The contract
The morning light through the curtains was the color of apricots.
Jules lay still, watching it creep across the ceiling in slow, golden increments. His body felt different. Not sore—the soreness had faded into something else, something deeper that lived in the spaces between muscle and bone, in the hollow ache behind his navel that pulsed faintly with every heartbeat. The twins had been inside him. Both of them. At the same time. And Antoine had been three feet away, drifting in whatever trance the massage had wrapped around him, murmuring about deep tissue work and piriformis muscles while his boyfriend was being split open on two cocks that had no business fitting inside a single human body.
The memory made Jules's stomach clench. Shame, hot and immediate, flooding his cheeks. But underneath it—underneath the guilt that should have been suffocating—something else stirred. Something that made his cock thicken against the sheet.
He turned his head on the pillow. Antoine was still asleep, his blonde hair fanned across the white pillowcase, his mouth slightly open, his breathing deep and even. The swimmer's body that Jules had admired by the pool on their first day—long muscles, broad shoulders, the elegant proportions Francesco had commented on—was curled toward him, one arm extended across the space between them as if reaching for Jules even in sleep.
How can you look at him and still want what they did to you?
The question had no answer. Or rather, it had too many answers, none of which Jules wanted to examine. He slipped out of bed and went to the bathroom, closing the door with a soft click that sounded like a gunshot in the morning quiet. The mirror showed him what he expected: the same brown hair, the same blue eyes, the same lean face that had been his for twenty-five years. But there was something different in the way his mouth sat. Something looser. Something that had learned to open on command.
He brushed his teeth. The mint burned his tongue, and for a moment he could taste Mateo instead—salt and skin and the bitter undertow of semen. His throat constricted. Not from disgust. From want.
You're a monster, he told his reflection.
His reflection didn't argue.
The art museum was Antoine's idea.
"There's a Goya exhibit," he said at breakfast, spreading jam on a piece of toast with the careful precision he brought to everything. "Temporary collection. Black Paintings, the late stuff. I read about it in the hotel brochure." He looked up at Jules with those brown eyes that crinkled when he smiled. "We haven't done anything cultural yet. The hike was nature, the massage was... wellness. We should feed our brains."
"Our brains," Jules repeated. The word massage had landed in his chest like a stone dropped into still water. "Right. Goya. That sounds good."
"You okay?" Antoine's head tilted. "You've been quiet this morning."
"Still waking up."
The lie came easily now. That was the worst part. Three days ago, lying to Antoine had felt like swallowing glass—painful, unnatural, something his body resisted. Now it slipped out before he could even register the decision to deceive. The twins hadn't just stretched his hole. They'd stretched his conscience, widened it enough to accommodate deceptions that would have been unthinkable a week ago.
Antoine nodded, satisfied, and returned to his toast. "The exhibit opens at ten. We can take the bus, or walk—it's only about two kilometers. The brochure says the building itself is worth seeing. Sixteenth-century convent, converted in the nineties. The architecture is supposed to be stunning."
Architecture. Decoration. The things Antoine cared about. The things Jules had always loved about him—his enthusiasm for details, his ability to find beauty in floor plans and furniture arrangements and the way light fell through a window at a particular time of day. Antoine had opinions about crown molding. Antoine could spend an hour discussing the merits of different kitchen layouts. It was one of the reasons Jules had fallen in love with him: that capacity for deep, genuine engagement with the mundane beauties of the world.
And now Jules was sitting across from him, still feeling the phantom pressure of two cocks in his ass, and nodding along to a conversation about museum architecture as if nothing had happened.
They finished breakfast. They walked to the museum. The morning was warm but not yet hot, the Spanish sun still climbing toward its afternoon peak, and the streets of the old town were quiet with the particular stillness of a weekday morning. Antoine held Jules's hand as they walked, his palm warm and dry, his thumb tracing small circles on Jules's knuckles. It was such a tender gesture. Such an Antoine gesture. Jules's throat tightened with an emotion he couldn't name.
"Do you ever think about the future?" Antoine asked.
"All the time."
"I mean specifically. Our future. The house, the life, all of it." Antoine gestured with his free hand at the street around them—the whitewashed walls, the terracotta roofs, the bougainvillea spilling over balconies in cascades of magenta. "Looking at all this, I keep imagining what our place could look like. Not exactly like this, obviously—we're not moving to Spain. But the feeling of it. The warmth."
