Page 9 of Overexposed

“But you haven’t done anything wrong. You flinch at noises and shrink from sudden movements because the animal part in you never got to outrun or fight off what caused your fear to begin with. If that man were still around, it would be a good thing. He is no longer around, but instinct and logic do not often see eye to eye.”

“Fuck. You are giving me fucking therapy.”

Auris kissed a wet cheek. “I’m telling you not to loathe yourself for these emotions, for these lingering afterimages of fear. Accept them. They are there for a reason. Not because anything is out to get you every time you set foot outside, and not because you are weak, but as an automatic failsafe, like how you breathe without thought.”

“You learned that in the forest too? Please tell me you are not going to drop me in a forest and fucking leave me there. That was cruel, by the way. That he did that.”

I felt Auris’s shrug run through me. “Back then, I thought so too. In hindsight, not so much. My sweet, if you want to be what I am, I need you to be able to survive the woods too. Not the loneliness and danger of my woods.” He tapped my forehead. “The woods that you make for yourself. And unlike Tove, I won’t leave you there by yourself. I’ll never leave you alone in a fight.”

I nodded. I’d always hated talking about emotions, ever since Mom’s death. Auris hadn’t forced me into a talk, though, he’d just told me and made me listen, and I was, oddly, okay with that. There was an ease to it. Or no, not ease. Trust.

“For what it’s worth, I… thank you. I… really don’t like feeling this way, and I don’t like… There are collages. In my apartment. I need them. Not anything fancy, just friends and family photos.”

“I will put you in contact with whomever I select to handle your place, and then you can tell them what you need to be delivered here.”

I leaned back against him. “My workstation. I really, really need my workstation. And then I need to get back to work. I mean, this place is huge. I’d have loved to have spent lockdown in a place like this, and now that I can work from here, I’m missing my stuff.”

“That can be arranged as well.”

I let out a breath that stretched my rib cage in ways it hadn’t stretched since the attack. “And I guess I’d need lube. Or do you have that here? I feel like it would be helpful to have that around. You know, have it around now. Right now.”

Auris chuckled, his breath rustling my hair. “There should be a selection. But, my sweet, I didn’t mean to get you to do anything like that tonight.”

I turned around finally until I kneeled between his spread legs. “You didn’t. And I know you wouldn’t. What I want is… something tender. I want to be close to you, feel you inside me. I want you to hold me. You… you are color and light. And that’s comfort to me.”

“Ah, Ethan. I won’t deny you, then. In front of the fire, or on the bed?”

“Here, on the floor,” I said and bent forward to kiss him, to savor his presence.

He pulled back at one point, the corners of his mouth curling into a smile. I found myself on my back in the pool of blankets and pillows a heartbeat later.

“Whoa, vampire speed,” I said.

He chuckled against the hollow of my throat. “Yes. It’s ever so useful, in situations such as this. You go ahead and undress for me.”

I missed his looming weight above me, but raw as I was from all the emotional stuff, I yearned for this, the closeness, his touch. Even all the messiness of anal sex sounded like a balm right about now. As I watched Auris find the lube in a drawer, I thought, I can be vulnerable in front of him and a messy mess, and it’ll be okay. I won’t ever have to be ashamed about anything, not when it’s him.

The thought felt like conviction, and it settled over my mind with the force of truth.

I peeled my stolen sweater off and wriggled out of my jeans -- or started to. By that time, I had an audience. Auris watched while he was unbuttoning his own vest and shirt.

We both got rid of our clothes in silence, the way we looked at each other louder than any words we could have spoken. His black eyes wandering over my erection and stomach and then to my face told me I was the centerpiece, spotlight-worthy, the part of the shot that you want everyone’s eyes to linger on.

On the floor, looking up, I was enthralled not by his vampiric magic but by the fae beauty of him. Auris was made of so many shadows, so much light, and I examined him like the background to a thousand shots. To me, he wasn’t just plain white canvas, but a skyline or a building, the background only nominally, in truth the perfect whole that could never be captured in a single photo.

And then, all that ceased to matter when he descended on me like warming sunshine, hands and mouth. I had demanded tenderness from him, lovemaking, and I thought I’d known what I’d been asking for. I was wrong.

He started with an abundance of touch, my face, chest, arms, down to my thighs, my back and shoulders. His fingers exploring every inch of me wasn’t precisely sexual, but at the same time, it went beyond a comforting caress. I reciprocated. I wasn’t used to this and couldn’t help wanting to touch his cock, which I did.

“There is no need to hurry,” he whispered in my ear, and for the life of me, I couldn’t make him hurry. The lack of selfishness in what he was doing to me was admirable and not something I’d come across before.

We progressed to kissing and closed the distance between us. Auris rolled me on my back, made sure I was on a pillow and not the hard floor. I could feel an addiction settle in, watching him above me, fire-glazed in orange and black, the sounds of wood crackling in the flames the background noise.

Our fingers twined on the pillows above my head, and while we tasted each other, Auris started leisurely rubbing against me with his whole body.

For some of it, my mind wandered to his story, and I tried picturing it, Auris as a young man, living on a weather-beaten island and looking out to the waves. Auris crouching low behind some saplings in the forest and watching a panting rabbit to learn a lesson from it that he would share with me centuries later. Auris in a medieval village, standing up to a man in order to protect a child.

I saw him in daylight, for some reason, eyes silvered, but I knew that wouldn’t have been right. I turned my head to get reprieve from his ministrations for a moment.

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