27. Toby
Twenty-Seven
Toby
What’s possibly the most important night of my professional life suddenly has the potential to be the most important night of my personal life, too.
Because Kingston is holding me like he needs me to keep him upright. Because Kingston says he wants me. Because Kingston’s tongue is touching mine and he smells like honey and he tastes expensive. His flavor is now my favorite thing to keep in my mouth and saliva pools there just imagining getting to taste other parts of him.
Which will be happening very soon, if I have anything to say about it.
I tear away from the kiss reluctantly. “We should—I mean, I want to, but?—”
Kingston opens his eyes, but they’re heavy-lidded and make me think of sex. “Of course, you’ve got to finish up, take your accolades, etc., etc.”
“It won’t take long,” I promise.
“But their dinner.”
“I’ll say I can’t come. That way, they can talk about me behind my back, which they probably want to do, anyway.”
Kingston kisses me again, his lips as soft and expert against mine as I imagined. I melt into him, wanting to say to hell with the people on the other side of the door. But I can’t. And Kingston and I have time.
I pepper his lips with two—three—more kisses. “Wait for me to finish up? We can go back to your place together.”
He adjusts his trousers and I nearly sink to my knees right then and there, thinking about what’s underneath them.
“Wait. Yes. I’ll wait.” His gaze drops to my crotch and then comes back up. “You might want to?—”
I glance down and see the result of our mini make-out session distending my black jeans. “Oh. Yes. Well. Thanks.” I shift things around as best as I can, while Kingston watches avidly. His gaze on me doesn’t exactly make me less excited. “Stop looking at me.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not helping,” I hiss.
“Really?” He sounds utterly delighted.
“The second we get home you can look all you want,” I say, my voice as darkly threatening as I can make it, but he just smiles wickedly, his gaze dropping to my feet, then traveling slowly up my entire body at a leisurely pace.
“I can’t wait,” he says, his velvety low voice also not helping the stiffy in my trousers.
“Me either,” I say with feeling. “Give me five minutes.”
“Take your time,” he says magnanimously. “Really. There’s no rush. I’ve waited… I never thought—” He’s got that look again, the one I now know means he’s overwhelmed. I’m still agog that I’m the one who’s able to overwhelm the unflappable Kingston James.
“I know.” I didn’t expect this to happen tonight. Maybe ever. But it is, and I have to at least attempt to keep my head on straight.
We give each other once-overs and determine we’re presentable enough to leave the storage room. Galia sees us emerge into the gallery and pounces on me. “Everyone left for the restaurant. Fernanda says you have to go make nice.” She gathers our coats from where we left them in the entryway.
“No, I don’t think I can?—”
“He’ll be there,” Kingston says.
“You’re coming, too, aren’t you?” I ask him.
“No, I’m going home. You need to focus and be the charming artist they want,” he says. “I’ll wait up for you.”
“You think I’ll be able to focus knowing that?” I glance at Galia, who pretends to study her phone and lower my voice. “I’m going to be thinking about you every second.”
“Good,” he murmurs back. “I’ll be thinking of you as well. But this is your job.”
I want so very much to tell the job to fuck off and take Kingston home to ravish him. But he’s right. “Damn it. Fine. I’ll see you at the apartment.”
“Text me when you’re on your way.”
“All right.”
I hesitate. Am I allowed to kiss him now? Galia makes an impatient noise and I back away without touching him. “See you later.”
Three hours later, I’m in the elevator riding up to Kingston’s apartment. My face hurts from talking and smiling at people for hours, and my head hurts from too little food and too much alcohol. And Kingston didn’t reply to the text I sent him twenty minutes ago, telling him I was finally on my way home.
I have a key, so I let myself in. Except for a light left on over the stove, the apartment is dark. I pad through to Kingston’s room. The door is partially closed, but I see light coming from within. I tap, unsure of my welcome.
“Come in,” Kingston says, sounding sleepy.
“Are you awake?”
The sheets rustle as I walk through the door. The reading lamp on a swinging arm next to his bed is on the dimmest setting, so I can just make him out, shirtless and sitting up in the middle of the bed. “No,” he says dryly. “I’m asleep.”
I give him an apologetic smile. “That took way too long to get out of, so sorry.”
“Did you do your job?”
“Yes, but?—”
“Then you don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
I pause, then decide to take him at his word. “All right.”
We just look at each other for a minute. At this time yesterday, I would have bid him good night, then backed out of the room and gone to the couch, wishing for the hundredth time that I could share his bed.
But this is today. And today is the day Kingston told me he wanted me. Today is the day Kingston kissed me.
This might be my new favorite day.
“Can I?” I say finally, walking fully into the room and looking at the bed.
“Please,” he says, all formality, but with a rough edge underneath that sends my blood racing.
I peel off my outer layers, kick off my shoes. I pass through to his en suite bathroom, the only one in the apartment. I wash my hands and brush my teeth, take off my trousers, and come to the bed in my black T-shirt and black boxers.