"Our place," Jules said. The words felt strange in his mouth. Not wrong, exactly. Just complicated. "You've been thinking about that?"
"I think about it a lot." Antoine squeezed his hand. "Three years is a long time. Longer than most of our friends, anyway. And we work. We really work, Jules. I know things haven't always been..." He paused, searching for words. "Perfect. In every way. But the important things are there. The things that last."
Jules didn't answer. He couldn't. The important things were there—the shared jokes, the comfortable silences, the way Antoine always knew when he needed coffee and when he needed space, the future they'd sketched out together in a thousand late-night conversations. The children with names they'd already chosen. The house with the kitchen that got morning light. The life they'd built in three years of careful, tender partnership.
And Jules was dismantling it, one betrayal at a time, because his body craved something Antoine couldn't provide.
The museum appeared at the end of the street—a converted convent, just as Antoine had described, its stone walls rising from a plaza dotted with orange trees. The guide woman from the tourist office was waiting at the entrance, her silver-streaked hair catching the morning light, her musical accent greeting them as they approached.
"Ah, the French couple," she said, her smile warm and professional. "Your hotel called ahead. You are interested in the Goya exhibit?"
"That's us." Antoine released Jules's hand to shake hers. "We've been looking forward to it."
"The Black Paintings are..." She paused, searching for the right word. "Intense. Not for everyone. But very powerful. You will see." Her eyes flickered to Jules for just a moment—a fraction of a second too long, as if she were seeing something beneath his skin. "Follow me. I will give you the orientation."
The exhibit occupied the convent's former chapel, a vast space with vaulted ceilings and stone floors that swallowed sound. The Black Paintings lined the walls in heavy gilt frames: Saturn devouring his son, the witches' sabbath, the dog half-drowned in sand, the faces twisted in terror and despair. Goya's late work, painted directly onto the walls of his house, never meant for public display. A man's private horrors, made visible.
Jules stood in front of Saturn Devouring His Son and felt something in his chest shift.
"They're so dark," Antoine murmured beside him. "I knew they were dark, but this is..."
"Visceral," Jules finished.
"Yeah. Visceral." Antoine tilted his head, studying the painting with the same intensity he brought to floor plans. "Look at the eyes. The wildness in them. He knows what he's doing is monstrous, but he can't stop. He's already too far gone."
Jules's throat constricted. The giant in the painting—Saturn, the god who ate his own children—stared back at him with hollow, desperate eyes, his mouth stretched wide around a small, headless body. The knowing was the worst part. Saturn knew what he was. He knew what he was doing. And still he consumed.
"Jules?" Antoine's hand on his arm. "You're shaking."
"Cold in here. The stone walls."
Antoine nodded, accepting the explanation the way he accepted everything—trustingly, completely, without suspicion. "The convent architecture. Amazing for preservation, terrible for climate control. Come on, let's look at the lighter stuff. There's a tapestry room downstairs."
They moved through the rest of the museum together. Antoine talked about the architecture—the vaulted ceilings, the restored frescoes, the way the modern lighting had been integrated without damaging the original stonework. He talked about how he'd like their future house to feel: old and new together, history and modernity in conversation, warm colors and natural light and spaces that invited people to linger.
"I want a kitchen that opens onto the living room," he said, standing in front of a sixteenth-century tapestry depicting a hunting scene. "None of that closed-off nonsense. If we're going to host dinners, I want to be able to talk to our guests while I cook."
"Since when do you cook?"
"Since I'm going to learn. For our future dinner parties." Antoine grinned. "You can handle the wine. You're better at that anyway."
The future. Their future. Antoine was sketching it out in detail—the kitchen, the dinner parties, the life they'd build together—and Jules was nodding along while the memory of Francesco's fingers and Mateo's grip on his throat. The cognitive dissonance was vertigo. Jules was living two lives simultaneously: the devoted boyfriend, planning a future with the man he loved, and the twins' plaything, counting the hours until he could be used again.
He didn't know which version of himself was real anymore. Maybe both were. Maybe neither.
They finished the museum and walked back to the hotel in the golden light of late afternoon. Antoine was still talking about the house—the color of the walls, the kind of furniture they'd need, the garden he wanted to plant. His enthusiasm was infectious, or it should have been. Jules made the right sounds at the right moments, and Antoine didn't seem to notice that anything was wrong.
But something was wrong. Something had been wrong since the moment Mateo spilled that drink, and the wrongness was spreading like ink in water, darkening everything it touched.
