24. Christian

I'd recognizethe sound of my brother's voice anywhere, even in my sleep. It was his chopped and constantly annoyed tone that had brought me around, immediately throwing me into a state of confusion because the softness of the sheets and the smell of the pillows confirmed I was still in America, in Kale's bed. But when I shuffled downstairs, Kale slammed the door closed and faced me with a cup of coffee in hand and the same unaffected look that sat on his face when he was in the middle of something serious.

He opened his arms to me, and if Phillip wasn't banging down the door in a fit of anger, Kale's arms were the only place I wanted to be. I nuzzled against his chest, breathing in the warm and spicy smell of his skin.

"What's on the agenda for today?" I asked, tracing my nose across the dip of his throat.

"First, coffee." He herded me into the kitchen, the terracotta tiles cool under my feet. I took a seat at the small dine-in table tucked under one of the windows while Kale busied himself with preparing a coffee for me.

"Shouldn't I get coffee for us both?" I asked when he joined me at the table. He brought a plate with two croissants with him, and I picked at the flaky corner of the one closest to me.

"You're my guest."

"But, like…" I cleared my throat, searching for the words and not wanting to come off sounding ignorant. "With the way things are between us."

Kale arched a brow. "How are things between us?"

"Are you really going to make me say it?" I asked.

"I really don't know where you're going, so…yes." He situated himself in his seat, a casual recline that screamed in sharp contrast compared to how uncomfortable I was feeling. Raising his coffee to his mouth, he took a drink and waited.

"I don't know a lot about domination." My cheeks immediately burned like I'd pressed them directly against the sun. "But isn't the serving meant to be my job?"

"Sex isn't a job, for one." Kale bobbled his head from side to side, a soft smile playing across his mouth. He wasn't teasing, but he was enjoying himself.

"This isn't sex," I blurted.

"But you're hard." He stretched one of his legs toward me, pressing his toes between my legs, against the tip of my slowly swelling cock.

"Because you're touching my dick."

"You were hard before," he said, withdrawing his leg and resting his ankle on the top of his other knee. "Was it thinking about serving me coffee that did it?"

"I'm always hard around you," I said, running my hands through my hair. I was inclined to pull it all out at the roots, but I wasn't quite there yet.

"What we do in the bedroom doesn't have to be what we do in every room," he said gently.

"We did it at a club last night," I reminded him, cock thickening even more as if to prove his earlier point. "Last time I checked, they didn't have any bedrooms."

"Oh, but they do."

I let out an audible sigh. "Point taken."

He smiled at me and dipped his chin toward his chest. "And I take yours. But to your point, no, Christian. You aren't supposed to serve me coffee unless you want to."

"What do you want?"

I was spoiled on account of my upbringing, but I strived to never be selfish. Even though that was the only thing I'd been when it came to him. The entirety of our relationship had been Kale doing things for me, whether it was hiding me from Niko, flying me around the world for dinner, or making me come so hard I saw stars. For weeks now, between the sex and the emails, everything Kale had done was for me. I hadn't even asked what he wanted, what he preferred.

"That's complicated."

"Then make it easy for me," I said.

He chewed his cheek, hollowing the skin while he worried himself over whatever answer he was preparing to give me.

"It's not as cut and dried as you're making it out to be. And none of the formalities of what this relationship could be matter. You're going back home the day after tomorrow and everything is going to be different then anyway."

Kale's expression turned sour, and he tore off a chunk of a croissant. Popping it into his mouth, he chewed and swallowed, then repeated the action eight times until the croissant was nothing but crumbs on the plate.

"What if I decide I don't want to go home?" I asked, peeling the buttery top layer off my croissant and folding it in on itself before shoving it into my mouth.

"You have to," he said quickly. "Do you want more coffee?"

He was up before I could read his expression and back with a full mug of steaming brown liquid.

"To your earlier question, the answer is no. I didn't get hard thinking about getting you coffee. At least, it wasn't just getting you coffee that did it. Now answer me."

"What do I want?" he repeated the question back at me and I nodded.

Kale studied my face in silence, eyes dragging from left to right and back, then up and down and around before his left eye twitched closed. It was almost a grimace, but not quite.

"I want to remember everything," he whispered, letting out a slow breath. "When you're gone."

Spit lodged in my throat, and I forced myself to swallow it down, the cursed echo of Phillip's voice still ringing in my ears.

"You're talking like when I leave, you're never going to see me again."

"It's different with the distance."

"Do you think if you tell me what to do over email that I'll ignore you?" I asked, snorting in amusement at the idea of Kale sending me a list of tasks that I would read and promptly ignore. He was delirious if that was his concern, because there wasn't a single word of his that I didn't hang off of. An ocean between us wasn't going to change that.

"There's just…different ways to do this." He gave me a weak shrug. "There's people who do it for fun during sex, people who take it a little bit further than that, and people who do it all the time. It's not one size fits all."

"And what do you want?" I asked again.

"Something in the middle, I think," he murmured, shoving the plate aside and reaching for my hand. I gave it without concern, and he threaded our fingers together, turning my palm up so my knuckles dusted across the rustic wood of the breakfast table.

"Tell me about it," I whispered. "I need your help here. I don't know how to ask for what I need because I don't have the words for it."

I hadn't been searching for the right thing to say, but I must have found it just the same. The stress that had wrinkled the corners of Kale's eyes turned soft and his mouth twisted up at the corner, a smile that almost looked like an apology. I wanted to move, to go to him. Wanted to crawl into his lap and curl against his chest, but I didn't know if that was appropriate or reasonable.

