Archive of Our Own

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The trek home is quiet. 

You and Rafayel haven't really ever been close in the traditional sense, considering the circumstances. The LCBI and your employment there as a Special Enforcer makes things understandably weird between you — an unspoken tension that you can’t really do anything about — but that doesn't mean you two aren't connected in some way. You two have a mutual understanding; an unsaid wavelength that only you and him are connected by. A certain type of bond, you could even say. 

When you're fighting Praedators, your partnership and the dynamic between you two is near instinctive, both perfectly in tune with each other without even needing to try. The signals that he shoots you with his eyes, dual-toned irises blank and imploring and mouth a straight line, all while dodging slashes and parrying swipes left and right in a sickening dance are enough for you to understand. There are no words that need to be said, that's how you two have operated since the beginning. 

Right now, in that case, nothing has changed. Walking beside him in the hush of the night, with heat wafting off his frame and warming your chilled, rain-sodden skin, is something you two have done countless times by now. Once you finish up your assignments for the day and he finishes up the combat simulations that the IEDS program forces him to do, you almost find comfort in knowing he’ll seek you out for his reward, and then you’ll walk home together as soon as the work day is over. 

The difference now, with the idle humming of old streetlights and familiar cries of agony that echo in the distance that you've become desensitized to, is that you can feel his anger. 

Well, not anger , you suppose. Something else, maybe, something more complex — though it rattles your brain when you dwell on it a little more. Praedators, especially ones as high ranked as him, aren't known for their emotions. After their transformation, they’re capable of very little; distrust, aggression, agitation, just to name a few. But as you stare at your feet with brows knitted, kicking away a stray soda can as you pass by it along the unkept street, there's something palpable in the air surrounding you both, stirring quietly like a slumbering dragon nearing its wake after a long rest. 

Rafayel isn't a man of many words, rather mute and intimidating on a good day, so the silence isn’t anything new. You're used to soft grunts of confirmation, low grumbles of discontentment, huffs of subtle amusement. 

As you near the street where your now shared apartment is located, though, there is nothing. Nothing but a prickling tension that you can feel underneath your skin; a tangible thing that you could scratch your skin raw at to try to remove. 

Your eyes risk a glance over to him impulsively before you can think to stop it, but when they meet his face, you find that he isn't even looking at you. He's as perfectly neutral as always, eyes gazing straight ahead, shoulders slumped and lax, hands shoved in his pockets. If you didn't know any better, you'd think he's almost relaxed, the picture perfect image of indifference; like he’s just as bored as he looks. Realistically, you know that he's got his ears strained, listening in to every possible sound in at least a two block radius, and that he's probably hyper-aware of everything in his peripherals, noting everything he sees in case there’s danger. Knowing this doesn't stop him from appearing the same as he always does, like he’s got a certain pretense to uphold. 

Despite that, you can still feel that tension in the air that wasn't there earlier, and you know it's your fault. 

When you went to the Opera House earlier tonight, you remember the exact moment your breath was stolen from you, unbidden and unexpected. You were so used to seeing him in his typical outfits — all leather and chains and buckles when he’s out, or soft, black graphic sweatshirts when at home — that seeing him in that suit , with gorgeous snow-white ivories and ashy ceruleans, left you understandably speechless. 

With how your nerves were buzzing around inside your stomach, you were practically vibrating in your seat in anticipation, but the sight of him walking on stage, calm and collected, taking long, measured strides to the center of the theatre, had you enraptured near instantaneously. His stage presence was intense, commanding. The applause that erupted around you, even with how loud and booming it was as it echoed around the theatre, might as well have been coming from somewhere else. The clapping came second to you, muffled in your ears as you zoned it out entirely. Nothing could take your eyes off the man on stage, especially when the music started, slow, melancholy ebbs that built up into a near crescendo. 

The nerves rattling around inside you vanished like smoke, filling instead with pure, genuine excitement, and you found yourself leaning forward in your seat in eagerness. Not because you were seeing Rafayel, the renowned opera singer, perform for the first time in years since his sudden disappearance, but because you were seeing Rafayel , your… 

…what was he to you, again? 

It was a question you kept asking yourself lately, time and time again, keeping you up until the early hours of the morning. You weren't enemies, as much as the LCBI believes you are, but you weren't quite friends either, though you almost wished you could be despite believing he isn't capable of such companionship. No, you're something else. Something harder to put into words. 

Sneaking another glance has your resolve wavering, and you swallow thickly. You can see his jaw clenched for a moment, the angles of his face illuminated briefly as you pass underneath a streetlight, and you’re unsure if he's been doing it the entire time or if he, too, can feel the air getting heavier between you. You squeeze your hands into a fist, trying your best to keep from saying something that would make things worse, and when you do, you can feel the bite of metal pinch painfully into your fingers. 

The ring. 

The one he gave you just a little while ago. 

Your eyes fall to it, flexing your fingers by your side as subtly as you can. You splay them so you can take another look, as if afraid the intricate band would disappear if you don’t. 

It's gorgeous — of course it is. Sat pretty on your ring finger, your stomach traitorously lurches when you think back to when he’d given it to you. 

The way his eyes lit up with amusement despite his neutral expression, voice monotone as usual, but speckled with inflections of something teasing. The way he held your hand so gently when he slid the ring on, aware of his own strength and of how easy it would be to hurt you. The way he didn't even question when you told him what finger you wanted it on, despite knowing the implications. The way he paused after he was done, still cradling your hand in between his own like he didn't want to pull away yet but had no excuse not to besides pure indulgence. Praedators don't feel that — shouldn't feel that, at least not in that way. 

The weight of it all went unsaid, like things always did between you two. 

Admiring the ring again as it shone under the moonlight, you think that maybe if any moment you two shared needed clarification, as many of them do with how unspoken you both leave things, that wasn’t one of them. 

When you two finally get to your apartment building, you let out an inaudible sigh of relief. Despite the urge to rush straight ahead and lock yourself in your room to forget everything that happened tonight — even if that includes his performance, despite how absolutely breathtaking he had been — you keep your pace steady at Rafayel’s side, refusing to betray how off-kilter you felt. 

When the elevator opens on your floor, your eyes scan around nervously, acutely aware of how late it is and how you haven't seen another soul since you reached the building. For some reason, the lobby and the hallway for your apartment complex is deserted and desolate, and you almost find yourself missing the unsettling sounds from earlier considering how quiet it is now. Some sort of insistent, chilling feeling rushes over you like a bucket of cool water, something resounding and ice cold that makes you shift on your feet. Something just the smallest bit akin to fear, but not quite. It makes your pulse race, makes your palms sweat, but it feels… just slightly adjacent. Like something went wrong, some wires crossed incorrectly and now you’re finding yourself inching closer to Rafayel instead of instinctively leaning away like before. 

He doesn’t seem to notice; or maybe he does, you can never really tell, and when you finally reach your apartment door he goes to unlock it, head downturned and hand outreached to unlock the pin-pad in a practiced ease. But right as he’s about to make contact, he stills, hand hovering in the air. His eyes narrow, brows furrowing, and his head turns just slightly in your direction like he’s listening for something. 

The tension in the air spreads thin, a rubber band pulled taut and threatening to crush you under the pressure when he raises his head, almost like he could hear it — the pounding in your chest. His nostrils flare like he’s scenting the air and then his eyes are on you, gaze cutting into yours past his rainstorm-soaked bangs. You freeze, unable to breathe. The air is suddenly charged, your adrenaline spiking like it’s on a livewire, pumping a sudden mix of hotcoldhot into your veins; a bittersweet contrast to the chill of the drying droplets on your skin. 

There have been many times over the course of bringing him back into custody all those months ago after his escape where he scared you, made you on edge just from his innate nature even though you chose to believe he wouldn't really hurt you. 

Even with all those times — of which there were many, though you’d never admit it — you can't remember a time quite like this; where he's looked at you the way he is right now. He's stock still, motionless like a hunter stalking its prey, lying in wait for just the right moment to strike. The only thing whirling through your mind in circles like sugar-spun candy is the memory from earlier when you were on the bridge, both sets of eyes overlooking the rushing water below in favor of each other. 

Rafayel's tone was filled with discontempt, recounting the way his kind attacked, how they mauled and fed with no regard for anyone or anything but themselves. His eyes shone in the moonlight, the water below them lapping at the rocks and shoreline and reflecting in his eyes, cold and empty. His words sent a shock through you, your body shivering at the cruelty he described before you could reign in your reaction and he paused, staring off into the distance like he was gathering himself, steeling his resolve like he was dreading what your next reply would be no matter what it was. His gaze met yours after a long moment, glistening through the strands of his long, dusty hair, messy and soaked from the rain. His eyes peered at you through long, wet lashes, striking you down where you stood like the echoes of lightning still lingering in the air. Your breath caught at his words, hushed and solemn.

“In your eyes, am I no different from the other Praedators?” 

When he speaks your name now, it's low; a quiet admission that slips past his lips as if it was stolen from him. It cuts through your racing thoughts like a knife and cauterizes them in its wake. You can't think about anything else except his voice, the flavor of your name on his tongue, surprisingly sweet in stark contrast to anything you've heard from him so far. 

You can feel it when heat rises to your face, the way your ears flush and throb in time with your heart fluttering like a scared hummingbird in the cage that is your chest. It's the only thing you can hear, with the way your voice fails you. You can't respond; don't know how to. The way he's looking at you makes you hot and embarrassed and guilty all at once for a reason unbeknownst to you. 

It appears like he scents the air again, his eyes darting around aimlessly like he’s trying to make sure whatever he can smell isn’t coming from somewhere else before they lock back onto you , pupils dilating under the low flickering buzz of the hallway lights and it solidifies your fear. His body is frozen still, but you can see how tense he is, ready like he’s poised to attack. His mouth opens on a word, something you feel yourself wanting to lurch forwards to hear better despite the freezing hot fear pumping through you, but nothing comes out except his breathing, getting louder as the seconds stretch on. His pink tongue sticks out just slightly, like he's trying to catch a taste of whatever flavor lingers in the air for himself, greedy and indulgent. 

You worry your lips in an antsy, idle fidget. Knowing you have to say something to break whatever's going on, you finally muster up the courage that you absolutely do not feel in order to air out the tense silence. 

“I—” 

Beep!  

He unlocked the door without you even realizing it, and he wastes no time in entering, leaving you cold and wet and alone. He doesn't slam it or anything, of course he doesn't. In fact, he leaves it ajar for you, and you can see the moment he flicks on the light when it seeps into the dim hallway, but it feels like a rejection regardless, though you’re aware of how ridiculous that is. 

You don't stand there for long, just a moment or two while you attempt to hurdle over the sharp sting that he'd left you with, before you wander in after him with trepidation. 

He's still standing in the doorway, peeling off the suit jacket that he'd worn when he'd performed earlier, hanging it over his arm. He isn't looking at you, as if he hasn't noticed you joined him even though you know there's no possible way he didn’t, not with his enhanced hearing, and you pretend it doesn't rub salt into your already open wound. The only thing that gets his attention is when you clear your throat, and he pauses his ministrations, flicking his eyes over to you. Your words are lost momentarily once more under the weight of his stare, but you thankfully recover easily this time. 

“I don't see you the same as the other Praedators,” you finally manage to say. It’s something you know you should’ve told Rafayel ages ago, but you weren’t able to get the words out before. If nothing else, you know this is what needs to be said. 

Nothing in his expression betrays his thoughts, and you feel dejected, like all of the courage and resolve you’d slowly mustered over the course of the entire evening was for nothing. He's just staring at you with that look , just a taste of the way he'd eaten you alive with his gaze just moments ago. The reminder makes your breath tremble, but you double down, firm in your decision in trying to make him understand .  

“I don't ,” you insist, tone pleading like you're trying your best to get through to him even though you can't read him at all. 

You watch his nostrils flare as if he’s trying to reaffirm whatever he had scented, and then something passes in Rafayel’s stormy eyes, too fast for you to even attempt to make out. Immediately, he's huffing a breath through his nose in mock amusement and working on removing his grey waistcoat. His head shakes with a cold smile gracing his lips like he doesn't believe a word you're saying. 

“Really.” He says matter-of-factly, like a statement instead of a question. His head is down and his eyes are focused on the buttons, brows furrowed in a mix of concentration and frustration. “I have a hard time believing you when I can still smell the fear coursing off you in waves.” 

“No, you have it wrong, I promise! I just…” You take a step forward, hand outstretched in the space between you like you were reaching for him to reassure him, but it falls short when he backs up slightly. Not enough to make it seem like he's retreating, but enough to make you feel silly when your fingertips meet nothing but air. 

Your hand clenches into a fist, nails firmly digging into the palm of your hand until the sharp bite of them makes you drop it back to your side. Another unconscious reminder of the ring as well, and it only makes your heart ache further.   

He's still there right in front of you, but his line of sight is just to the side, eyes fixated on nothing over your shoulder. It makes you feel like you aren't even worthy of his gaze, staring hard at the door with everything he isn't supposed to feel hidden in the dual-toned hues of his eyes unbeknownst to you. 

“Do you think I'm an idiot, Miss Enforcer?” He asks, voice coming out unsteady with the movement of ripping his waistcoat down his shoulders, a lick of disdain coating his tongue. Despite the harshness of the action, the words come out soft between you two, just barely skimming the surface of a whisper, and your eyes close briefly like you’ve been struck by the weight of it. His tone makes it feel like he spits the words right out at you, failing to mask the conviction and distrust laced within them. 

“Rafayel…” 

Your mind is racing again, too many thoughts filling your head and making you dizzy, but none of them escape past your lips and it's driving you crazy. You feel caught like a deer in headlights, unable to will your mouth to move in the blinding lights of his unforgiving gaze. 

