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“Well…” Lune remarked as the screen door clacked shut. “Now that we have the place all to ourselves…”

“What did you have in mind?”

Lune lowered eyelids and offered a crooked smile. “I want to see what it looks like. Care to assist?”

“What?” Narsus teased. “I thought you were so set on waffles.”

“Waffles can wait, Mister. To the bedroom!”

Without a reply, Narsus carried Lune into their suite. Lowering him to the soft mattress, he ran his hands over Lune’s dual tails.

Narsus leaned down and kissed the Compass-rose pattern set into the scales of Lune’s butt cheek. “Your birthmark is exactly like mine.”

“Time to drop your drawers and share.” Lune laughed.

“Soon,” Narsus said. “You wanted to look at yourself.”

“Truuueee.”

“So, in order to see what you want to see, we’ll need to do this? ” Narsus’s hands journeyed up to the juncture of Lune’s core.

Lune gasped a most affirmative yes .

Narsus lifted his brows and stilled his hands. “Ah. So that remains a sensitive area.”

“You…thought different?” Lune gasped out.

Narsus hummed. “As if you didn’t.”

“Well, push deeper. Whatever you’re doing is giving me a boner.”

Narsus’s attention turned downward. Lune was eager for his touch, the twin tails writhing and coiling.

“Oh, Oh!” Lune yelped as he assumed what was his penis emerged. Correction: penises? “Well, um. That’s…different.”

Tentacles. Four of them. Wide-girthed at the base and tapering down into long, thinner ends. Each limb had suction cups. They moved independently of each other in slow, semi-lethargic twitches.

“Lovely. Hello,” Narsus greeted them. “How are you? It’s very nice to meet you.”

Lune choked out uncontrollable laughs. He put his hands to his face. “You’re talking to it?”

“Of course,” Narsus defended. “Imagine how you would feel, emerging into the world all new and confused, only to be turned away by negativity?”

“It’s um…strange.”

“You sound disappointed. Why?”

“I had something like that for lunch the other day,” Lune remarked with flat ambiguity.

“Ohh, what a marvelous idea. Let’s eat.”

Lune giggled and hid his face in the pillow. “I…I can’t believe we’re going to do this.”

Narsus chortled, and Lune felt the bed give as his mate gave him some space. “Why?”

The short distance gave Lune the courage to face him. “Well, I…I…wasn’t raised to—”

“Is this the same Lune who spent all the birthday money he socked away, like a little squirrel, to have a night out on the town with a courtesan?”

“That’s different,” Lune protested from his hiding place now under the pillow. “It was for educational purposes only.”

“You were brought up by Calico, Mr. Prim and Proper,” Narsus mused, poking at the pillow, then gently pulling it away. “I’m not surprised.”

“We will NOT be talking about Calico right now.” Lune was laughing hysterically again. Tears tracked down the siren’s cheeks as he motioned to his members. “This is just so…so weird.”

“Not weird,” Narsus defended. “It’s you.”

“A good weird,” Lune corrected, then stretched out on the bed. “I think. Yeah, I want to show you something.”

“What?”

Dreamy eyed and seductive, Lune propped himself up on an elbow. “Watch what I can do.”

One of the tendrils lifted. Then, like a finger, crooked a come-hither motion at him. With Lune laughing through it all.

“That was quite the enjoyable treat.” Narsus’s husky voice was thick.

Lune’s nostrils flared as he took a breath. “There’re suckers on the undersides. I don’t know if I have that much control over them yet.”

“So what you’re saying is there may be marks afterward.” Narsus wiggled his eyebrows.

“That’s what I’m saying.”

This time it was Narsus’s nostrils that flared. “That’s a risk I’m willing to—”

He was cut off by the beach house’s front door clicking open. Caught by the wind, it slammed against the wall before it was wrestled close.

“Did you hear that?” Narsus nearly growled.

Lune looked up from his immersed self-study. “Hear wh—”

Beyond, in the living room, slow footsteps strode across the planked floor. As if taking in new surroundings. The steps began anew, coming down the hall before stopping at their bedroom door.

Narsus leapt up and flared his wings as the handle turned.