“No,” he said again, quietly. “But you . . . In your culture, a kiss is tremendously significant. You have stories and songs of transformative kisses that are thousands of years old. Jesus was betrayed with a kiss. Animals transmuted into men by kisses. The dead awakened. The sick cured. Kisses that symbolize every kind of love. Kissing is of great consequence to you. I . . .” he hesitated, his eyes coming back to Ángel’s. “I’ve never done it.”

The room was dim; Oberon’s eyes were the color of moss, dark, his pupils wide.

Ángel pressed his lips together against the smile that threatened to stretch across his face. “I guess . . . if you don’t get it right, there’ll be a really scathing paragraph about it on your Wikipedia page.” He bumped Oberon’s nose with his. “Which would reflect badly on the Otherworld forever. Or I might leave a negative review on Yelp. One star. Would not kiss again.”

They gazed at each other for a moment, and then Oberon, still cupping Ángel’s skull, leaned up and kissed him on the mouth. A sweet kiss, a meeting of tingling lips, a little pull. A little caress.

Ángel opened his eyes. Oberon was watching.

“That was nice,” he whispered, a smile curling one side of his mouth.

“It was?”

“Yeah. Very.” He inched farther up Oberon’s body, elbows on either side of his head. “Close your eyes this time.”

He tilted his head and slanted his mouth over Oberon’s.

Teaching the cultural envoy from the Otherworld to French kiss was possibly the greatest idea he’d ever had. His tongue asked for permission to enter, and when he got it, the thrill that ran through his body almost made him groan aloud. If Oberon’s smell was an intoxicant and his touch a stimulant, the taste of his mouth was like a shot of white rum—shocking and toe-curlingly good. Oberon allowed Ángel to explore him, tease him, lips and breath, a nip of teeth. The hot slide of their tongues.

Oberon had no bad habits to unlearn, and if he didn’t know how to kiss, he sure as hell knew something about foreplay. He perfectly gauged Ángel’s responses, and when he began to kiss Ángel back, there was nothing tentative or awkward about it. He clasped Ángel’s face and pressed Ángel’s mouth open, the penetration of his tongue slow and deep, blood-hot and hungry.

Then he rolled Ángel over onto his back, covered his body with his own, and Ángel went from playfully teaching him what he liked to swimming in sensation, drowning in the hot velvet friction of Oberon’s mouth. He made a sound like a whimper as Oberon took possession of his mouth; his arms, around Oberon’s shoulders, went lax, his whole body loose and welcoming. Oberon kissed him, and kissed him, and all Ángel’s pathetic defenses crumbled into nothing.

He was such a total bottom.