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Meryt pressed into me so hard, using the wall behind me for leverage, that he no longer needed his hand for us to grind with purchase. Our erect cocks were sopping wet from the prerelease that had built while we teased each other in dance until my knees had nearly given out, and Meryt had dragged me from the practice room.

It was a hasty race toward an end now, any end found together, because the buildup had been exquisite torture, and we deserved our reward now, didn’t we?

“Mer,” I whined, gasping for breath, though Meryt barely paused to take a breath of his own before beginning to kiss and nip down my neck. “This isn’t… what the elder dancers taught us.” We were supposed to use finesse, technique, allure.

“I don’t care,” Meryt growled into the hollow of my throat, then licked into it and up over my bulb. “You looked so beautiful, soincrediblemoving like that, I couldn’t wait—I can’t wait!”

Meryt grabbed hold of only my cock this time and brought one of my hands down to take hold of his. We stroked together, knuckles brushing with frantic friction. We were panting so hard, warm breaths mingling as we pressed our foreheads together and zealously pumped each other’s pricks, hips rockingin tandem. Our eyes kept falling closed, but every time, we would open them again, seeking the connection, the proof that the other was there.

Here. Because this was real. We were each other’s, and there would never come a time when we wouldn’t be. It wasn’t only about the madness for us. I loved Meryt.

Oh gods, how I loved him.

“Nakht….Nakht…” Meryt whimpered, like a mantra to signal he was close. I was too, so close, but I wanted us to finish together.

I slowed my strokes, prompting Meryt to do the same. “Gods, you’re gorgeous,” I said, looking first into his beautiful black eyes and then down the length of him to his cock in my hand.

“You are,” he countered. “So gorgeous. You’re like… the sunrise, do you know that? Like… like…”

Then Meryt said the words that would hallmark our story forever after.

“The dawn to my dusk.”

We spilled, like the gods had decreed it, gifting us our twin completion. If not for Meryt’s weight against me, I might have sunk straight to the floor.

Dawn to my dusk.

“I thought I was the poet between us,” I teased him.

Meryt huffed a laugh into my neck, nuzzling against me.

I wrapped my arms up around him, and just let us rest there for as long as we could stand the mess between us. “I guess that means… you’re the dusk to my dawn.”

The scroll was on the floor.

Oh shit, the scroll was on the floor!

“Did we damage it?” I asked in alarm, looking to where it lay, upside down now, but seemingly unbent and unharmed. It was in the reinforced covering Amy had planned for it, so really, nothing should be able to harm it, but it was still ancient.Nothingwas never a certainty. “It better be okay, it’s my… I-I mean… uh…”

What had I been about to say?Myscroll?Mypoems?

My…

Meryt?

I looked into Merry’s eyes. So much for not having to deal with cleanup after hours. We both had our pants and underwear at our ankles and had jerked each other off to mutual completion, even sweatier now than before with me leaned back against the stack of items where the scroll had been resting.

But a moment ago, we’d been somewhere else, hadn’t we?

“Nakht…?” Merry whispered, like the name was some dangerous secret he wasn’t allowed to speak.

“What the actual fuck was that?” I blurted.

Merry laughed, staring just as hazily and contentedly into my eyes. “Seemed like more than déjà vu? Another lifetime? That’s crazy though, right? Insane.”

Madness. “I’m already starting to forget some of it, like… like a dream. Maybe there’s a gas leak—”

“Nero,” Merry chastised when I tried to get up and look around for the invisible gas.