Chapter 10 Kit
KIT
Istill can’t believe Damian left, practically scurried out of the house like a man running from the gallows.
And he never came back, good to his word that he was going to stay at Jasper’s and far away from me.
My fucking reckless plan to figure out if he was even the slightest bit interested in me has backfired spectacularly.
I chased him into another man’s arms. Yes, Jasper is straight, and apparently so is my stepbrother, but still, the point stands.
Last night, I’d tossed and turned in my bed for hours, listening for any sign that Damian might have changed his mind and come home, until I finally gave in and opened my toy drawer.
And even then, after working myself into such a frenzy that I needed to change my sheets, I still couldn’t forget the terrified look on Damian’s face as he watched my video.
All day, I’ve haunted the university campus, floating from class to class in a beaten-down stupor.
I’m going to have to spend the next few evenings catching up on my lectures, because the few notes I managed to take make absolutely no sense.
Samuel even went so far as to kick me out of my final class when he caught me checking my phone for the millionth time.
And, to top it all, I’ve had to find a last-minute Pilates class because I told Damian I would be out this evening, and I’m too stubborn to go home and prove myself a liar.
It’s turning out to be yet another bad idea to add to my never-ending streak.
The instructor I’ve found is ancient, easily one hundred years old, with skin like paper and hair like half-eaten candy floss. Her stale coffee aroma permeates the studio, overpowered only by the stench of unwashed man wafting from the stooped figure in front of me.
Fitness is for everyone, that’s a hill I’ll die on, but this class is not for me.
For a start, I must be at least forty years younger than everyone else.
And I’m pretty sure I heard a witches’ coven plotting my sacrifice before the instructor called them to heel.
Or they might have been organising their next knitting circle. Only time will tell.
Thankfully, the class has groaned, cracked, and flatulated its way to the cool down, and if the importance of recovery hadn’t been so well drilled into me, I’d seriously consider skipping these final stretches in favour of making my escape and catching some blessed fresh air.
“That’s all for tonight, folks,” the instructor rasps, pushing to her feet and snapping her fingers impatiently for us to do the same. I’m all too eager to comply. “And don’t forget, next week we’re all wearing pink. I want to take some pictures for the Facebook.”
The Facebook. THE Facebook.
The pungent man in front of me moans. Perhaps at the thought of raiding his wife’s wardrobe, or maybe from an impending heart attack.
I’ll never know, though, because I quickly roll up my mat and run from the ramshackle building quicker than Damian from my attempts at seduction.
Note to self, finding a last-minute, undersubscribed Pilates class in suburban London is not the lucky find one might think.
Overall, I’m in a pretty sour mood. I’m tired after a bad night’s sleep, twitchy after a disappointing workout, and my phone is still deathly quiet.
All I want to do is get into bed and avoid everyone until tomorrow.
But I know I can’t do that. I can’t hide forever.
I have to face my stepbrother at some point, and I might as well get it over with.
Perhaps after a few nights of awkward gaming, things will somehow return to normal.
I drive home on autopilot, barely registering where I’m going until I pull into our usual coffee shop.
My heart lurches along with my brakes. I’ve never second-guessed whether I should pick up Damian’s order before.
Even if I know I’m going to beat him home, I’ll still grab his coffee and leave it in the microwave for him to reheat later. Gross, but it seems to make him happy.
If I come back tonight brandishing a flat white, will it be a welcome peace offering, or make Damian feel so suffocated that he runs away again?
Will he appreciate the normalcy, or will he feel like I’m ignoring the boundaries he’s trying to set in place?
After painful minutes of deliberating the pros and cons of walking into a café and ordering a fucking coffee, I feel sick to my stomach and drive away empty-handed.
The feeling’s still there by the time I pull up next to Damian’s Jeep on our driveway.
I sit in my car, summoning the nerve to walk into the house and pretend everything is normal, all for my courage to fail every time my fingers touch my seatbelt.
In the end, it doesn’t matter because the front door bursts open, and Damian hops down the front steps in the direction of his car.
