“You will not have to do this job on your own for much time longer.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“Just now, during my mandated temporary cessation from labor, I received a transmission call from my employers—the beings you know as Mr. and Mrs. Leon.”
“Okay, and what’s that got to do with me?”
“Mr. Leon has come to the same conclusion as you—that more than one government employee is required to accomplish this task effectively. He has decided that it will be necessary to have another official assist you so you will not feel overwhelmed and will instead feel joy.”
“Oh, thank Christ,” Ezra said with a sigh of relief, letting his chair fall forward into its proper position with athunk. The pressure from being the only human the Darvrokians trusted in a diplomatic capacity was so crushing, it felt like a spaceship had landed directly on his chest, and the news that he was no longer going to be the only one responsible for all human and Darvrokian relations made it feel like he could breathe for what felt like the first time in a year.
“Yes, this will make everything much better for you, Human Ezra. You and young Titan Leon will do very good work together.”
The spaceship instantly crashed back down onto Ezra’s chest and knocked the wind out of his lungs, becausewhat?Surely—surely—he had not heard that correctly.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a level tone, “but did you say Titan Leon?”
“Yes,” Kyle said with a smile, oblivious to Ezra’s internal panic. “You will recall meeting him at Al and Human Jude’s bonding ceremony, yes?”
Did he recall? Fuck yes, he fuckingrecalled.
The night he’d spent with Titan was never far from Ezra’s mind. Often it was accompanied by crushing guilt—the knowledge that he’d slept with the brother of one of his best friends behind his back was gnawing at him—but he had yet to find a time that felt right to go up to Al and say, “Oh, by the way, I let your brother rail me the night before your wedding. We cool, though?”
Ezra preferred the guilt, however, because when it wasn’t that, what he tended to feel was, well… arousal. Thinking about Titan made him really fucking horny, okay? He wasn’t proud of it! It was just that their short tryst that night had been, unquestionably, the best sex of Ezra’s life, and it was hard—no pun intended—to not get a little worked up over it when he let his thoughts wander too far.
But that didnotmean he wanted to see Titan again. The guy was a total asshole, and Ezra had made a solemn vow to himself to never again let good dick overshadow a bad personality. So maybe he’d fudged it up a little bit by sleeping with Titan in the first place, sure, but now he was determined to stick to his guns.
It was just… it was easier to stick to his guns when the asshole he was avoiding was light-years away and the temptation of his very fuckable body wasn’t right there on a silver platter.
“He’s not, by chance, working from Darvrok 6 remotely, is he?” Ezra asked with a fool’s hope. “Like, are we going to Zoom him into the meetings? Or, you know, the alien equivalent?”
“No,” Kyle said brightly. “Titan has been approved for a work visa here on Earth.”
Ezra bit back a groan.
“When’s he supposed to get here?” he asked, hoping he at least had a few days—preferably a fewweeks—to mentally prepare himself.
Kyle checked his watch, which was a shade of gold that was hard for Ezra to perceive if he stared at it too long. “Today,” he declared a moment later.
Ezra’s stomach dropped.
“Today?” he asked weakly.
“Today,” said a voice from the doorway, causing both Ezra and Kyle to turn and see who had sneaked up on them.
“Hello, Ambassador Ezra,” said none other than Titan fucking Leon, who looked every bit the sex god he’d been the first time they’d met. “I am certain that you are pleased to see me again.”
There was no way he’d ever be able to get out of it for real, but Ezra immediately began crafting his resignation letter in his head anyway.
He was the utter definition of fucked.
9
Titan
“?.Λ.yz’Ο,” the Darvrokian known as Kyle said with a start. He scrambled up from his chair, bowed his head, and touched his fingertips together. It was a polite gesture in Darvrokian culture—one often used to show respect to those of higher status—but for the first time, it rubbed Titan the wrong way. He had known Kyle his entire life and had in part been raised by him, yet here he stood so rigidly when just increments of time before, he had been at ease and speaking with Ezra as though they were friends.
Should not the opposite be true?
