the tension faded around his mouth, and Levi could see the framework settling back into place behind his eyes.
“He doesn’t get to touch you.” Asher’s free hand came up and brushed the tears from Levi’s face. He rubbed a finger across Levi’s lower lip, the gentle pressure dragging the wetness of tearsacross it, and Levi’s breath stuttered. Asher’s eyes dropped to his mouth and stayed there.
“He doesn’t get to look at you.” His thumb pressed in, parting Levi’s lips, and Levi let him. “Or adjust your clothes. Or say your name like he owns a piece of it.”
Then the thumb was gone and Asher’s mouth was there instead. The kiss landed like an exclamation point— like something that had been decided well before this room— and Levi’s hands pulled on Asher’s shirt harder as he melted into the kiss. Asher kissed him the way he did everything: with all of his attention and the single-minded focus of someone who had identified what he wanted and saw no reason to pretend otherwise, and Levi felt that in his lips, on his tongue, quickly racing south even as bruises formed on his neck.
Asher’s hand moved from his chin to his jaw, tilting his head back further, opening the angle of it, and made a low sound against his mouth that Levi felt more than heard, like a pleased sigh.
Levi kissed him back, both breathing harder than was strictly dignified, and he didn’t care—couldn’t care—as his whole nervous system narrowed down to the heat of Asher’s mouth and the hand cradling his jaw like something precious.
“I don’t care what rank he thinks he has,” Asher whispered as he pulled back, his cheeks flushed and his pupils blown wide. “He doesn’t get any part of you.”
Levi nodded quickly, trying to ignore the hard length of Asher pressing against his hip.Focus. You have to focus, not think with your dick. He just rattled your skull because someone touched your shoulder. Now is not the time.
Asher held him there, pinned to the wall by the palm cradling his skull, looking like he was about to go back in for another kiss.
Then he stopped.
A frown formed on his face as his brow creased. He blinked a few times, as if some invisible person had just asked him to explain quantum physics. “You…you didn’t say it back.”
Levi felt the temperature shift between them. Asher let go of him so quickly Levi had to remind himself to use his muscles to stand upright, still plastered against the wall. “W-what?”
“In the corridor,” Asher said, his brow furrowing deeper. “Before. I said ‘I love you’...and you didn’t say it back.”
Before,meaning when he’d killed Levi. Before meaning his lips on Levi’s forehead, andI love you too much to let you leave,and the bolt through Levi’s chest.
“That’s how it works…when someone says it, you say it back. That’s—” Asher took a few steps back, running his hand through his hair, still looking at Levi, utterly bewildered. “Why didn’t you say it back?”
“You said it,” Levi confirmed, nodding slowly. He needed time to figure out what the fuck he was going to tell Asher, because sayingI have strong feelings for you despite all the murder, torture, and inappropriate touching, I’m trying to save both of us, but I don’t know if that’s loveseemed like a bad idea given Asher’s hair trigger. “And nobody has ever — nobody has ever said that to me before. Not like that.”
Asher went very still.
“Not like that,” he repeated.
“Not like that.”
“I know you didn’t have sex, but no one you ever dated—”
“No.” The word landed harder than Levi intended, and he watched it happen — the last remnants of anger and confusion giving way to a strange, delighted calm in every line of Asher’s body.
“So when I said it—” Asher stepped closer. “It’s like before. You should have told me.”
“Like what?” Levi wasn’t sure he wanted to know what thread Asher was following.