Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Kieran
“You don’t look as if you’re enjoying that.”
I blinked. “What? Oh. No, it’s fine. I have no idea what quark is, but it’s delicious.” Stefan had grabbed me a plastic tub filled with quark and fresh fruit to go with my morning coffee. I took another spoonful and smiled. “See? It’s great.”
Stefan arched his eyebrows. “Okay, where are you right now? Because it isn’t here, having breakfast.”
I let out a breath that felt as if it had been sitting in my chest for hours. “I think I’m still in your bed.”
If I’d closed my eyes, I would’ve been transported back there in a heartbeat, lying with my head cradled in his arm while he—
I stopped abruptly, dragging a hand over my face. “—while I was clearly having very wholesome thoughts,” I muttered.
Stefan’s expression didn’t change. “That’s not quite how I remember it.”
Heat flooded my face. “You would say that.”
“I would,” he agreed.
I pointed my spoon at him. “And for the record, I was trying to be discreet.”
He smirked. “Newsflash. You missed the mark.”
I dropped my gaze to my breakfast. “Right. Excellent. Good to know.” Then I smiled. “And for the record, I’m not complaining for a second about how little sleep I got.”
Stefan grinned. “Which explains where your head is at.”
“It does, does it?” I said, trying for lightness.
“It does.”
I huffed out a laugh, shaking my head, and took another spoonful of quark more for something to do than because I was hungry.
The teasing didn’t help, because underneath it, everything from last night—and this morning—was still there.
I scraped my fingers through my hair. “You don’t understand. It’s just—” I stopped, searching for the words that would explain the tumult going on in my mind. “Sex was never… like that,” I said in a low voice.
Stefan studied me for a second, then leaned a little closer. “Breathe.”
I was trying to.
“It’s not just that it was good—and oh my God, it was.”
He bit his lip. “It takes two to make it so.” Then he tilted his head. “Then what—”
“It’s that it felt… different,” I blurted. “Like I was actually there. Like I wasn’t trying to… match something I thought it was supposed to be.”
Stefan went quiet for a moment. “I can’t speak from experience, but from talking with other men, I know that being in bed with a man is not like being there with a woman. The dynamic is different.” Stefan’s expression softened. “That’s worth paying attention to.”
“But what does it mean?”
“That,” he said in a gentle tone, “is something you get to decide.”
I frowned. “That’s not very helpful.”
“But it’s honest.” He paused. “I’m not going to tell you who you are, or what this makes you. That’s yours.” He tilted his head again. “What I can tell you is that what you felt—being present, being… connected—that’s real. And it matters.”
He’d nailed it. That mattered more than anything else.
“It feels as if something’s shifted,” I admitted. “As though I can’t go back to how things were before.”
Stefan held my gaze. “Maybe you’re not supposed to.”
I looked down at my hands. “It also feels…” I hesitated.
“Go on.”
“Like I’ve been missing something,” I said with a sigh. “Not necessarily this exact thing, not you specifically, just—” I exhaled. “Something I didn’t even know how to look for.”
Stefan was quiet again, and then he laid his hand on my knee.
“That happens. Sometimes it takes a while to recognise what fits. That doesn’t invalidate anything that came before. It just means you’re learning something new about yourself.”
I nodded. That resonated with me. It wasn’t a case that something had been wrong, but more that I’d been incomplete.
I glanced at him again. “And this?” I gestured to the two of us. “What’s this?”
He smiled. “This is two people figuring something out.” He pointed to the pot on the table. “Now finish your quark.” He rubbed my thigh, an almost unconscious motion, and I had to admit, it felt good.
I couldn’t resist. “Yes, Daddy,” I said with a chuckle.
Stefan paused his hand, and his gaze met mine.
Oh God.
“That’s the second time you’ve used that word.” His voice was quiet. “Don’t think I didn’t notice.”
I shrugged, aiming for casual and probably failing. “You seem to like it.”
The faintest trace of a smile curved his lips. “I do.” He moved his thumb in a slow circle on my thigh. “It’s a word that gets overused, thrown around without much thought. But that doesn’t make it meaningless.”
I held his gaze. “What does it mean to you?”
Stefan considered that for a moment. “Responsibility, more than anything else,” he said at last.
That wasn’t what I’d expected.
“It’s not about control for its own sake,” he continued.
“Or a title you claim because it sounds good.” His gaze seemed to stare past me.
“If someone gives you that word, they’re trusting you with something.
Their comfort, their boundaries. Their experience.
” His voice was still calm, still measured, but there was weight behind it now. “And that matters,” he concluded.
