Chapter 11
I ordered so much junk food for us to indulge in—burgers, nuggets, fries, large soft drinks.
We pigged out on it in front of the TV with some adult animation shows he wanted to show me.
I would’ve called them cartoons, but these ones were definitely for an adult audience.
I never grew up watching TV, only the news.
“I might have to quit my job anyway,” Kalen said.
“Why?” I asked, pushing my gut out and rubbing my hands over my stomach.
“My mom,” he said.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s wrong?”
He paused, dipping his nugget into the ketchup then leaving it there and facing me.
“She’s forgetful, doesn’t eat, stops using her nebulizer, and her mood changes.
” He snapped his fingers. “Sometimes, I don’t know which version of her I’m gonna get.
She’s nice, then she can be annoyed and angry.
I think she also forgets that she was ever mad as well, like she just doesn’t remember. ”
I rubbed his back softly in circles. “And she’s able to get the help at the doctor’s?”
“She needs referrals, but to get those, she needs to actually go to her appointments,” he said. “She also needs to remember to eat.”
“I saw her with you, right?”
“Yeah. She’s always in these oversized knitted and crocheted cardigans and sweaters.
But I—I hugged her the other day and she was concerning,” he said, and I could feel him lightening, like he was letting all the weight on top of him leave.
It was nice to see, but the idea he had all this responsibility over his mom concerned me.
I wanted to help him, but I knew he didn’t want help, not the type I’d offered.
He didn’t want my money. “I’m just kinda glad I’m here for the night. ”
“And not in your car going back to New York?” I asked. “I already looked at the apartment you’ve got there.”
“You—you broke in?” he asked.
“No, I just looked it up on Zillow,” I laughed. “I definitely haven’t had the time to go break into your apartment, get back here, and then deal with my brother.”
Kalen threw himself into my arms.
We were both so lethargic from eating that we lay in that position together for a moment longer. I didn’t know if he’d ever move again, like a cat pawing at my soft and hard belly, making biscuits—or whatever it was they did to massage you, like the human equivalent of fluffing a pillow.
“I don’t want to go to sleep,” he whispered.
“We don’t have to,” I said, taking his hand and kissing the back of it. I didn’t have the energy to lift him up and kiss him. “We can do whatever you want, and maybe we could discuss how we’re going to work. Like, together, in the dynamic and stuff.”
All I had to go on was my brother and his boyfriend. Isaiah was sweet, quiet, and the very definition of a submissive twink—of course, Santo could never know I viewed him that way. We’d already fallen out with Tomaso, the two of us didn’t need to fracture as well.
Eventually carrying Kalen to the bedroom, I placed him on the duvet in a pile on the floor.
“Why are all those doors locked?” he asked.
“My office,” I told him. “The room with the cuffs. And the third room is a spare bedroom but it’s currently just full of paperwork.”
Kalen spread his arms and legs out like he was making an angel in the duvet. “It’s a nice place.”
“Nicer with you in it,” I said. I hated coming home.
It was large and empty. Although I probably could’ve made it more of a home if I’d ever wanted to, but the want never crossed me, not until now.
“So, are you gonna help me change this bedsheet, or do you wanna just lie there on the floor like a little prince?”
He giggled, kicking his feet. “I’ll help. I think I made the mess.”
“You think?” I said, pointing to the spot and the smaller droplets on the red bedding. “All of my cum went in you.”
“In the condom,” he said.
“Daddy’s got to use to protection, always.” I winked at him. “Unless you wanna come get a clean bill of health with me at the local clinic. Then I’ll more than happily go from making you my little toaster strudel to Boston cream pie—but like the donut version they sell at Dunkin’.”
“No more food talk,” he said, holding his stomach. “I could burst.”
“Aw, well, that won’t stop you from helping me.”
It was natural yet strange to have this playful dynamic.
I was used to ordering people around, and I was more than used to doing it with a stern face and the looming idea of a threat if they said no or let me down.
I didn’t know if Kalen had ever been scared of me.
He didn’t leave at any point when I called him a Fed, or at any point when I told him to leave—and maybe if I hadn’t found him slightly attractive, I wouldn’t even have told him, I’d just have had a man deal with him. Or was I becoming softer?
As we made the bed together, I continued to go over how I’d changed since my father’s death.
The idea of having to be the tough son, the rough son, the one who cast the largest shadow of a threat.
There was also Tomaso, but he was the sneaky threat, the one you didn’t see coming, so people never saw him as a threat.
It probably didn’t help that I had more muscle on me, and I’d KO’d several opponents in some amateur league boxing rings.
Kalen noticed I wasn’t actively in the room with him. “I think that’s what I look like when I’m in little space,” he said, grabbing and fluffing the duvet.
“Sorry, I’m just—” God. I never said sorry, and here I was, saying it to someone I’d had shackled to a bedroom wall earlier. “People don’t usually sleep over. They kinda bore me with their conversations, mostly because they don’t say anything worthwhile.”
He smirked. “And me?”
“Well, you’re a fucking Fed.” I cocked my head and grabbed a pillow. “You’re interesting, and I think when you crack, you’re going to contain the juiciest little nuggets of information.”
Giggling, he snorted, and his eyes watered—with happy tears, it looked like. “You mean when I nut, right?”
I threw the pillow at him, engaging in a pillow fight.
Kalen jumped on the bed with his knees, the duvet still around him, and now armed with a pillow. It was like armor and a weapon, but it weighed him down. I grabbed the second plumped-up pillow from my bed and as I went to swipe him with it, he ducked into the duvet mound, still giggling.