“Unless… it isn't fear?” He mumbles suddenly, brows furrowed and eyes narrowing like he's analyzing you. The cotton candy of his eyes, normally so vivid and cloying despite the intensity he exudes, are dark when they size you up, like his pupils have seeped through to his irises and painted them deep obsidian in their wake. They have you pinned to the floor, unable to take another step even if you wanted to. “Perhaps I did get it all wrong. You're not looking at me like you're afraid , but rather…” 

His voice trails off, purring timbres dying in his throat when he sees the way you immediately tense up. The sight of him smirking just slightly, just the corners of his mouth tilting up in a cruel display of mirth, has you unsettled once again, but now that he points it out, he's right. It isn't fear that you're feeling. 

All of a sudden, you're hyper-aware of the hot flashes washing over you, fervent and overwhelming. The heat engulfs you like a furnace, making the hair on your skin raise and your abdomen clench before finally settling, somewhere deep in the center of you. The intensity of his scrutiny has you even more hot, reinvigorating the flush on your face and ears. 

“ Ah… I see now.” 

The arm Rafayel has his clothes draped over falls to his side, dropping the exorbitant garments unceremoniously to the floor and blanketing over his dress shoes, and he simply walks over them to stalk over towards you. This time it's you retreating, tucked with your tail between your legs and you back up to keep the space between you two until you have nowhere to go, jolting like you’ve been shocked when your back collides with the door. 

He dips his head down slowly like he's approaching a wild animal, tucking it in the crook of your shoulder and gently nosing at your ear in a motion that could be considered sweet were it anyone else. All it succeeds in doing in this circumstance is making you freeze, holding your breath in a poor defense tactic, as if it'll help trick him into thinking you aren't there. All of your senses are screaming at you to run, like you’re ensnared in his trap and there’s no possible way out. 

You can feel him smirk from where he's nuzzled against you and you burn hot with a twisted amalgamation of embarrassment and terror. 

“Scared of me yet?” He whispers dulcetly into your ear, the words sending an uncontrollable shiver down your spine, subtle with how much you try to hide it though your efforts are in vain when you can tell he feels it anyway. The knowledge has your hackles raised, on edge from the vulnerable position he has you in and how easy you’d be to overpower. You're utterly trapped, there's nothing you could even think to do that would deter him from subduing you in any way. That thought alone has you trying to squeeze your thighs together in the most inconspicuous way possible, your body flushing white-hot and making you flatten even more against the door. 

When his nostrils flare with another deep intake of breath, you can hear it right in your ear. He's scenting you. 

The barest hush of a noise falls unbiddenly from your lips, inaudible even to your own ears but he catches it instantly like he was waiting for it, ears perked and tuned to the slightest notes of your melody. The wet press of his lips to your ear sends you into a full-body shudder, biting back another sound before it can betray you. 

“There's no need to hide it, you know,” Rafayel murmurs between kisses, hurried and breathy. “ Mmm , I can smell how wet you are.” 

“No—” you keen, back arching from the door at his taunting words, well-timed with a long, slow lick up the shell of your ear. Your half-formed words are cut off, choked like you’re gasping for air, your head swimming with the flowing tides of his intensity, “I’m not—” 

One of his gloved hands snakes around the curve of your spine, pressing flat against your back and pulling you flush against him, and the other grips the top of your leg. His fingers trace the crease where your hips meet your pelvis and his thumb grazes along your inner thigh. He's so close to the heat of you, so hot you're sure he can feel it radiating even through all the barriers of clothing. 

“ No ?” He echoes your words, voice tilting up at the end like he's phrasing it as a question with a mocking tone. Your face burns from mortification, eyes squeezed shut so tightly that colors burst behind your eyelids, a cacophony of hues so bright it hurts. 

Having him right next to your neck makes you run ice-cold with fear, a stark contrast to the way you're burning up from his ministrations. It's almost like he reads your mind with the way his nose runs along the length of your ear before dipping lower. 

You can hear him swallow audibly at the scent of you, like he can smell the pheromones right from your neck. His mouth opens like he's going for a taste, but at your flinch, he pauses, tongue lolling out just past his lips like he can taste it in the air. 

He's panting softly against you where his head is ducked down in your shoulder, his hot breath fanning across your flesh making you whine out into the buzzing silence of your apartment. Your hands come up to find something to grab onto and ground yourself, and your fingers scramble for purchase when they meet his shoulders, digging into the soft silk of his high collared dress shirt. 

You're pressed up against him so tightly that you can feel his chest heaving, matching your own labored breaths. His hand twitches on your thigh before sliding it a little closer to where you're aching and making another chill run down your veins, limbs twitching before you can help it. 

“Are you trying to tell me you don't want this?” Rafayel asks you, grip tightening as he speaks like he's reinforcing his point. “With the way your body responds to me so eagerly?” 

His head lifts from your shoulder, slowly, so slowly, eyes still peering longingly at your neck like it was a difficult feat to part with it, before his face is so close you're a hair's width from each other. His eyes flick back to you after a bated pause. 

“Your scent doesn't lie,” he whispers, gradually closing the gap between you two, eyes slipping shut until your lips are touching just so, and only then does he finish his words. 

“...My dear supervisor.” 

And then he's kissing you, licking into your mouth like he's only had a whisper of you until now and is dying to get the full taste. It's messy and wet and intense right off the bat, his fangs caressing your bottom lip like a kiss in its own right before sinking in, just enough to send a jolt through you and make you whimper, the barest flavor of iron filling your senses and setting you both into your own individual frenzies. 

At the sheer taste of you, he groans against your lips, low and gravelly and vibrating through your skin. The sound rattles your bones enough that your knees buckle and he catches you easily, pressing you against him even more firmly like a silent reprimand, ordering you to stay put .  

You feel like you're suffocating in the best way possible, the breath in your lungs shuddering when it rushes out of your nose, and you suck in a sputtering wheeze to try to dissipate the fog slowly clouding your mind. The shared air mingling between you is hot and humid, filling your senses until you're on fire, and all you can focus on is him. The way you're pinned against him completely has you melting, your cold, wet clothes warming up from your combined body heat. 

Suddenly all of your senses are honed into the hand creeping up your thigh, fingertips just barely brushing across your clothed cunt. The sensation is electric, currents of lightning travelling along your flesh at just the anticipation, and it has you buzzing underneath your clothes at that point of contact enough that it's almost painful. Squirming, your hips jolt back and hit the door with a dull thud before thrusting back into his hand, pushing it a little more firmly against your cunt. The slight brush of it makes you stutter out another gasp and he smirks against you, pulling back from the kiss to rub his forehead along your shoulder with a breathy chuckle. 

“You have no idea, do you?” He mumbles idly, eyes closed. His mouth opens wide, fangs glimmering under the dim overhead lights, to lick a fat stripe up the clammy skin of your neck. It has another icy hot flash run through you, like all your fear and survival instincts are put through a grinder, channeling them all and reforming them into unbridled lust. Satisfied with your reaction, he turns his head to nuzzle his temple against you once more, his eyes fluttering open to meet yours in a half-lidded stare. “What you do to me. How much you make me want to lose control.” 

This time when he traces over you, he does it with intent, hand cupping your arousal and grinding the ball of his palm against your clit with unyielding pressure. The roughness of your slacks against your wet cunt has you hissing out, a hoarse cry escaping your clenched teeth, but you drive your hips back into him to meet his ministrations even through the biting sting. 

His chuckle in your ear has a hidden tether within you snapping, awakening something long since buried, and your hands rouse to card your fingers through his long hair, entangling in the strands at his neck and clutching it like a lifeline. He's licking back into your mouth before you even realize that you'd guided him back to your lips. 

The kiss, akin to the harmonized dance you’d share in battle, is near perfect in the way that you mirror each other flawlessly, responding to the other’s movements with an ease that makes it seem like you’d practiced it a thousand times, like it comes second nature to you and it’s almost jarring. You two had never kissed before, though you'd be lying if you said you hadn't thought about it. The times you catch his burning gaze fixed on you from the corner of your eye, intense like he was honed onto just you, sight narrowed and tunnel visioned. Deep and fervent, his dual-toned prismacolor eyes conveying more in a way that you don’t think he ever could with words. Your gaze would then dart over, and he’d already be facing away with a blank expression gracing his features, his attention already locked onto something else, making you feel like you'd imagined the whole thing. Those were the moments that made you wonder, despite knowing it was a bad idea. Even your own thoughts made you spiral, intrusive and impossible to repress. 

The feeling of being watched became a constant in your life ever since Rafayel came into the picture, even carrying over to times you thought you were alone. Your heart skipping, your skin prickling, the anticipation of something you knew was there, just hidden. It had been the first time you'd almost enjoyed the feeling, the lingering suspense making you look forward to the unsaid game of cat and mouse that had unintentionally begun within the first stretch of your budding relationship. 

“Rafayel…”

He swallows up your moans and whimpers with a purr of his own, a pleased rumble that vibrates against your lips, and he moves his hand up to rub along your lower abdomen teasingly before sliding it past the waistband of your slacks. His touch is heady and electrifying, like the trail itself that it followed was fire, like a match sparking embers in its wake and burning away the guilt, the sin, the unspoken barrier you two had set. Every brush of his skin against yours was like a key that unlocked another door to your heart that you'd kept hidden away from him, from everyone, but it seems like he's unravelling you without even trying. 

His hand is cold when it dips beneath your pants, an intoxicating contrast to the stifling heat below. The cramped space inside is sticky and damp, wetting his palm when he runs the tips of his fingers along the length of you over your panties. He doesn't even put enough pressure to dip them through your folds, just teasing along the outline of them with the gentlest touch you think you've ever seen him display. 

The soft friction from the cotton, as barely-there as it is, is enough for now with how keyed up you are and it has your body lighting up in ways you'd never imagined. It sets you on fire , your skin buzzing and tingling from that single point of contact, the shadow of a ghost of a touch, and it's near painful in its descent. It isn’t enough in the long run, not by a long shot, but it successfully manages to make you ache with need. 

The noise you make is desperate, a delicious sort of whimper that resonates from deep in your chest, and you wouldn’t have even realized that you’d made a sound at all if it wasn’t for Rafayel’s answering smirk that he presses into the kiss.  

“Hm?” He hums against your lips, a wordless question, a patronizing coo that has you flushing hot and bucking into his hand in desperation. 

You almost don’t want to answer, don’t want to see or hear or feel the satisfied, smug reaction that he’ll undoubtedly have if you beg . No way you’re doing that. 

Just like with everything else, it’s like Rafayel can read your thoughts, letting out a chuckle that fans across your lips when he pulls a hair's-breadth away to drink in the sight of you. 

His eyes are half-lidded, with blown out pupils that nearly swallow up the sticky sweet cotton candy of his irises, like fluffy pink clouds cast across a midnight sky. His pretty pink lips are stretched into a small grin, like he’s amused at your reaction in an almost condescending way, making you feel small under the scrutiny, under the weight of his gaze. He cocks his head and his gaze flicks from your eyes down to your lips, just for a split second, before darting back up so fast you think you might’ve imagined it if not for how his smirk widens the smallest bit more. 

“Gonna use your words or are you gonna make us stand here?” Paired with his words, his fingers start to make their retreat out of your pants, and your hand shoots up at the speed of light to grab his wrist and hold it in place. 

“No!” You blurted before you could think to stop it. “No, I…” 

“You…?” 

There’s a pause, where he’s sizing you up with his eyes like he has you right where he wants you, and immediately you want to wipe that taunting look right off his face. Your hand is still gripped tight on his wrist, unwilling to let it go, so you do the first thing you can think of to get the upper hand. 

You reach out with your free hand to graze your palm along where he’s clearly affected just as much as you are. 

Instantly, that subtle smirk drops and Rafayel’s eyes flash with shock. The change in the air is unmistakable, and within a split second, you know you made the wrong move. It’s like he sobers up instantly, face closing off like shutters on a window. Maybe it was because you reminded him of his own pleasure, of how real this thing that you both started was, or maybe he was just messing with you this whole time and you pushed it too far. Either way, you don’t stop him when he straightens up and pulls his hand out of your pants, wiping the slick from his fingers off onto his pant leg absentmindedly. 

He doesn’t say a word, just looks at you with an unreadable expression, eyes darting between yours and mouth a straight line. 

“I…” you begin to say, just to break the silence, but you don’t know how to finish the sentence. Suddenly, you feel like an idiot. 

His lips quirk up — the slightest grin that doesn’t reach his eyes — and he takes a step back. “I got stuff to do, bounties to track. You know how it is, yeah?” 

His relaxed stance and even tone throw you for a loop, like the past ten minutes hadn’t happened at all. He shows almost no signs of being affected, and if it wasn’t for his lips, red and kiss-bitten, you’re sure if anyone else were to see him like this, they wouldn’t have a clue about what just transpired. 

“...Right,” you hesitantly reply. You’re not sure how to approach the situation anymore, don’t know exactly what will set him off, though you’re also not sure how it could get much worse than this. It’s almost comforting, in a way. You’re back to standing on a tightrope around him, unsure of how to proceed. 

Oddly enough, you find a certain type of solace in that. You can’t imagine Rafayel lashing out at you or hating you or anything of the sort — no, you trust that he would never do that to you. You’re certain that the worst thing that he could do was ignore you. Pretend like nothing happened, like your feelings and emotions don’t exist, all because you believe he doesn’t have the capacity to put them into consideration. 

And from the look in his eyes, that’s exactly what he plans on doing. 

Without another word, he turns around and stalks off towards his room without sparing you another glance, leaving you stunned and alone. 

• ───────────────── •

Days pass, which blends into weeks, which eventually blends into an entire month. You’d like to say you’ve forgotten about the whole thing, but in reality, you haven’t. It’s been impossible for you to stop thinking about it. 

