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Auris chuckled and took a step closer. “My sweet Ethan, I didn’t even put any effort into it.” He ran his thumb over my throat and raised one eyebrow in question.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

He nodded. “Would you mind if I touched myself? While I taste you?”

I sucked in a sharp lungful of air. A man getting off while he was biting me shouldn’t be a turn-on, and yet…

“That’s fine.” My voice sounded rough. “Better hurry. We’ve already wasted so much water.”

Auris went very, very still for five seconds. I counted. At the four second mark, I tilted my head to the side, and he descended. I could practically feel the delicious spike of adrenaline when he bit down. The pain was incredibly sharp, much more so than it had been the first time he had done this.

The lightheadedness brought black spots that danced in front of my eyes, and my arms and legs felt funny. It wasn’t uncomfortable though, and a part of me liked this. That part took even more note when Auris started jerking himself off, his breath coming fast against the skin of my neck, his powerful body tense against mine.

I could feel his teeth inside me, my blood trickling into his mouth, and every few seconds, he swallowed. I went soft, clinging to him while he held me with unmovable strength, trembling with his own rapidly building pleasure.

My partners lying on top of me was something I had always liked, but it wasn’t anywhere near as…satisfying? Calming? Comforting? As this was. Through the ebbing pain of the bite, I moaned, my breath twisting the steam from the shower into lazy eddies.

Auris’s release hit my stomach, a streak of warmth under the already warming water. He kissed me, steadied me, rinsed the mess away, and finally turned the water off.

By the time I was coherent again, I was looking up at the bedroom ceiling, wrapped in a bathrobe with a towel twisted around my damp hair.

“That was really nice.” I blinked up at Auris, who was bent over me and in the process of placing a Band-Aid on my neck.

“It was?” He sounded uncertain.

“It was. I want to do that again.”

“Not for a while, and only if you can show me that you can get up and feed yourself.”

I groaned. “I’m perfectly capable of feeding myself. But you have to kiss me first.”

“Is that so?” The corners of his lips quirked upward. He was smoothing out the Band-Aid; a self-soothing gesture on his part more than a necessity.

“Oh yes. It’s a rule. After shower sex, you need to do everything I say.”

Auris chuckled. “Sweet Ethan, what did I tell you about being bad?”

“That I’m really good at it?”

He lifted his fingers away from my neck at last. “I love you, my sweet.”

We kissed some more. Then we accidentally spent another half hour or so in bed.

14

Eva was a Gen Z artistic type with short hair dyed platinum blonde and featuring blue and green highlights. She liked wearing overalls and had an impressive tattoo sleeve along with a nose piercing that was hidden by her surgical mask. She ran the vacuum across the living room carpet as if said carpet had personally offended her.

“Oh, boy,” I mumbled and let Auris take the lead.

When Eva saw him, she turned off the vacuum. I could always tell when she smiled, because it reached her eyes. The laugh lines had taken a day off today.

“Good morning.” She frowned. “Your guest is in the kitchen. I made buckwheat waffles with spicy pear jam and cream. I’ll go make fresh for you.”

I loved her accent. Eva wasn’t as intent on getting Auris to “put a ring on it” as Gloria had been. Her approach was simply to treat us as a couple; nothing temporary about us belonging together.

She was also fun to talk to, she knew the best places to go to in Prague—once they all reopened. She’d told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to take my lazy behind and my camera to Letna Park. She’d actually made a list of all the Brutalist architecture to photograph on my way, and she was clear that I needed to end my trip at the seventy-five-foot metronome in the park, or maybe at the beer garden. It was “up to me,” she’d said, but her tone of voice had strongly implied a high opinion of the beer garden, or at least of drinking beer. I didn’t like that Charlie had pissed her off so much.

I cleared my throat. “That would be lovely, but I can⁠—”