by Cari Z
Devon fought back his initial instinct to take the blame. If he hadn’t been possessed…but no, there was nothing he could have done about that. “I’m sorry you had to use it,” he let himself say instead.
“It was better than the alternative,” Rio replied, actually smiling. “I don’t know how you did it, but you got through, Devon. Through all my walls, all my bullshit. I would have gone through a dozen demons to get you back, and to hell with whoever knew it.”
“Wow.” That was maybe the most honest thing Devon had ever heard Rio say. “You really do love me.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s…awesome!” Devon moved to spring forward, but Rio held up a hand.
“My love comes with serious baggage,” he warned Devon. “I’m pretty damn sure that I’m being hunted by the church now, as well as a few other parties who think they’d like to have a nephilim around to play with or experiment on. I also burned a lot of bridges to figure out where you were.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that Porter Grey is probably dead, Maria probably wants to kill me, and Safeguard Systems definitely no longer wants to employ me.” Rio shrugged. “I wouldn’t be able to work for them now anyway, since I’ve got bigger problems, but you don’t have to share my exile. They’d take you back in a heartbeat, and I know your dads have connections to them.”
“I want to be with you,” Devon said quickly. Rio shook his head.
“Dev, take this seriously. I’m talking about isolation, living completely under the radar. It could be years before it’s safe for me to move around again, maybe decades, surveillance being what it is now. I could be found, I could be captured. You don’t have to live that way. You can go on with your normal life, helping people, catching summoners, living large. You’re one of the best operators Safeguard has, and I know you’d hate to be separated from your parents.”
“I would hate that,” Devon agreed. “But I’d hate to be separated from you more. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but I’m kind of crazy in love with you, and I’m not going to leave you just because you think it’s the thing to do.” Devon saw Rio’s jaw tighten and forestalled whatever he was going to say next. “Don’t bother. Yeah, hardship, isolation, no fun, I get it. But I don’t for a second believe you’re just going to hide away for the next decade or however long it takes for people to forget about you again, and I’d rather have your back than trust you to take care of yourself when you go off on your next incredibly dangerous adventure. I want to be with you, more than anything, and you want to be with me too, so just don’t even fight me on this because you’re going to lose.”
They stared at each other in silence for almost a minute before Rio finally deflated a little, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders and chest. It left him looking smaller, but sort of content at the same time. “Well. If you’re going to be that way about it.”
“I totally am,” Devon said with a grin. “So, where are we going next? Or is northern Minnesota going to be our new home?” Devon wrinkled his nose. “Am I going to have to learn to fish? Because I don’t think I’m going to like that.”
“No, we’re not staying here,” Rio replied. “This was just a convenient place to hole up while I waited to see if you were going to go crazy or not.”
Devon leaned his shoulder against Rio’s and laid his head in the crook of his neck. “What would you have done if I went crazy?”
“Taken you back to your dads,” Rio said immediately. “Emiel would have handled it.”
Emiel, not Emile. “Why do you call him that?”
“Ask him the next time you see him,” was all Rio would say on that subject. “We’ll head south sometime today, make for my home base. As far as I know it hasn’t been compromised yet, and I’ve got a lot of equipment stockpiled there that I’d hate to have to replace.”
“And Steven will meet us there with Maggie?”
“That’s the plan.”
“I’m a little surprised you trust him that much,” Devon said. “Not that I think he’s untrustworthy, even though he works for Lynlis, but I didn’t expect you to agree with me.”
“I think at this point Steven’s going to find it hard not to be faithful to me.” Rio sounded a little sad about that. “Part of what he and I did to find you, it sort of bound us together. It’s like a nephilim’s version of allure, but messier and more permanent. I can sense where Steven is right now. I can sense if he’s sleeping, if he’s eating, if he’s anxious...”
Devon felt an unexpected tendril of jealousy creep into his heart. “What’s he doing right now?”
“Still sleeping. It’s not even five in the morning on the West Coast.”
“Does he know you’re connected to him?”
“Yeah, it was pretty obvious when it happened. But Dev,” Rio covered Devon’s hand with his own. “I only did it so that we could find you. And Steven only agreed in order to find you.”
Devon let that percolate for a moment. “So what you’re saying is that a threesome is suddenly a very real possibility.”
Rio burst out laughing. “Of course that’s what you’d think of first.”
“Priorities first,” Devon teased his lover. “If I have to share you with someone else it might as well be someone ridiculously hot who likes the way I look in lingerie.”
“How about we get settled in before we think too hard about threesomes?”
Devon turned his head just enough to kiss the point of Rio’s shoulder. Warm, strong, handsome and indecently sexy, and he had literally put his life on the line to save Devon from a fate worse than death. Devon knew in his heart that being with Rio, no matter where they were, was never going to be an issue of settling. The question was, could Devon live up to expectations? Was he really worth it, could he really be everything Rio needed? Could he take on the role of the protector if he needed to?
Devon didn’t know, but he was damn well going to find out. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s do that.”
Cari Z. is a Colorado girl who loves snow and sunshine. She writes award-winning LGBTQ fiction featuring aliens, supervillains, soothsayers, and even normal people sometimes
Cari has published short stories, novellas and novels with numerous print and e-presses, and she also offers up a tremendous amount of free content on her blog and Patreon. Follow her there to read her serial stories, with new chapters posting every week.
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Blog: https://carizerotica.blogspot.com
Twitter: @author_cariz
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Cari_Z
Email: [email protected]