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My trembling fingers meet his jaw and he freezes. His skin is smooth under my fingertips.When did I reach up?

“Lys,” he says, the shortened version of my name coming out in a rough.

The tingling spreads all down my thighs.

I drop my hand at once. My knees are shaking. He finishes fastening the other shoulder and smoothes his fingers over it, but his hand doesn’t linger. His eyes fall to my lap, and I follow his gaze.

My heart hammers in my ears. The mound between my thighs swells, distending the lace. Has it ever done that before?

“I’m going to back off now,” Ezra rasps.

I swallow a whimper of protest.

I don’t want him to. I want…

I want…

The unformed thought fades. Ezra shuffles backward, his face red. He holds his forearm crookedly across his pants. I squeeze my knees together, aching in ways I don’t understand. My wings flutter with agitation.

“Sorry,” Ezra says quietly. “I didn’t mean to push. You look stunning, sweets.”

“Don’t,” I interject swiftly. “Don’t be sorry.”

He nods jerkily. “I’d better get out there and find a spot to watch from.”

He stumbles out of the room, casting one last look over his shoulder before he shuts the door behind himself. I dig my fingers into my thighs and try to breathe as my body swarms with sensations I don’t understand.

15

EZRA

Istagger down the hall and lock myself in the red room, pressing my forehead to the cool wood of the door. My cock throbs in my jeans. I almost reached down to the smooth place between his legs and touched it to see if he was hot.

That’s not being a friend, Ezra.

Pulse racing, I press the heel of my hand into the base of my cock and swallow a groan.Fuck. I want to keep giving him what he needs, but the signals he’s throwing off are way more than just friendly — at least by human standards.

Of course, he’s not human. Maybe cuddling with your friends would be normal for fairies if no one was at risk of being poisoned. Friends with benefits, but the benefits are platonic touching.

The problem is that my brain keeps misfiring, trying to take Lysander out of thefriendbox and put him back in theI want himbox.

The show is mind-blowing, as always. Lysander is utterly ethereal in his new costume. Far from being annoyed at the audience the way I was at first, now I get a weird sense of pride knowing how hard he worked on it.

Mostly, however, my brain is stuck on how soft the lace was under my fingers, all warm from his skin.

The crowd breaks up for smaller shows and I hang at my table, nursing a soda. I’m not staying over tonight and I have no excuse to see him — I stopped in to wish him luck on a whim. The idea of going home to my empty apartment leaves me cold, but I’m also totally uninterested in the rest of what’s going on in the club tonight. It’s not that the novelty’s worn off, it’s that I only came to see one person.

Part of me knows he’s probably got a whole post-show routine that doesn’t involve me.

The other part of me is stuck on the moment I looked down and saw something swelling distinctly under the lace.

Suddenly needing a silent moment to think, I finish my drink and slip down the back hall to the staff room. I nod to Orion, guiltily wishing the room was empty.

“You heading out?” he asks.

“Not sure.” I get a mug out of the cupboard and start making tea for something to do with my hands.

“Not interested in Bear’s knot demo later?”