They reached the hotel gates just as the sun began its descent toward the horizon.
"Oh," Antoine said, as if remembering something. "The twins invited us to dinner tonight."
Jules's heart stopped. "What?"
"Mateo and Francesco. I ran into them this morning, when you were in the shower. They said they've really enjoyed getting to know us, and they'd love to have dinner together before we leave. Just a casual thing, at the hotel restaurant." Antoine smiled, that trusting smile that Jules had fallen in love with and was now learning to fear. "They're really nice guys. I said yes. I hope that's okay."
"Nice," Jules repeated. The word felt foreign in his mouth. "Yeah. They're... nice."
"They've been so welcoming. The jacuzzi, the massage—they've really gone out of their way to make our vacation special. I thought it would be good to show some appreciation. And honestly, it's fun to make local friends. We don't do that enough when we travel."
Local friends. Jules's mind reeled. Antoine was calling the men who had spitroasted his boyfriend while he slept three feet away local friends. The men who had made Jules suck their cocks in a staff shower, who had taken turns filling his ass in their private quarters, who had double-penetrated him on a massage table while Antoine drifted in a trance. Local friends.
"That's great," Jules heard himself say. "Dinner sounds great."
The hotel restaurant was on the terrace, overlooking the pool. At night, the water was lit from within, a rectangle of turquoise against the darkness, and the tables were set with white cloths and candles in glass holders. The twins were already there when Jules and Antoine arrived—seated at a corner table, their massive frames somehow contained by the delicate wrought-iron chairs, their bronze skin glowing in the candlelight.
"Antoine! Jules!" Mateo stood, his smile wide and warm, and clasped Antoine's hand in both of his. "So glad you could make it. Please, sit, sit."
Francesco pulled out a chair for Jules. The gesture was courtly, gentlemanly, but his hand brushed Jules's shoulder as he passed, and the contact sent a current straight to Jules's groin. "The specials tonight are excellent," he said. "We took the liberty of ordering wine. A Rioja. I hope that's acceptable."
"More than acceptable," Antoine said, settling into his chair. "This is lovely. Thank you for inviting us."
"It is our pleasure." Mateo poured wine into four glasses, the dark liquid catching the candlelight. "We do not often meet guests like you. Most tourists are... how do you say... transient. They come, they swim, they leave. But you two have been different. Special."
The word special landed differently on Jules's ears than it did on Antoine's. He could see Mateo's smirk in the candlelight, the private knowledge swimming behind his dark eyes. Francesco was watching him too—not obviously, but Jules could feel the weight of his gaze like a hand on his thigh.
Which was appropriate, because a moment later, a hand found his thigh.
Jules's breath caught. The hand was warm, heavy, unmistakably male. It squeezed once—a possessive gesture, a reminder of ownership—and then settled there, fingers spread across the muscle just above his knee. He didn't dare look down. He didn't dare react. Antoine was sitting across from him, sipping his wine, completely oblivious.
"So," Francesco said smoothly, his free hand lifting his glass, "tell us more about France. Antoine, Jules mentioned you are both from Lyon? I have always wanted to visit."
The conversation unfolded. The twins asked questions about Lyon, about French food, about Jules and Antoine's studies and their new jobs and their plans for the future. They listened attentively, laughed appropriately, contributed stories of their own about growing up in Spain, about their kinesiotherapy program, about the hotel and the guests they'd met over the years.
And all the while, the hand on Jules's thigh climbed higher.
It was Francesco's hand. Jules had learned to tell them apart by touch—Francesco's fingers were slightly broader, his grip slightly firmer. The hand slid upward in slow increments, each movement timed to a laugh or a sip of wine, until his fingers were brushing the crease of Jules's groin. Jules's cock stiffened treacherously against his trousers, and Francesco's thumb traced the outline of it through the fabric with clinical precision.
"You're quiet tonight, Jules," Mateo observed. His smile was innocent, but his eyes were not. "Is the wine not to your liking?"
"The wine is excellent." Jules's voice came out steadier than he felt. Francesco's fingers had found the head of his cock and were pressing down with just enough pressure to make him lightheaded. "I'm just... taking it all in."
"You seem distracted." Mateo's foot found Jules's ankle under the table, sliding up his calf. "Is something on your mind?"
The twins were bracketing him now—Francesco's hand on his cock, Mateo's foot on his leg, their words circling around him like wolves around prey. Antoine, across the table, nodded sympathetically.
