Chapter Eight
Ellery couldn’t help but think that it was a peculiar sensation—leaving a naive little lion in a house one day and coming back the same evening to find a partially trained submissive had taken his place.
Whatever had happened to Kefir while Ellery had been at work, it had produced a strange and rather idiosyncratic result.
As he and Kefir closed their bedroom door behind them that night, Ellery wasn’t quite sure which version of the man he was going to be sharing a bed with, or just what altogether the little lion had learned while he’d been out of his master’s sight.
“Have you spoken to Marrick today?” Ellery asked, as he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it on the back of a chair in the corner of the room.
Kefir stared across at him from his position right next to the door. He’d barely taken two steps into the room. “No, sir.”
Ellery mentally crossed the Marrick off Kefir’s list of possible inspirations. It had been a long shot anyway. As far as Ellery could tell Marrick had always been more of a masochist than a sub.
Ryland belonged to Arslan—there was no doubt about that. But, while it was possible Kefir had acquired the honorific from his studies of their relationship, nothing else Kefir was doing appeared to have been copied from the way they arranged their lives.
Kefir, for his part, didn’t seem inclined to volunteer any information on the subject, and Ellery wasn’t about to play twenty questions with the boy. Especially not when he was sure it wouldn’t take anything more drastic than a little space and silence to have Kefir speaking up of his own volition.
Stripping off the rest of his clothes, Ellery was soon sliding between crisp white bed sheets. Kefir still stood on the other side of the room, watching his master’s every movement and, apparently, still waiting for some kind of permission that Ellery had never told him he needed to wait for.
Kefir looked from Ellery to where he’d put his clothes, then quickly back to Ellery. “May I, sir?” he suggested after a little while.
Ellery nodded his permission. Leaning back against the headboard, the blanket covering him up to the waist, he watched Kefir remove every stitch of clothing on his body and set each item neatly aside.
There was no hint of embarrassment to him.
He was entirely unselfconscious, perfectly at home in his own skin, and still amazingly unaware of how stunning he was.
Ellery happily inspected every inch of the little lion’s body as he moved across the room toward him.
Kefir was hard and making no attempt to hide that fact. There could be no doubt that he hoped to do far more than sleep that night as he came and knelt by the side of the big double bed.
Ellery had never told him he needed to do that, and he was also pretty sure Kefir wasn’t doing it because it was part of one of his own fantasies either. It didn’t feel like Kefir was trying to introduce a protocol he thought was hot; it just felt odd.
Ellery let him wait there a full, silent minute before he tapped the mattress next to him.
Kefir happily climbed up onto the bed. He smiled a little shyly at Ellery as he slipped under the blankets beside him.
Turning toward Ellery, he waited expectantly, not making any request, but his hopes still clear in his eyes. And there was still something off.
Without a single word, Ellery reached out and switched off the light. Darkness descended on the room. Ellery made himself comfortable, as if to go to sleep, curious to see if that would spark an honest response from Kefir, something that wouldn’t feel so artificial.
In the shadows, Ellery was aware of Kefir still sitting exactly where he was, watching his master.
With no idea how good a lion’s night vision was, Ellery wasn’t inclined to take any chances.
He made a point of laying very still and letting his breaths fall into a slow, easy rhythm, as if he had fallen asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.
With his eyes still closed, Ellery sensed Kefir lie down on the other side of the bed.
Minutes passed. Ellery was almost ready to believe that the little lion had simply fallen asleep, and he was silently cursing himself for buggering about with silly games when he could so easily have just demanded the information he wanted, and kept demanding until he got something honest in response.
Then, he felt a movement on the mattress.
A few seconds later, the blanket stirred slightly above him.
Ellery remained motionless as he felt Kefir slowly creeping closer to his supposedly sleeping master. Another full minute passed before bare skin brushing against his arm.
Then more skin, more of the little lion sliding against his body.