He pulls up short when he notices me parked beside him, and his face falls. Mine does the same, at least until he spots me lurking behind the steering wheel, and he blows out a sigh of relief.
“Roll down your window,” he mouths, jogging over to my driver’s side.
I take a deep breath and do as he says, steeling myself for whatever excuse he’s going to come up with that’ll mean I spend my night alone.
It turns out, I needn’t have bothered.
“Kit,” he greets me happily, flopping in through my window. “I thought you were going to be out tonight?”
The smile stretching across his face is heart-melting. Literally, I think there’s a puddle forming in my solar plexus. I’m probably going to drown.
“I was. I had a Pilates class, but it started earlier than I thought.”
“Oh, cool. Any good?”
“Nah,” I laugh. “It was a bit shit. There’s a good chance the old man in front of me died after I left. I’m just glad to be home.”
“So, does this mean you’re in for the rest of the evening?” he asks hopefully. Or I hear hopefully, at any rate.
“Yep. I’m just going to shower. Do you want to do something?”
I bite my lip, cursing the words as soon as they’re out of my mouth.
Damian’s all wrapped up in his oversized puffer jacket, the collar pulled out of shape by the chunky scarf I bought him last Christmas.
He’s obviously on his way out. Of course he doesn’t want to do something. “Sorry. You’re probably busy.”
“No, no,” Damian says, practically crawling through my window to shake his head at me. “I was just going to pick up some chocolate ice cream. I’ll be back by the time you’ve showered. My room? Twenty minutes?”
“It’s a date,” I say, before groaning inwardly. If Damian didn’t look so happy, I’d be driving myself to the nearest cliff and faking my own death.
Damian throws me one last pant-dropping smile before he extracts himself from my car, jumps into his own, and reverses around me with enough cocky skill that my dick takes an interest.
Nope. Don’t you dare. You’ve got us into enough trouble this week.
Still, I can’t help but smile back, waving in my rearview mirror as Damian disappears out of sight.
With that one, simple interaction, Damian’s made everything better. My mind has cleared, and the heavy ache that was weighing me down has dissipated. Now, I’m excited to spend the entire evening with the person I love most in the world.
So what if I can only have him like this? So what if he’ll never see me as anything more than his brother? I’ll take it if it means I never have to go through a day like this again, to never feel my stomach roll whenever I think of Damian.
For the first time in hours, I can breathe.
My mind is made up.
I’m never hitting on Damian again.
My resolve lasts exactly thirteen minutes, the length of time it takes me to get from my car to my bedroom, into the shower, and out again. Then, when I’m blasting myself with my hairdryer, I spot it. A small, innocuous package on my bed.
Yes! I fucking adore presents.
I turn off my dryer and scramble over to it as fast as my feet will carry me.
The box is pitch black, with an expensive, smooth matte finish that’ll likely attract every speck of dust in a one-mile radius.
It’s about the size of a book, but by the way it rests on my cream duvet, I know that it’s not heavy enough for that.
A silky red ribbon criss-crosses its way around the package, one tail slightly longer than the other, simply begging to be pulled.
There’s no name or card, but it’s hardly going to be from someone outside the family.
Mum’s probably out of the running. She’s not really one to buy presents for other people.
Gifts in this house are more likely to come from Lucien, but he’s an in-person gift giver.
He likes to feel your gratitude up close.
And my heart’s still tender after its battering yesterday, so I try not to even contemplate that it could be from my stepbrother.
That is, until I tug on the ribbon and peek inside…
At first glance, all I can see is opaline tissue paper, neatly folded and secured with a bronze seal shaped like an old key. As we’ve already established, I love presents, so I waste no time in flicking my finger through the fancy label and tearing away the flimsy paper.
When the gift flows out from within the pleats, I immediately regret my cackhandedness.
Wrapped up so carefully is the most delicate cream lace I’ve ever seen.
It’s almost ethereal in its fragility, mesmerising and intricate.
It shimmers under my fairy lights, glistening as I run it through my fingers.
It’s not until the piece falls onto my lap that I realise the seductive shape it forms. Lingerie.
