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“Why’s that?”

Cassian twisted in his arms until he was facing Ruari, chin tilted up, his breath warm on Ruari’s skin. “I’ve been busy with our own love story,” he said. “I don’t need to watch other people fall in love on telly when I’m doing it myself. That would be like eating a croissant that someone had already chewed up.”

Ruari kissed his forehead, then his nose, then the corner of his mouth. Cassian batted at his chest. “I like Euphoria because it’s not like my real life at all.” Cassian licked the sugary coating off a cola bottle, and Ruari’s restraint evaporated.

He nipped the sweet right out of Cassian’s fingers with his teeth.

“Ruari!” Cassian’s hand flew to his mouth as though he’d been robbed at gunpoint. “That was my last cola bottle!”

Ruari pressed Cassian down into the mattress, bracketing the omega’s narrow frame between his forearms, and kissed him.

“I want to watch my show,” Cassian grumbled.

“No you don’t. You were fast-forwarding most of it.”

Cassian’s protest dissolved into a hum as Ruari kissed the hinge of his jaw, then his throat. He arched up to press flush against the thickening jut of Ruari’s cock through his joggers.

They’d been at this for weeks now. Kissing in the bakery after close, kissing on the sofa while Cassian’s shows played unwatched behind them, kissing in Ruari’s bed while it got dark outside. Ruari’s hands knew the dip of Cassian’s waist and the ridge of his hip bones. The noise Cassian made when Ruari kissed the spot behind his ear, a breathy little catch, went straight to his cock.

He wanted inside him so badly it hurt. The ache of it lived low in his gut, surging every time Cassian moved, and the sweet smell of his slick cut through everything else in the room. Ruari spent every one of these evenings with his teeth clenched and his hands deliberately above the waist, holding himself at a line he refused to cross until Cassian was ready to invite him over it.

Every night, the omega left. He tied his trainers in Ruari’s doorway, as Ruari resisted the urge to drag him back inside by the waistband. The second the door closed, Ruari had his hand down his joggers before he’d made it to the bedroom.

Tonight, Cassian lay on Ruari’s chest. “Ruari?”

“Mm.”

“I want to stay tonight.” He tilted his chin up so that it rested on Ruari’s shoulder.

“Yeah?”

Cassian’s nose brushed Ruari’s throat as he nuzzled in.

“Then you stay.”

Cassian reached for the hard length of him straining through his joggers. He poked it with one finger, then again, like he was testing whether a loaf had proved properly.

“Show me what you want, baby.” Ruari kept his voice low, his mouth on Cassian’s hair. “Whatever it is. I’ll follow you.”

A high flush climbed Cassian’s cheeks. He ducked his head.

“Can’t do anything until you show me,” Ruari said. “I want to take care of you so badly, Cass, and I need you to be very clear with me about how you want it.”

Cassian was quiet for long enough that Ruari almost told him that they should just watch another episode. There was no rush, and no version of this night that disappointed him as long as Cassian was in it. Then Cassian pushed his joggers down over his hips, lifting his arse off the mattress to work the fabric past his thighs, then his pants after them. His cock sat small and flushed on his stomach.

He took Ruari’s wrist and guided it down past the soft skin of his inner thigh, until Ruari’s palm cupped the cleft of his arse. Slick clung to his fingers the instant they made contact, thick and hot, soaking through to the sheets beneath them.

“There,” Cassian whispered, and his hips rocked forward into Ruari’s touch.

Ruari stroked his thumb across Cassian’s slick, swollen rim, and the omega’s whole body arched into the touch, his thighs falling open for Ruari.

He eased his thumb inside, and Cassian went rigid under him. His breath stopped. His thighs locked against Ruari’s arm. Ruari kept his hand exactly where it was and waited. After a moment Cassian’s chest rose again, and his body softened around the intrusion, drawing Ruari in with a slick, greedy pull. He worked his thumb sideways in a slow back-and-forth along the inner wall. The omega’s lips parted, and he sighed.

That was all Cassian did, let out a contented little breath, and yet Ruari was about to come right in his pants like a teenager in the back row of a cinema, just from the clench of Cassian’s body around him.

Ruari withdrew and kicked at his joggers. One leg caught around his ankle, requiring a second kick and a full-body twist that nearly sent him off the edge of the mattress.

His cock sprang free, thick and dark, the veins standing out in hard relief along the shaft. Cassian’s eyes went wide. His gaze tracked down the length of it, and then he wrapped his hand around it.