He remembered feeling a similar mix of shame and sexual agitation when he was thirteen or fourteen years old. For some time he’d been secretly fascinated by the faces and bodies of men, but his feelings had never found a specific objective until a visiting priest had come to Assumption Catholic Church from another diocese. Father Joseph had been young, clean-shaven and doe-eyed, androgynous in a way that Ángel would always dig. All Ángel’s inchoate desires had focused on him like a laser. Ángel had stared at him, rapt, throughout Mass, his heart beating with admiration, his penis quiveringly rigid beneath the missal clutched in his lap. He’d known it was wrong to have those feelings—toward a man, toward a man of God—but that knowledge had done nothing whatever to mitigate them.

This was wronger than that. Oberon was not a person, not human. Still, Ángel spread his legs, brought his left hand down to palm his balls, to stroke behind them, while with his right hand he worked his wretchedly excited cock. He squeezed his eyes shut as his pleasure climbed and climbed, and the fantasy of Oberon being here with him invaded his mind. He grabbed his discarded shirt, pressed it to his body, and came into it—silently, silently, his hips spearing the shirt, soaking it with spunk.

God, I am so gross, he thought, even while his body luxuriated in the aftermath of release. What the hell is wrong with me?

Chapter 9

Logan the goon rousted him early the next morning. “Get up,” he said, kneeling beside the bed and reaching under it to tug on Ángel’s blanket.

“¿Qué bolá?” Never a morning person, Ángel bumped his forehead on the bottom of the bed. “Ow.” He crawled out of his cave and pushed his snarled hair out of his eyes.

“Put some clothes on,” said the goon. “You need to go to the basement for a while.”

“I do?”

Logan seemed nervous, glancing around the room. He was the one who’d said that Oberon gave him the willies. Ángel washed his face, brushed his teeth and, clad in jeans, socks, and his new blue embroidered shirt, headed downstairs.

He paused on the stairs when he saw the whole security team was there. Oberon was just emerging from the gym, wearing nothing but black track pants, one of his black button-down shirts in his hands. Ángel got a long look at the expanse of the fae’s bare torso.