I swallowed. The word I’d tossed out glibly didn’t feel like a joke anymore.
Stefan’s expression softened a little. “That being said, I won’t object if you choose to keep using it.”
I laughed, mostly from relief. “Good to know.”
Except I knew that word would stay with me, but with a different feel to it.
Like everything else in my life right then.
I scraped the last bits of quark from the pot, and Stefan laughed. “Are you trying to eat the plastic as well?”
“We don’t have this in the UK,” I retorted. “Which is such a shame.”
He grinned. “Then at some point, I’ll take you to the supermarket near Nollendorfplatz where they sell quark flavoured with cherry, blueberries, peach and passion fruit…”
“Stop it!” I gaped at him. “Can we go now?”
Stefan guffawed. “That can wait. I have a question for you that needs answering, because time is running out.”
That intrigued the hell out of me. “Then ask it.”
“Have you though any more about the concert I told you about? Classic Meets Fetish? Because it’s tonight.”
“Yes, I’d love to go with you.” That was the easiest decision I’d made in a while.
Stefan beamed. “Great.”
“But now I have a question. The way you described it makes it sound as though there’s a dress code.”
He nodded. “There is, but I can help with that. I have a wardrobe full of leathers.”
I bit my lip. “We’re not exactly the same build.”
He smiled. “They belonged to my ex—you met him in Elefant, remember? He didn’t want them.” He looked me up and down. “And they’ll be a perfect fit.” Then he smiled once more. “We’ll meet at my place first. I’d like us to complement each other.” He leaned against the wall, relaxed and confident.
I couldn’t hold back any longer.
“How did you become like this?”
Stefan glanced at me, his brow furrowed. “Like what?”
I gestured vaguely, frustrated by my own lack of precision. “This. So… certain. Comfortable. Like you’re not trying to be anything other than what you are.”
He didn’t answer immediately, but now I knew why. This was his way of taking a question seriously.
“It took time,” he said at last.
I huffed. “That’s not a very satisfying answer.”
“No,” he agreed. “But it’s true.” He finished his coffee. “I wasn’t always like this. I tried, for a while, to be what I thought I was supposed to be.”
That caught my attention. “What did that look like?”
He bit his lip again. “Very convincing, I imagine, at least on the surface.” He shrugged. “The right conversations. The right places. The right version of myself.”
“And underneath?”
Stefan’s gaze shifted ahead, and I had that sense of him seeing past me. “Less certain. Less… honest.”
“So what changed?”
He expelled a long breath. “I got tired.”
I blinked. “Of what?”
“Of performing,” he said simply. “Of trying to fit into spaces that didn’t quite fit me.” He stared at his laced fingers on the table. “At some point, that becomes more exhausting than being yourself.”
It made an uncomfortable kind of sense.
“And then what?” I asked.
“Then I found people who didn’t require me to edit myself. Spaces where difference wasn’t something to be corrected.” He glanced at me. “Where I didn’t have to explain who I was before I could be accepted.”
Then I got it.
“The leather community.”
“Yes.”
“And that just… fixed it?”
Stefan smiles. “No. Nothing fixes it. You simply get better at recognising what feels right.”
I frowned. “And ignoring what doesn’t?”
“Not ignoring,” he said. “Choosing. You learn that certainty doesn’t come from having all the answers.” A light sigh escaped him. “It comes from being honest about the ones you do have.”
I looked at him, trying to see past the layers he showed to the world.
“And you’re there now?”
Another shrug. “Most days.”
That felt more honest than anything else he could have said.
I let out a slow breath.
This is what I’ve been trying to understand, to achieve. Not perfection, or some finished version of myself, but a way of being that doesn’t feel like a compromise.
I glanced at him again, and realised I didn’t just want to see what was underneath Stefan’s layers.
I wanted to learn how to get there.
“Stefan!” A deep, gravelly voice broke through, and I jumped.
Dieter stood a few feet away, Gertrude in his arms. It wasn’t a warm day, but he didn’t seem to feel the cold. He wore a pair of ragged denim shorts and a tank top, revealing a deep tan.
Stefan smiled. “Good morning.”
“Will I be seeing you Saturday night?” he asked. His gaze flicked towards me, then back to Stefan. “Rolf said he’d messaged you.”
“Yes, he did. I’m… undecided at this point.”
I glanced at him. Indecision didn’t belong to the Stefan I knew.
Dieter waved a hand. “To be honest, I’m not sure yet either.” Then he grinned. “But then maybe you have other things to do.” He walked out of sight, heading towards the counter.
