Page 78 of The Fake Divination Offense
“I don’t want you to feel indebted to me, like your safety is contingent on us hooking up. What if one day you want to end things, butdon’tbecause you feel like I’ll kick you out if you do? What if—”
“What if Galaxrien’s cultists find me tomorrow,” he cuts me off, “and I never knew what it was like for you to fuck me?”
I choke. Full-on attack of coughing and wheezing.
Bel gives me a satisfied, bratty little smirk.
“I don’t know about you,” he tells me while I do my best not to asphyxiate onnothing. “But I won’t be able to treat you like a handler. I won’t be able to live in the same apartment and not touch you. Kiss you. Iwantyou, Orok, and—”
He stops abruptly. Like that same car I saw coming hits him, his shoulders jolting.
He glances down at his body.
“But I know… I don’t have to look like this. I have the illusion magic.”
He pulls a small spray bottle out of his pocket and uncaps the lid with shaking hands. Instantly, the smell of apples floods the space, and he hasn’t even used any yet.
I close my fingers over it. “No, you—wait. That’s why you always smell like apples?”
Eyes on the floor, he nods. “I got to pick a scent to cover the smell of the illusion magic. Are apples okay? I think Ilbryen could change it if you—”
“Don’t you dare.”
Those gold-black eyes lock on me. They aren’t the big brown eyes, but they’re still him, sweet and hopeful.
“Apples or not, demonic form or not, I wantyou,” I tell him. “As whoever makes you the happiest.Of courseI want you. But it isn’t about me—I need you to feel safe. And I’m afraid, if we keep the physical side of our relationship, you won’t feel safe. You’ll feelobligated.”
He studies me, my hand still keeping the bottle in his grip captive. Without breaking eye contact, he frees his hand, recaps and pockets the bottle, and takes a step closer, his face tipping up, reaching for mine, open, raw, pleading before he’s even spoken.
“Maybe I want to feel obligated to you,” he whispers.
It shocks through me, an electric current.
No. No, I’m giving him the proper out. We can make this professional. We can—we need to—
“Bel—”
“Maybe I want to feel like I belong to you.”
I slam my eyes shut, rocking like the whole damn city got hit by an earthquake and I’m absorbing the impact.
“You don’t know what you’re saying.” He doesn’t. He can’t know what a throughline his words have straight to the most unhinged part of me.
“I do,” he says, gradually more beseeching. “I want to feel like I’m bound to you.”
A shiver walks down my spine.Stop. Stop—
“I want to feel like I’myours.”
He’s mine.
Entirely. Utterly. In every conceivable way.
The beast is raging, stalking,hungry; I freed it, why am I still holding it back?
Because Bel needs me to. Because this is the healthy thing to do. Because—
Bel braces his hand on my chest, his spot, and I don’t have to open my eyes to know he’s lifting up on his toes.