For a moment, he thought that Kefir was trying to start something. Another silent minute had passed before he realised that the careful movements had nothing to do with sex and actually had everything to do with sleeping. The boy was just trying to snuggle against his master before he drifted off.
Yes. At least that felt honest. It fitted Kefir in a way that so many of his actions hadn’t that evening. Ellery lay very still, letting his breaths continue on in a sleeping rhythm as Kefir tried and fit himself against his body without waking him.
It was like lying next to a living hot water bottle. That hadn’t been a trick of the mind the previous night. Kefir really was running hot—in all ways. The little lion’s erection rubbed against Ellery’s hip as Kefir’s cheek came to rest against his shoulder.
Kefir didn’t go so far as to hump against him, but Ellery had no doubt that he was tempted to. He smiled into the darkness above the bed as Kefir finally fell still with a content little sigh.
“Are you under the impression I’m asleep, Kefir?”
Every muscle in Kefir’s body tensed.
Ellery expected him to retreat, and he wasn’t inclined to prevent him doing that entirely.
But he’d also assumed that Kefir would stop retreating before he reached the opposite side of the mattress, but Kefir didn’t stop there—he got off the bed.
Ellery opened his eyes just in time to see a shadow walk around to his side of the bed before disappearing from sight.
Frowning, he fumbled for the switch above the bedside table. Light flooded the room. Kefir was nowhere to be seen—until Ellery looked down. The little lion, still in his human form, lay curled up on the bedside rug.
As Ellery glared down at him, Kefir blinked back up at Ellery.
“What are you doing down there?”
“It’s where human submissives sleep, sir,” Kefir informed him.
Ellery studied the boy’s serious expression for a few seconds. “And what do you think of that?” he asked, when no further information was offered.
Kefir sat up, looping his arms over his knees as he fell into his habitual pose. “Lions are more used to sleeping close to people they care about, sir,” he observed, each word carefully neutral. “I didn’t realise that human submissives weren’t allowed to do that before.”
“And what makes you so sure they’re not?”
Kefir looked down for a moment. “There was a website…” he began. He must have sensed Ellery’s reaction then, because he fell silent.
So many idiots posting so much nonsense about kinks that they didn’t practice or understand.
Great. There was no way of knowing what kind of stupidity Kefir might have stumbled on.
But, given how many people loved to post their fantasies pretending that they were facts, Ellery knew there was a pretty good chance it would have him worried his master might turn into a psychopath at any moment.
A sub had wandered onto a website that probably wasn’t accurate. It should have been a mild annoyance. Ellery was caught completely off guard by the fury that burned in the pit of his stomach. Not with Kefir, but with anyone who might have upset the little lion, however unintentionally.
“Sir?”
Ellery took a steadying breath. “I own one website. It’s about bikes, not leather. Whatever site you found, I had nothing to do with it.”
Kefir nodded his understanding of that point, but he didn’t seem to leap ahead and realise anything more than that.
“You have no idea who did write it, or if he has the slightest clue what he’s talking about,” Ellery expanded.
Kefir nodded again. He thought about it all for a little while. “He was wrong, sir?”
“Yes,” Ellery bit out, not quite able to hide his annoyance with the nameless, faceless internet idiot. “Probably about a great many things.”
The little lion seemed to ponder on that, the same way he dissected everything Ellery said to him. “Which things, sir?”
That’s what Ellery wanted to know, too. He couldn’t fix anything until he knew. “Well, I wouldn’t have invited you onto the bed, if I wanted you to sleep on the floor,” Ellery suggested, as a nice, easy starting point.
Kefir looked up at the mattress. “Invited me onto the other side of the bed, sir?”
He was doing his best. That much was obvious—even if Ellery hadn’t quite got them onto the same page yet, it wasn’t because Kefir wasn’t doing his absolute best. Ellery held out a hand to Kefir and guided him to clamber back up onto the bed and then to climb over him, so he was back on the right side.
He only stopped Kefir short when he’d have moved properly over to the empty side of the bed.
