Chapter Twenty-Six #2
He makes a face. “I cannot stand the stuff. It’s Felix’s favourite, and even the smell turns my stomach.
” The mention of his beautiful ballet dancing ex barely even grazes this time as it flies past me.
Because no, darling. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid my eyes on, is still loud and clear in my head more than twenty-four hours later.
I watch him plate up in a sort of love daze, slipping again into the fantasy where we live and cook and exist together like this every night.
The pasta is incredible. It’s rich and creamy and cheesy, and after the first mouthful, the fact that I’m eating only slightly warmed eggs disappears from my mind. I feel warm and satisfied by the end of it, and it’s not hard to see why it was a comfort dish for his wife.
“So what’s your comfort food then?” I ask as I mop up the last of the cream sauce with the warm bread.
“Curry. Authentic and South Indian, preferably. The spice always helps pick me up from whatever’s getting me down. My favourite restaurant in the world is a curry place just off Brick Lane. I’ve been going there for twenty-odd years. Which is about as long as you’ve been alive.”
I ignore the remark about the age. “I’ve never had authentic South Indian curry.”
“Never?”
I shake my head. He gives me the same look he gave me the day at the ambassador’s residence, when he said he wanted to show me the world.
“Maybe when I get my passport, you can take me to your favourite curry place?”
He wipes his face with his napkin. “Oh, I completely forgot. I got word back from my contact to say they were able to have it approved internally. They’re sending it to my office. It should be there when I get back on Thursday.”
“Seriously? That’s… thank you. I really didn’t want to have to go to Ohio… I appreciate it.”
He smiles, pleased. “You’re welcome.”
“That’s impressive. What else can you do?”
“Here, not very much at all. I think arranging for a passport to be issued to an American citizen might be about the extent of it.”
“And back home? What can you do there?”
“A lot more. I managed to have a man released from prison twenty years early.”
“Hot.”
He laughs, fully, and I do too, moving to lift our empty bowls. “I’ll wash, you sit down.”
“Don’t be silly, we’ll do it together. Do you want to wash or dry?
” He follows me through, and we lapse quickly into a two-man assembly line of him washing and me drying.
As I’m putting the last fork into the drawer, he snakes an arm around my waist and nuzzles his mouth into my neck, pressing a kiss just below my ear.
I let my eyes close and my body sink back against his chest, a feeling of delicious contentment settled low and warm in my stomach, the buzz of good food and arousal flowing through my veins.
In the living room, he tugs me back toward him and our mouths and hands find each other immediately.
We stand and kiss for a long time, slow, hypnotic kisses, which leave me hard and panting and desperate for him.
“Fuck, I really love how you kiss me,” I say as he turns my head to suck at my throat and collarbone.
“Mmm. I really love kissing you, darling.” He’s hard as stone against my thigh, hot, thick cock constrained tightly beneath his jeans.
I want it out. I want it in my hand, my mouth, my ass.
He tugs off my T-shirt and then kisses across my exposed chest, the backs of his hands skimming my pecs, my nipples, and then down over the flat of my stomach before very slowly going to his knees.
The pants I’m wearing have an elasticated waistband, and he pulls them down, my jock too, and sucks my dick right into his mouth.
“Shit,” I gasp, clutching a fistful of his hair. “That’s… fuck, Christian…”
He makes an unintelligible noise but doesn’t stop sucking, pupils blown black and wide as he deep throats me.
While he’s down there, I step out of my pants and underwear, and he pulls off my cock to kiss my stomach and hips and the tops of my thighs, featherlight kisses that send goosebumps over every inch of my body.
“I love your body, sweetheart,” he murmurs, cherishing it with his eyes and hands and mouth.
Still on his knees, he fumbles his way out of his pants until I tug him to stand so he can get them off easier.
He kisses me again as he strips. When he’s out of his clothes, he turns me to face the couch, nudging my hips so that I’m bent forward to grip the back, and then he’s on his knees again behind me.
His hands smooth over my ass and thighs, down over my calves and back up: worshipping me with his touch.
When he pulls open my cheeks and leans in to kiss my hole, my knees almost buckle.
“You’re gorgeous,” he whispers against the tender flesh before kissing it again.
Desperate to touch him, I reach between my legs to where his cock is jutting out from his body, long and red and obscenely thick.
I groan at the feel of it in my hand, the pulse urgent against my fingers.
“So. bloody. Gorgeous,” he growls impatiently against my hole.
Standing, he pulls me up and tight against him, arms coming around me to wrap me up in him.
“Fuck me,” I pant as he finds my mouth.
“Ask nicely.”
“Please, daddy.”
And he does.
After he’s fucked me into the couch, slow sensual fucking that almost made me cry, I lie with my head on his furred chest as he strokes his fingers down my spine.
We’re still naked, but the apartment is hot, too hot actually, and I should get up and open the balcony door, but I’m way too comfortable.
“What are you doing next Friday?” he asks conversationally.
“Uh, probably nothing, why?”
“Well, there’s an event at my house.”
“At your palace, you mean?”
“My palace, yes. It’s a dinner—well, it’s finger food, which by anyone’s standards is hardly dinner—but there are a lot of people coming. Local business owners, entrepreneurs and creatives, as well as the usual dignitaries and politicians, of course.”
“Of course.”
“It’s a good mix of attendees. I wondered if you’d like to come. If you think you can stand it. There’s a gallery owner attending; I could introduce you to him.”
I sit up so I can see his face. “You want me to come to dinner at your house?”
“Palace,” he corrects teasingly. “And it’s more of a party. You can bring a friend, of course.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to be bored and alone, and the sheer number of people I’m told I have to bloody talk to, I’ll barely have time to say hello.”
“No—why do you want me to come? How is that even… I mean, how will you explain it?”
“Like I said, lots of local creatives there, and you’re a young, upcoming artist. It’s hardly going to raise eyebrows.”
“What about Stephen Gardiner?”
“Oh, he’s not invited.”
“That’s not…”
“I know.” He gives me a reassuring look. “Darling, I told you, you don’t have to worry about him.”
“Yeah, that’s the bit I don’t get, this guy was outside my house, accusing you and me of having an illicit affair. A guy who works for someone who’s trying to ruin your life. If I’m spotted at your house at a party, surely it just proves everything to be true. It gives them exactly what they need.”
He takes a deep breath and then patiently says, “Asher, Adrian Brooke is going to forget all about his vendetta against me. I have this on authority, which means neither of us need worry about him or Stephen anymore, all right?” It’s vague.
On whose authority did he have it? But I trust him, and if he’s not worried…
“Really?”
“Really.”
It’s hard not to smile at the look he’s giving me. It’s hard not to smile as soon as I realise there’s no way I’m not going to this fucking thing. He wants to introduce me to a gallery owner. He wants me to come to his fucking house, where lots of people might see us talking.
I hope Amata has a real nice dress.
“So… what sort of outfit should I wear to this party?”