“I’m learning you too,” admitted Ángel.

“There would be a process of learning between any lovers. It would be easier with a member of my own species, but . . . How do I explain? Right now you do not play the mandolin very well. Someday you will, but you need to learn it. It takes time for the music to be good. That is all.”

“I’m the mandolin in this scenario?”

“Ah, it’s not a good metaphor. You are my lover.” Oberon’s voice was unusually hesitant, though his face was unchanged. “And I am yours. Your skin changes when you are near me, and mine changes when I am near you, and soon—if we go on like this—we will have created a new kind of music that no one else will be able to hear. A new language that no one else will know.”

“Oberon, I just—” said Ángel, his chest tight with anxiety, “I just want you to know that I’m here. I’m here for you, for however long you need me. Not because of what my dad did, or because of the contract I signed, but because I want to be. I want to be what you need. Even though I’m not, I’ll try. You can trust me to always be here and to always try, okay? I promise.” He gulped. “So you don’t have to say things like that.”

“Thank you,” said Oberon, his tone warm, his skin fragrant, like jasmine and browned butter. “Oh, thank you. I’m happy for that, Ángel, truly. But how can you not understand? You’ve touched me. You know that I desire you. You are desirable. I admire you because you are admirable. I call you beloved because I love you.”

Ángel’s breath was hot in his lungs.

Oberon could feel it, surely: his bewilderment, his anxiety, his disbelief. He went on, “I promise you. Once we have learned each other, Ángel, and changed each other, and grown together, I will be yours, and you will be mine, in a way that no one else will ever know or understand. We are a new thing in the universe, and I love it. You are precious to me. I love you and I always will.”

But Ángel didn’t believe him, and Oberon clearly knew it.

“You’re angry?” he asked. “But . . . No, you’re not angry. You’re afraid. I don’t understand why you’re afraid.”

“Well, you don’t know me very well.”

Because this was, seriously, just an epic misunderstanding. It had to be. A failure to communicate of magical proportions. Born of desperation and sex and loneliness-gone-crazy. A basic inability to understand.

No one loved Ángel, not really. Not once they got to know him. And the idea that he could be transformed by Oberon’s love into something lovable . . . permanently changed, unfit for anything or anyone else . . .