Someone has left lace lingerie on my bed.
And not just a simple pair of hot pants, but what looks like an elaborate body suit, built with swaths of lace that are woven carefully together to caress the male body and turn the wearer into a piece of alluring art.
Okay, so probably not a gift from Lucien. And not Mum either. That leaves… Damian?
My breath catches in my throat, my heart pounding so hard that I can hear its incessant beat against my chest.
No, he couldn’t have? Could he?
But then, what other explanation is there? That one of my parental figures bought this for me? They’re liberal-minded, sure, but even the most supportive of parents have their boundaries.
I think back to Damian’s reaction last night, his shallow breaths as he watched me wrap around my pole, his wide eyes locked on my screen as I hung in the air.
Yes, there was terror, that was unmistakable.
But at what? At the horror of his unapologetically gay brother showing off his new toy in nothing more than skimpy shorts?
That’s the most logical explanation, isn’t it? Except… what if I was wrong?
Damian has always known I’m gay and never given it a second thought. And the shorts couldn’t have come as a surprise to him, since he was with me when I bought them. He even asked the shop assistant for the pair from the mannequin when they didn’t have my size on the rail.
He was petrified when I showed him that video, there’s no doubt about it. But was he scared of me and what I was doing with my body? Or of something else? Of something life-changing? What really caused his reaction?
I think back to his sheepish departure, his flimsy excuse to meet Jasper, a man who has never had ‘girl trouble’ in his life. I think back to his jealousy when he thought that waiter was flirting with me, and the way he just so happened to be in the area on my date with Will.
I think back to the way he moaned my name in his sleep.
Damian moaned my name.
Holy shit, I got it wrong.
I grab onto my moment of hope with both hands and clutch it to my chest before my rational mind can push it away.
Damian likes me. He likes me enough to dream about me, to say my name with such need that I can’t believe I’ve spent so long questioning this. Questioning him.
I don’t care when it happened or why. What matters is that I have a chance. What I’ve wanted since the very moment I set eyes on Damian is finally within reach. And now he’s daring me to take it.
I spare a quick thought for Lucien, the man who stepped up as a father to me when no one else did. Am I betraying him by going after Damian? Will he think that I’ve used the fruits of his generosity to steal his only boy from him?
But it’s a quick thought at most, because Damian has made the first move, and I’ve never been able to deny him anything. If Mum and Lucien don’t like it, then fuck them. My stepbrother has always been the most important person in my life, and he’s made his point with this gift.
There’s only one thing to do. I have an open invitation to join Damian in… three minutes… and there’s no way I’m wearing anything except this. My heart’s all in, and there’s no going back.
Slowly, I rise from the bed and let my towel drop to the floor.
My cock’s been half hard since I first felt the fine lingerie slip through my hands, and I admire the evidence of what it’s done to me in my mirror.
The pink tip of my length is going to look stunning trapped against creamy lace.
I’m not huge by any means, but I think Damian will like what he sees.
I carefully untangle the material, using as much brainpower as I can spare to map out the various parts when my blood is quickly rushing south.
The leg holes are at least easy to find, and I step into them without bother, but the elaborate maze of material that cuts across my upper body takes a bit more thought.
Still, after a few wrong moves, I’m in, and the effect is breathtaking.
My pale colouring has transformed the lace into a cascade of champagne, flowing down my body to accentuate my lithe frame.
The material stretches over my toned obliques and winds itself around my belly button, brushing up over my body in a series of interlinked, delicate lines that trail over my chest until only two thin straps glide over my shoulders and cross down my exposed back.
Fucking hell, I look incredible. So good that I snatch up my phone from the dresser and take a few selfies in my ornate, full-length mirror. If tonight goes the way I want, maybe I’ll send them to Damian as a reminder.
Then, I drop my phone onto my bed and, just because it feels wrong to run through the halls of Lucien’s home in nothing but lingerie, I throw on my silk bathrobe and secure it tightly around my waist.
Now, I’m ready. It’s time to seduce my stepbrother, and he’d better be fucking ready for me.