Page 43 of Sinful Pride
The second realization I had was I might have been missing out. See, I was coming to quite like Szymon, Kasia, and Marzena. And I had enough self awareness to know our friendship wouldn’t be able to blossom as it did if I took one or all of them to bed and then tried to distance myself from them if they asked for a repetition. How many times did I interpret a casual invitation to hang out to have an attached ultimatum of, ‘yes, that means I want more sex and I won’t take no for an answer’? My Polish friends had a saying ‘dmuchac na zimne’ which translated more or less to “blow onto something already cold” and meant that it didn’t hurt to be overtly cautious… but I wondered if I wasn’t doing myself a disservice by keeping everyone at arms length.
When I told my three new friends I wasn’t interested, it closed one path but opened another.
“I think I want to pursue someone,” I told them, while staring at the depths of a full glass of craft beer in my hand.
“Woo-hoo! Go for it!” Kasia shouted enthusiastically.
Marzena lifted an eyebrow at me, and Szymon planted a sharp elbow in my ribs. “Tell us about them!”
“He is… shy and determined. Pretty… though he won’t acknowledge that. It’s so frustrating,” I said.
“Well, did you tell him he’s pretty?” Kasia asked.
“Yes, many times.”
“Did you show him he’s pretty?” Szymon asked with a leer.
“I did,” I said primly. “But he still thinks of himself as plain and uninteresting. And here I am, not being able to think of anything else.” I thunked my head against the back of the booth with a sigh.
“That sucks, man, but I’m sure you can get through to him.” Szymon patted my arm comfortingly.
“Making someone change the view they have of themselves is hard,” Marzena said seriously. “Be patient with him.”
“I will,” I said. “I only hope he is going to be patient with me.”
Beelzebub
We stared at each other as if we were in the middle of a battlefield. Raphael measured me with his stare, then frowned.
“You already know how I did, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” I responded with a raised eyebrow. “What? Did you think I would just believe whatever you said? Lying isn’t above angels. As the master of espionage, I know that better than anyone else. But I’m surprised that you noticed the little helpers which reported back to me.”
“I didn’t,” Raphael sighed. “I realized you spied on me when I saw that expression on your face.”
“What? This one?” I pointed at my face, trying to look the most innocent I could.
Raphael shuddered.
“Stop it. That’s giving me the creeps. That kind of expression has no place on your face. Just tell it to me straight. What’s the verdict? Do you think I can keep it in my pants for long enough to give a relationship with Tirael a go?”
“To my astonishment, it seems so.”
“What about you, then? I did not have anyone spy on you.”
“Why? Of course I have restrained myself.”
“I was going to believe you, but now you are making me worried,” Raphael responded to my tone. “How can I be sure that you are telling the truth?”
“Well, you just have to trust me… or check one of my favorite illegal fighting pits. They threw me out for getting too violent.”
“That isn’t exactly reassuring, you know that, right?”
“You don’t need reassurance. You need to believe that I have been channeling my dark instincts into something other than pleasant torture in the bedroom.” Raphael’s lips thinned, but in the end he nodded sharply, choosing to put his trust in me. “What a lovable fool.” I clapped my hands together. “Thus, the first stage is completed.”
“Last time you mentioned something about a plan?”
“Indeed, I did. I believe to achieve our goal of having our own little Tirael to do with as we please, we need to work in three stages. And in the end, I believe we will have his heart.”