It’s not that it doesn’t leave your head — you’re an adult with an excruciatingly demanding job, one that has you up until the early hours of the morning more often than not, and you don’t really have the time to dwell on it like you know you would otherwise. However, there’s still times where you make sure to remind yourself, resolute in your decision to remember it as vividly as you can, if only so that you can be sure that it happened. 

On the other hand, Rafayel is seemingly intent on forgetting about all of it. He’s been acting the exact same as he always is, bored with his job as a bounty hunter and bored with the LCBI’s testings. If anything, his attitude has worsened, seemingly short with everything and everyone now — excluding you. 

No, he looks at you like you’re important. With reverence . Like he’s parched and you’re the refreshing ice-cold pool of water in a mirage that his eyes can’t quite focus on and fingertips that can never quite reach. Now that you’ve noticed it, it’s as if it’s all you can see. The feeling of his eyes on you has never been so obvious, even when he’s right next to you. 

You wonder how long it must’ve been going on and you hadn’t even realized it. 

The last bounty Rafayel took was of an SS-Class Praedator, one class below him and one that the LCBI have been trying to track down for a long time. They’d been intangible and under the radar, hiding right under your noses for years to the point where you’d started wondering if they were actually a real person, and only recently had Rafayel caught wind of a new lead. 

“I’ll be gone for a bit longer this time. Try not to worry about me too much, yeah?” He had said, voice just as low and bored as usual but with amusement laced within his words. You fought the urge to roll your eyes, convinced he had it handled because he always does. 

That was yesterday. 

An entire day has passed since you’ve heard from him with no news or updates about the bounty, let alone any regarding himself. You’ve never had to worry about him before — you’re always able to rely on him no matter how elusive he might be — so being worried about him is foreign to you and you hate it. You can feel it like it’s a real, tangible thing just underneath the surface of your skin. 

Your nerves, your anxiousness — it’s been bubbling up inside of you in the subsequent hours after his leave. He goes on bounties frequently ever since you suggested that he helped pay for rent, so this is nothing new to you, though it’s not often that he hunts a Praedator of such high ranking. You can’t help but feel a little nervous whenever he does, but every time without fail, he comes back within a few hours while looking just the same as he had when he’d left, with skin perfectly unblemished and lips upturned just slightly at your concern. 

Not only that, but he’s always sure to check in when you text him. Well, you suppose it’s you spamming him for updates and him giving a single thumbs up emoji in return, but it’s proof of life and it works for you. 

Now, though… there’s nothing . Not a single reply. Your messages haven’t even been read, with the ‘delivered’ at the bottom of the near essays you wrote him staring at you in the face like it’s taunting you. 

Biting back a sigh, you know scrutinizing your messages with him over and over won’t elicit a response, so you reluctantly lock your phone and push it to the far end of your desk where it can’t tempt you anymore, and you lift your head in search of Tara. Your eyes light up slightly when you find her across the room talking to a few coworkers, and once she spots you, she beams and makes her way over. 

“Hey, what’s up?” She asks as she gets close enough, short hair bouncing as she rears your desk, somehow still having a spring in her step even after an entire excruciatingly long work day. 

You hate having to do this, but there’s no way you’re going to be able to focus on work right now when you’re so distracted and all your thoughts are about Rafayel and if he’s okay and why doesn’t he just text you back — 

“Tara, hey. Listen, I feel really bad, but…” 

“You gonna head home a little early today?” 

“...Yeah,” you blink a few times, a little stunned that she clocked you that fast. “I’m just not feeling too well, and I don’t think I’m gonna get much done right now.” 

She gives you a small, knowing smile, leaning against your desk with a cocked hip and arms crossed over her chest. She tilts her head, eyes darting between yours for a moment before leaning in slightly and uttering, a bit bluntly, “are you sure this doesn’t have to do with Rafayel?” 

“ What? No, not at all! I just…” you stammer, trailing off for a moment before processing what exactly she said. “Wait, how did you know?” 

Tara gives you a tittering giggle into her palm, light and amused. Her eyes crinkle. “I just had a feeling, you know?” 

She scoots in closer, scanning the room for a moment before whispering behind her hand, “I get that he’s a Praedator and all, but he doesn’t seem like any of the other one’s we’ve caught.” When your eyes widen in bemusement, wrongfooted by her sudden admission, she reels back a little and her facial expression turns just the slightest bit sly. “Plus, I know you guys live together, so surely he can’t be all bad, right?” 

Your mouth opens on a word at her implication, but it gets lodged in your throat, unable to get anything out, even to deny it. She giggles again, loud enough to attract the attention of your coworkers. 

“Tara!” You exclaim, face burning. You can’t help but duck your head and avert your gaze in embarrassment as casually as you can when your eyes meet several pairs from across the room. You lower your voice. “It wasn’t even my choice to live with him…”

Once her laughter dies down, her eyes retain their amusement and they seem to shimmer and sparkle with mirth. “I know, don’t worry. I’m just teasing you. Now go home, girl! I got things handled here.” 

A relieved sigh escapes your lips unbiddenly, one you didn’t know you were holding. Very rarely do you ever take time off from work; you’ve always been the type of person who functions best on a full schedule, always finding tasks to do to keep your mind active. Unable to sit still for as long as you can recall, you remember the exact moment you had found out that you’d been officially promoted as a fully fledged Special Enforcer and how the weight on your shoulders had lifted ever so slightly. It was one burden less to bear, knowing it was a job that would keep your hands and mind as busy as you needed — no, craved them to be. 

Giving her the most genuine, appreciative smile you can muster while your heart is still clenched tight with concern and unease, you can’t help but somehow appreciate her even more than you already do. 

“Thank you, Tara. I don’t know what I’d do without you,” you tell her honestly with a weak but thankful smile. “I’ll make it up to you with lunch soon, okay?” 

She flashes you one last beaming, radiant grin and taps your desk once as an acknowledgement before pushing off of it with her hip and sauntering away with a small little wave. 

You don’t leave right away, too used to the droning monotony of work as you lose a couple more minutes to wrapping up some paperwork and drafting one last report, but once you feel like you’re at a good stopping point, you close the lid to your laptop and go through the motions of cleaning up your desk. It feels like you’re moving on autopilot, watching your hands slide your laptop into your bag, picking up stray documents and piling them together in a neat stack, putting away stray pens and markers. You don’t know exactly when you finish, but before you realize it, you’re standing outside of the LCBI building with your bag strung over your shoulder and your phone in your hand. 

It’s the kind of evening that you can feel before you can see it. The air on your skin feels cooling and hot at the same time, the humidity kissing your skin like a gentle embrace and leaving you feeling sticky as a result. Even though you don’t recall the forecast showing rainfall, the wind carries the barest hint of it along the air, tickling your nose with its sweet scent like a preview of what’s to come. 

Paint splatterings of different tones are brushed along the sky like watercolor strokes on a canvas as its vibrant, swirling colors peek behind wispy clouds and light them up like an illuminating backdrop. The sun is nearing its descent, tucking itself past the highest buildings into the burnished horizon as it sets in the heart of Linkon for the night. It’s a breathtaking display of orange and pink, and when you look up, eyes raking across it and taking a moment to absorb it, it shades your face in its intricate colors like it’s trying to stain your skin with its stunning grandeur. 

You can almost forget about what you’ll start seeing — start witnessing once the moon finishes trading places with the tired sun. 

The streets are never a fun place and haven’t been for a long time, not since the surge of Praedators in the past few years. Every night is filled with dread, lingering in the air like it carries the fear and anguish from everyone in the city and channeling it through to both sides of Linkon. 

As if on cue, a bloody shriek reaches your ears, muffled from being so far away but still carrying the tone of horror you’re all too familiar with. It never fails to raise the hair on your skin, stomach swooping low with a small, subtle burst of adrenaline, but you’re so used to it that it hardly phases you. You don’t bother to help, not anymore. There’s no point. It’s sickening, you think with a lurch — how normal it is now. 

A distant bang echoes out, a few pops, and then eerie but blissful silence. Only the ringing resonance of the scuffle remains, stuck rattling in your ears long after it ends. All that's left is a cloud of unease hung thickly over the sky. 

Your lips twitch downwards, unnerved, and you forcefully unstick yourself from where you’d found yourself frozen in place at the sound. You look back down to your phone, tab open on all of your unread texts. There are dozens of them at this point, beginning with short, concise messages simply asking for updates, then slowly dissolving into a mess of impulsive paragraphs that fill the screen, all of them worried and distressed. 

Somehow, you find yourself longing for those silly texts from him that normally have you huffing. One word updates, single emojis, even a lone question mark. 

Rafayel isn’t much of a talker, and that applies to his text messages, too. If his replies came from anyone else, you’d be stressed that you’d done something wrong to have warranted such a response, but because it’s him, you know it’s just how he is. It’s almost endearing at this point, and you miss it hopelessly. 

Eventually, you realize that you can’t loiter outside of the LCBI much longer, so you hike up the strap on your shoulder and tentatively make the trek back home. With Rafayel typically by your side after work, you usually don’t have to worry much about your safety, but with him missing, you catch yourself scanning your surroundings a little more than usual. The grip on your bag is white-knuckled, though you try your best not to show your apprehension just in case. 

Arriving home in record speed, you fling your bag to the side and peel off your coat once you shut the door behind you forcefully with the heel of your boot. You feel yourself sag with relief, shoulders finally slumping once the lock on your door is firmly in place despite knowing it wouldn’t do anything against any sort of actual threat. 

Immediately, you know the first thing you want to do is take a shower. Nothing sounds as appealing as the thought of hot water washing away all of the stress that has accumulated over the course of the last twenty-four hours. 

Making your way to your room, you resolutely try to avoid looking at the spare bedroom next to yours. The door is open just the slightest bit like Rafayel hadn’t spared a single thought to close it before he’d left. The light is off — of course it is, Rafayel isn’t here , your mind cruelly supplies — and the darkness creeping from just past the edge of the door seems almost ominous, like it knows exactly what's happened and wants to sink its claws into you the same way the subtle, lingering dread in your stomach already has. 

The thought makes you shiver, worrying your lip before finally pushing through to your room and to the adjacent bathroom connected to it. You kick off your shoes as you walk, dropping your phone on the sink counter with a clatter and turning on the shower. 

As soon as you duck underneath the spray of water, you feel everything melt away until only the slightest sheen is left, like an oil spill you can’t quite wipe away. The majority of your stress, worries and nerves are being cast away by the pelting droplets and the steam filling your lungs. It’s just what you needed and you spend a little longer than you originally planned just standing there as the water beats down on you and the steam fills your head until your mind just drifts . 

You don’t know the exact point in time of when you first closed your eyes, but they snap open the second you hear a loud bang coming from somewhere in the apartment. 

You’re instantly on high alert, adrenaline spiking once more after you had finally started to relax. Within seconds, the shower is turned off and you’re stepping out of the bathtub, reaching for your towel for a cursory wipedown and wrapping it around your torso hastily. 

You mentally scold yourself for not bringing your gun with you, or at least in your bedroom, but you have no time to spare to dwell on it as you slowly, quietly, make your way out of the bathroom. 

Your hair is still near soaking wet, cascading droplets of still-steaming water drip off the ends of your hair onto your heated skin but you pay it no mind as you rear the door to your bedroom, still open from earlier. You stop right before it before inching your head past the doorframe to peek around the corner into the living room. 

The figure on the floor laying on their side haphazardly, in front of the balcony and cloaked in the shifting shadows of your apartment, was undoubtedly Rafayel. As soon as you spot him, your stomach lurches and you rush towards him with an exclamation of his name, all thoughts of your state of undress dissipating from your mind like smoke when you see his disheveled body. 

When you drop to your knees next to him, hands hovering just over his torso like you don’t know if you should touch him or not, you scan over his frame for injuries and you suck in a breath when you take in his form. Clad in his usual outfit of leather and buckles, his clothing makes it easy to spot all the gashes and cuts along his body, a mix of dried and fresh blood spackled and smeared along his skin. 

He doesn’t move when your palm comes down to his shoulder, he just shifts slightly like he can’t quite get comfortable and hisses through his teeth when the action ends up pulling on his wounds unpleasantly. When you push at him, he rolls over onto his back, head lolling to the side and face hidden beneath the tangled mess of hair over his eyes. He doesn’t bother fixing it, he just lays there silently with his eyes squeezed shut in a wince like even the simple act of breathing is painful. 

“What happened? ”

Rafayel doesn’t answer at first, too busy trying to catch his breath, and in the meantime you reach up with your hand and gently brush away the mauve strands of hair glued to his forehead. When you cup the side of his face, thumb grazing along a cut on his cheek, he pushes his head farther into your hand for just a split second before he seems to realize what he’s doing and pulls away again. He sucks in a breath, body shifting, and finally opens his eyes to look around aimlessly. They dart all over the room like he’s taking in his surroundings and gathering himself, and when they finally lock on you, he blinks. 

His eyes are on your face first like he’s sluggish to recognize you, but then they trail down your body, down to the towel you’re wearing. His nostrils flare, and your face heats up immediately. 

Neither of you do anything, too bewildered to speak, but eventually his eyes raise back up to yours and his lips twitch, betraying his thoughts. Somehow, he still finds the will to be annoying. 

“Well,” Rafayel says bluntly, monotone as always. “Guess I came in at a bad time, yeah?” 

His words remind you of the situation at hand, at how he’s injured , at how he’s been missing for an entire day and you hadn’t heard from him at all until now and suddenly you’re fuming . 

“Yeah, you did. You should have been back ages ago. Where were you? Why didn’t you text me? I’ve been sick with worry all day!” 

You can’t keep your temper in check. You try to reign it in, knowing he’s hurt and has probably gone through something seriously bad to warrant his radio silence, but you can’t help it. All of your anxiety and stress comes out in waves, more frustrated than the last. Seeing him now is finally making it bubble to the surface. 

