He turned on a little lamp in the bare room that contained only a mattress on the floor and a couple of little colorful packets scattered by the wall. Despite being so much warmer and drier, the space somehow reminded Shadow of the cell downstairs, since it had no windows.
Time for thinking came to an end when Jared’s lips met his. Shadow put his hands on the man’s sides and tried to reciprocate by doing the same thing with his tongue that Jared was. Why wasn’t his body reacting the way it did to Gray? Maybe it was the mattress. Or the lack of windows. Or the fact that he didn’t really know Jared?
Either way, he tried to cleanse his mind and slid his hands up and down the slim back, until they reached Jared’s ass. Jared gasped, and his entire body rocked against Shadow as if they were dancing. His scent was already changing, becoming muskier and sweeter. Shadow could hear his blood pumping faster, the way it always did in human bodies when they were about to connect, and yet Shadow’s remained painfully peaceful. There was no change inside him, no urgent need, no rush of pleasure when he was touched.
Jared’s tongue felt alien in his mouth, like a stick of rotting wood.
The nimble fingers unbuttoning Shadow’s jeans were a wake-up call he didn’t know how to handle, but he followed Jared’s lead, working on the kisses even if they felt forced. Shadow could do this. It was only practice after all.
Jared pushed his way into Shadow’s open jeans and rubbed his cock. Slowly, but steadily, the motion teased Shadow’s dick, but caused none of the urgent reaction even smelling Gray’s hair did.
“You nervous?” Jared asked, backing away just enough to meet Shadow’s eyes.
“No, it’s okay.”
“You sure? I always have time for someone this hot,” Jared whispered, rolling his hand along Shadow’s cock, gently twisting until a tingle of pleasure heated Shadow’s balls. It was difficult to talk like this, but despite the touch being pleasant, like touch generally was, the experience felt flat. Jared’s slim body didn’t feel like Gray’s, and where Gray smelled faintly of gunpowder, leather, and silver, Jared had an earthy scent that male humans seemed to like so much in their perfume.
Still, Shadow closed his eyes, pretending that the man in his arms was Gray. But his fantasies were shattered in an instant when he felt his fourth hand, the one attached to Gray, touching another human body. Bile made out of jealousy rose in Shadow’s throat, and kissing was no longer an option. Burning with a sickening mixture of anger and sorrow, he took the hand back, once again hiding it inside his human form.
Jared pulled away from Shadow’s lips, and for a moment Shadow wondered if he’d done something wrong. It made him lose the hint of excitement he‘d been desperately grasping at, but when he opened one eye to see what was going on, Jared smiled at him from his knees and leaned forward to kiss the tip of his cock.
He was handsome by any man’s standards, and his lips were as warm as Gray’s, but he looked so out of place. Shadow’s mind clung to the image of Gray taking his cock inside and sucking on it until Shadow’s black cum rolled down his chin, but even when he retreated into his mind where Gray was the one to caress him with that soft tongue, he couldn’t shake off the sense of wrongness. Jared’s lips, while warm and wet, but didn’t feel like Gray’s passionate sucking at all.
Was he destined to only enjoy one human?
The one human who didn’t want him?
Shadow took a deep breath when Jared hollowed his cheeks around him, causing a little spark of what with Gray had been a bolt of lightning spearing down his spine.
Jared stroked Shadow’s hip and backed off after a while. “Don’t worry, this can happen even to guys our age.”
Shadow was extremely familiar with feeling inadequate at this point, but Jared’s words were a heavy weight hung around his neck. He was so ashamed, and his cock, which still hadn’t stiffened, looked ridiculous next to the pretty face of the man who tried to make things work.
His body wasn’t working right, and he had to pretend that was okay, because the last thing he needed was for Jared to flee.
“I… I’m sorry,” he said with shame filling even his lungs and preventing him from efficiently breathing. He wouldn’t gain any experience with this man, and that meant he would never be good enough for Gray. He might as well go to the trees and bury himself there, eat worms for the next few weeks, and forget he’d ever aspired to be human, because he was clearly incapable of the most basic instincts.