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argue. He’d wait until Lindsay wobbled enough to warrant an intervention.
“Fine.” He stopped and gestured for Lindsay to go in front of him. “Go on. Least if something else
steals you, I’ll see it.” Dane watched him struggle, too proud to ask for help. Lindsay didn’t know how to
ask for help, and Dane knew it.
Dane caught up in two strides, sweeping Lindsay up in his arms and ignoring how it hurt. It was better
than watching. Sometimes, Lindsay could be ridiculous and it was irritating how much like Dane the boy
was being at those times.
“I’m not indulging you,” Dane muttered. That was still pissing him off. No matter what the guul had made Lindsay think, the fact remained that it was damned difficult for one of them to make someone think
something they didn’t believe in, at least a little.
“It feels like you do,” Lindsay admitted softly. “I didn’t want to be an obligation, like you had to do
anything like that to keep me happy. I…want to be wanted. That’s all.” He closed his eyes, tucking his cheek against Dane’s chest.
Dane pressed a kiss to his hair and tried not to get angry again. “It wasn’t your fault for thinking it.
Well, it wasn’t your fault for being stupid about it,” he said quietly. “Not completely.”
“It’s not?” Lindsay’s face was full of such desperate hope that Dane wondered, again, what Cyrus
thought he was doing giving someone so fragile to him.
“Not completely, no,” Dane grumbled, any residual anger temporarily diverted by Lindsay’s need to
be forgiven. “Demons play with your mind. The sweet smell, it’s not sweet. It’s the same smell as the other one. You think it’s sweet, because you know the smell of honey. Same as the way you felt that made you
walk off.”
Lindsay sighed, defeated, and sank into Dane’s arms. “Still my fault for thinking it. It wouldn’t have
happened if I didn’t believe it, right?” Sometimes, he was too smart for his own good.
“I should have remembered.” Dane wasn’t about to let himself, or Ezqel, off the hook. “It was my
fault.”
“But…” Lindsay started, but fell silent when Dane glared at him. He pressed his cheek to Dane’s
chest and gave Dane those wide eyes.
“My fault,” Dane said flatly. He didn’t need this ridiculousness. Right now, he needed to work out
where they were so he could get them back to the hotel.
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“You killed it, at least.” Lindsay’s stubborn little voice drifted up from under Dane’s chin. He was
impossible, and it made him all the more irresistible.
“Who said I don’t want you?” Dane shifted so that Lindsay could be more comfortable even though
his voice got more angry as he spoke. He was frustrated with both of them. “Cyrus is going to kill me for
touching you at all—if I’m lucky, he’ll only kill me—and you’re going on about how I don’t want you?
Where the fuck did that idea come from?”
“You didn’t seem all that…I don’t know. Interested. I guess.” Lindsay raised his head to peek at
Dane’s face. “Cyrus is going to be angry?”
“Not interested…” Dane stopped on a street corner that was barely lit by a single flickering bulb.
“Cyrus is probably chewing his own hair. And I am interested in you.”
Dane could hardly help himself. Lindsay had grace and intellect and beauty and delicacy and strength
that hit all of Dane’s buttons right. He was everything Dane wasn’t, and so perfectly made. What the hell
did Lindsay want, poetry? Getting out of that kind of thing should have been an advantage to being with a
man, and Lindsay was definitely a man, even if he was still green and new to it.
Dane set Lindsay on his feet and held his shoulders so that Lindsay had to look at him. “Asking what
you want doesn’t mean I’m not interested. Where’d you get that idea?”
“It just…” Lindsay closed his eyes. “I don’t know. I didn’t want you to be…tolerating me, or
something. And when you asked… I thought if you were really interested in me, it would sound different.”
Dane wanted to bang his head on the lamppost, except that his head already hurt. “Maybe I am
indulging you,” he admitted. His hands were filthy, so he used the back of the cleanest one to push
Lindsay’s lank hair back from his smudged face. “It’s nothing I don’t want. What’s wrong with being
indulged? What’s wrong with someone giving you what you need? Sometimes it can fix things nothing else
can.”
Lindsay bowed his head. “I didn’t want it to be like…” Dane could guess the rest of that sentence.
… like his parents, being civil to him out of duty instead of love.
“This is now. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, with everything. This is not then.” Dane dropped his
head to nuzzle Lindsay’s nose with his own. “This is a different life.”
Lindsay tipped his head up, eyes closed. He was so young, far too young to be starting over, but here
they were. Even if Lindsay had lived all his years free, he would have been inexperienced, next to Dane. In spite of all the terrible things that had been done to him, Lindsay was so i
good as well as so much of the evil in the world. All Dane wanted was to make sure that Lindsay learned
the best of things first.
“It’s over,” Dane reminded him, instead of saying what he wanted to say, for fear of sounding
patronizing. “Your mother wouldn’t even know your face. She’ll depend on the kindness of strangers until
she dies. You nearly killed your father from hundreds of miles away. You could do it again.” Dane nudged
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Lindsay under the chin with a knuckle, making Lindsay open his eyes. “Your life now. Say what you
need.”
Lindsay hesitated for a long moment. “You.”
Dane was a tired, hurt animal, but the answer made him smile, made him warm in places he hadn’t
remembered he could be warm. He should have told Lindsay to pick something better, something more
useful, something more beautiful, something less broken. He couldn’t. What he wanted wasn’t worth
considering here, but he wanted this. “Then you’ll have me.” He pulled Lindsay to him and kissed
Lindsay’s soft mouth.
Resting his hands against Dane’s chest, Lindsay opened up to the kiss, yielding so easily. “I’m sorry,”
he whispered when he could speak, his lips warm against Dane’s.
“I can’t always be there to make sure you survive your mistakes. Or mine.” Dane scooped Lindsay up
again and started walking. “If you’re sorry, make smaller mistakes. So will I. Okay?”
Lindsay nodded, snuggling up against Dane’s chest. “I’ll try,” he promised.
“You’re a fast learner.” Dane laughed quietly. He could smell Lindsay’s sweetness under the muck
and smoke and the musk of other men. “But I might have to put you over my knee if you don’t hurry up.”
“No, thank you,” Lindsay muttered, stretching up to butt his nose against Dane’s chin. “I won’t run
away from you again.”
“Good.” Dane turned up a street that was better lit and they passed people who gave them odd looks.
“We’ll get a cab soon,” he promised. “Get you back to the hotel and you’ll feel better.”
Lindsay tucked his head against Dane’s shoulder, closing his eyes again. Nothing hurt anymore.
Dane’s blood bubbled with the satisfaction, however muted, of a kill, and the pure pleasure of being
claimed. He could have walked the whole way back without a second thought except that he didn’t want to
make Lindsay wait to get clean. It wasn’t only concern for the grubby little bu