15. Kale

Christian's nostrilsflared and he licked his lips, mouth falling partway open like he had something to say that he couldn't find the words for. The blank confusion on his face gave me the impression that I'd dropped a pretty substantial bomb on him, and I imagined he would need time to process. Hell, I needed time the process.

The trip itself had been such a half-cocked whirlwind of an adventure. The jetlag and the insanity of the whole thing was finally starting to catch up with me, and I had genuine concerns my legs were going to give out. Even with Christian's careful and thorough hands working their way over every inch of my skin, I didn't trust my knees to keep me standing.

Taking the cloth from Christian's hand and giving him the same service he'd given me, I cleaned him a little quicker, then made sure we were both rinsed before grabbing a towel for him off the warming rack just outside the shower.

"I wish your friend had a jacuzzi," I said, wrapping him up before knotting one of the large bath towels around my own waist.

"I told him the same thing." Christian toweled off, padding barefoot back into the living room where most of his clothes lay discarded on the floor. He stepped into his underwear and then flopped down on Parrish's couch with a groan.

I dried off and put on a clean pair of underwear, then sat down beside him and closed my eyes. Christian curled his fingers around my bicep and tugged me closer, my head falling into his lap. I blinked up, studying the guarded look on his face.

"What are you really doing here?" he asked.

"Lying on the couch at your best friend's apartment while you play with my hair," I said. Christian rolled his eyes at me and I kissed his bare stomach. "Hoping that we can sneak out and grab a bite to eat before my stomach eats itself."

"We can't," he said quickly.

"Why not?"

"This isn't New York. I can't just…"

"Is it that bad?" I asked. "Honestly?"

"The rules are rigid."

I shoved up off of his lap so I could face him head on. His features were still marred with the tight lines of worry around the corners of his eyes, and I found I much preferred the relaxed state of his face post-orgasm to this constant tension and concern.

"Why, though? Aren't you the spare of the spare and then some?"

"Eleventh back," he muttered with a shrug. "I don't know why it's this way. Tradition… expectation. Take your pick."

"Is the expectation that you just do as you're told for the rest of your life? Like a servant?"

"Come on, Kale." Christian stood up and paced across the room, stopping in front of the window and folding his arms in front of his chest. His shoulders were up high around his ears, tense and locked. "You're from money—you get it."

"I'm not from money," I corrected.

"You just flew around the world to fuck me. That couldn't have been cheap."

In all honestly, I'd flown around the world to see him, but mincing words at this point wouldn't add anything to the conversation.

"My parents own a farm in California," I said, stretching out my legs and crossing them at the ankle. He was still at the window, shoulders maybe an inch lower than before. "They raise goats and grow produce."

"Do the goats shit gold?"

I chuckled. "I see where you're going, and the answer is no, but they shed it. Technically. Not enough to fund my lifestyle, though. That's my grandparents. It's their money."

"Are you a kept man, Mr. Sheffield?" He finally turned, resting his ass on the windowsill and staring my way. The light beat against his back, casting him into shadow and making him look as much like an angel as he had the first night I met him.

"I had a leg up," I admitted. "My grandparents were fundamental in helping me get to where I am and a decent amount of money in my bank account has come from theirs, but I've done well on my own."

"Well enough to globetrot for a fuck?"

"Would you stop talking about yourself like that? Like you're just a piece of ass? I liked you better in the shower," I told him. "When you were leaning into your submission a little better."

Christian's mouth quirked up in the corner and realization dropped over me like a wet and heavy blanket. He was being a brat again. He was quite literally sitting across from me doing exactly what we'd talked about in the shower. He was asking me for what he needed, and I had almost missed it. After telling him how reliable and sure I wanted to be for him.

"Come over here, princess."

At the endearment, he pushed off the windowsill and stalked toward me. The light diffused around him and I was able to make out the deep flush on his cheeks and the erection thickening between his legs.

"What do you want?" he rasped.

The question felt weighty, loaded, in a way I hadn't been expecting. He wasn't asking about what I wanted in that moment, of that I was sure. The question was a throwback to the rest of the conversation, with him trying to get to the bottom of my motives, which…good luck there. I wasn't even sure what I'd been thinking when Ford and I came up with the plan in the first place. The only thing I knew was I needed to see Christian again.

"I want you to bend yourself over my lap so I can give you what you need," I said to him.

Christian bent himself in half with ease, the burning rod of his cock pressing hard against my thigh, even through the shield of his underwear. I didn't have much time to decide if I wanted to keep them on him or take them off, and at the last minute, I decided to keep them on. The first time I'd taken Christian over my knee, I'd tucked his cock between my legs and let him rut against me while I spanked him. I'd allowed that because it was what he'd needed, but it was different now. He was untrusting and uncertain of me and my motivation, and it was my responsibility to remind him of who I was and who I wanted to be…to him.

I yanked the waistband down below his ass cheeks, exposing his skin but keeping his cock and balls covered. He groaned, writhing against me and I delivered one sharp smack to the center of his right ass cheek. Christian yelped, and I pressed my left hand against the center of his back to keep him still and steady.

"It's been ten days since we met," I said, kneading my hand over the first place I'd spanked him. "Count them."