"He's been like this all day," Antoine said. "I think the massage yesterday really took it out of him."
"The massage," Francesco repeated. His fingers pressed harder. "Yes. That was quite an experience."
"For both of us," Antoine agreed. "I've never felt so relaxed in my life. You two really know what you're doing."
"We do." Mateo's foot had reached Jules's knee and was pressing his legs apart. "We take great pride in our work."
The dinner continued. Appetizers arrived—small plates of jamón and manchego, olives glistening with oil, bread still warm from the oven. Jules ate mechanically, tasting nothing, his entire consciousness focused on the twin points of contact that were holding him in place. Francesco's hand had retreated from his cock—a temporary reprieve—but it still rested high on his thigh, fingers tracing idle patterns on the sensitive skin. Mateo's foot had withdrawn, but his eyes never left Jules's face, and the look in them was a promise.
"I need to use the restroom," Jules said, pushing back his chair. "Excuse me for a moment."
The restaurant's bathroom was tucked away down a short corridor, past the kitchen doors. The walls were tiled in deep blue, the lighting dim and intimate. Jules stood at the sink, gripping the porcelain edge, staring at his reflection in the mirror.
Get it together. Go back out there. Sit through dinner. Then go to bed with Antoine and forget this ever—
The door opened.
Mateo filled the doorway, his massive frame blocking the light from the corridor. The lock clicked behind him.
"Your boyfriend," Mateo said, his voice low and amused, "is remarkably unobservant. Or perhaps remarkably trusting. I cannot decide which is more useful."
"He's not unobservant. He just..." Jules trailed off.
"Just what?"
"Just believes the best of people."
"Yes." Mateo crossed the small room in two strides, his body crowding Jules against the sink. "That is what makes him so easy. And you so easy, too. Because he trusts you, and you betray him, and the betrayal makes your cock hard." His hand dropped to Jules's groin, cupping the erection that had not flagged. "Like now. You're hard just thinking about what I'm going to do to you while he sits out there, ordering dessert."
"I'm not—"
"You are." Mateo's fingers worked at Jules's belt, the leather slipping free with practiced efficiency. "You are exactly that. A whore who gets hard from cheating on the man who loves him. A whore who opened his mouth the first time he saw my cock. A whore who begged us both to fill him while Antoine slept. You are what you are, Jules. Stop pretending otherwise."
The words landed like blows. But they were true—that was the worst part. They were true, and Jules's cock was leaking against his briefs, and when Mateo's hand closed around it, he moaned into the quiet of the tiled room.
"On your knees. Quickly. We don't have much time before Antoine gets curious about where you've gone."
Jules dropped. His knees hit the tile with a soft thud, and then Mateo's cock was in front of his face—already out, already hard, the broad head slick with the first bead of pre-cum. The scent of him filled Jules's nostrils: salt and musk and something darker underneath. The scent of the first time, in the staff shower. The scent of surrender.
"Open."
Jules opened. Mateo's cock slid into his mouth with the familiarity of something that had been there before, something that belonged there. The weight of it on his tongue, the stretch of his jaw, the way his throat constricted around the head as Mateo pushed deeper—his body remembered all of it. His body had been trained to remember.
"That's it." Mateo's hands found Jules's hair, gripping tight. "Such a good mouth. Such a good whore. Antoine is out there, Jules. He's probably looking at the dessert menu right now. What do you think he'd order? The flan? The chocolate cake? What kind of dessert does your boyfriend like while you're in here choking on my cock?"
The words were gasoline on the fire in Jules's gut. He moaned around the cock in his throat, and Mateo laughed—a low, cruel sound.
"I knew you'd like that. You love the danger. You love knowing that at any moment he could walk through that door and see you on your knees with your mouth full of another man's cock." His hips began to move—short, shallow thrusts that pushed deeper with each stroke. "You'd probably get even harder if he did. You'd probably come right here on the floor while he watched."
Jules couldn't answer. Couldn't think. There was only the cock in his mouth, the hands in his hair, the tile under his knees, and the distant awareness that Antoine was thirty meters away, probably wondering what was taking so long. The knowledge made everything sharper. The taste of Mateo's skin was more intense. The ache in his jaw was more exquisite. The pressure building at the base of his own cock was more urgent.
Mateo's thrusts quickened. The careful pacing from before—the long, deliberate strokes—gave way to something more urgent. He was close. Jules could feel it in the tension of his thighs, in the way his grip on Jules's hair tightened, in the ragged edge of his breathing.