His smirk only grows, fangs catching in the moonlight and adding fuel to the fire. “You were worried about me?” 

“Rafayel, I’m serious! ” 

“Yeah, so am I.” His face softens slightly, eyes big and round and so unlike him that it doesn’t surprise you at all when the facade shatters after a moment like he couldn’t keep it up for long and his gaze turns wicked once more. His lips twitch as he tries to contain his amusement. “You were so worried that you didn’t even think to dress properly before rushing out here. Were you planning on seducing me right when I got home, my dear supervisor?” 

Unable to deal with him and his relentless teasing, you huff and push off the floor until you’re standing next to him, peering down at him with narrowed eyes. “You know that’s not what I — Y’know what? I can’t do this right now. Just stay there and let me get the first-aid kit.” 

“Whatever,” he sighs like he’s doing you a favor, even though he doesn’t look like he’s gonna be getting up any time soon. 

Finding the supplies you need takes a few minutes, but by the time you get back, Rafayel hasn’t moved an inch. He’s still laying on his back, head to the side. He’s caught his breath for the most part, but he’s still breathing with his lips parted like he’s having trouble getting the air into his lungs. His face twitches in an off-handed wince, but once he hears your footsteps getting closer, his head tilts towards you and his expression schools back into casual neutrality. “Took you long enough.” 

You scoff, dropping back down to your knees and opening the first-aid kit. 

“And you still haven’t gotten dressed. I’m beginning to think this is on purpose.” 

His voice is quiet, low, and it's spoken in the air between you two in a way that feels like he’s trying to rile you up on purpose, filling the silence and making you shift in place. Fighting against the burning in your cheeks like you can stave off the inevitable, you begin pouring some alcohol on a washcloth in silence. He’s still going, rambling with his eyes raking over you. He licks his lips, and you press your mouth into a thin line. 

“What a warm welcome I’ve received. Might just have to take up more bounties if this is what I get to come home to—” 

His verbosity gets cut off with a bland, atonal hiss when you shove the cloth a little too forcefully onto a cut on his chest. The blood has dried by now, so it’s a little harder to clean up, but you work at it a little gentler to avoid opening back up the wound — and to avoid hearing him complain.  

You don’t bother looking up from your work to check his expression, and he doesn’t say anything for a while. The silence isn’t exactly comfortable, but it’s not strained enough to warrant you speaking in order to break it. 

After you’ve finished cleaning up the majority of the blood, cotton ball after cotton ball is used up and discarded by your knees, piling up into a small mountain of fluff until finally you turn back to grab some gauze. When your hand hovers over it, your fingertips just barely manage to graze it before he speaks, startling you into pausing. 

“It didn’t go as planned.” 

When you don’t move, listening intently without sparing him a glance, he eventually adds, “the Praedator. It had an Evol.” 

It isn’t enough information, not by a longshot, but you doubt you’re going to get much more out of him and so you finally move to pull out the gauze without a word, like it’s an acknowledgement in its own right. Wrapping up the worst of his wounds takes longer than you’d hoped, and in that amount of time, you grow increasingly aware of your state of undress and you can feel your face flushing darker and darker as the minutes stretch. Eventually, when you go to put away the rest of the gauze, you can feel your towel beginning to slip and he halts your movements with a sudden grip on your wrist that shocks you enough that you drop the roll entirely before you even get a chance to react.  

There’s a pause before you finally raise your gaze to his, and you shift in place slightly from where you’re sat. His eyes are dark, shadowed by his long lashes in an air of allure, and his pupils are blown, overtaking the duo-chroma of his irises, leaving you lost for words. It’s magnetic, and you feel your breath catch at the intensity with which he regards you. His hold on you tightens like it’s a want, like it’s a need . 

Slowly, you reach your other hand up to pull up your towel and tuck it back into place and he watches the ministrations with poorly masked desire interlaced across his features. 

Rafayel murmurs your name in a hushed admission that is as captivating as the vast sea, the tides ebbing and flowing along rocks and spraying saltwater across the warm sand. When he speaks to you like that, when he says your name like that, it’s like waves lap at the shoreline of your core, retreating with every pretense of normality and rushing back in when he decides to grace you with his devastating fervor. His soft spoken whisper sighed amidst the tension makes a shiver wrack your frame as if even the temperature itself dropped suddenly, dropping to its knees in his commanding presence. It feels like your name is essential to him, like you’re a lifeline that he wants, that he needs, that he craves . Like he’s casting his spell on you like some sort of tempting siren, powerful and enticing and calculated and you find yourself wavering towards him, caving and crumbling under the weight of it all. 

Your lips part like you want to say something, try to gain back whatever resolve you had, but it falls through your fingers like grains of sand and your mind is too blank to get anything out besides a soft, shuddering breath that only fans the flames of temptation between you. 

You’re so caught up in the allure that you don’t even register him sitting up, pushing off the floor and groaning when the action pulls at his wounds once more, but you finally find the words that keep failing you. “I don’t want you to get hurt. I-I thought you were dead .” 

He falters slightly, his expression flickering with something akin to bemusement. “So what if I did? People die everyday. It’s not anything new.” 

His hand slides over the bare skin of your knee, firm and warm. It sends sparks down your spine and heats you up from the inside out all from that single point of contact, and you squirm in place. When his palm trails up to the edge of your towel, thumb teasing along the inside of your thigh, you grab his wrist to halt his movements. “Rafayel…” 

“Hm?” 

“But I don’t want you to. You must know that by now.” 

He moves against your grip easily, an easy display of strength that has you weak, and he keeps going until his hand is fully underneath the damp fabric of your towel. It’s like he’s too distracted to dignify your words with a response, and it’s hard to reaffirm your point with the way he lights you up completely, coloring your vision with unrelenting magnetism, but this time you try your best to be firm. “Promise me you’ll keep in touch when you’re on bounties from now on.” 

His eyes dart back up to yours, irises flicking from the skin he’d revealed where he’d ridden up your towel slightly. He licks his lips and you lock onto the movement instantly, the unconscious act betraying you and the seriousness you’re trying to convey. He knows what he’s doing and it’s infuriating . 

“ Rafayel ,” you plead desperately, a last ditch attempt at grasping at your dignity with the way he’s playing you like a beautifully crafted instrument. 

He has the nerve to put on a faux display of confusion, and you hate how enticing the act looks on him. He cocks his head at you. “What?” 

“What about… last time?” The words are hard to get out, hesitant and meek under the weight of his stare, but also because of how cautious you are to bring up what you both tried so hard to bury. 

“What about last time? Don’t know what you’re talking about if you don’t use your words.” His tone is laced with patronization and it's practically dripping in honey, sugary sweet on his tongue. You almost want to give in, want to surrender yourself completely and let him take over just like before because you can feel yourself wanting him and it’s impossible to deny it at this point, but the memory of how it had ended brings you enough strength to push him away to speak. 

“You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play dumb.” 

His lips quirk. “Am I?” 

“ Yes! ” 

When his other hand slides over the side of your hips, fingers trailing along the soft fibers of the towel to rest at your waist, he grips you and yanks you closer with enough force to knock you off balance. You’re driven forward with the momentum, stumbling clumsily into his chest where he locks you in place firmly. Pushing at him only succeeds in his arm tightening around you. 

This close, you can feel the coolness of his skin in stark contrast to the warm, dampness of yours from your residual shower. Your hair is still wet, and you watch belatedly as it tangles messily in between you two amongst the commotion, dripping water onto his chest. It breaks some of the tension, popping the bubble that had slowly been building. When your eyes flick up at him, eyes wide in bemusement and mouth open on an unsaid word, he’s already looking down at you. 

There’s hardly any space to breathe, and you try to reel back but find that you don’t even budge an inch. His cotton candy irises dart down your mouth, his lips parted just enough that you can see the pretty pink of his tongue, and you swallow thickly. 

You can’t do this, not again. 

But you want to. 

Sensing your hesitance, Rafayel loosens his hold to reach up like he knows you won’t move away, and he cups your jaw, thumb teasing along your lower lip. He doesn’t say anything, just looks at you with hungry eyes that seem to want to swallow you whole. 

His face is like the point of a horizon where the vast landscape and twinkling midnight sky meet, like the point where light and shadow interweave. It’s framed and illuminated by the gloom of night and the luminance of the moon peeking through the balcony’s sliding glass doors. In this lighting, his eyes are overcast by the dusty mauve of his hair and the shadows of the night, and all you can see is the gleam of their reflection through the messy, tangled strands. He almost seems to look down his nose at you, chin tilted up just enough to make you feel like shrinking in response. 

You want to retreat, to do something just to get his beseeching gaze off of you, but you can’t find it in yourself to move. 

When he pushes past the seal of your lips with his thumb, just barely sinking into the warm, wet cavern of your mouth, your tongue darts out to kitten-lick at it. As if he had your unspoken permission, he presses it farther in until you wrap your lips around it, tongue laving over the digit unconsciously. 

His mouth presses into a thin line, breathing hard out of his nose as he stares . 

He eases his thumb back out to rub along the corner of your mouth, wiping the saliva messily along your cheek. When his head dips down just enough to make you think he’s about to kiss you in replacement, it’s enough to shock you out of your haze and you muster enough strength to pull away right as his lips ghost across yours. Breath catching and legs trembling, you scramble to stand and he blinks for a moment, bemused and right where you’d left him. After a beat, he straightens up to meet your gaze from where he’s sitting on the floor. 

“I… I need to go get dressed.” 

He doesn’t say anything in response, just blinks owlishly at you with a blank, closed off expression. The sight has your anger bubbling back up to the surface at how easily it is for him to go back to being unbothered, to repress any and all emotions that wash over him  — no matter how few there may or may not be — but you push it back down for now. 

“...A shame,” Rafayel finally says after a moment, sighing the words like it’s truly disheartening to hear. It was a pause long enough that you had started to retreat, foot just barely lifted from the floor like you were in the middle of taking a tentative step back. His eyes rake over you, trailing down your body like he’s committing it to memory, searing the image of you into his mind. Not like he might never get a chance again, but like he knows he will and he’s just getting a taste for now. 

“We are talking about this.” The words come out firm, obstinate. Narrowed eyes glare daggers at him like you’re trying to cement the words into his mind so that he doesn’t forget. There’s no way you’re letting this go, not after the stress you’d been put under over his absence today. 

“Mm,” he hums noncommittally in reply. Not a yes or a no, just an acknowledgement to let you know he heard you, but you find it hard to believe he really did with the way his eyes are still boring into you and it makes you feel like you’re laid bare before him, vulnerable and exposed. It’s searing, hot and itchy in the way that it makes you want to squirm, want to shift your weight on your feet in restlessness. 

You leave like that, with the prickling tingle of his eyes lingering on you, searing into you like a brand as your feet finally carry you back to your room to go change. 

• ───────────────── •

The next time it happens, it doesn’t take quite as long as before. You aren’t sure if it’s because of him, because you’re somehow unintentionally tearing down the cold, unyielding walls he’d built up, or if it just ends up that way naturally. 

Regardless, after only a handful of weeks, it happens again. 

Once again, you and Rafayel had breezed past the last event just like everything else you do. It isn’t great, because you’re left with nothing but your thoughts and they never fail to drive you crazy, but you at least function and it’s enough for you. Addressing it would cause nothing but confusion, stress, and would absolutely muddle things not only between you and Rafayel, but your employment with the LCBI as well if they ever found out. The best thing to do is to sweep it under the rug and do your job. 

All things considered, it has been a beautiful day. For Linkon, at least. 

Fortunately, work has blessedly been slow for the most part today, consisting of paperwork and logging data from Rafayel’s last bounty, so you spent a large portion of it simply daydreaming away. Of course, there had been more Praedator attacks even from just the past twenty-four hours, but luckily those cases had been handed off to your coworkers — Tara, it seems, had especially gotten the brunt of it as you look at her over the stacks of documents and reports on her desk to see the top of her head poking over it. 

When she realizes you’re staring, she leans over the mountain of paperwork to meet your gaze and give you a bright, infectious smile that you can’t help but sheepishly return. You’d offer to help lessen the burden, despite having been told by Rafayel that you work more than enough anyway and he never understood why you’d willingly stack on even more, but you know she’d simply shush you and usher you back to your desk no matter what you say. 

Because of the long drag of the day, you found your eyes drifting back to the window on the back wall of the room. The sun held proudly in the sky for longer than you’d expected, making the day seemingly stretch even longer than usual, and it just barely peaked its head out behind dozens of large, fluffy clouds spanning across the entirety of the sky from what you could see. It was captivating to watch it slowly make its way down the length of the sky to bury itself behind buildings and structures until the sky blended its colors together like rich batter, with gorgeous shades that melt before you and make a striking display that your eyes greedily soak up with awe. 

Eventually, once the sun has finally descended for the day in order for the moon to take its place, you decide it's been long enough and stand up to stretch. After saying goodbye to Tara for the day and packing up your belongings, you make your way to the elevators to go meet up with Rafayel. 

You’ve never liked going down to the command center. Despite knowing what its purpose is and knowing what Praedators are capable of, you still can’t help but find it inhumane, and watching what it does to Rafayel firsthand makes it all the more sickening to you. 

They’ve been upping the difficulty more and more recently, fixing the combat bots to be faster, smarter, more agile, all in order to keep up with Rafayel and it's finally paying off. You see it in the way his chest heaves after a trial, breathless and drained; in the way his clothes become tattered and his skin gets scratched and scraped up and his eyes dim. He’s exhausted, but he still waits for you just the same, like nothings wrong. 

When you get to the testing arena, you find the same sight greeting you and your stomach drops. 

