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“The truth is,” he said, and I heard him open the bottle of lube, “I imagined you as whatever it was I desired at the time. Longing changed according to my moods, and in my early days, I wouldn’t always know my moods or my longings. You’re tense, Ethan.”

I was. Without his weight, with one leg raised and his fingers exploring, I felt unmoored. “I want this. I do.”

“So let me inside you. Let me have you and hold you.” His fingers wandered over my skin as if I were a map he was reading. He paused to play with my balls until they were coated in lube. “Everyone reacts differently to a compliment, but I love your body, wholesome or not. You are soft and flexible. I like the taste of your skin. I like the sound of your laughter and that look you get when you want to photograph something.”

“I get a look?”

He chuckled. “Oh yes. It’s like your eyes are telling the rest of the world to take a number and wait its turn. A fire ignites inside of you, and you don’t care if anyone watches, you just care that you get to burn. It’s a sight to behold.”

“Oh. That’s nice. I know I can get single-minded about that kind of thing, but I’m glad you don’t mind it.”

He leaned closer. “I love it as I love everything about you.”

He opened me with a single finger, sliding right in, then finding a rhythm, a movement that made it so he had to tighten his grip on my leg.

My mouth had fallen open. “My… Did you like my blood?”

If it shocked him, he didn’t show it in any way I noticed. “I liked it very much.”

“You can have it again.”

There was no time to mull the words over, to consider them, not when he carefully continued stretching me for him, slow and methodical, adding lube as he went.

“Look at me.” His tone wasn’t a command, but it wasn’t a request either. “Do you mean it?”

“Yes.”

His mouth fell open a fraction. He was my fae prince, made from a dream that turned real. With him I had a mythical connection, love at first sight, the promise of happily ever after bound up in one person. His idea of a prince on a pretty horse and my idea of a faerie prince weren’t that different, after all. But I was pretty sure I’d gotten the better deal out of this prophecy, if that was even as real as Auris had made it sound.

He said, “I’ll have you now,” then pulled out of me, lifted both my legs over his arms, and proved that this had been one of my better decisions of the night.

The way he moved that night in front of the fire is one of those memories for me that sit in your brain like engravings on metal. I remember all of it, the firelight slithering over his face, his mouth going slack, his upper body moving toward mine like stars falling into each other and birthing light.

Our eyes remained bound while our bodies were that close, and I held on to him, held him close, each thrust full of fire and color, the strobing brightness of a camera flash. It felt so good to have him inside me.

He was still thrusting when I spilled. There was something here that made me love this scene, Auris, powerful yet caring, but setting the pace. Taking me. And he decided the how, the speed of it. This was a kind of caretaking, and allowing it was reprieve as much as it was pleasure.

“Yes, good. So pretty,” he murmured when my cock jerked, untouched but stimulated between our bodies. “So messy, but what a pretty mess it is. Give me your neck. If you mean it, show me, and let me have your neck.”

I bit my bottom lip, and with pleasure still saturating my blood, I tilted my head up and to the side. I offered myself to him all over again.

“I’m yours.” I sounded breathy, spent, but I had no doubt he could hear me.

With low moans tearing from his lips, Auris went harder, buried a hand in my hair, and offered up a handful of bruising thrusts. I could feel him inside, his release, the warmth, all of it. Then I felt his teeth break my skin, the pain sharp in the very best of ways.

He drank little, at least as far as I could tell, though with the afterglow still warming me, it was enough to make me feel lightheaded. I shouldn’t have liked that as much as I did.

When he lifted his mouth off me, I was a step removed from what was happening, focused on him and on the closeness we still shared. He circled my neck where he had bitten it with a finger, then kissed me there.

“Look at me, Ethan.”

I turned my head. It took a lot of effort, but he seemed satisfied with whatever he was seeing and let me be, sinking down to lie mostly on top of me just the way I liked.

At that point, I wasn’t sure which words would have suited the situation, our tangle of limbs, the panting breaths slicking over damp skin. I wanted to burrow into him. His arms tightening around me were more than welcome. I needed them, needed the anchor of them.

It settled in then, the thing he’d been wanting me to understand. I was not who I had been a month ago. I would never again be who I had been then. I didn’t know yet whether this new person was someone I liked or not, but this was me now: loved and sheltered, dark dreams haunting me if I let them, brightness and warmth in my lover’s arms an easy way to keep the darkness at bay.

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