“But it’s cool if you’re straight,” Benny told him easily. “Or if you’re just not into me.” Helio opened his eyes just as Benny flipped onto his back. “But do you think it would be cool if I went skinny-dipping tonight? I just think it would feel really good. These shorts are a little small, you know.”
Oh, Helio knew.
“But it wouldn’t, like, offend the servants, right?”
Helio sighed deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No, Benny. No servants will be offended by your nudity.”
Because therewereno servants. Just Helio and his enchanted villa, the both of them apparently wrapped around Benny’s oblivious finger.
So why not let Benny prance around nude on top of everything else? What was one more layer to Helio’s torment?
It wasn’t like this endeavor could get any worse.
5
Helio
Helio should have known better.
Hedidknow better.
He knew enough to stay inside the villa tonight; that was for certain.
He’d known what he was going to find if he ventured outside, and he’d known exactly what that was going to do to his self-control.
He’d known, and he’d stepped onto the beach anyway.
And he’d found exactly what he’d known he was going to find—a naked Benny, standing on the sand at the ocean’s edge, the pale slices of skin on his buttocks that the sun hadn’t been able to reach practically glowing in the moonlight.
Clearly he hadn’t been tanning naked yet. (Which Helio already knew because Helio watched him like a hawk every second of every day, unable to bring himself to do anything else.)
Benny twisted at the waist to greet him with a grin. “Hey! You coming swimming tonight?”
Helio didn’t answer.
And Benny, as usual, was unfazed by his silence. He just turned back to face the ocean with a happy sigh. “It looks so beautiful tonight, doesn’t it? And it’s the perfect temperature.”
Of course it’s beautiful and perfect, you gorgeous idiot!Helio wanted to shout.You’re in the fae realm. You’ve been kidnapped to the fae realm, and you’re too good-natured to notice, and it’s driving meinsane.
Oblivious as always, Benny was already wading into the water. As soon as it was up to his knees, he dove in fully, his muscled arms slicing through it with lazy strokes.
Helio watched him for a long while. Too long, really. Long enough to catch more than a few glimpses of Benny’s soft cock in the moonlight.
Eventually—as if sensing what would drive Helio mad the fastest—Benny turned to float on his back in the water, displaying that substantial cock to its fullest, uncaring of his nudity.
“This is heaven!” he called out.
He wasn’t put out by Helio not joining him. He didn’t hold a grudge about being left alone. It had been part of what had been so enticing about him, back at the bar in Miami. He’d been handsome, sure, but so had many of the men that night. It had been more about the way Benny had carried himself. Friendly but also…distanced, in some genial way. Twink after twink had been throwing themselves at him—one of them quite literally—and he hadn’t so much as noticed. He’d been friendly to everyone but partial to none, happy in his own world.
As he was happy in Helio’s.
It was completely foreign to Helio. Everything with the fae was subtle barbs and calculations—how much one could take from another without giving anything away in turn. Half-truths and secret bargains and lying by omission.
But Benny said exactly what he meant and meant exactly what he said. Always.
He’d be happy to have Helio join him in the water, and he meant that with uncomplicated sincerity. Just as he’d be happy to have Heliotouchhim. He’d be pleased and grateful, and he wouldn’t hold either of those emotions back for fear of them being used against him.
Benny went back to swimming back and forth in front of Helio, giving him glimpses of those beautiful buttocks again in replacement of that beautiful cock.