The researchers that control the bots are ecstatic from where they are in the observation room, safely tucked away behind bulletproof glass and free to do whatever the hell they wished without repercussions. The way they’re talking with each other so gleefully but staring at Rafayel with hard, cold eyes makes you sick. You choose not to even spare them a glance and instead watch the moment Rafayel’s legs give out and he collapses just slightly, with his hand coming down flat against the wall behind him to catch himself. 

“ Rafayel! ” You cry out as you rush to him, brows knitted in worry and heart thumping in your chest so loud that you can hardly make out the cheers from behind you. “Oh my God, are you okay?” 

His skin is torn up all over. Cuts lace his arms and litter across his chest, with some still trickling lazily with blood. You’ve only seen him like this once before and the reminder has you filled with rage. 

“ Mmm ,” he grumbles under his breath with a wince, coughing for a moment. His head raises to meet you and the moment he does, his gaze is empty . The sight shocks you to your core and your mouth drops open, hands frozen from where they’d been reaching forward to check over him. You know this look, of course you do. When you two are in the heat of battle, when you come down to the testing arena a little early and he’s still fighting hard in the trials, when he thinks you aren’t watching and he lets his eyes dim slightly like he forgets himself. 

But never, not once, had it been directed towards you. 

You’re sure it isn’t intentional, with the way his eyes clear up almost instantly once he registers it’s you, but the lingering sensation of it rocks you to your core and you can’t help but feel off-kilter even as he attempts to straighten up with a low groan. 

Your hands come up to steady him, grazing along his shoulders and down his arms to grab his hands and lift them towards you so you can check over the wounds on them. 

“You didn’t bring it,” he finally says. His voice is blank, but his tone is woven with a subtle play of amusement that falls flat in the face of his injuries. 

“What?” You ask distractedly, voice wavering with fear. You’re too shocked to even begin to think about what he’s talking about, turning his hand over in your grasp like you can will the cuts to disappear. Like magic, you see him push off the wall with a poorly concealed hiss. You jolt, hands out and ready to catch him if he falls, but he doesn’t. He takes his time, straightening up for just a moment before leaning backwards until he hits the wall behind him in a way that makes you think he tries to make it look casual, but it’s clear he needs the support. 

“My honeydew. Where is it?” 

“Your… yogurt drink?” You ask him incredulously. There’s no way he’s thinking about that right now at a time like this. 

“Yeah,” is all he replies, short and blunt. 

All you can do for a moment is blink at him, taken aback, until you realize there’s no reason you should be surprised right now. You decide to play along with his attempt at diffusing the situation in order to minimize his own injuries. “There’s… some at home. Let’s go, you can have some when we get back.” 

He hums in agreement, though he doesn’t look very happy. It seems today wasn’t the day to forget to bring him a yogurt drink, especially with how taxing it was for him. Although you’re willing to let it go for now, you know you’re going to hound him later to be more careful, even though you know the LCBI isn’t making it easy for him. 

It takes a little bit of time, wrapping things up and going through all of the personnel and jotting down information, but eventually you both make your way through the command center and out of the building into the cool, crisp evening air. The wind tickles your nose, brushing along your skin and whipping your hair behind you stubbornly. It’s annoying enough to make you huff out a breath, attempting to smooth out your hair with your hands to no avail. 

The street lights reflect off absent puddles, casting warm colors that bounce off the pavement. It’s dark, nearly night out, and you look around to scan your surroundings in a way that is almost instinctual. 

Watch for other people. Watch for Praedators. 

You’re about to speak up about it being too quiet before a scream reaches your ears, distant and far away but still just as heart-lurching. You promptly close your mouth at the distinct pops that follow. 

In much needed polarity, the refreshing breeze of the day still lingers in the air, wisping around and brushing against your skin like a gentle caress, a nice contrast to the sticky humidity that sticks to you. 

After one too many times of trying to push unruly strands off of your face when they cling to it uncomfortably, you look for your hair tie on your wrist and click your tongue when you realize you forgot it at home. Just another thing that put a dampener on the admittedly blissful day you had been having. Feeling Rafayel’s intense, questioning stare at your irritation, you sigh. “Today was going so well.” 

“Mm,” he murmurs quietly in response before the sound gets cut off with a slight wince. You realize you’ve unintentionally been speeding up the pace of your feet and he’s been having to match your pace to keep up with you. You slow down to match his movements, as slow and sluggish like molasses as they are. 

Your eyes linger on him worriedly. “You sure you’re okay?” 

“Asking the same question over and over won’t change my answer, you know.” 

He seems fine enough to retain his snark, and so it’s enough for a bit of the tension you’d unknowingly been carrying to leak from your shoulders. Catching yourself smiling at the familiarity, you shake your head. “If you say so.” 

The trek from the LCBI building to your house isn’t too long, so you’re pretty relaxed on your way home. The two of you have done this tons of times by now, and you have no reason to believe it’d be any different. 

Until suddenly, Rafayel stops in his tracks. 

You don’t register it at first as your apartment comes into view, and you walk a few paces forward on your own before realizing you can’t hear his footsteps beside you anymore. You pause, turning around in confusion. 

His expression looks odd, unreadable — he’s difficult to discern on a good day, but with his head cocked to the side, eyes darting around your surroundings like he’s listening for something, searching for something that isn’t there, it’s clear this is different. It puts you on high alert instantly. 

Straightening up, you can’t help but scope the area out again, even though you know you won’t see whatever he sees. It’s completely silent to you aside from the ambient crickets around. There’s nothing, or well, there should be nothing. But you know there’s something , just by the look on his face. 

When his sightline stops on something in the distance, eyes hardened like steel, your gaze follows it until you see a group of Praedators in an alleyway across the street. To your human eyes, it’s hard to make out their shapes let alone exactly what they’re doing as they’re basked in shadow, but based on Rafayel’s expression, it’s nothing good. 

“Should we do something?” You ask tentatively. You try to make sure your voice is hardly above a whisper, spoken in the softest, breathiest murmur you can manage when your heart is still clutched tight with dread, but it still seems to be too loud when his eyes flick to you for a split second with a firm, rigid look. 

You’re close enough to your apartment that you think you could make it if you snuck past, just maybe , but just as soon as the thought passes through your mind, it immediately falls through like sand through your fingers when all at once, you’re surrounded. 

You don’t move, frozen in place as adrenaline instantly jumpstarts through your veins. Your fight or flight response is pointless in this scenario since neither of them are an option, but that doesn’t stop your heart from pounding and roaring in your ears until you can’t hear anything else and you feel yourself begin to panic. 

It’s almost dizzying with how fast it floods your senses, an inferno rippling and spreading like a stifling lava current and you know instantly that there’s nothing you could do to fend them off. They had the element of surprise on their side, and if you even attempted to reach for your gun, you’d be dead before your fingers even grazed it. Your best bet is Rafayel, even with how injured he is. When your desperate, pleading eyes meet his, you find him already poised to attack. 

It’s a flurry of movement after that. He takes them out swiftly and precisely despite his sluggish movements, and once the first one hits the ground, you use the distraction to pull out your gun from your holster. 

The screams don’t deter you. You raise your gun with practiced ease in spite of your shaking fingers, and the moment you aim it at the second Praedator, Rafayel is already on them with a ferocity that you don’t think you’ve ever seen from him before. 

Observing his trials in passing, dealing with wanderers, bringing in the occasional Praedator for missions or bounties… even when you take all of that into account, you don’t think you’ve ever witnessed him as merciless as he is now. The look in his eyes is petrifying enough to root you in place, his expression thunderous like a looming storm over choppy seawater. 

Slashing, clawing, biting . Rafayel has never used his teeth as much as he has now; at least not with actual people. You’ve seen him use all kinds of techniques in the trials, if not but to find amusement in the incredulous looks on the researchers faces, but now it’s used for real , in desperation, in fury. 

The arm holding up your gun trembles minutely as you watch the exact moment his fangs rip down into flesh, and you quickly avert your eyes. 

The screams die out in quick succession, until the only sounds you can hear are heavy, ragged breaths and soft, subtle trickles of liquid splattering on the ground. When you finally raise your head to turn to him, you do it slowly, hesitantly. Eyes rake over the scene from the ground up, over the bodies that lay at his feet with unseeing eyes until they roam over Rafayel’s form. 

His face is absolutely covered with thick, dark blood. It dribbles down his chin to meet the messy smears along his neck and chest and his eyes — they’re unnerving, dark and hollow and flat like even the light refractions are getting swallowed up by the depth of his stare. 

Even the newfound silence sounds deafening in your ears in the wake of what could’ve happened — what did happen. Neither of you speak for a long moment as you both strive to gather yourselves; you, trying your best to steady your still-racing heart and thrumming veins, and Rafayel, who is wavering on his feet yet still has a visceral, primal lividity wracking through his frame. 

It’s him who finally shatters the stillness of the evening air. 

“What,” he hisses, voice low and calculating and pulled taut with vehemence, “were you thinking? ” 

In any other situation, you’d instantly be bristling. His words are familiar, similar to ones he would use in the past just to provoke you, like something just irksome enough to make irritation bubble underneath the surface of your skin — but the tone is all wrong. It makes you hesitate, a hot chill weaving its way through you like intricately crafted threads that pull tight on your pulse. 

Your mouth opens, but there’s no words that you can say that would be sufficient enough to quell whatever intense emotions he’s feeling right now. The fact that he seems to be having this many at all is positively jarring to you; you don’t think you’ve ever seen him so animated, so upset , and that alone would be enough to leave you lost for words. It doesn’t seem to matter either way, because he keeps speaking like whatever you wanted to say is insignificant to him regardless. 

“Not only did you alert them to us, but you froze up? Just like that? What if I hadn’t been there, hm? What would you have done?” 

His words come out slow and measured, like they’re chosen very carefully and the intensity of it is enough to loosen your tongue, though you’re still finding it hard to meet his gaze, as fierce and stifling as it is. “What do you mean? What was I supposed to do, pull out my gun and shoot them? I’d be dead before I got the chance.” 

He shakes his head like you aren’t making any sense, and he looks wild like he’s incapable of standing to reason right now. “No. Not good enough. You should’ve known they were there in the first place.” 

“Are you kidding? How could I have, if even you didn’t know?” 

“I did. I was trying to pinpoint their exact location; something you should’ve been on the lookout for, especially because of your weak human senses.” 

“ Weak? ” You can’t help but exclaim incredulously. The wording he chose is like a sharp sting that you can feel phantom pains of, and the bite of his tone has you taking it personally. “It’s hard to stay vigilant when I’m busy worrying about you all the damn time. Today proves my point!” 

“What point?” He asks it like it’s phrased like a statement, like he dares you to continue, and his voice is cold, glacial, apathetic. 

“That I can’t focus on anything! I’m too busy stressing over you! Over if you’re gone, if you’re hurt… hell, even if you’re right next to me I’m too busy thinking about you to even—” 

Before you realize it, he’s taken three long strides over to you and your words die back out in your throat like they’d never risen in the first place as he comes to a stop a hair’s-breadth away. When he’s this close up, it’s easy to make out the crazed look in his eyes, the sickening glimmer that the blood shined with on his face, his fangs that just barely peek out past his parted lips. 

It’s almost second nature at this point with the way you recoil back from the sight. You can’t help it, not with the way he looks every bit of the SSS-Class Praedator that he really is. 

It’s impossible to truly forget his nature, but with the way you and him have essentially been playing house for the past few months, it was easy to dismiss it. He was so different from the other Praedators you’ve come across that somehow, you find yourself nonplussed and shaken as you come face to face with a wolf who's been purposefully, calculatingly hiding beneath all his wool this whole time. 

It’s unbelievably jarring and, for the first time in his presence, you feel like you don't know exactly who you’re looking at. 

“You’ve been in this situation before,” he speaks slowly in the space between you two, cutting through your uneasy thoughts with a voice that is quietly and painfully controlled, like he’s choosing his words and tone very carefully. “Don’t forget that this isn’t the first time I’ve had to come to your rescue.” 

Images zip through your mind like a flashbang, bright and blinding in their veracity. 

Multiple Praedators of all different classes, all surrounding you in a dim, dirty alleyway. Your gun, held tightly in your shaking hand with only a few bullets left in the chamber. Rafayel, crouched down towards you on a nearby rooftop with a slow forming smirk as you bribed for your life. Not only was it one of the most intensely dangerous experiences you’ve ever had, but it was the first time you’d ever met him; there’s no way you could forget it. Being filled with such acute fear that you felt sick with it, eyes darting around anxiously between the most vicious creatures you’d ever come across in your time as a Special Enforcer and the relaxed, seemingly amused one above you as he watched the scene unfold with mirth shadowing his face… 

“I didn’t.” 

He watches you silently for a moment with cold, narrowed eyes, letting the quiet hush of the moment drag on until you can feel the tension inching its way up your spine like it’s trying to consume you until — 

A breath is stolen from you, ripped from your chest like tangled weeds from soil, from something sowed in the dirt and muck of your insides from the moment you two met when his arm wraps around you suddenly, pulling you flush against his chest with all the intensity that his guarded, stony expression masks. 

His head dips down to nuzzle at your cheek, smearing the thick, wet blood along your skin in a sickeningly sweet display of affection that makes the air in your lungs catch and your stomach lurch simultaneously. 

It’s gross , it’s vile , and you find yourself leaning into it further, your hands coming around him to press at his back, to urge him closer. 

When he pulls away, his eyes flash when they dart over the mess he made, the mess he smeared all over you. If he’s surprised by your reaction, or lack thereof, he doesn’t show it at all. If anything, he almost seems amused. “You almost died by the hands of Praedators just moments ago, and now you’re willingly clinging to one. Are you sure you aren’t the messed up one between us, Miss Enforcer?” 