I’ve slept in this bed before, when Kingston overrode my insistence that I sleep on the couch, and on a few occasions when I had to stay in the city while he was in Rosedale. It’s a comfortable bed, furnished in the same hotel-white sheets Kingston uses in Rosedale, sateen finish so soft it feels like silk. I’ve never been in the bed with Kingston, but there’s plenty of room for both of us. In fact, the bed holds us perfectly, as if it was waiting for us to come together all along.
Kingston lifts the sheets and I settle in next to him, close but not touching. It’s odd and familiar at the same time, because it’s Kingston, someone I’ve been hovering around for months, someone with whom I feel as safe and secure as a person can feel.
But he’s half naked under the sheets and he’s looking at me with carefully hungry eyes. He’s holding back, still, and it makes me wonder exactly how much he’s been holding back all these months that we’ve spent together, how much was going on under the surface that I didn’t see, or didn’t let myself see.
“Do you want to go to sleep?” I ask, suddenly uncertain of this new dynamic and my place in it. He said he wants me, but that doesn’t have to mean right this very second.
There’s a pause. “I bet you’re tired,” he says. His voice gives nothing away. It’s the same tone he uses when he wants me to eat something, or take a break from work, or come on a drive in his absurdly luxurious convertible. It’s Kingston’s taking-care-of-me voice. I’ve heard it before. And all the time he was using it, he wanted me, he says.
So he must want me now, too.
“I’m wired, actually,” I confess. “But I don’t want to keep you up.” I stop, realize how that sounds. “Any more than I already have. Don’t you have to go to the office tomorrow?”
“I do. A day full of meetings. And you have an enormous party in your honor to go to tomorrow night,” he reminds me.
Oh yeah. The opening.
“I forgot,” I whisper. “I guess I’ve been distracted.”
“Did something happen at the dinner? Did everything go okay?”
“It was fine. Boring. But fine. What’s distracting me is you .”
“Oh, right.” Kingston sounds surprised.
“So no, I don’t particularly want to go to sleep, unless you want to, in which case I will happily snuggle down at your side and do my best impression of Luna. Otherwise, I’d very much like to kiss you again, if I may.”
He chuckles and turns to his side. I shift, too, and suddenly we’re only a few inches away from each other. His eyes look black in the low light. I think he’s looking at my mouth.
“You can kiss me,” he says. “I guess I just don’t want you to do anything you aren’t ready for.”
“I’ve been aching for you for months,” I say. “I’m ready for whatever you’re ready for.”
“I—damn.” He chuckles ruefully. “You’re calling my bluff, Toby. I guess I thought you’d, I don’t know, want to take things slower.”
“Slower? When I’ve been celibate for nearly a year?”
“No one since Ivy?” he asks.
“No one since Ivy,” I confirm.
“And when you were together, it was only her?”
“Of course,” I say. “I’m highly monogamous.”
“Because of your dad?”
“Because I’m much too much of a mess to be able to manage multiple partners at the same time. And because of my dad. And because I think at heart, I still believe in that fairy tale kind of love. If I didn’t, I would have thrown myself at you long ago and not cared about the consequences.”
“And before her—did you have relationships with men?”
I finally get what this is. The previous partners questionnaire. It’s been so long since I’ve done the new partner thing I forgot there were rules to the game.
“Relationships is a strong word,” I say. “But I had enough encounters to confirm for myself that I’m bisexual. I think after I met Ivy, I considered myself hetero-romantic.”
“Ah.”
I don’t imagine the hurt in his expression.
“And then I met you. And I knew that any label I had for myself was moot. Because I’ve never felt this way about anyone else. It’s the most cliché thing to say, but it’s true.”
“I happen to like clichés,” Kingston says.
“What about you?” I’ve wondered and now seems as good a time to ask as any. “How long since you’ve been with someone?”
“Longer than a year,” he says. “By complete accident. When my last real relationship ended?—”
“With Sergio?”
Kingston nods. He’s mentioned his friend a few times, and I always felt vaguely jealous of him. “With Sergio. That ended, and I felt… I don’t know. That the idea of trying to meet someone seemed exhausting. I wanted to, at least in theory. But then I met you, and I had even less incentive to find someone else when you were all I wanted. By the way, I’ve always been regularly screened and there’s nothing to worry about on that front.”
“I’m glad of that. But you never told me,” I say, still confused. “You wanted me all these months, and you never said anything.”
“I was scared,” he says plainly. “Of losing you altogether. And you didn’t say anything either.”
“I was scared, too,” I admit. “Of not being enough for you. And of, well, of it being too good. Because Kingston—” I break off, not ready to put into words how very much he’s it for me.
“I know.”
I know he does know. We both know what the stakes are. That this could be it for both of us. The pressure is a palpable thing that keeps me from reaching for him yet again.
“What if I mess this up?” I whisper.
“I won’t let you,” he says. And then his mouth’s on mine, his hand cradling my jaw, our bellies pressing together. It’s so good, too good, but I have to trust him. I have no reason not to take him at his word. He’s never let me down before.
I kiss him back.