It wasn’t as though Percy didn’t feel bad about kissing Anna earlier in the evening. She was his brother’s girlfriend, after all. Not that he thought his brother would mind, and Anna obviously didn’t, which is why he’d done it.
But what he kept coming back to was the look in Joe’s eyes when he walked in on them.
Shock—only natural.
Outrage—perfectly reasonable.
But he had also looked… sad. Broken-hearted, even. Betrayed. As though Percy had let him down somehow.
And now, sitting on his leather couch, head lying back, staring at the ceiling with an untouched glass of scotch in his hand, Percy’s insides churned and twisted, and he saw only Joe.
That look on his face.
How he wished he could take it back.
But why? What right did Joe have to make him feel that way? Or to feel any of whatever feelings he was feeling at the time that made him make Percy feel like he was feeling now?
Joe wasn’t only beautiful—and he wasreally fucking beautiful, with his hazelnut curls and tan skin and golden eyes—he wasalso sweet. Really sweet. He knew about demons and ghosts and hell hounds and the lot of it. And he kept being near Percy. He kept bumping into him, kept sliding his goddamn hips right up against Percy’s every time he sat down next to him. He kept fluttering those gorgeous eyelashes like a siren, and Percy couldn’t get Joe out of his head.
But Joe was a priest. Part of the fucking priesthood that had been ruining beautiful Italian men for the world since day fucking dot.
Joe was off limits.
Totally out of reach.
Permanently.
He had his God and his life of celibacy, and he chose that daily over Percy, when Percy had made it perfectly clear he would have liked to get to know him properly.
Biblically.
He’d seen Joe naked, that one time he accidentally came across him taking a shower. Joe had no idea, of course, but since then, the image had chased Percy like a vengeful spirit.
Joe’s back was all muscle, his thighs thick, his ass so pert it begged to be lifted with two grasping hands, squeezing the flesh tight, pulling him wide open, and?—
Percy felt his dick getting hard at the thought.
No. Not again. He didn’t want to wank over Joe. Well, not unless he could literally wank over Joe. Not unless Joe was about to be cloaked in ribbons of his cum, his pretty mouth dripping, begging?—
Three hard knocks fell upon Percy’s front door, followed by a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder.
Percy’s handsome lip curled with hateful disdain. He placed his scotch down and he took his dagger up.
Percy lived in an old church, at the end of a long lane, by an ancient and disused graveyard. No one came that way by chance at half past two in the early morning of a rainy night.
Everyone he loved and cared about was tucked up safe in bed, so it was, undoubtedly, one of the many people who wanted him dead. Or wanted to steal from him. Or possibly some sort of supernatural something…
The absolute fuckers.
Whoever it was, they were about to get a very nasty surprise.
He thrust open the door, intent on slitting the throat of whoever had the gall to think they could get one over on him, and it remains a testament to Percy’s quick reflexes that Joe Bruno didn’t die on his doorstep that very night.
Lightning blazed about him where he stood in the rain, his priests’ vestments soaked through, the rings of curling hair black and dripping down his lovely cheeks, his pretty lips parted, breathing deeply, chest heaving.
“Joe…”
Strong hands gripped Percy’s shirt, shoved him back against the wall, and Joe’s pale and icy mouth took Percy’s, warm and soft and yielding.