“No,” you breathe, shocking yourself with the honesty that bleeds out of you. 

• ───────────────── •

It all comes to a head just one week later. 

The moment you hear the news — what the LCBI have planned for not Praedators in general, but Rafayel specifically , you know immediately that you have to act. 

It was an accident, of course; you hadn’t meant to overhear Winona, the secretary of the Operations Sector manager, speaking with two researchers in hushed voices on your trek to your desk, but the moment a certain name reaches your ears, you find yourself ducking behind the corner before you realize it. 

You only manage to catch the tail-end of it, but you gather what you believe to be the most important parts either way and it prompts you to move before they spot you with the newfound knowledge eating away at your brain like it was trying to take up full residence. 

Finding Rafayel was easy after that. Once your workday was over, you made your way down to the command center faster than you ever have with your heart pounding against your ribcage. 

When the elevators open, you can tell immediately that today’s trial is over by the way Rafayel leans casually on the outskirts of the testing grounds, hands in his pockets and shoulders lax in boredom. As soon as he spots you, his head tilts up and his eyes flash when they narrow down on the bag you’re holding. 

“Honeydew,” is what he greets you with, cotton-candy irises locked onto the item in your hand that you pull out for him. 

“We need to go,” you mumble in the most nonchalant, quiet tone you can muster. You try your best to sound casual so as to not alert the researchers still watching you two, but the way his hand flexes on the yogurt drink tells you he picked up the poorly-masked strain in your voice. 

He makes an off-tune hum in reply and pushes off the wall, poking a hole in the top of the drink with a straw and taking a long drag. He smacks his lips before nodding once. “‘Kay.” 

Walking back to the elevators seems like it takes forever with the eyes drilling holes into you and Rafayel’s slow, leisurely pace, but as soon as the doors close behind you both, you turn to face him. 

He beats you to the punch, lips still wrapped around the straw in his mouth. “Another case?” 

“No,” you grit out, anxiety thrumming in your veins and making your fingers twitch at your sides. The ring on your finger draws your attention, as it often does, and you clench your fingers into a tight fist to feel it press against your skin even harder. The sensation bites into you, tingles along your skin amongst the strain and it grounds you somewhat. “I’ll tell you at home.” 

The finality in your voice must give away something that you were trying to hide under the off-chance that even the elevators are bugged, and he hums again in acknowledgement, eyes watching your movements with lazy curiosity. 

You’ve always been steadfast, not only with your job but with your stances; that’s why you joined the LCBI in the first place. Not only did they share the same morals as you, but you were able to help out civilians, people in need that had no other way of defending themselves. So, when they began their IEDS branch, there was no question in your mind that you would support it fully. 

Over the months, the IEDS’s combat program was evolving, and you knew that the strain it caused Rafayel was increasing with each test. You hadn’t stopped to think about it too hard until now, but…

Now, you weren’t sure what to think. All you know is that you need to do something, anything . You refused to continue sitting on the sidelines as your employers tried their best to push Rafayel to his limit until he broke. Watching him struggling in those stupid experiments is one thing, but what you overheard… 

You were resolute. 

You were not going to lose him. 

As soon as you step through the barrier of your apartment, it’s like everything wanes and slides right off of you like water over downy feathers. Your anxiousness, your uneasiness, it all dissipates the moment the front door is shut behind you two now that you’re alone, and you drop your belongings right there in the hallway to deal with later. 

“Rafayel,” you begin quietly. You have no idea how to even approach this in a way that he’d take seriously, but you have to. 

“Hm?” He steps right over your bags unthinkingly to stride over towards the kitchen in search of another yogurt drink, and you follow him with slight trepidation, braced in preparation of his reaction. 

“Today, I overheard Winona and the others talking about a mission,” you start slowly, hesitantly. He continues with his hunt, head ducked into the fridge and eyes scanning the rack like he didn’t hear you. 

Eventually, when you don’t say anything else, he replies distractedly, “so I was right?” 

“Well, no,” you correct him. “It was a mission about us — about you, really.” 

He hums again, straightening back up with a new drink in hand and closing the fridge forcefully enough that it rocks unsteadily for a moment before stilling. You watch him peel the straw from the wrapper with his teeth, blowing it out of his mouth to the ground somewhere with a huff before poking it through the top. 

“Rafayel, they plan to kill you.” 

Silence. 

You watch him watch you with a breath caught in your lungs, in your throat like it’s trying desperately to claw its way out. He takes a long pull from his drink and blinks at you, gesturing like he’s telling you to continue, like you aren’t shaking, trembling where you stand with fear in your eyes. Not fear of him, but fear for him. 

When you don’t say anything else, he purses his lips around the straw in a pout that is way too endearing for the current situation. “’Kay, and? ” 

You furrow your brows incredulously and sputter at his lack of reaction. You knew he would probably react like this, and yet you find yourself bewildered anyway. “What do you mean ‘and?’” 

“Well,” he pauses to suck noisily through the straw in a way that makes your eye twitch. He smacks his lips again, licking over them in an unconscious movement before crushing the bottle in his hands and tossing it across the room. It bounces off the wall before landing in the trash can. He turns back to you. “They do that everyday, yeah? So what’s new?” 

“It’s… They’re planning to kill you . To frame your death like an accident on purpose so they can get rid of you. This is entirely different from the trials! The LCBI has gone completely rogue.” 

He raises an eyebrow like he’s surprised by your outburst, and all it does is fan the flames of your distress, blowing them bigger and bigger until they’re nearing frustration; at him, at the situation, at everything. His hip cocks to the side until he’s leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed in an air of casualness unfitting of the seriousness you’re trying to convey. 

“Why are you so surprised they would do something like this? Sure, they’re going about it in a different way, but they’ve always been trying to kill me, no? Ever since they picked me to be a test subject for their little experiments. That was the point of the IEDS program.” 

“ Yes ,” you sigh, dragging out the word with exasperation. “But this time it’s serious. The trials are one thing, but now they’re setting up an actual staged mission with the intent of murder. It’s completely different. It changes everything.” 

All he does is study you for a moment, eyes flicking over your face like he’s trying to soak up some of the anguish on your face for himself so he can get a grasp at why you’re acting this way. 

“Why are you so upset over the mission?” He asks, brows furrowed and voice genuine enough that something in you snaps. 

“It’s not about the mission! It’s about you! ” You exclaim, eyes wild and pleading. It all courses out of you like a dam breaking, the words flowing past your lips like rushing currents of water past the carefully built walls of your heart. “I don’t give a fuck about the mission! You were right, people do die everyday and I’ve come to realize that I don’t care about any of them because they aren’t you .” 

A telltale, betraying flicker of something that frays the edges of his carefully constructed mask opens up before your eyes. His hardened expression splinters just slightly, enough for you to catch bits of confusion and wariness seeping through and his eyes dart over the span of your face like he’s trying to read through the lines to get to the real meaning of your words. 

“You must know by now. Please tell me you do.” 

His brows knit together like he just doesn’t get it and it has a strangled cry ripping from your throat in agitation. 

“ Rafayel ,” you plead. “You aren’t this dense. I know you’re a Praedator, but surely you remember what it’s like to be human?” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” His voice is quiet, low. Even with the unintentional bite of your words, he just looks at you with perplexion gracing his features. 

You almost don’t want to continue your words, not with the way he stares at you now like he’s seeing you for the first time, but you shoulder on if only to make him understand . “To feel. To be happy, to be sad, to love . It’s been a few years since you turned, but you remember what that was like, right?” 

For a long moment, he doesn’t reply. All he does is pin you there with his gaze, the walls reflecting in his irises erected so high you fear they might never drop, may never show you what’s been carefully hidden behind them until they do , right in front of you. 

The sight has all the breath leaving your lungs, has your head spinning dizzily, almost wanting to scramble for something behind you to keep you upright. It’s dismay, it’s hurt; it’s indignation . 

Immediately, you wish you could bottle back up the words you’ve spoken in the stilted air between you two to tuck it somewhere hidden so that no one can bear witness to your mistake. 

“You think I don’t feel , Miss Enforcer?” Rafayel spits out with disdain, peering at you in a way that feels like he’s striking you down where you stand. It burns like it's a physical thing, his words a brand on your skin that sears into you so blindingly that you can’t help but look away under the heat of it all, and you recoil. “You think just because I don’t speak that I have nothing to say? That just because I might not be particularly emotional that I have no feelings at all? Do you think I’m incapable of such a thing?” 

He backs you up into the wall, corners you like an animal all too familiar to how he did all those months ago after the Opera — only this time you don’t stop him, you don’t fight back. Everything in you slumps in dejection, in resignation in the wake of your words. 

“Maybe you’re right,” he whispers bitterly, breath fanning across your skin when he dips his head down enough to speak the words right into your ear. It has you shivering, trembling from disgrace, from abashment, from the frustrating heat that ghosts down your spine like a sickening pavlovian response and he grabs your waist, pushing you roughly into the wall with a force that sends a jolt through you. Distantly, you can hear the fridge rocking once more, but it feels like it’s so far away, muffled beneath the throb of your pulse in your ears. “I’m not like you. I’m not human.” 

Leaning back far enough to catch your gaze, he lets a smirk grace his lips; one that doesn’t reach his eyes but shows off his fangs instead, glistening in the dim light of the kitchen. He ducks back in to lick over the shell of your ear with the flat of his tongue. 

Your jaw drops open on a shuddering gasp that betrays you despite your efforts to keep it in when a new rush of adrenaline sparks lightning in your veins. He’s doing it on purpose, he’s baiting you on purpose and it’s working and it makes you feel even more ashamed. 

“I’m a Praedator,” he sneers against your ear. His voice is filled with such vehemence yet his breath fans hot against you in a calculated action, one that makes you tremble. “We’re vicious, hungry beasts who do nothing but indulge in our most selfish desires.” 

A hand glides down, tracing a long, agonizingly hot trail from your waist to your thigh and hoists it up over his hip to grind down against you roughly, just once. The action lacks fervor, lacks any sort of real desire but you scramble anyway, body twitching at the hum that you can already feel under your skin before shying away again, knowing you’re proving his point. 

You grab at his waist, stilling his movements with a shaky exhale before he can do it again. 

You’re starting to believe that maybe it isn’t that he has nothing to say, but that the language you two have always spoken is one that goes unsaid. He’s not well suited with poetry or flowery words, but with his actions; with his hands, his skills. Tools he’s learned to wield over the past few years when it comes to bounties, to trials, to other Praedators — to protecting you . 

“No,” you finally murmur breathlessly, your voice soft but firm. Your hand comes up to cup his cheek with a small, watery smile. You watch as he leans into it just slightly, his half-lidded eyes fluttering weakly at the tenderness of it despite himself, and you soften, soften, soften like down at the sight. “Not to me.” 

And then you kiss him, and it’s everything.

The feeling of your lips on his is simultaneously the same and yet nothing at all like the first time you kissed. It’s warm and dizzying and it lights you up from the inside out just like it did before; but this time it’s sweet, full with intent. You’re driving a point home, not mindlessly capturing him in a kiss under the guise of lust. You’re trying to convey everything you’ve been feeling through the way you press against him, the way you clutch at his shoulders to pull him closer, to try to get him to corner you entirely to show him you aren’t afraid of him, not now, not ever. 

Rafayel breaks the kiss just to pant against your lips in a shuddery exhale, full of everything you’ve been too foolish to notice. His eyes are squeezed tightly like he’s restraining himself, like he doesn’t want to break the spell you’ve cast on him. 

His eyes flutter open slowly after a moment like he was lost entirely to the kiss and is slow to register. His long, dark lashes overcast a shadow across his downturned gaze and fan across his cheeks before his irises trail up your body to catch your eyes. They’re a sticky sweet sunrise cast upon a warm, salty ocean, with gorgeous hues of pink spread across vast, lapping waves of cobalt blue and they’re raw, open and unguarded — laced with unrestrained, unfiltered vulnerability for maybe the first time since you’ve known him. 

His brows furrow and his jaw drops like he wants to speak, like there’s something right on the tip of his tongue that can’t quite get past his lips, but he shakes his head and he huffs out a breath, pulling you in by the sides of your head, tilting his head to get closer, deeper . 

Your chest tightens up with a gasp of surprise that gets knocked out of you with the press of his mouth, muffling right into Rafayel’s parted, waiting lips. It has you melting against him, and you let him push you further into the wall and maneuver you however he wishes with a knee shoved between your thighs. When he feels you relax, feels you submit to him entirely, he hums out a pleased tune against your lips and into your mouth that you swallow eagerly alongside a keen of your own. 

It’s slow and sticky and indulgent, like the kiss is akin to a decadent chocolate. He licks the sweetness off your lips, savors the richness right from your tongue and he relishes in the way you melt right on his taste buds. 

It builds languidly, the syrupy heat suffocating you from all directions. You’re panting hotly against him, pawing at him to minimize all the space in between you until you’re forced to merge into one singular stream of consciousness and even that doesn’t feel like it scratches the surface. 

There isn’t a single word that fully encapsulates the way you burn for him, the way you long for him, the way you yearn for him. It’s a craving that scratches and claws at you more than mere infatuation or affection would. It’s a hunger, a fervor, a need to lose yourself in him. In the way he touches you, in the way he drinks you in like he can’t get enough, can’t satisfy himself the way he longs for. 

Too much has happened. You’ve found yourself growing attached to someone you never could have expected. You started out wanting to protect Linkon — a Special Enforcer, someone who was tasked to guard the city and save people from Praedators. It was your job, it was what you’ve wanted to do since you can remember. 

Now you’d burn it all down in a heartbeat — the LCBI, the city, the entire world — if it meant the two of you would be safe. If he’d be safe. 

“ Rafayel .” 

His name is whispered helplessly, powerlessly between you and you can feel the way it affects him when his fingers flex from their spot on your waist, when his throat bobs thickly. You want to bite it. 