"You'll take it," Mateo said. "All of it. Every drop. And then you'll go back out there and sit beside your boyfriend and taste my cum in your throat while you kiss him goodnight."
The thought tipped Jules over an edge he hadn't known he was approaching. His hips bucked against nothing, his cock pulsing, and he came in his trousers like a teenager, untouched, just from the words and the cock in his throat and the shame that had become indistinguishable from pleasure.
Mateo groaned—a deep, guttural sound—and his cock swelled and pulsed, and then he was coming too, his release flooding Jules's mouth in thick pulses. Jules swallowed. He'd learned to swallow. It was easier now than it had been the first time, in the shower, when the taste had been strange and overwhelming. Now it was familiar. Now it was almost comforting.
Mateo withdrew. His cock, still half-hard, glistened with saliva. He tucked it back into his trousers with the casual efficiency of someone who had done this many times before.
"Clean yourself up," he said, nodding toward the sink. "Your face. There's..." He gestured at the corner of his own mouth. "A little."
Jules climbed to his feet on shaking legs. The mirror showed him what he expected: lips swollen, eyes glassy, a smear of white at the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away with a paper towel. His trousers were wet at the crotch—his own come, not Mateo's—but it was a small stain, the kind that might have come from spilled wine. Antoine wouldn't notice. Antoine never noticed.
"Good boy," Mateo said. His hand landed on Jules's shoulder—not gentle, but not cruel either. Proprietary. "Now go back to your boyfriend. We're not done with you tonight."
He unlocked the door and was gone.
Jules returned to the table. His legs were still unsteady, his throat still coated with the taste of Mateo's release. The candlelight seemed brighter than before, the sounds of the restaurant sharper. Antoine looked up as he approached and smiled.
"There you are. I was about to send a search party." He pushed a plate across the table. "I ordered you the flan. I hope that's okay."
"Flan is perfect." Jules slid into his chair. The twins were watching him—Mateo with satisfaction, Francesco with hunger. The hand found his thigh again almost immediately, but this time it was Mateo's, squeezing the damp fabric of his trousers. "Thank you."
"Everything alright?" Antoine asked. "You look a little flushed."
"Just the wine." Jules lifted his glass. The Rioja was dark and rich, and it washed the taste of semen from his mouth. "And the heat. It's warmer tonight than I expected."
The conversation resumed. But something had shifted. The twins' comments grew more pointed, their glances more knowing. They talked about the hotel, about the guests they'd met, about the things people did on vacation that they'd never do at home.
"Vacations reveal people," Francesco said, his hand sliding higher on Jules's thigh. "The masks come off. The inhibitions fall away. People become who they really are."
"Or who they want to be," Mateo added. "Sometimes it is the same thing."
Antoine nodded thoughtfully. "I think that's true. There's something about being in a new place. You're not accountable to anyone. No one knows you. You can be whoever you want."
"Is that what you've been doing?" Mateo asked. "Being someone different?"
"No." Antoine shook his head. "I'm pretty much the same everywhere. What you see is what you get." He smiled, that open, guileless smile. "Jules is the one who changes. He's always been harder to pin down. More layers."
The word layers hung in the air. Francesco's hand tightened on Jules's thigh.
"He seems very... complex," Francesco said. "Very deep. One might even say hungry." His eyes met Jules's across the table. "Hungry for experiences he cannot get at home."
The double meaning was unmistakable. Jules's face heated, and he reached for his wine glass, hoping the dim light hid his blush.
Antoine, incredibly, seemed to miss it entirely. Or perhaps—and this thought struck Jules like a physical blow—perhaps he wasn't missing it. Perhaps he was choosing not to see.
"There is something I need to say," Antoine said suddenly.
The table went still. Even the twins' hands stopped moving.
"I've been thinking about this for a while," Antoine continued. His voice was steady, but his fingers were fidgeting with his napkin. "About us. Jules and me. About our relationship." He paused, gathering himself. "I know I'm not... I know there are things I can't give you, Jules. Things you need."
Jules's heart stopped. "Antoine—"
"Let me finish. Please. This has been building up for a long time, and if I don't say it now, I don't know if I ever will." Antoine took a breath. His brown eyes met Jules's, and there was no anger in them. No accusation. Just a deep, sad tenderness that was somehow worse than fury would have been. "I know about sex. I know that other couples—most couples—do it more than we do. I know that you sometimes want it more than I can provide. I'm not blind, Jules. I see the way you look at me sometimes. The frustration. The hoping. And then the disappointment when I don't respond the way you want."