It was over once I got on the bed and wrestled him out of the duvet.
It didn’t last long for him to tap out and give in. I sat across him with just his cute little face appearing through a hole in the duvet.
“You’re all mine,” I said, kissing him.
“I already tapped out,” he said.
“That doesn’t change anything,” I said. “I might just lie on you like this.” I wiggled myself, coaxing some more laughter out of him.
“Or maybe I’ll pick you up like a baby in the duvet and hold you tight.
” Sweeping my arms down under him, I managed to pull him into my arms and hold him there. “Like this.”
He lifted his head and kissed me. “Do you think I’d get arrested if I quit my job to date you?”
“I thought that stopped being in the table?”
“It is,” he said. “I just keep thinking about it.”
I tried my best to keep those thoughts at bay for him.
We had people who helped, people whose job it was to keep us out of trouble, and people who put a stop to any investigation that got started.
Having Kalen in my apartment and my life was dangerous, but maybe not quite in the way he thought.
It was dangerous because there was unrest after my father’s death, and he could find himself in the crosshairs of it.
“So, I’ll keep my job,” he said, still in the cocoon of the duvet. “And then I can decide what we do after my mom’s been to her appointment.”
It sounded good, but to know it all rested on this left me a little shaky.
Knowing he could vanish for months, back into his work, knowing there was probably going to be a Kalen-shaped hole in my life, right after he’d made it himself, cuddled up within it—that he was figuring out whether he wanted to stay in the hole.
We got to sleep in the bed at around three in the morning.
I needed the sleep for the poker game tonight.
And I wanted Kalen as far from it as possible, even if Santo wanted his set of eyes.
I agreed that he was good at analyzing, and if we were a legit casino there would’ve been cameras, and he could watch, but this wasn’t a legit casino.
I woke before Kalen, early enough to clean the apartment and look at all the food we’d managed to stuff our faces with—there was very little left behind.
It was nice to see him still sleeping when I got back to the bedroom.
I hadn’t thought this was how everything would go after yesterday.
He’d been cuffed to a wall, trying his best to seduce me, and then when we actually did have sex, I’d felt something deeper—not just inside his ass, but inside him as a person.
And I think part of him combating me meant I liked him more, even if he had been throwing himself at me—back when he was trying his best to build a case against me.
“What are you doing?” he asked, turning over in bed. I’d been standing, staring at him, my eyes glaring, lost in thought, and I’d barely registered the fact that he’d actually woken up.
“You want something to eat?” I grumbled.
“Come cuddle,” he said, all soft with a pout.
“It’s already getting late in the day.”
He snapped out of the comfort glazed-over daze, grabbing at the duvet and pillows to find his phone. “What time?”
“Ten, it’s still the morning,” I said, raising my brows. “I’ll make coffee. I’ve got one of those fancy pod machines.”
Kalen found his phone on the nightstand and looked at it. There was a sadness there on his face. “I—” He puffed out all the air in his lungs it seemed. “I thought my mom might’ve called or texted.”
“Is that concerning?”
He shrugged. “I really don’t know.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and stroked the side of his leg under the duvet. “We can go check on her,” I said. “I can have Roland ready the car in fifteen.”
“I—” He sucked in deep this time.
It must’ve been a huge adjustment waking up here. I know it had been for me, and I’d managed to beat all my nerves to submission through cleaning. “I’ll make coffee,” I said. “I don’t know what all the pods are, but I’ve got red, I’ve got green, there’s a yellow pod. So take your pick.”
He continued to stare at his phone, breaking concentration for a moment to smile at me. “Whichever has the most caffeine.”
“The red,” I said with a nod. “Should I leave you or—”
Kalen looked serious for a moment, then offered me another smile. “We could go check on her together,” he said. “Besides, you should both probably meet. That way—” He chuckled.
“That way what?”
“That way if you ever turn on me, she knows who it was,” he said, and while it felt like a half joke, I knew there was a serious undertone.
“Great,” I said, stroking my hand up his leg, way under the duvet it was consumed by.
“Because I’d love to meet her, and that way if anything happens to me, she knows you tried to turn me in and the claims wouldn’t stick because I’m obviously not a criminal.
” I tickled him into a submission of laughter, forcing him onto his back as I bounced onto the bed and straddled his naked body.
I could’ve looked for all his soft tickle spots, but we really couldn’t spend the day in bed—in fact, today was going to be hectic.
I’d have to leave him with his mom and we probably wouldn’t see each other until tomorrow.
“Depends on what your definition of criminal is,” he said as I applied just a little amount of my weight on his chest.
“Define criminal,” I said, my thumb under his lip, parting them for him to speak. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”
Kalen’s smile was infectious—that should’ve been criminal. “A criminal is someone who’s committed a crime, or been convicted of a crime,” he said. “And you—” He snorted. “Well, I don’t know because I couldn’t find any information on you.”
I let up on him, pulling away and swinging a leg over to the other side of the bed. “See, I’m not a—”
Kalen tackled me with the same move, but completely naked, it wasn’t a show of strength or intimidation. If anything, I could see how my actions had given him a boner, as he sat with his balls and dick on my chest. “You wanna play?”
“I thought you only liked to play when you were—”
“Daddy.” He rocked himself on my chest, his hard cock nearly between my pecs. “I wanna play.”
“Twenty minutes,” I said.
Kalen’s hungry eyes practically told me he only needed ten.