Page 22 of Sinful Crimes for the Artistically Inclined
And he’d thought he was finally in with a chance. But apparently not.
Joe and his God. What chance could Percy ever stand against that?
But then he hadn’t expected Joe to react like this either.
“I’m sorry.” Percy brought his sword down on the shoulder of a headless skeleton, cracking the mass to the floor. “Have I done my dash with the whole sex thing, or is that still on the table?”
Joe, already a little red with exertion, turned positively scarlet. He made no more answer than to wield his sledgehammer with twice the force, which made Percy twice as regretful he’d fucked up.
Percy suggested, “I can do angry sex, if you’d like? Just cold, nasty, angry sex. That’s fine by me.”
Joe dropped his sledgehammer and punched a skull off some being’s spinal column.
Why did he have to be so impossibly hot? Muscles rippling everywhere. “You can just drop by for a lesson in head if that would be agreeable to you? Just fuck my mouth until you work it all out.”
Joe turned sharply towards Percy. “How was I so wrong about you?” He flung an elbow back into an encroaching skeletal arm.
Percy flipped a whole corpse, still with a little flesh on it, over his shoulder and onto the floor. “I’ll be honest, Joe, you’re kind of making me feel like shit right now. I didn’t mean for things to get out of hand.” He stamped down on the chest of the thing, got his foot stuck in the cavity, but managed to rip an arm up, taking a hand clean off. He considered making the obvious joke as the thing flapped about in his grip, but decided against it.
Joe took up his sword again. “That’s you all over, isn’t it?” He sliced a corpse across the middle. “Didn’t mean to be so sexy.” He chopped an arm off another. “Didn’t mean to lead me on.” He rammed the hilt into a third. “Didn’t mean to get into this whole mess.”
“Lead you on?” Percy chopped the legs off an assailant just below the knee. “I’d say that’s the pot calling the kettle black. You don’t tie a man’s hands to the bed like that, fuck him dry, and expect him to forget it overnight.”
“You don’t fuck a virgin priest and do—do—do all those things you did, and not expect that to mean anything!” The last skeleton was dispatched by Joe’s blade tripping it up, followed by his boot flattening its skull to powder.
Percy glared around at the broken and silent skeletons, pieces everywhere, twitching quietly on the floor. “So we had a good night. We’re on the same page. Why are you angry at me? I didn’t mean to catch feelings and I apologise. I’ll gostraight back to the cold prick I’ve always been if you just stop with this bullshit.”
“What?” Joe verily snapped the word out, and Percy was even more taken aback, becoming a little irate with it.
In one long, fast and sarcastic tirade, he vomited out, “I don’t like you at all. Is that better? I can’t stand strong jaws and muscles as it goes. I don’t like your hair and your eyes. You’re too sweet for my liking. Too kind. Too fucking brave and arguably too responsible, making us come down here to slay these things so I don’t get killed in my sleep. And on top of it all, I hate that you came to my house and seduced me in the middle of a stormy night, because I don’t find grand gestures remotely compelling. In fact, you’re not at all my type?—”
Percy’s speech was cut short by Joe’s lips crashing into his. Joe wrapped his hand around the back of his neck, fingers threaded through the base of his hair, sending a shockwave of delicious tingles down his spine. “What did you say?”
Percy dipped his forehead to Joe’s as he caught his breath. “What answer’s going to get me more of that?”
Joe laughed. Such a gorgeous sound that smoothed over every frazzled wire of Percy’s nerves. “You said… feelings?”
“The love thing was too subtle?”
Joe pulled back, gesticulating around Percy’s underground tunnel with his beautiful hands, shouting, “You did that snack thing!”
“I was trying not to pressure you!” Percy shouted back. “You said you didn’t want a boyfriend!”
“You saidyoudidn’t want a boyfriend!”
“I lied!”
“Ilied!”
“So?”
“So…”
The longer the quiet stretched, the more ridiculous it felt to both of them, but Joe wasn’t about to say it, so Percy forcedhimself out onto that plank. “Joe, would you please be my boyfriend?”
He gave a nonchalant shrug of one shoulder. “Okay, yes. Since you asked so nicely.”
“I take it bac—” This kiss was the kind of kiss that very quickly turned from sweet to heated. The kind of kiss that had them both, lips locked, retreating for the ladder to go directly to bed to seal the deal. And so they did. And some time later, still covered in bone dust on Percy’s just-changed sheets, the two rolled into each other’s arms and basked in their post-sex haze, as boyfriends. It was the moment Percy craved when he’d woken up without Joe. And he held on that much tighter, until the endorphins slowly ebbed away, and yet again, miserable reality started to claw its way back through the temporary shield.
