Elias's breath caught halfway in his chest, stalled between denial and surrender. The room pressed in, thick with the weight of everything unspoken, the taste of Victor's pheromones heavy in the back of his throat. His fingers, curled in the sheets, twitched once. A kiss. He offered himself to help Victor when his ether channels were shimmering and Victor refused it.
Victor's arm tightened slightly, just enough for Elias to feel the weight of him, flesh and heat pressing along his spine. The air was humid with pheromones now, almost liquid in its intensity, and even Elias, whose body had almost never reacted to pheromones before, was beginning to tremble beneath the weight of it.
"I didn't forget," Victor murmured, his mouth close to the shell of Elias's ear again, the words soft but unmistakably possessive. "You said it, and I listened."