"Antoine, I—"
"I did some reading. A lot of reading, actually. About asexuality. About people who don't experience sexual attraction the way others do. And I think..." He swallowed. "I think that might be me. I think I might be asexual. Or somewhere on that spectrum, anyway. It's not that I don't love you. God, Jules, I love you more than I've ever loved anyone. It's just that sex doesn't... occur to me. The way it occurs to you. The way it occurs to most people. And I've been feeling so guilty about that, for so long, because I know it hurts you, and I can't change who I am."
The words poured out of him in a rush, a dam breaking after years of pressure. Jules sat frozen, his chest hollowed out by the weight of Antoine's confession.
"But I've been watching," Antoine continued. "The past few days. Here. At the hotel. I've been watching, and I'm not as oblivious as you think I am." His gaze shifted to the twins, then back to Jules. "I've seen the way they look at you. Mateo. Francesco. I've seen the way you look back. And I've been putting pieces together in my head, and I think I understand now. I think I understand what's been happening."
The silence that followed was absolute. Jules could hear the distant clink of silverware from other tables, the soft splash of water in the pool, the pounding of his own heart in his ears.
"I'm not angry," Antoine said. "That's the strange thing. I thought I would be. I thought if I ever found out that you—" He stopped, recalibrated. "But I'm not angry. I'm relieved, almost. Because now I know what you need, and I know I can't give it to you, but maybe..." He looked at the twins again. "Maybe there's a way."
"What are you saying?" Jules's voice was barely a whisper.
"I'm saying that if you need something I can't provide, I want you to have it. With them. With whoever. I don't need to know the details. I don't want to know the details. But I can't be the thing that keeps you from being fully yourself." Antoine reached across the table and took Jules's hand. His grip was warm and steady. "I have two conditions. Just two. One: you don't tell me about it. I don't want to know when or where or with whom. What I don't know can't hurt me. And two: you come back to me. At night. To our bed. To our life. Because I can't imagine my future without you in it, Jules. I don't want to imagine it."
Jules's vision blurred. Tears, he realized. He was crying. "Antoine, I don't know what to say. I never thought—"
"Say yes." Antoine squeezed his hand. "Say you'll come back to me. Say we can figure out a way to make this work. Because I love you. And I believe you when you say you love me. And I think love is bigger than this. I think it has to be."
"I love you." The words came out raw, scraped from somewhere deep in Jules's chest. "I love you so much. More than anything. More than—" He couldn't finish. The tears were flowing freely now. "Yes. Yes to everything. The conditions. All of it. I'll come back to you. Always. Always."
They sat there, hands clasped across the table, while the candles flickered and the pool lapped against its tiles. Antoine was crying too now, silent tears tracking down his cheeks, but he was smiling—that crinkling-at-the-corners smile that Jules had fallen in love with three years ago at a party in Lyon, when Antoine was wearing a terrible sweater and arguing passionately about something Jules couldn't remember.
The twins, who had been silent throughout this exchange, exchanged a look. Then Mateo cleared his throat.
"This is a very beautiful moment," he said. His voice was different now—less predatory, more measured. "And we do not wish to intrude on it. But perhaps we should leave you to finish your dinner in private."
Francesco nodded. His hand had withdrawn from Jules's thigh at some point during Antoine's speech. "We will go. But Jules..." His dark eyes held Jules's gaze. "We would like to speak with you. Later. In our room. When you are finished here."
The smile that accompanied these words was not predatory. It was something else—something that might have been respect. But underneath it, unmistakable, was the hunger that had been there from the beginning. The hunger that Jules now had permission to satisfy.
"We have things to discuss," Mateo added. His hand drifted to his crotch, adjusting himself with casual deliberateness. "Things that require... privacy."
Antoine looked at Jules. Jules looked at Antoine. And in that shared glance, something passed between them—an understanding, a permission, a contract sealed in tears and candlelight.
"Go," Antoine said quietly. "After dinner. Go talk to them. And then come back to me."
"I will." Jules squeezed Antoine's hand one last time. "I promise. I'll come back."
The twins rose from the table. Mateo's smirk had returned, but it was gentler now, almost fond. Francesco's hand landed on Jules's shoulder—the same proprietary grip as always, but for once, it didn't feel like a claim. It felt like an invitation.
"We'll be waiting," Francesco said.
