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“I’m abstractly sorry. But I like being with you too much to be completely sorry.”

He laughed, his hand finding its way to my arse and giving it a squeeze. The fabric of his suit was slightly rough against my nipples, making me very aware of the fact he was, once again, fully clothed and I was starkers. It was kind of the way things tended to go with us. Mostly I didn’t mind, and there were times when the sense of personal exposure was definitely part of the fun, but from another perspective it was bizarre. After all, I looked like me—decentish but nothing special—and Caspian was absolutely spectacular. If I’d been him, I would have been naked whenever I could get away with it.

Honestly, I’d probably never stop wanking.

While taking selfies of myself.

Narcissus for the social media age.

I snuggled in closer, just content to bask in the time that Caspian had unexpectedly given me.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked, after a minute or two.

He’d told me when we’d first met—on a moonlit night in Oxford that seemed forever ago now—he allowed himself one cigarette a month. Something to do with controlling his vices, which didn’t make much sense to me because if there was one thing Caspian Hart could have done with a bit less of, it was control. I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant that he wanted to indulge himself here, now, with me but it was intimacy of a kind and I sure as hell wasn’t going to say no. “Course not.”

My bedside table was a pervert’s smorgasbord of lube and condoms and exciting things to put up your arse or wrap round your knob. I didn’t get much of a look in Caspian’s but I was pretty sure there was nothing inside it except a book, a lighter, a saucer I guessed he was using as an ashtray, and a packet of Dunhill.

With an arm around me, he was a little clumsy lighting up. And then he lay back against the pillows, still holding me tight, and took a deep, luxurious drag. His eyes fell half closed, smoke billowing from between his parting lips. It made me desperate to kiss him. Feel the surrender of his mouth. He hadn’t wanted me to see him come but he let me see this. The one pleasurable yielding he seemed able to countenance.

“Caspian?”

“Mmm?”

“What did you write on me yesterday?”

“It’s from The Lathe of Heaven.”

One of the many problems with being an English literature student, especially if you went to Oxford, was that people expected you to have read everything. Thus condemning you to a life of lying, bullshitting, and incipient shame.

I opened my mouth to do make a bland statement that implied familiarity with the text without committing myself to anything. And then I thought: fuck it, no. Caspian already knew I’d only pretended to have read Ulysses. He wasn’t going to think less of me because I hadn’t read The Lathe of Heaven.

And there was no reason for me to think less of myself either.

“I don’t know it,” I announced triumphantly.

“Why would you, since you’re not into sci-fi? It’s Ursula Le Guin. About a man who has the ability to change reality through his dreams.”

“I can see why you might be into that.”

He smiled faintly. “It’s not quite what you think. The protagonist is very much a dreamer. Passive to a fault. It’s other people who want to change the world, usually with disastrous consequences.”

I sighed. “You know, that’s another thing I don’t get about science fiction. For a genre that’s supposed to be all about technology and progress and the future…why does it always turn out to be a massive disaster whenever somebody tries to do anything or change anything?”

“You tell me, Mr. BA Oxon.”

“I guess because a lot of genre fiction has its roots in the nineteenth century, when we had more rigid ideas about God and social order. Aaaand check out me sounding like I know what the fuck I’m talking about.”

“That’s because you do. Though, for what it’s worth, I don’t think this book is actually saying that. I think it’s more about the complexities of the world and its problems, especially the problems that are connected to the complexities of people. My father…” He paused. Cleared his throat. “My father always said Le Guin was primarily interested in people.”

“Isn’t science fiction supposed to be about ideas?”

Caspian swallowed. “It is. But it can also be very…very human. Since a lot of the time it’s concerned with human questions. At least that’s what my father believed.” He shifted and I could feel him getting self-conscious. This was usually the moment he would pull away from me. But, to my surprise, he gave a slightly rueful laugh and went on. “No wonder I read PPE.”

“I thought”—I gave him a naughty look—“you were leveraging the Oxford brand to something something the something something?”

“That too.” He let his voice slip into its driest, coolest register. “To lead a successful life, it is vital to something something the something something.”

I giggled, hopelessly heart-eyed. I adored everything about Caspian—his strength, his ferocity, his delicious cruelty—but this side of him, his secret capacity to laugh at himself, never failed to delight me.