A flush stole into the bronze of Damen's cheeks. "You're not so bad yourself, it turns out." He'd made so many assumptions about Laurent over the past weeks, even more over the last few days. Seeing him like this gave Damen hope that he had not chosen unwisely at all.

The face that tilted down towards Laurent's betrayed how much that invitation meant to him. Damen swallowed hard, opened his mouth to say something, closed it suddenly, and simply nodded once. His hand curled around Laurent's face and tipped it at an angle towards his own. Some things just didn't need talking about.

The touch of his lips was amazingly gentle. One might have thought that, given permission, Damen would have kissed like a charioteer racing through the desert. One would be wrong. His mouth moved whisper-light across Laurent's, half-chaste, and yet the softness itself was a kind of suggestion, like velvet brushing bare skin.