Summary: A follow up piece to Confessions, when the group is back on the airship and Kenna and Diavolos just want to have some time alone.
Jackson comes to get them around daybreak. Diavolos’ hair is mussed as he steps out of the tent, yawning and fastening his sword belt on. It’s strangely adorable, seeing him all sleep-rumpled, though she has a feeling he wouldn’t particularly like being called ‘adorable’. Kenna briefly lets herself think about waking up next to him, what it would feel like to have his arms around his and his lips pressed against her skin, his voice gravelly with sleep, then shakes her head, clearing her thoughts.
Diavolos smirks at her when she keeps stealing glances at him as they take the tent down, but instead of hurriedly looking away, she just grins back. It sends a look of amusement across his face, but she doesn’t miss the way he keeps glancing at her too, his gaze lingering.
Once they’re on the airship, Kenna finally realizes just how exhausted she is, and excuses herself to her quarters once she’s checked in with everyone else. The sheets are blissfully cool against her skin as she drops into her bed, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep almost immediately. When she wakes later, the sky is just starting to turn dark outside her window. Kenna is surprised how long and how heavily she slept, given that she’s usually a light sleeper. She climbs down the ladder to her room, finding everyone on the bridge. The tension that had been so thick on the way to Aurelia seems less palpable, much to Kenna’s pleasant surprise. Everyone is lounging comfortably, drinks in hand, Whitlock manning the ship. Hex is sitting silently not far from him.
“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” Dom teases her, handing her a glass.
She smiles at how, well, normal he looks, given what’s happened to him. Kenna punches his arm playfully, taking the drink.
“It’s good to see…you,” she says emphatically, sitting next to him.
“It’s good to be me,” he sighs, taking a long drink.
She visits with Dom for a few minutes, until Sei sternly reminds him he’s not supposed to be drinking with the herbs Annelyse gave him, and he starts protesting and giving her a hard time.
Kenna laughs and makes her way over to Diavolos, who raises his glass in a cheers.
“Did you finally manage to sleep, Your Majesty?” he asks her with that damnable smug grin.
She looks at him pointedly as she takes a drink. “I did.”
“So my distractibility only lasts so long. I’ll have to work on that,” he muses, and Kenna can’t help but laugh.
“You do that.”
Despite what he says, Diavolos still manages to be plenty distracting. She watches his throat work as swallows his drink, the way his fingers curl around the glass, the shift of his muscles as he moves. She knows he notices by the way he keeps smirking at her and purposely brushing his arm and his hand against hers. The conversation between them flows easily, and she loses all track of time as the sky grows black outside the airship. At one point, Kenna asks him if he’s looking forward to getting back to Lykos.
Diavolos shrugs noncommittally. “My father will have a thousand questions. Zenobia will probably complain that I didn’t try and steal her any jewelry or gold.”
Kenna feels a little guilty for bringing it up, knowing now how rough his childhood was.
Diavolos turns to her, his eyes flickering to her lips so briefly that she wonders if she imagined it. “Though I am looking forward to the company this time,” he says in a low voice.
“I much prefer your company to your father’s and Zenobia’s,” she agrees, trying to keep her voice steady.
Kenna doesn’t realize how late it is until everyone starts heading off to bed, and she finds herself disappointed when Diavolos rises. He holds a hand out to her, and Kenna smiles as he easily pulls her upright. His fingers are slightly rough, from years in battle, she supposes, and it sends a slight shiver through her, thinking about his touch against her bare skin.
When they stop off at the ladder to her room, she finds herself itching to touch him, to invite him up with her. He’s standing close enough that she could kiss him again, that she can feel the heat radiating off of him.
“Come up?” she finds herself asking.
The intense look in his eyes as he watches her and the press of his lips to the back of her hand gives her the answer and makes her flush. Her lips are on his as soon as they’re in her room, her fingers gripping his collar. Diavolos lifts her effortlessly, her legs going around his waist as he presses her against the wall.
“Hells, Kenna,” he growls, yanking away and kissing her neck. “I would have kissed you like this right on the bridge if there hadn’t been so many damn people around.”
Kenna groans, sucking in a breath as he sucks at her sensitive skin.
“You can’t-“ she gasps as he nips at her throat “-leave any marks.”
“Can’t I?” he asks, sinking his teeth in just slightly.
She almost doesn’t say it again as his lips and his teeth find all of the sensitive spots across her throat, just below her ear, the arch where her neck and shoulder meet, but she doesn’t need Jackson and Dom seeing these marks tomorrow. And she really doesn’t need Luther seeing them, even if he wouldn’t know they came from Diavolos, so she retaliates by tightening her legs. “No,” she gasps.
Diavolos squeezes her thighs and pulls back, looking at her like it’s taking all of his self-control to stop. It makes her impatient as she kisses up his jawline and tugs at his hair.
“I want you,” she breathes in his ear.
He drops her onto the bed and she immediately yanks him down, fumbling with the fasteners on his shirt. Diavolos chuckles, a low, delicious sound that vibrates against her. She gets his shirt undone, humming appreciatively as she pushes it off and runs her hands over his bare chest, then nudges him to roll over. Diavolos grins up at her, his eyes glittering as she straddles him and he slides his hands up her thighs and around her back. A smile spreads across her face as she leans down, teasing her tongue over his neck and collarbones, then down his chest. His hands tangle in her hair as she kisses her way down his stomach, a quiet curse leaving his mouth.
She’s reaching for the tie on his pants when the airship suddenly drops and jerks to the left. The sudden motion nearly throws them off the bed, Diavolos just barely managing to grab her around the waist and keep her pressed against him.
“Oof.” Diavolos grunts as the airship suddenly jerks again and this time they roll out of the bed and hit the floor with a hard thud. He rolls them to the side as her desk chair suddenly topples over near them.
“I’ll go see what’s going on,” Kenna tells Diavolos once they get upright, crawling over to the door and gripping the handle as the airship tilts sharply.
“It’s probably just turbulence,” Diavolos reassures her, grumbling and grabbing the bed frame as the airship drops yet again. “You’re better off staying here and waiting it out.”
Kenna snorts out a laugh as he shoots a suggestive grin at her. “I’ll be right back. Stay here?”
“Unless I roll through your door, I’m not planning on going anywhere.”
When she finally makes it to the bridge, Whitlock assures her the lurching and dropping are indeed just turbulence, and should pass soon. She inches her way back to her room, and sure enough, the turbulence has stopped by the time she gets back up the ladder. Kenna looks at Diavolos in amusement, the way he’s so casually sprawled out on her bed, hands behind his head, eyes closed. He cracks them open as she lowers the door closed.
“You look comfortable,” Kenna teases him.
“Not quite,” he replies, snagging her around the waist and pulling her down to the bed.
“Much better,” Diavolos rumbles, hovering over her, kissing and biting across her throat.
Kenna sighs, burying her fingers in his dark hair, arching up into him as he pulls her shirt down to bite at her collarbone. She’s reaching for his pants again when she faintly hears someone shout her name below the door. It sounds like Whitlock.
“Oh, hells,” Diavolos grumbles, dropping his head against her shoulder.
It really doesn’t amuse her, but she huffs out a laugh anyway, at their apparent penchant for poor timing and being interrupted. She pushes Diavolos off and climbs back out of bed, promising him, “I’ll be back” as she straightens her clothes out.
Diavolos grins slowly. “I’ll still be here.”
The way he looks at her makes her suck in a breath, heat flooding through her. It’s enough to make her half-consider pretending she didn’t hear anything, until Whitlock calls her name again.
She flashes a smile at Diavolos as she reaches for the door handle. “Maybe next time we won’t be interrupted.”