I spanked him a second time, and he called it one, which was fine with me. One after another after another until we reached ten, and his cock had leaked a river through his underwear, the precum smearing against my leg every time I hit him. Christian was close to babbling nonsense, but I was nowhere near done with him.

"It was an eight hour flight to get here," I said next, delivering another strike, this time lower against the tender fold where his ass met his thigh.

He counted it was one, and I hit him harder each time until the word eight sounded like a prayer in the back of his throat. My hand throbbed from how hard I'd been hitting him, and what I wouldn't have given to be back in the privacy of my house with a rack of paddles and toys at my disposal. The way he would cry for me if I struck him with a tawse was enough to send shocks up the back of my spine at the thought of it.

I'd played with a lot of partners in my life, men and women, but it was a rare thing to find a partner who truly enjoyed the masochism part of BDSM. Not that there was anything wrong with people who did it for fun. I did it for fun, but there was a stark difference between people who liked pain as part of their orgasm and those who needed it separately. Christian was very much the latter, even if he couldn't comprehend what that meant for him.

"Are you good?" I asked him after the eighth spank.

Christian's face was buried in the cushions of the couch and he shook his head furiously, muttering something into the fabric that I couldn't make sense of. Dragging my hand up the length of his spine, I fisted his hair and yanked his head back.

"What did you say?"

"More. More. More," he whined.

"Ask me nicely."

"More, please, Mr. Sheffield."

I dropped his head and raised my hand, delivering the hardest spank of the day. His back didn't bow—it arched—and he pressed up against my hand as I rained another flurry of strikes down against his already bruising skin. New marks popped up around the lingering yellow remnants from our first night together, and my arm was close to falling off from exertion when Christian's entire body went straight as a board on my lap. Wet heat pooled on the top of my thigh, and he seized, cock pressing insistently against my leg as he came.

"Did you just…"

"Oh, fuck," he moaned against the couch, humping my leg as the last jets of cum leaked out of his cock.

I shoved my hand past the pulled-down waistband of his underwear and took his balls into my fist. They shifted and churned against my palm as he finished spilling his release into his underwear, moaning when I touched him, whispering and begging and saying my name over and over again.

It was better than any drink I'd ever had. Better than any high.

It was like Christian had been made for me, in ways neither of us understood. Because until I met him, I thought for sure I knew who I was and what I wanted. I was always after a good time, a naked time, a short time. Not that I had been relationship averse, I just never saw the point in it. I'd never met anyone who inspired me to want to lock them down. But with Christian on my lap, covered in his own cum after nothing more than a spanking? The idea of sharing him with anyone ever again made me want to tear all of Parrish's pretty art off the walls and set it on fire.

"Am I in trouble?" he asked, turning his head so his cheek lay against the couch.

His pupils were blown wide and his lashes were clumped together like he'd been crying.

"I didn't tell you not to come," I said. "But…"

"It feels like I should have asked."

The perfectness of this man was unparalleled and unfair.

"Then ask next time," I told him.

He nodded and turned his face away from me.

I petted the back of his head, smoothing down the strands of hair that he'd twisted out of place, then I worked my way down his back until both of my hands were on his ass, tracing the shape of my palms against his skin. Christian sucked in a sharp breath, held it, then let it out with a long shudder.

"I want to take you to dinner," I finally said.

"Can't go out," he muttered, still keeping his face buried and out of sight.

The despondency in his voice almost broke my heart, and hearing him sound so miserable so soon after a hands-free orgasm that had sent him into another stratosphere felt patently unfair. I needed to fix it. Needed to make it right for us both.

"What will happen?" I asked.

"Someone will recognize me."

"And then?"

"Niko will show up."

I sighed, remembering the unwelcome appearance of his security detail at my room at The Plaza.

"Do they know you're gone yet?"

When I reached out to Parrish, he had promised me that he would buy us as much time from Niko as he could manage, though he hadn't said just how he would do that. Since Niko hadn't shown up yet, I imagined we still had a little more time left. I would have been shocked if we made it through the next two nights unbothered, though. And I hated that, like a snake coiled in my stomach. The idea of my time with Christian being interrupted again had me ready to unfurl and strike. I tried my hardest to remind myself that he had a life that didn't make sense to me, obligations I would never understand, but all I wanted was two nights and three days. A small fraction of time for us to explore ourselves together, uninterrupted and undeterred.

And after that?

I wouldn't be content to let him go, but that was a problem for future Kale.

"Niko knows I'm gone, but he was giving me a head start."

"Do you have your passport?" I asked.

Christian shifted onto his elbow, pushing himself up into a half-seated position across my lap. The wet spot on his underwear was massive, and it was a shame to waste a load like that when my mouth—and his—were right there.

"Parrish put it in my bag."

"Alright." I grabbed him by the shoulders and stood, depositing him on his feet with as much grace as I could manage. His knees wobbled, and he caught himself on my shoulder, post-sex confusion washing across his face.

"Alright, what?" he asked, tugging down his underwear to free his cock from the sticky wet spot he'd just made.

"Get dressed," I told him, yanking his briefs back up. "We're going to America."