But he didn’t say it. Because what would he do if Oberon refused his ultimatum? Make good on his threat to walk away from this mansion? Put on his new coat and try to hitch a ride in the dark through the mountains? He wouldn’t even know which direction to go. And then what?

He shook his head, refusing to commit either way.

Oberon’s voice went very soft, sweet-toned, as he asked, “Then will you come to my room tonight?”

What was Oberon actually asking? Did he want them to sleep together? Or to sleep together? For a split second he imagined himself agreeing to join Oberon in that soft pile of blankets and duvets. Imagined what might happen next. He glanced into Oberon’s mask-like face, the lustrous but empty green eyes, and felt himself shiver.

“No, Oberon.”

In the dream, the cultural envoy from the Otherworld was chasing Ángel across the flat sand at Neptune Beach, not far from where he’d grown up. He fled into the surf, but running in knee-deep water slowed him down, and he couldn’t run or escape or scream. Oberon pounced on him like a lion, a full-body tackle that drove Ángel down into the water. Falling, drowning, he awakened with a gasp. It took him a moment to remember where he was, and why he was under the bed.

Even disoriented from the dream, Ángel found that he was fully aroused, his cock hard and throbbing with inappropriate excitement. The slide of the silky bedspread on the heated skin of his thighs and belly was wickedly delicious; his dick strained against the cotton of his underwear and quested up under the elastic waistband. He breathed deeply, pulling the bedspread away and his underwear down, hoping that in the cool air his erection would subside on its own.

It didn’t happen. This was both ridiculous and horrifying. He’d nearly had a heart attack at the slightest contact with Oberon’s hand. An autonomous fight-or-flight reaction, an instinctive recoil from the touch of something genuinely inhuman, like the touch of a snake’s scales or an octopus’s tentacle.

Ángel’s dick wasn’t listening.

He covered his face with his left arm and wrapped his right hand around his shaft, stroking up and down the entire rigid length, biting his lip against a groan of pleasure.

Quiet.