“Are you sure you want to—” 

You manage to get that much out before he cuts you off to capture your lips again in an action forceful enough that it feels like a reprimand. It has you shuddering right in his hold, and you wrap your arms around his neck to press against him even further because it feels like all there’s ever been between you two is space. You want to get rid of it, eliminate it, crawl your way right into his skin and live in there so that there’s no room for miscommunication ever again. 

The sound of you pleading his name again has something in him snapping, some last sort of restraint shattering right in front of you and before you realize it, you’re lifted off the ground and being carried out of the kitchen. A yelp of surprise escapes you and you scramble to wrap your legs around his waist instinctively so that you don’t fall. The sudden pressure of your clothed center pressed up against him has his breath stuttering against your neck, has his fingers tightening from where they’re holding you up by the backs of your thighs — but his steps don’t falter. He makes it to his bedroom in record time. 

Even though the door to his room is almost always slightly ajar, you’ve never once been inside. It felt wrong, forbidden; as if stepping past the door frame was like crossing an unspoken barrier, betraying some sort of trust. He’s always been a quiet, private person in your eyes, so you’ve always respected that in the time you’ve lived together. Now that you’re inside, though, your eyes can’t help but dart around greedily to take in the surroundings. 

As far as furniture goes, it looks almost the same as when you’d lent the space to him. You aren’t able to gather much beyond what it was before, so the sight of bare walls with muted colors, closet doors open to show a sparse amount of clothing hung, and scattered papers strewn across the dresser to the left doesn’t surprise you. Before you get a chance to analyze further, your attention is drawn back to Rafayel as he kicks the door closed and drops you on top of the bed with a bounce that knocks the breath from your chest. 

Your mouth drops open and you stare up at him incredulously, hair fanning out and splaying messily around you like a halo. He’s crowding you instantly, hovering over you in between your spread legs and eliminating any space between you when he ducks back down to his favorite place to lick a hot, wet stripe up the side of your neck like he can’t get enough. 

The sound of him inhaling deeply, greedily like he can smell your pheromones, your arousal, has your face heating up. You flush even harder when you remember that he can. 

His messy hair tickles your cheek and you brush it back before clutching at the strands between your fingers with a gasp when he sucks at your skin, hard enough to leave a bruise before soothing the flesh with his tongue. Thighs squeezing around his torso at the feeling, you dig your nails into the soft cotton of his black sweatshirt with a shudder. His breath is hot, searing against your skin and it zips up your spine deliciously. 

“Please,” you gasp, breath hitching when you can feel him nipping at your skin, an ice-cold hot flash rushing through you like an influx of subfreezing seawater, drowning you and suffocating you with the pressure of being submerged with no way out. Just a little harder and he’d be drawing blood. Just a little harder and, if you were anyone else, someone who wasn’t immune to the virus, he could turn you, make you one of him. 

The thought has you whimpering, craning your neck even more despite the sudden dawning fear spiking your pulse and sweetening the lust racing through your veins further. Rafayel groans right into your neck like he can smell it seeping right off your skin, the sound low and deep and incredibly sexy. 

It’s like your hips have a mind of their own when they thrust upwards to rub your clothed core against the thick outline of his arousal trapped behind the barrier of his pants.   

You can feel him grazing his fangs along your pulse point and revelling in the tremble it elicits from you, and you swear you can practically hear the smirk on his lips when he huffs out a breath of amusement that fans across your heated skin. 

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were getting off to this.” 

A whine escapes you when he accentuates his point by digging his fangs into your neck just enough to leave pinprick indents on your flesh before latching his lips around them and sucking hard , licking away the soft sting it left behind. 

“ Ah! Mm—” 

He cups the back of your head to guide you back to his lips, cutting off your moan with fingers threading and lacing through your messy hair. The action is done with such casual dominance that it has you whimpering straight into his mouth, jaw slack. 

Rafayel kisses you like you’re a puzzle to solve, like you’re something he can figure out. It’s as if he’s trying to pin down your exact tells; what he needs to do to get the best reaction, how to make you feel the most pleasure. And though he was built for calamity, thrived on risk and was practically trained for chaos over the course of the past few years through trials and hunts and fights for his life, he treats you with a calculated, slow precision. In the way he licks into your mouth, in the way his rough, calloused hands run down your sides, in the way they tug off your shirt to throw it behind him. It’s all deliberate and it sweetens the embers kindling inside you. 

When he starts peppering kisses down your body, you tremble in his grasp. Hot, wet passes of lips down your jaw, past your neck before stopping quickly to dart his tongue out and lap at the hollow dip in your collarbone. Whines and keens escape your lips as the tingling between your legs becomes nearly painful to ignore. 

It’s overwhelming in the best way possible with the way his ministrations light up your body like a livewire, sending electric shocks through you that wrack your frame with every brush of his fingers, his lips, his tongue. It feels holy, it feels reverent. Like worship . Like he was leaving traces of his devotion with every swipe of his tongue along your skin, a testament to the depth of his emotion. 

Fingers find their way into his long, unruly hair, carding through the mauve strands at the back of his neck and sweeping them away from his face, off of his neck. The action has his eyes darting up to you as he flicks his tongue over the bare expanse of your chest above your bra. He dips down to circle around the peaks of your breast through the lace and dampen the fabric before nipping right above it instead. 

It’s a sweet confection, sugar spun on a stick. His irises are sticky and honeyed and blown as the yellow-tinged light from the ceiling fan paints him in a silhouette of gossamer gold. It brushes against the soft mess of hair between your fingers, ghosts along his skin, reflects the darkened saccharine of his eyes. You can’t help but reach up to trace along the freckles scattered across his face with your finger, drawing constellations between them in quiet, unspoken admiration. 

As your hand cups his cheek, thumbing over the corner of his mouth gently, he turns his head just enough to press a soft kiss to the pad of it. A soft huff of breath exhales from his nose in a warm rush as his hands glide up your sides, curving towards your chest before stopping just under the swell of your breasts, charting towards your back and unclipping your bra in an action so smooth that you didn’t even realize he’d done it at first, not until he’s tugging the straps of it down your shoulders and over your arms to toss it behind him. 

The sensation of him tweaking the peaks of your breasts just enough to hear you choke out a surprised squeak before dragging his hands down the heated flesh of your middle, like his focus is aimed somewhere else, somewhere more important, has you breathless . It leaves a trail of heat behind, sparking and rekindling the flames of lust that had begun to smolder and cool in the wake of your reverence. It lights you back up all at once. 

His gaze bores into yours as he grazes his fingers along the waistband of your pants, resting on the button of the hem in silent question. You twitch your hips up in confirmation and he pulls down your slacks inch by inch. 

The sound of fabric brushing against your skin feels like it echoes and bounces around the room, like it’s so much louder than it really is when all your senses are so heightened and narrowed to him — to the way he stares at you, intense and reverent, to the way he slides his hands up your inner thighs once he sheds your pants, to the way he ducks down to breathe hot against your soaked panties, making you twitch. 

He shoves his nose right up against you, drinking in the scent of you like he can’t get enough, like he’s hovering right upon the precipice of salvation. It makes you flush hot. The tingle spreads, you throb .  

“Focus, honey. Eyes on me,” he purrs. It comes out low, tender but commanding against you and the timber of his voice vibrates the fabric. It sends a zip up your spine, makes you clench and pulse around nothing. Your eyes flutter back open, unaware that they’d ever fallen shut in the first place. 

He peels away the damp fabric clinging to your slick arousal with a slow, methodical ease, like he’d been picturing this moment for far longer than you thought and knew exactly what he wanted to do and how to do it. The sight of the string of wetness still trying to cling to the gusset of your panties stretching and snapping has you flushing in embarrassment. Your thighs try to close, you try to squirm away but Rafayel’s dark eyes flick up to yours, narrowing and flashing with displeasure. His hands lock onto your hips instantly, yanking you back where he wants you. 

“Stop moving.” 

The words come out stern, quick and sharp like an order, and they fan across your center, sending tingling warmth throughout your core. It spreads upwards, overtaking your entire form in a full body shudder. You feel hot , sticky and antsy under the weight of his words, his attention. It’s almost too much. You relent easily, falling limp in his grasp. 

Rafayel hums out an acknowledging note under his breath and it’s as if it stems from deep in his chest, rumbling outwards like he’s pleased by your surrender. His thumbs graze along your stomach in a shockingly sweet caress like he’s trying to soothe you, to get you to settle even more under his ministrations. He drags his palms down to your thighs, lifting them up and apart, leaving you open and vulnerable underneath him. 

The first press of his lips to your inner thigh has you startling, twitching and legs tensing underneath his hold for just a moment before you relax once more. You’re so keyed up that even the sensation of him pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses to your skin has you panting. Blood rushes through your ears, your heartbeat feels like it’s rattling against your ribs, trying to beat right out of the cage of your chest. 

Your hand finds its way in his hair once more. Not to guide him, not to pull him closer, but to relish in the silk glide of it and to brush away the idle strands of hair that have fallen into his eyes so that you can have some sort of grounding contact as he shatters you before him so gently. 

His tongue darts out to lick hot stripes along your skin, trailing them upwards, each one closer and closer to where you’re aching, leaving wet smears of saliva in their place. It’s blissful agony — the way he takes his time, savors you slowly. The moment feels sacred and intimate, like something holy, like it’s the first chapter in a book rewritten. 

The air is filled with your sweet sighs and soft, breathy whines, and his eyes flutter open, half-lidded and shadowed by long, dark lashes. He looks up at you, peeling back so he can watch your expression at the exact moment he finally moves his hand to your core, running a finger down where you’re dripping for him. 

It’s featherlight. It’s hardly anything at all, really. He’s simply smearing your wetness around, brushing against you so softly that it’s like he’s doing it just to test your reaction, but it’s the first direct contact you’ve had all night and it’s enough to have you throwing your head back. Your jaw drops open, your thighs instinctively try to squeeze closed against his grip and your hand in his hair tightens into a fist, gripping at the long strands to keep him there, there, right there . 

“ Yes , please, more ,” you plead helplessly. The words are sudden and desperate,  ripping out of you like they were stolen. You buck against his hand impatiently.  

He huffs out an amused laugh through his nose, lips quirking up in a smirk, but he thankfully acquiesces. 

“Like this?” 

With one hand, he spreads you open before him, and the feeling of being so exposed has you pulsing hotly, thrumming through you like a plucked chord. You watch in anticipation as he ducks his head down and flattens his tongue to drag through you just once, slow and teasing and hot. 

It lights you on fire and you’re clenching down hard before he even lifts his head back up like you’re trying to keep him there, clinging to the sensation even as it leaves you. Back arching like a bow pulled taut, a moan tumbles past your lips, desperate and stretched out. 

“Yeah?” 

You’re left panting, shifting and squirming restlessly underneath the grip he has on your thigh like you can’t get comfortable, can’t get over the tingling pleasure that still buzzes low in your veins, in your belly. 

“Raf, ple- hease ,” you sob. 

His lips stretch upwards, grin widening just for a split second before dropping,  concealing his amusement. His thumb trails up the outline of you, teasing you with an absentminded, barely-there touch as he speaks. “There’s no need to beg, but I appreciate the sentiment nonetheless.” 

His tongue lolls back out and reconnects with your slick, swollen center and this time it’s deeper, hungrier. It’s a slow, prodding swipe, like he’s mapping out the expanse of your arousal and committing it to memory, and the sound he lets out at the sheer taste of you vibrates against your core in a dizzying buzz. It’s gravelly, rumbling like it comes from deep within his chest and he smacks his lips, savoring you like you’re a rich, aged wine. His throat bobs as he swallows up the blatant evidence of your desire. 

Again and again, he drags his tongue through you in devastatingly slow, fervent laps. 

Swipe. Swipe. Swipe. 

It’s unbearably hot — his tongue is like fire against you, rolling through you in molten waves with each pass over you and your nerves light up in flashes, each one brighter than the last. Your chest rises and falls with heavy, shuddering gasps as if all the air has been sucked out of the room and you can’t catch your breath. 

Even with the magma flowing through your veins, you yank on his hair as if to signal for him to give you more. 

And he does , curling an arm underneath the small of your back to pull you flush against him like he wants to surround himself in you, lose himself in you. Mouthing around where you’re most sensitive in wet, languid kisses, it’s like he’s building you up, just to knock you down like a house of playing cards when he latches his lips around it and sucks in soft, rhythmic pulses. 

It’s instantaneous. You keen so loudly that it feels like it bounces off the walls, hips shuddering back into the bed before jumping forward, right back onto his waiting tongue. “Rafayel…!” 

His answering moan is deep, raspy, groaning against you like he’s the one unravelling and the sound adds to your already frayed nerves. Hot, ragged puffs of his breath fan against your skin like the lick of a roaring flame and he swirls his tongue in languid circles, his mouth an addicting suction that scorches your flesh in lazy pulls. 

The coil deep in your stomach tightens with each lick, each suck, each hum against your soaked flesh and yet, you clench down in phantom ache, unbridled need filling you to the brim until you’re near overflowing. Your breath hitches on a shaky inhale. “Please, please ,” you pant, tugging at his hair. 

He doesn’t speak right away, too lost in the haze of you to bother replying, but eventually he finally pulls away with dark, half-lidded eyes that lock onto your soaked center for a beat like he’s reluctant to part with it before slowly lifting to meet yours. His mouth is glistening with your arousal, lips red and swollen and enticing. 

“Hm?” 

Your hand comes up to wipe away at his chin, smearing the wetness around and gathering it up on the pad of your thumb before pushing it past the hot seam of his lips. They yield instantly, closing around the digit and sucking sloppily, unabashed. It has you squirming once more, mouth parting on a silent moan that gets trapped in your chest. He pops off your thumb with one last lick to make sure he got it all. 

