“Tell me with certainty that you do not wish to mate with me,” Titan said in a low, seductive whisper, “and I will leave you alone.”
“I—” Ezra’s voice broke, a whimper dying in his throat. His heart hammered. His cheeks burned and, almost as if drawn to Titan magnetically, he lifted his chin as if to claim Titan’s lips. Arousal pulsed through him, urging him just to do it. To kiss him. To let Titan have his way.
But Ezra was stronger than his biology, and even as his body begged him to bring Titan to bed, he held tightly to his resolve.
He did not fuck with assholes, and that meant he would not fuck Titan Leon.
2
Ezra
Ezra was going to fuck Titan Leon.
Breathless, panting, he pulled Titan into his bedroom and slammed the door shut. It was dark without the light from the hallway—too dark to see—but Ezra didn’t need his vision to feel how Titan grabbed him by the shoulders and pinned him to the wall. The air between them stirred and the heat of Titan’s body closed in, and Ezra knew if he were to lift his chin, Titan’s lips would be right there, waiting to claim his mouth in a searing kiss.
It wouldn’t be the first one they had shared since leaving the rehearsal dinner.
Titan’s relentless flirting had gone on all night, and as the hours had slipped by, Ezra had fallen entirely under his spell. At the wedding rehearsal, with Titan by Al’s side and Ezra across from him at Jude’s, there had been no escape from Titan’s leering eyes. Then at dinner, Titan had slid smoothly into the seat beside Ezra’s and spent the entire time running his ankle along Ezra’s leg, whispering seductive things into his ear.
Things like, “I wish to see your human form with the absence of your human clothing, Ambassador Ezra,” and “I would like to experiment with the functionality of my new human anatomy and require your assistance, Ambassador Ezra.”
And while, yeah, they weren’t exactly come-ons by human standards, the way Titan had spoken them with such overconfidence made Ezra want to jump his bones right there at the table, friends and family be damned. Hot boys who said dumb things were his kryptonite, and hot boys who said dumb things with their whole chest?
God.
He had never wanted to ride someone’s dick more in his life.
That, and there was something about being called “Ambassador” in that tone of voice that really got him going… even though he wasn’t sure how he’d become an ambassador in the first place.
Which was why, by the time dessert had wrapped up and the rehearsal dinner had come to an end, Ezra had taken Titan by the wrist and hissed, “This is a one-time thing, all right?” before dragging him up a back staircase in order to get to his bedroom unseen. Titan, smirking, had followed, and now here they were.
In the dark.
Together.
Lips barely a kiss away.
Had it been any other hookup, or had there been a little more champagne involved, Ezra would have gladly lifted his chin and taken the kiss he’d been craving all night. He preferred having sex in the dark, where it was easier not to get so hung up on his own body image issues… but in the dark, he was alone with Titan’s personality, and that simply would not do. The only reason he was doing this was because Titan was hot, and if he couldn’t enjoy the view, then there wasn’t any point. So rather than let things progress naturally, Ezra pushed Titan away and clapped twice, activating his bedside lamp.
A dull, warm light flooded the room, and there stood Titan, hot ashell and every bit as cocky, his eyes on Ezra and Ezra alone, like Ezra was the one with a modelesque body… until the glimmer of light reflecting off Ezra’s pinball machine caught his eye, and Titan stopped looking at him to stare agog at the room.
Ezra’s bedroom had a decidedly… different… energy than the rest of the house. This was by design. It wasn’t that Ezra disliked being rich—it would be absurd of him to be ungrateful for his sudden privilege—but it didn’t come naturally to him. Luxury felt foreign, and the truth was, since coming to live with Al and Jude in their mansion, he’d felt like an intruder more often than not. A large part of him really missed his shitty rental with its collapsing infrastructure and questionable smells, but he knew moving back there wouldn’t fix the ache in his heart; it would only remind him of how much things had changed, and that they would never be the same again.
Which was why Jude, who knew Ezra better than Ezra knew himself, had given him permission to decorate his wing of the mansion any way he pleased. With his blessing, Ezra had crafted his bedroom into somewhere safe he could escape to—somewhere that felt like him, and not some hoity-toity Better Homes & Gardens spotlight.
In other words: somewhere very, very weird.
But it hadn’t occurred to him until now that a room like this might catch the guys he brought home off guard.
“Is that Secretary of Defense Buttons?” Titan asked with reverence, eyes glued to a giant oil painting of Ezra’s cat that he’d commissioned from the artist who’d painted the official White House portrait of Barack Obama. In the painting, Buttons was on a fluffy cat bed and was wearing a golden crown.
“Yeah, I got that done when she got the position.”
“And what is that large piece of debris?” Titan pointed at what seemed to be the jagged remains of a broken wooden door.
“I paid a shit-ton of money to get the original raft from the Titanic movie. The one Jack totally could have fit on if Rose would have just scooted over a little.”
“This does not mean anything to me.”
