Page 146 of Forget Me Not

“This is a test,” Cal corrected him. “And I’m not sure either of us is passing, but getting work done outside isn’t terrible, either. You can see new parts of your city.”

It wasn’t Ray’s city. It was Cal’s city, and Ray was Cal’s.

Ray left that unsaid.

As if he had heard it nevertheless, Cal patted Ray’s leg. “There’s no need to decide today, at any rate. Just read or sleep or feel the breeze, and when you’re ready, we can head into the woods. Off the trails. We’re not tourists.”

They were, in a sense, but Ray could find him if Cal wandered off and “fairy-led himself,” so off the trails was fine.

Taking Ray’s silence for agreement, Cal stared back down at his notes.

Ray stared at him, faintest dusting of freckles across his nose, one partly crushed blue petal in his hair, the angry mutterings as he read something he didn’t like.

Ray curved an arm around Cal’s back, then raised his hand to lightly thumb the space between Cal’s wings.

Cal stopped completely, then exhaled a pretty, needy sound.

Ray traced the bottom edge of one wing, then the other, and then put his hand between them to press them down flat and open.

Cal got louder, biting his lip to stop a moan before he twisted to give Ray a startled, but not angry, look.

“You… you want to…” He trailed off, puzzled, then aroused when Ray went back to stroking the soft, secret spot between the jewel-toned wings.

From what Ray remembered, Cal was the one to initiate their public encounters, and that generally with a specific audience in mind, usually fairies. But Ray also remembered Cal thinking Ray would never choose him a second time.

He pushed the wings down again, pinning them, then worked his thumb between them in hard little circles.

Cal took a shocked, hitching breath, with his wings stuttering beneath Ray’s hand. His wings were so small it only took one hand to keep them both down, even with all of Cal’s excited flutters.

“But this is public.” Cal wasn’t objecting, just confused. “There might be children somewhere around.”

There weren’t, the moms and their kids already on their way up a trail.

Ray didn’t bother relating that detail. Cal usually arranged these. Ray could do the same. “Not deep in the trees.”

That wasn’t public, not how Cal probably saw it, but it must have been public enough because Cal pushed back against Ray’s hand and tipped his chin up, showing off his throat.

“You too?” Cal wondered, head falling forward when Ray did what he pleased to sheer, stained-glass wings, like touch them, then dip down to inhale desire and sugar from the valley between them.

Ray still didn’t like the idea of fucking in public—the reality of it, of forgetting himself where anyone could witness. But the woods were different. The park was hardly a forest like up north, but was beautiful, and there were hidden, wild places, even only a short drive away from the city.

And they had fucked in these woods before, even if a sleeping bag had been involved.

But Ray paused before he licked at the base of one wing. Sparkling rock candy, like surprise and sweet hunger. Ray licked the spot again, doubting very much that the kids waiting on their car repair even noticed them. With a patch of blue at the corner of his eye and Cal’s wings spread wide open, Ray teased the hard, sensitive muscle with the tip of his tongue, then scraped his teeth over the damp place he left behind.

Cal was panting and smelled like sex, already ready to go. “Ray.”

“Yes,” Ray agreed, swallowing hints of flavors. “In the woods, you can have me too.”

Ray would listen and keep watch, and Cal could do as he pleased to Ray once Ray had made him come.

Cal put a hand on Ray’s knee. “Are you keeping me?”

He waswonderingand he shouldn’t be.

“Trying to.” Ray moved, breathing over the back of Cal’s neck, brushing his nose along the shell of his ear. “Are you happy?”

He could smell that Cal was happy, taste startled joy on his teeth. But Cal needed words.

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