“Need you. Please,” you beg, barely above a whisper. “Inside.” 

He sucks in a breath. His dark, blown pupils seem to dilate even further under the thickness in your pleading words, but he reluctantly shakes his head. When he speaks, his voice is deepened with heated want. “Not yet, need to stretch you first.” 

You can’t hold back the whine that escapes past your lips, petulant and frustrated. It feels like you’re at the end of your rope already, high-strung from all of the teasing he’s done thus far. “I can take it, I promise—” 

A gasp tumbles from you and cuts off your words at the feeling of his fingers prodding around your entrance, collecting your wetness and smearing it around before dipping a single digit inside the hot walls of your core. The glide was slow but easy with how soaked you were, the heady mix of your slick and Rafayel’s saliva making it effortless. 

“So wet,” he murmurs in adoration. 

You flush at his words, cheeks heating up even as you buck down against his hand for more. The introduction of a second finger reveals a small bit of resistance, but you relax almost as soon as it’s all the way in, your walls welcoming him in with a pulsing flutter. 

It’s all a bit of a blur after that, your body shivering and hips bucking downwards to meet his movements. Splashes of color play behind your eyelids, a cataclysm of intoxication. You’re enveloped in it, drowning to pure sensation. Throwing your head back, trickles of moans wisp past your lips into the air when he grazes against a spot that makes you see stars, but you choke on nothing when he reintroduces his mouth in an overwhelming combination of pressure and suction. 

It builds, slow and sticky like a souffle on low heat that rises gently, like your pleasure has nowhere to go but up, filling you to the brim with restless decadence and tasting sweet on your tongue. 

It takes you a moment to realize he’d pulled away, the intensity of the aftershocks thrumming through your body so great that they have your body wracking with tremors, remnants of pleasure still ghosting over your nerves. 

You let out a soft, broken noise of confusion, head tilting back up to see why he’d stopped, and you find that he’s already staring back at you. His eyes are overcast with raw lust, heady and glassy and dark . Mouth parted like he’s catching his breath, his lips are glossy with your wetness, the barest point of his fangs peeking through. He sucks in a breath as if he’s going to speak, but instead rises back up to his knees to connect his lips with yours. 

“So good,” Rafayel mumbles into your mouth before diving back in harder, smashing his lips against yours like he can’t possibly get enough, like he wants to entwine himself through each layer of your skin and bury himself there. His lips are soft; bitter velvet on your tongue. You can taste yourself, and it has you panting, open-mouthed against him. He licks his way inside. “So good .” 

He retreats far enough to meet your gaze as he runs his dampened fingers across your lips, dipping them past the seam of them just barely until you’re welcoming them in, sucking the slick off them with vigor. A groan escapes him at the sight and then he’s diving in, licking a slow rivulet of wetness that had started to trickle down until he’s following it upwards with the flat of his tongue, lapping at the webbing in between his fingers and he meets your tongue there, kissing you over the digits still inside your mouth. It’s sloppy, it’s lewd, it’s obscene and it has your jaw slackening on a breathless moan, past his fingers and right into his waiting mouth. 

“Honey,” he pants like the air in the room isn’t enough, dragging his fingers out of your mouth and burying his face in your neck to press sloppy kisses there. His heaving breaths blow on the smear of wetness he leaves, a combination of your slick and your shared saliva, and the chill sends a shiver down your trembling body. “You’ll let me have you now, won’t you? My sweet girl.” 

You bite down on your lips on a high-pitched keen, breathy as it leaves your nose. Nodding enthusiastically, your hands come up to cup the back of his neck and bury your fingers in his hair, gripping at the strands and tugging until he follows your movements to meet in a clumsy, wet kiss. 

Trailing a hand down the hard planes of his chest, you can’t help but sigh at the feeling of his abs tensing, quivering beneath your touch. “Off. I want it off .” 

He huffs out a breath of laughter through his nose that fans across your face and pecks you once, twice more before pulling back just far enough to peel it over his head and toss it somewhere behind him. His hair gets mussed, sticking up and fanning across his neck and the tops of his shoulders just enough for it to be tousled and sexy . It’s an unconscious, unwitting thing that has your breath catching, eyes darting between the mauve strands and his amused expression. 

“You look like you have something you want to say.” 

You don’t dignify that with a response; all you do is yank him closer, closer until he’s forced to catch himself on his hands on either side of your head with a surprised chuckle. 

Your hands slide back down his stomach to dip your fingers under his waistband and tug down both his sweatpants and boxers over his hips. The sight of him, of the undeniable proof of his arousal, has your breath stuttering in your chest, has your hands curling into fists, has you fluttering in anticipation. 

Locking eyes with him then is as easy as breathing, and you watch the heady fog overcast in the storm-clouded irises of his eyes dissipate like smoke and get replaced with something softer, something that buries itself behind your ribs and nestles itself there right beside your heart. 

Your lips reconnect at the same moment you feel it; pressure, fullness, just enough sharpness to be on the knife’s edge of too much. Rafayel’s breath stutters out of his chest like it was torn from him, lashes fluttering across his cheeks at the feel of you. His lips part like he’s going to say something, but your legs wrap around his waist and press on the small of his back to encourage him to sink the knife in deeper, further, to the hilt and the words on his tongue die out with an overwhelmed groan. 

Gasping as he bottoms out, your hands wrap around his shoulders, clutching at his back and the hair dusting across his neck like it can ground you, save you from the onslaught of sensation. It’s buzzing, it's red-hot electric and it only heightens further when he pulls his hips back after a moment only to push right back in, a deliciously slow movement that has your toes curling. 

It’s so much more than anything you would have imagined. You’re drifting, floating, lost to the moment, to him, to the way he makes you feel. The noises escaping you are ones you’re not even aware of, trailing past your lips as easy as the way he dips down to mouth at your neck, to suck in greedy lungfuls of your intoxicating scent right from the source. 

“So good for me,” he murmurs to you before biting down just enough to make you feel it, fangs digging in with a sting sharp enough that it has you keening, nails scratching at his back and leaving crescent-shaped marks along his flesh. The hiss that escapes him is enough for you to flush hot, a zip that travels right down your body and leaves crackling sparks in its wake. 

The slow, calculated drives of his hips feel never-ending. Each time he pulls back it’s like it drags along the sensitive flesh of your walls, sending cloying surges up your spine that spread outwards until you’re filled again, filled with him and the look he gives you, the sweet, tender press of his lips against the soft skin of your neck, the sheer reverence you can feel with everything he does. 

The tempo doesn’t last for long as languid thrusts turn into harsher, deeper, more intense ones inside the wet heat of you. He’s everywhere, surrounding you inside and out and it’s not enough, too much all at once. 

“Rafayel—” you choke out, jaw dropped on a moan that gets punched out of you with another movement that has your whole body bouncing upwards on the bed. 

“ That’s it, pretty girl. Sing for me.” 

It’s as if he tries to time it with the way he lifts your hips up, pulling you down flush right as he sinks into you so deep and hard and perfect that there’s nothing you can do but listen . You sing for him, whines and whimpers and breathless gasps filling the warm, humid air surrounding you two like you’re making your own opera. 

He nuzzles against you, cheek ghosting across your flesh in a bittersweet contrast to the way you feel stuffed full to the brim with his devotion before he nips at the sensitive skin of your jaw, sucking a bruise there. He withdraws just enough to whisper, “Louder. Yes , just like that. My perfect symphony.” 

It feels like you can hardly control your body, not as it digs its nails into his flesh, not as your thighs squeeze around his waist, not as your insides flutter around him in pulses like you can barely handle the sensations yet can’t bear to have him pull away. His answering groan, raspy and stuttery as it fans heated across your skin, does you no favors as all it does is succeed in stretching the coil further, filling your swooping stomach with warmth so hot it burns. 

You can feel it, just like you know he can feel it, the way you tighten, tense and pulled taut like a rubber band. 

He lifts back up until he’s sitting back on his knees in between your spread thighs, grabbing at them with both of his hands and brushing his thumbs along the sensitive flesh there. His eyes are half-lidded and blown, and he gazes down at you through the messy, damp strands of his hair that fall over his face. He looks intimidating like this, you realize with a jolt. He’s staring down at you with an expression that, if this were you a few months back, you could’ve easily mistaken as a way animals would look at prey; dark, calculating, intense. 

Now, though, there’s nothing to mistake. He looks at you as if you’re it. As if there’s nothing else around you two, as if there’s nothing else worthy of his gaze, his time, his effort. The way his eyes rake over where you’re connected, across the expanse of your body, over your face, it’s not nothing. It’s everything. You’re everything. 

That knowledge is what sets you off, and you gasp as the coil inside you strains. You only have enough time to scramble a hand downwards, searching mindlessly until it finds his, entwining your fingers together and squeezing down hard . The ring on your finger pinches your skin at the pressure, right at the same time that you snap , and there’s nothing you can do but feel . 

Your body is plunged into the vast, deep sea. Everything is muffled, and all you’re able to feel are the waves that envelop you, absorb you until you’re nothing but a trembling mess of sensation. Your lower half is fluttering, pulsing down around him so hard that he has nothing left to do but fall right into the abyss alongside you. 

“ Fuck ,” you hear Rafayel gasp, squeezing your hand back just as hard. Suddenly it’s warm, so warm, you’re brimming with it. It comes in surges, hot and sharp and blinding, flooding you until you can feel it spilling out. Your body clenches down again, harder, like it can’t stand the thought of that warmth leaving you, of it escaping the wet, oversensitive walls of you. Above you, he moans breathlessly, unbiddenly, and you’re filled with another surge. 

It feels neverending, until it doesn’t. The tides recede, the lapping waves slowly stilling as the pleasure ebbs, gradual and sluggish. It takes a while to come back to yourself with the way syrup still runs through your veins, slow and thick. As you struggle to catch your breath, you blink your eyes open. 

Rafayel is already staring at you, lips parted and chest heaving. His eyes are just as open and unguarded as they were earlier, his cheeks are heated and flushed, his hair is sticking to his face messily and there’s a bit of drool pooling in the corners of his mouth. He looks beautiful. 

“I…” is all you can say in the face of his vulnerability. 

Somehow, it’s enough. His lips quirk up into a rare, soft smile that reaches his eyes, and crowds over you until your noses are brushing, pausing right above your mouth. Your eyes flutter with expectancy, anticipating the kiss you know he wants to give you, but instead, he laughs. Not a low chuckle, or an amused huff through his nose. 

It’s soft, and light, and it titters off almost as soon as it starts, but he laughs , and your chest feels like it’s fit to burst. 

“Hi,” you whisper. 

“Hi,” he whispers back. 

You realize you’re still holding hands only when you feel him pulling away from your grip, just enough to brush his thumb against the ring on your finger. It feels absentminded, like an unconscious movement, but the way his eyes are firm on you tells you it's anything but. 

You can’t wait any longer. You tip your head back, lifting off of the pillows just enough to press your lips against his. The kiss is soft, sweet. For the first time, it’s not driven by anything. Not lust, or frustration, or trying to prove something. It’s simply because you want to. 

You think it’s the best kiss you’ve ever had. 

He murmurs your name against your lips just to say it, cupping the back of your head with a hand, gently guiding your movements until you open up for him enough so that he can deepen the kiss with a tenderness that has you melting beneath him. 

“Let me get something to clean you up with,” he mumbles in between kisses like he can’t go a second without the press of your mouth on his. You giggle breathlessly as he dives back in with another smooch, and another, and another. 

“Okay,” you say, laughter wavering in your voice. 

“Okay,” he replies, kissing you again. 

“ Rafayel .” 

“Alright, I heard you the first time. Hold on.” 

He sighs, short and huffy like he’s steeling himself before pecking you once more and leaning back. Peeling out from between your legs, he slides off of the bed and stalks out of the room. Your eyes follow him as he leaves before slowly rising to the ceiling as you lean back against the pillows. 

You don’t know what this means. 

Not for you and Rafayel — no, you’ve always operated on actions, not words. There’s nothing more for you to say; you’re finally on the same page after everything and you couldn’t even begin to describe how elated that makes you. And yet… 

What does this mean for the LCBI? For the mission? 

There’s nothing left to do but ponder . To brainstorm, to try to come up with a solution that works and doesn’t fall flat. The authorities are smart, your sector manager even moreso. There’s nearly nothing you can think of that can end with a good ending. 

Nearly. 

The sound of his feet shuffling along the carpet brings your attention back to the forefront, and you tilt your head to watch as he closes the door behind him, washcloth in one hand and yogurt drink in the other. 

A disbelieving smile rises to your lips, and you can’t help but bark out another laugh. “Really? More honeydew?” 

He shrugs, joining you back on the bed with a knee planted on the edge. He drops the drink down on the bed until it rolls right against your side, the coldness making you jolt slightly. “I can’t have one of my honeydew’s without the other.” 

“Oh? I’m your honeydew now?” 

He hums out an agreement, hand brushing against your thigh until you spread them for him, and he brings the cloth to your skin, wiping at it gently. The way he works feels deliberate and his facial expression is unwavering, like he’s trying his best not to graze where you’re oversensitive but still clean you up to the best of his ability. It’s oddly sweet. 

“Raf,” you say, breaking the silence with a more serious tone. 

His eyes dart up to you briefly as if he felt the shift in your tone before flicking back down to his ministrations. “Yeah?” 

You suck in a breath. 

“I have an idea — for the mission.” 

At this, Rafayel pauses. The hand holding the washcloth freezes, before he lets it drop down to the bed. His head finally lifts, catching your gaze as he strokes down your thigh in a comforting caress, giving you his full undivided attention. 

The words pain you to say, but it’s the only way. 

“We need to fake your death.” 

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