“Close is fine,” he said.
Kefir purred as he took full advantage of the permission, snuggling up against Ellery as if he’d been granted something wonderful.
Ellery shook his head, more at himself than at Kefir. “Happy now, kitten?”
Kefir didn’t stop rubbing his forehead against Ellery’s shoulder when he gave his answer, and his response was too muffled to make out.
“Kefir?”
“A cub, sir, not a kitten,” Kefir corrected, gently, as he lifted his head a fraction. “Lions young are called cubs.”
“You don’t remind me of a cub. You remind me of a kitten.”
Kefir lifted his head a little more. Ellery could almost hear the words turning over inside his head. Still on the steepest part of the feline-human learning curve, Ellery found himself unable to guess how a lion would react, what the word might mean to him.
A brief, beautiful smile, a quick nod, and Kefir dropped his head back onto Ellery’s shoulder. If nothing else, he seemed to realise it was an affectionate label and not an insult.
“And the only time I’d send my sub to sleep away from me was if he’d behaved very badly and I was very displeased with him,” Ellery told him
“Always be pleased with me, sir?” Kefir requested, so sweetly, as if that was all that needed to be done.
Ellery thought for a few seconds. “No.”
Even though he kept the word gentle, Kefir still squirmed his way even closer to him, looking for reassurance.
Ellery stroked his palm down Kefir’s back as he tried to think of a way to explain the whole world to a guy who didn’t seem to have any idea how leather worked, even if he did have a wonderful instinct for submission.
“I’ll promise you that I’ll always treat you fairly, and that I’ll always look after you, but I won’t promise that I’ll always be pleased with you. ”
He had to be brought to understand. Ellery felt the need to draw Kefir into his world more strongly than ever. The very idea that he could fail in that task made him tighten his hold on the little lion, as if he was afraid Kefir might be snatched away from him at any second.
Kefir didn’t speak as Ellery considered his options.
“There’ll be times when you do displease me, when you’re careless or when you disobey the rules I’ve set for you. And, on those occasions, you’ll be punished.”
Kefir still didn’t say anything, but Ellery could almost hear the sheer effort the boy put in to listening intently to every word he offered to him.
“It might be a physical punishment, like a spanking. Other times, it could be something different. That’s something we’d have to work out over time.
But it would be something you dislike.” Ellery wasn’t going to lie to him about that.
A dominant had a duty to let his sub know exactly what he was getting himself into.
“Punishments shouldn’t be fun—they should make you determined never to make the same mistake again. ”
Kefir didn’t pull away. He didn’t object to the entire concept. He nuzzled against Ellery, seeming to instinctively look for reassurance. But, at the same time, there was something about his manner that hinted there was something about that kind of arrangement that appealed to him.
Ellery continued to stroke one hand up and down Kefir’s spine. The little lion had come so close to him, he was practically lying on top of Ellery now.
“Then, after you’ve accepted your punishment, you’ll be forgiven, and I will be very pleased with you,” Ellery went on.
“I’ll hold you close, just like this, and tell you how good you’ve been in accepting your punishment.
And, whether you’re being punished or not, you’ll know that your master still… cares for you.”
Ellery quickly swallowed down the words that had almost slipped through his guard when he was too busy thinking about Kefir’s reactions to notice if he was giving away far more than he should.
And you’ll know your master still loves you.
After just a couple of days, he knew it couldn’t be true.
Ellery had far more sense than that. But the thought was still there in his head, in a place where it had never been before.
There weren’t many things he hadn’t said to a sub over the years, but that phrase was one of those rare things, and there was no way in hell he was going to blurt them out right then.
“Yes, sir.” The words were whispered very softly against Ellery’s chest, but there wasn’t the slightest hint of uncertainty or fear in them then.
In a few minutes, Ellery slowly became aware that Kefir was fast asleep, his head resting over his master’s heart, their bodies moving gently against each other every time either of them took a breath.