I turned to face Stefan. “So what’s happening Saturday night that you didn’t want to talk about in front of me?”
He chuckled. “Was I that obvious?” He stood. “Come with me. I have some shopping to do.”
I blinked. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
Stefan laughed. “No, because this is not the place for that conversation. But we will have it, I promise you. And right now there’s somewhere I need to go first, and I’d like you to come with me. Think of it as part of your… education.”
I narrowed my gaze. “You do realise that telling a man ‘this is part of your education’ without any further explanation is the fastest way to make him imagine the worst.”
Stefan chuckled. “The worst?”
“I don’t know what the worst is yet,” I admitted. “But I’m fairly certain I’ll recognise it when I see it.”
“That’s part of the process.”
I followed him to the cafe door. “You’re enjoying this,” I said in a mock accusatory tone.
“Immensely.”
I shook my head, but I couldn’t suppress my smile. Whatever Stefan was about to show me mattered. I could feel that much already. And although apprehension tightened my chest, I didn’t want to back away from it.
We stepped out onto the street.
“Fine,” I said. “Lead the way.”
Not that I needed to say the words. Something in me had already decided.
The sign was simple. Mister B. The window was filled with mannequins wearing leather or rubber.
The inside took my breath away.
I stared at racks full of leather gear, rubber, skimpy shorts, tees, harnesses… But they weren’t what stopped me cold.
That was everything else.
Floggers, paddles, whips, collars. Things I’d seen on online—late at night, half-curious, half-disbelieving—but never in real life. Because going to a sex shop back in Manchester?
I didn’t have the nerve.
And then there was the back wall.
Rows of toys—dildos, cock rings, vibrators, ball gags, cages—lined up with an almost clinical precision. Shelves behind the counter held more varieties of lube than I would’ve thought possible.
One label caught my eye, and I coughed. “Well… I think I know what that’s for.”
The word FIST was printed in unapologetically large letters.
Stefan followed my gaze, a hint of amusement in his expression. “I have plenty of lube at home.”
My pulse kicked up a notch. “Do you use that one?”
“On occasion.”
Sweet Jesus.
My brain didn’t quite know what to do with that information. Part of me recoiled instinctively, whereas the other half… didn’t, which I found unsettling.
Inside me. Oh. My. God.
“Pick a toy.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
Stefan gestured towards the back wall. “Your first. Go on.”
I gave him the most indignant look I could manage.
“I have a dildo at home, I’ll have you know.
” Thank God for ’s brown paper bags. I glanced back at the display.
“But it looks nothing like… that.” I pointed to a long, black piece that seemed more sculpted than manufactured.
Then to another. “Or that, which appears to belong to a mythological creature.”
“It’s supposed to be a dragon dick.”
“I’m not surprised.” My gaze kept moving, drawn in despite myself. And then I froze. “That’s… a hand,” I said, pointing. “And those?”
“Ball stretchers.”
Right.
Fine.
So this was happening.
I was officially down the rabbit hole.
Then Stefan’s hand settled on my arm, his presence close, grounding rather than guiding.
“We don’t have to buy anything,” he said in a low voice. “I just wanted you to see the world you’ve stepped into.”
I swallowed, forcing my breathing to calm the fuck down. “I’ll be honest. There’s a little voice at the back of my mind right now.”
“And what’s it saying?”
I snorted. “Don’t run before you can walk.”
Stefan’s thumb brushed against my arm. “Good advice.”
This was an overwhelming experience, but one thing was certain.
I hadn’t stepped back, and I wasn’t going to.
Then Stefan withdrew his hand from my arm. “I’ll be right back.”
I watched as he moved across the floor towards a display, as though this space was as familiar to him as his own apartment.
Which it probably was.
I followed, intrigued. Then I saw what he’d lifted from a rack.
It was a flogger.
The leather was smooth, the handle shaped to fit the hand properly, the strands falling evenly, almost elegantly. Stefan tested their weight against his palm, a motion that spoke of familiarity.
“I saw this a few days ago.” Then he carried it to the counter where he set it down without ceremony. The guy at the till greeted him like a regular.
Of course he did.
Stefan paid, thanked the man, and turned back towards me, the bag now in his hand.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“For now.”
There was nothing suggestive or teasing in the way he said it, but there was an openness, as though the conversation wasn’t finished.
“Seen enough?”
I nodded, and we stepped back out into the street, the door closing behind us. I glanced at the bag in his hand.
And then it hit me.
This wasn’t just something he owned, or something he did.
It was part of him.
What would it feel like to trust him with it?