I lick him lovingly from base to tip, thinking I’d probably be doing this even if he hadn’t ordered me to. His thick cock is worthy of countless hours of worship. It’s a thing of beauty.
Maybe instead of abstracts, I’ll move on to nudes.
I giggle a little when I picture my living room walls crammed with paintings of Kage’s erection.
He rolls his head to one side and gazes at me with hazy, half-lidded eyes. He caresses my face. In a husky voice, he says, “If I had a more fragile ego, I might not take it so well that you’re laughing when your face is two inches from my dick.”
I give him a few more licks, then crawl up his body and lie on top of him, draping my bound arms over his head and snuggling my face into the crook between his neck and shoulder.
“I was just thinking you’d make a great nude model. If I brought you into sketch class, my students would die.”
Winding his arms around my back, he nuzzles my hair. “Your classes have nude models?”
“No. The kids are too young for that. But you’re inspiring me to start teaching night school for adults.” I tilt my head and smile up at him. “I could make a lot of money charging admission if you were on the ticket.”
He kisses the tip of my nose. “You don’t need to worry about money anymore, remember? By the way, why haven’t you started taking draws from the trust?”
I crinkle my nose. “Can we please have a few minutes of uninterrupted afterglow before we start talking about money?”
He cups my face and softly kisses my lips. “You might be the only person I’ve met who doesn’t care about it.”
“Oh, I care about it. I just don’t want to feel like you gave me a ten-million-dollar payment for services rendered.”
After a moment, he starts to chuckle. Short, silent chuckles that shake his chest. “What if I said it was only a fifty-dollar payment, and the rest was a tip?”
“If my wrists weren’t tied together, I’d smack you a good one, you jerk.”
He rolls me over and presses me against the mattress, smiling down at me, so handsome, it hurts.
“Then I guess I’ll have to keep you tied up for good.”
“You have to let me go sometime. I still need to clean up that shoulder of yours.”
His warm eyes flare even warmer, until they’re smoldering hot. “I have a better idea. Let’s get cleaned up together. In the shower.”
Without waiting for a response, he rolls off the bed, picks me up, and carries me into the bathroom.
23
Nat
I always pictured the reality of shower sex being less like it is in the movies—glamorous, sensual—and more like two baby elephants rolling around awkwardly in a tiny kiddie pool as they’re sprayed with garden hoses: trunks flying, legs tangling, everything a chaotic, weird-looking mess.
Kage simplifies things by pressing me against the shower wall, pinning my arms behind my back, and fucking me standing up.
When the echoing cries of our pleasure have faded, he drops his forehead to my shoulder and exhales.
“I wish I’d met you years ago,” he murmurs, softly kissing my wet skin. “You make me want to be a different man.”
The sadness in his voice tightens something inside my chest. “I like the man you are.”
“Only because you don’t know me well enough.”
He withdraws from my body, then turns me toward the warm spray. Standing behind me, he squirts a dollop of shampoo into his hand and massages it into my hair.
It feels so good, I’m almost distracted by what he just said.
Almost, but not quite.
“So start talking, then. What is it I should know?”
The sound of the water can’t drown out his sigh. “What do you want to know?”
I think for a moment. “Where were you born?”
“Hell’s Kitchen.”
Never having been to Manhattan, I don’t know much about its different neighborhoods. But I do know that Hell’s Kitchen isn’t considered high-end. “And you went to school there?”
His strong fingers massage my scalp, working the shampoo through my hair. “Yes. Until I was fifteen and my parents were killed.”
I freeze in horror. “Killed? By who?”
His voice gains a hard, hateful edge. “The Irish. Their gangs were the deadliest in New York then. The biggest and best organized. My parents were shot in cold blood in front of their butcher shop on 39th Street.”
“Why?”
“They missed a protection payment. One.” His tone turns deadly. “And for that, they were murdered.”
I turn around. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I search his face. It’s hard, closed-off, and a little scary. I whisper, “You were there, weren’t you? You saw it happen.”
A muscle slides in his jaw. He doesn’t answer. He simply adjusts the spray and tilts my head back into it to rinse the shampoo out of my hair.
After a tense moment, he continues. “After that, I dropped out of school and started working full-time in the shop.”
“At fifteen?”
“I had two younger sisters to look after. And no relatives—my parents left everyone behind when they emigrated from Russia. They barely spoke any English when they arrived, but they were hard workers. We didn’t have much, but it was enough. But with them gone, I was the man of the house. It was my duty to take care of my sisters.”
I recall how he said it was his duty and pleasure to take care of me and think I understand that a little better now.
He grabs the bar of soap and starts to wash me, gently and methodically, getting in all my nooks and crannies until my face is flushed. As he rinses me, he keeps talking.
“The day I turned sixteen, two men came into the shop. I recognized them from before. They were the same two who shot my parents. They said they’d given me time, out of respect for the dead, but now it was my turn to start paying them protection. When I told them to go to hell, they laughed at me. They stood right in the middle of my parents’ shop and laughed. So I shot them.”
Finished with me, he begins to soap his chest.
I gape at him in horror.
He says, “I knew who to call to take care of the bodies. It wasn’t the police, of course. It was the Russians. The Irish weren’t the only ones with tight community connections. Though my father wasn’t a made man, he was respected. After his death, the head of the Russian mafia made it known that if I needed him, I could count on him.”
There’s a short, weighted pause. “For a price.”
“You mean Maxim Mogdonovich?”
Surprised, Kage glances at me with sharp eyes. “Yes.”
“Sloane told me.”
“Stavros must’ve been talking.”
It sounds ominous the way he says it. I don’t want any blood on my hands, so I clarify.
“I don’t know if he did or not. Maybe she overheard something. Or she looked it up on the internet. She’s savvy that way, with research. She knows a lot of random stuff.”
He smiles, turns me the other way, and rinses himself under the spray.
It’s like watching porn.
Soap slides sensuously over acres of rippling muscles. Strong hands run up and down his broad, tattooed chest. He tilts his head into the water, closes his eyes, and rinses his hair, giving me a great view of his beautiful neck and biceps, his pecs and rock-hard abs.