But Chaos didn’t seem put off by his answer. “Then what’s the difficulty?” he asked, gesturing to the laptop. “These are all videos of men. You find the male form pleasing, yes?”
“Yeah, I’m gay. It’s just—”
“You don’t findmyform pleasing?” Chaos’s tail swung, closing the laptop with a thump.
“No, you’re—you’re very pleasing. I just—” Cooper didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t even exactly sure how they’d gotten here. He found himself blurting out, “I prefer to bottom! So I can’t—you know—depending on which way you—”
He trailed off as, in answer, Chaos swung a leg over him, straddling Cooper’s torso fully and leaning down until their faces were barely an inch apart. “Oh, puppy,” he crooned, his voice full of sympathy even as his eyes gleamed with some sort of sinister intent. “Here I’ve only been discussing kissing. But if you wish me to penetrate you…that can be arranged.”
Cooper rinsedthe toothpaste out of his mouth, avoiding his own eyes in the mirror.
He’d shouted something about not being able to kiss with morning breath and run off into the bathroom. Chaos had mercifully let him flee.
Cooper had just…needed a moment.
He eyed himself in the mirror now, wondering what the strength of his appeal might be for someone like Chaos. He supposed he was attractive enough. He definitely needed a haircut, but the overlong mess kind of suited him. He had a nice face and an okay smile, and people were always intrigued by his eyes. And yeah, maybe he could benefit from going to the gym every now and then, but…it wasn’t like no one had been interested before.
Cooper had been fucked. Quite a bit for a semirecluse. But never by a literal demon. A strangely cute one who held Cooper’s hand when they walked and looked at him like he was something fascinating and not a boring, nerdy shut-in.
But if Cooper ignored that last dig about penetration—and hewouldignore it, so as not to court a full-blown panic attack—then Chaos was just talking about a little making out.
Cooper could handle that.
Who was he fucking kidding? Nervousness aside, Cooper wasdyingto handle that. He hadn’t been on the apps in a while, and he hadn’t been kissed in forever. Or touched in any significant way. In terms of a sex life, he was basically crawling through the desert, and Chaos’s offer was a straight-up pitcher of ice-cold water. Like Cooper was really going to refuse?
And if Chaos didn’t like kissing Cooper—if he didn’t likeCooper, in the end—well, that was to be expected, right? Cooper wouldn’t get hurt by it, because he wasn’t holding out for anything anyway. Chaos was going to find some other human to bond and mate with, most likely some jacked supermodel type who liked skydiving and going to raves and participating in every single orgy they came across.
This was just…practice.
And yeah, maybe Cooper should have more self-respect than agreeing to be someone’s practice hookup, but the truth was that he really, really didn’t.
He blew out a breath, narrowing his mismatched eyes at himself in the mirror.Let’s fucking do this.
Bolstered by the shortest pep talk of all time, Cooper walked back into his bedroom, only to halt in the doorway, frozen in horror.
He’d thought the porn was bad. He’d thought it couldn’t get any more embarrassing.
He’d been wrong.
Chaos had found Cooper’s sex toys.
The drawer to Cooper’s bedside table was open, and the demon had a dildo—a squishy purple monstrosity Cooper hardly ever used, one that by some disturbing luck matched Chaos’s hair perfectly—in one hand and a string of anal beads in the other. There was a Fleshlight and a vibrator beside him on the bed, where he was still sitting cross-legged.
Chaos held the items up like he was showing them off, grinning brightly. “You have accessories!”
“Oh my fucking God.”
Chaos stroked the dildo. “So nice to play with, yes? Is this what you do instead of going to orgies?”
No. No, no, no. That was not happening.
Cooper stepped up to the bed. After a moment of initial reluctance from the demon, he was able to gather the toys from Chaos’s hands. But when he tried to place them back in the drawer, Chaos’s tail whipped out, slamming it shut before he could.
Cooper let out a frustrated breath. Forbidding Chaos outright from something didn’t seem to work well, but distraction…
“Bracchus,” Cooper said gently, abandoning his battle for the drawer handle. “You want to kiss me, right?”
Chaos perked up immediately, his tail abandoning its hold on the drawer to curl up behind him. “Yes, please.”