Normally, at home, when I was out of my depth with something, it made me angry. Nothing made me more upset than feeling—or looking—stupid, but even though I was the one at a clear disadvantage, nothing about Kale's demeanor brought up those feelings for me. The space felt safe and tender, giving me the feeling of being in his arms even if I was on the other side of the table.

"Most of my relationships have been inconsequential, Christian," he explained, turning our joined hands over. "Not all of them, but…"

"I've never had a relationship," I offered.

"Why not?"

"I've never been interested in anyone that my father or Phillip would approve of," I admitted. "And it's honestly too fun to make them mad, so I've not cared to try and find anyone they'd consider respectable."

"What would they think of me?" he asked.

The fact that Kale had closed the door in Phillip's face and lived to tell about it was more of an answer to the question than I'd ever be able to give him.

"I think you'd be tolerable," I answered.

His mouth quirked into a brief smile.

"I enjoy the way things are between us." Kale picked his words carefully, gaze flickering toward the ceiling like the rest of the answer might be written above our heads. "I like when you let me choose for us, but I have no interest in being in a relationship with someone who doesn't have opinions of his own."

"I have plenty of opinions."

He chuckled, yanking our hands across the table and raising them to his mouth. He kissed each of my knuckles, then each of my fingertips.

"I know you do," he said, angling his arm so he could kiss the thin skin on the inside of my wrist. "It's one of the things I love about you."

I closed my eyes, humming softly to match the way his confession felt in my bones. "What else do you love about me?"

"I love how you look on your knees with my cock in your mouth."

I opened my eyes in time to see him smirk.

"I love how my sheets smell after you've slept in my bed."

My lashes fluttered, and I let my eyes fall closed again.

"I love that you asked me to tell you what I loved about you because you needed the reassurance," he said.

"That's no—" I snapped my mouth closed before the rest of the sentence could escape my mouth.

That was exactly the reason I'd asked the question, and somehow he'd realized it before I did. I didn't know if he was simply that observant, that good, or some combination of both. But it was really sexy to recognize how in tune with me he already was.

"And what I want, Christian, is for you to continue asking me for the things you need. Whether you ask with your mouth, or your body, or that ever-hard cock of yours. What I want is to give you what you need."

My eyes were still closed, so I heard, rather than saw, when Kale went to his knees in front of me. Without looking, I tangled my fingers through his hair, relishing the silky softness of the strands as they wove through my fingers. I knew where he was, and one part of me wanted to open my eyes and see him there, but the other part…

There was a lot I didn't understand about the dynamic of my relationship with Kale, but one thing I knew for certain was having him on his knees for me was a sacred offering that deserved to be treated with reverence. When he reached for the waistband of my pajama pants, which were his pajama pants, I squeezed my eyes closed tighter. Lifting off the seat so he could tug them down to my thighs, I dropped my head back to give me double protection from seeing him between my legs.

When his mouth sealed around the tip of my cock, I let go of his hair and covered my face with both of my hands. Digging the heels of my palms against my closed eyelids, my entire body burned like a bomb had centered itself in the middle of my chest before detonating outward to every nerve ending in my body.

"Kale," I whimpered his name, and he hummed happily, taking the rest of my length into his mouth.

His mouth was hot and wet, tongue wrapping around my shaft as he worked his way up and down. For every disheveled noise I made, Kale doubled his efforts, and by the time an orgasm shimmered around the edges of my vision, I was sitting in a pool of spit, my bruised thighs sliding around the chair. Kale's fingers dug into my legs, spreading them apart and while he bobbed up and down my shaft, groaning like I was the best meal he'd ever had.

The orgasm was a heavy and intense wave that slammed into me so hard, my back bowed and I curled over the top of Kale's head. Hips bucking madly as hot jets of cum streaked out of my dick, my fingers gripped the seat of the chair to keep myself rooted to the ground. My eyes flew open in time for me to realize Kale had been watching me the whole time. With his lips spread around the thick girth of my shaft, his stare was focused upward at my face. His brown eyes shone with unshed tears, and spit shined across his hollowed cheeks.

He sucked at my dick, swallowing the last pulses of my orgasm with a low growl of approval. He kept his mouth around me until the touch of his tongue against my shaft hurt, and only then did he carefully ease me out of his mouth. He didn't bother tucking me back into my pajamas, as they were wet and soiled like the rest of me. His lips were shiny and swollen, and while I'd wanted many things in my life, I'd never needed anything more than I needed to kiss him in that moment.

The chair made a loud and grating sound as it slid back across the tiles, and I was on my knees with Kale's face in my hands, crashing our mouths together. He opened for me readily, going pliant while I used my tongue to scoop the taste of my cum from his mouth. It mixed with my spit and his spit, swirling between our tongues and our mouths, not even stopping when my back hit the floor.

Kale's weight on top of me was a welcome presence, and I spread my legs to make room for him there. He didn't break the kiss, not even when he reached down between his legs to jerk off. With his other hand braced beside my head, hips rutting against me, Kale shot his load across my stomach with another rough grunt before he collapsed, dropping his forehead against mine.

The entire scene felt frantic, but those moments at the end were the most peaceful of my life. I sighed softly, letting my eyes fall closed again. The sharp pain of the tile against my shoulder blades faded into nothing, the sticky wetness between my legs was nothing more than another piece of me. A piece of us.

Kale kissed me again.

The corner of my mouth, my chin, my cheeks, my nose. Humming contentedly, I wrapped my arms around him, tracing my hands down to his exposed ass and digging in. Kale kissed each of my eyelids before pressing our foreheads together and going still.

"I don't know how to be with you, princess," he whispered, "but I promise you, I'm going to figure it out."

And I believed him.