The noise started again at exactly 5 a.m.

Cassius stirred, lifted his face off the pillow, and blinked sleepily at the dark bedroom.

“Oh!” a voice shouted faintly through the wall opposite his bed. “Oh yes! Right there! That feels so good!”

Cassius groaned, jammed the pillow over his head, and pressed his face into the mattress. Alas, nothing he did could drown out the racket coming from the adjoining apartment. The man’s cries of pleasure intensified and were soon accompanied by a steady thumping.

Cassius swore and sat up, the bedsheets falling around his bare waist. He glared at the wall separating his apartment from his neighbor’s.

It’s a miracle that asshole hasn’t broken his bed yet!

The demon cat was sitting on his dresser and staring avidly at the spot the sounds were coming from, its swinging tail matching the tempo of the lovemaking happening in the next apartment.

Had he known when he’d moved into the building two weeks ago that he would be living next to a sex addict who liked to fornicate with a different person every night, Cassius would never have signed the lease on the penthouse. As it was, he’d hardly gotten any sleep since he’d come to San Francisco, bar the couple of nights he’d relented and slept on the living-room couch.

“Oh God! Harder! Fuck me harder, Morgan!”

Another man’s low grunts reached Cassius, the creaks from the rocking bed escalating as he pounded his partner and gave him exactly what he was begging for. Heat flooded Cassius’s cheeks as he felt a stirring in his own groin.

His neighbor only got loud right near the end, before he climaxed. And, for some insane reason, the sounds he made always quickened Cassius’s pulse and made lust pool in his belly. Cassius told himself it was because he hadn’t had sex in months. Deep inside, he knew that lie was starting to wear thin.

The first man cried out in ecstasy when he came.

A feral noise left the other man a moment later as he orgasmed.

Blood pounded in Cassius’s ears in the silence that followed. He could almost picture the two men on the other side of the wall in his mind’s eye, their faces flushed with pleasure and their bodies damp with sweat as they lay in each other’s arms. The ache in his groin intensified.

Cassius dropped his head on his knees and closed his eyes, his erection throbbing between his legs. He was about to touch himself when he became conscious of an intense stare.

The demon cat’s gaze was locked on him.

The demon cat meowed, its stare all knowing.

“Look, it’s because I haven’t gotten any in a while, alright,” Cassius told the creature defensively.

The cat blinked, its expression indicating it wasn’t buying that bullshit.

Cassius blew out a heavy sigh, threw the sheets off his body, and walked naked into his bathroom, his erection at full mast. He gritted his teeth and stood under an ice-cold shower for a good ten minutes until his body calmed down, all the while cursing his neighbor.

“Fucking Morgan and his fucking stamina.”