Page 111 of The Fake Divination Offense
“I’m taking you home.” I wipe the last of the moisture from under his eyes. “We can try this again some other time, when we’re—”
“No.” He takes my hand and fixes me with a look of determination. “You’re sweet, but no. Iwantto stay. I want to go back out there, apologize to your parents, and have lunch with my boyfriend’s family.”
A soft smile tugs my lips. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah,” he says, then gives a lopsided smirk. “Besides, how else are we going to earn that reward?”
I exhale a snort. “That’s what matters most, after all.”
“Have youseenyour dick? That’sallthat matters.”
My face heats as I laugh, but he squirms around me to stand and throw himself at the sink, where he quickly fixes his smudged eyeliner.
With a hard sniff at his reflection, he says, “Let’s do this. Cock awaits,” and marches out of the bathroom.
Gods. I really do love that man.
Bel’s apology is formal but sincere—he’s not sorry about standing up for me, but he is sorry about yelling and shaming my parents. In public. But his display endeared him to my mother even more, because she cuts him off by gushing about how he leapt todefend Orok’s honor, and then goes on to list all her ideas forfurther spreading Urzoth’s strength.
We both listen, and Bel asks how each of her ideas embodies Urzoth’s teachings. It gets her into a probably too-deep discussion of our dogma, all thatstrong as stone, hard as rockstuff; but also the finer details, the things Reverend Drach hinted at, and the things I rarely, if ever, hear my mother admit to believing, that although Urzoth is made of stone, he is a god of strong emotions, like love.
I’m not sure I speak the whole meal. I sit there while Bel interacts with my mom, pulling these ideologies out of her and genuinely, eagerly soaking up all the information, his hand on my thigh and his body slightly leaning toward me the whole time.
As much as I love watching him win over my parents—well, my mom; my dad will like him if she does—I need this lunch to end. Now. And the longer we sit here, our plates cleared and dessert half eaten, the paparazzi outside having dispersed an hour ago, the less I listen to what Bel and my mom are saying, and the more I pay attention to the heat of his body against mine, the smell of hisapple illusion magic, the way his eyelashes fan across his cheekbones when he closes his eyes in a laugh.
He loves me.
He defended me. Again.
I want you to be free, Orok.
But I already am. I am every moment I get to be with him, and finally,finally, Bel turns to gaze up at me, presumably to ask a question, and he notices the look I shoot him, the heat burning from my core.
I’m quick to get the check after that. I hug my mom and dad goodbye, and she fawns over Bel, promising to be in touch and get him some Urzoth books she told him about, but I’m dragging him out the door as she’s still talking. Bel giggles, a delighted, sexy noise as I march him up the sidewalk, my apartment only one block away. Other pedestrians fall out of my path, and I should maybe be concerned that I’m being such a lumbering, overbearing weirdo right now, but I can’t stop it.
He brings out this side of me, and it isn’t even that—he’s the only one I’ve ever felt isworthyof this side of me. The ferocity, the brutality, the swelling force that so many people attribute toUrzoth’s strength. It’s for Bel. It’s only for him.
We surge into the lobby of my building, the doorman and security guard greeting us, and Bel says an actual hello to them, but I keep him moving. The elevator’s there and I haul him into it, and before the doors are even shut, I have him caged to the wall, towering over him, burying my nose in his curls.
He smells likehim, and the restaurant, and the soap from the stadium; I want him to smell like me.Needhim to smell like me.
Bel sucks in a faltering breath as I lap at the skin under his jaw. “D-did we earn our reward?” he stutters. “I definitely feel like we did. We both survived, yeah? We—gods, that feels good—walked out of there intact.”
The elevator dings, the doors peel open, and I heft Bel up.
He squeals in protest. “Orok! Your injury—”
“This arm’s fine.” To prove it, I sling him higher until he’sdraped over my good shoulder, hanging there far too temptingly. I slap his ass, and he devolves into a helpless laugh.
“Oh my gods. Tell me no one’s around to see me like this.”
I already have, in fact, scanned the hall. It’s clear. “Uh-oh, paparazzi got ahead of us.”
Bel lurches, trying to spin around. “What?Where? I—”
He notes the empty hall.
And drops back down to slapmyass. Except he barely reaches my lower back.
