Chapter Eighteen #4
Damir shook his head, turning to his own amuse-bouche. It tasted delicious, though it might have been better directly from Kilian’s lips. “I have a few, ah, friends there, but nothing more ever came of it. Not with me only there for the summer every year.”
When he chanced a look over, he found Kilian studying him intensely.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Kilian said far too quickly.
Damir raised his eyebrows.
“It’s sweet. You didn’t want to do an open relationship or long distance or whatever.” Kilian said. “You’re kind of a secret commitment guy, aren’t you?”
Damir busied himself clearing the last flecks of risotto from his jar to avoid answering.
The waitress arrived soon after with their first course, a creamy mushroom soup with chives and perfectly braised chicken liver.
Kilian raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t push as they enjoyed the soup in silence.
Damir breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t know much about dating, but he knew it would come on a little strong to tell someone he hadn’t seriously considered commitment until they met.
When the waitress had cleared their plates, Kilian folded his hands together. “So tell me about all the kinky stuff you did with your Russian friends with bennies.”
Damir’s fingers fumbled against his silverware, knocking it together with a quiet clink.
“Come on,” Kilian cajoled. “You know so much more about all of it than me, and I want to learn.” He batted his eyelashes winningly.
With a sinking feeling that he would never be immune to Kilian’s wide-eyed pretend-innocence, Damir gave in.
Over the course of the second starter (a fresh herb salad accompanied by beet carpaccio for Damir and mashed parsnip for Kilian, who rejected any offered tastes of beet) and the first main (lamb chops with confit tomatoes and baby potatoes), he described his sex life prior to meeting Kilian.
Damir narrated his teenage fumblings and first crushes and finally finished with his more adult affairs, limited as they were.
It seemed fair, now he knew he’d been all three for Kilian.
“So you really only got laid in the summer?” Kilian asked, wiping his mouth with his napkin. A pink smudge from his lip gloss marred the white cloth.
“It was safer. Didn’t want to get recognized in a club in Chicago, or photographed, or…”
With a self-deprecating shrug, Kilian said, “Fair. You hit the clubs in Russia instead?”
“Sometimes. Usually, I would have a friend over. My friend, Kirill, he’s…well, he likes a few of the same things you do…orgasm control, impact play. He taught me how to do it safely.” Kirill would be livid about how badly Damir had been doing on the safe, sane, and consensual front.
“Impact play?”
Damir cleared his throat and took a sip of water. “Anything involving, ah, hitting you.”
“When you spanked me.”
Glancing around furtively to make sure the waitress hadn’t overheard, Damir affirmed.
“Cool. What else?”
“Kilian! We’re not going to do a kink negotiation at a three-star restaurant!”
“When else are we going to do it?”
The waitress returned with beautifully seared steak strips alongside five elegantly plated ravioli filled with goat cheese and truffle and topped with parmesan and chestnut shavings. She narrated each item on their plates before leaving with another smile.
Damir picked up the next fork, hoping the interruption put the conversation to bed.
“So this is amazing,” Kilian decided, speaking with his mouth full. “Orgasm in my mouth level amazing. Good call on the restaurant. Seriously though, I want to know about all the kinky stuff, and we can’t talk about it on the plane or at work.”
Damir sliced a steak strip in half purely to have more bites with which to enjoy the food. “We could talk about it in one of our hotel rooms, where we won’t accidentally traumatize the waitstaff. Or at home.”
“But when I get you alone, I want to do kinky shit, not talk about it.”
It was a struggle to keep chewing evenly and swallow before responding. “Brat.”
Kilian flashed a cheeky grin. “What are you going to do about it?”
Damir took a bite of his ravioli and licked the excess butter sauce from his lips—what was that sharp note, lemon? It was inspired. He ought to remember it for the next time he made pasta. He leaned forward and, in a low voice, said, “Tie your arms behind your back and fuck your mouth.”
Kilian’s mouth dropped open, and his cheeks pinked. “Touché,” he muttered.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You can absolutely tie me up.”
“Not that.”
“Okay, fine.”
Damir swiped the last bit of steak through the remains of the sauce, popped it in his mouth, and savored it before continuing. “Why haven’t you looked it up? The kink stuff?”
The waitress came to clear their plates then, but if she heard the last words, she was excellent at pretending she didn’t.
When she’d left, Damir hastened to add, “It’s not a requirement. But I know you looked up things about Russia and Islam for me. Or I think it was for me. If it wasn’t—”
“Of course it was for you.” Under the table, Kilian’s knee brushed against the inside of Damir’s thigh. “I was curious about you, and I didn’t know how to get to know you like a normal person, so I did some research.”
“Do you mean to say I wasn’t extremely approachable?”
“Most approachable hockey player who ever slid into my DMs.”
Damir knocked his knee against Kilian’s leg lightly. “Kilian.”
He wanted to ask who else had slid into Kilian’s DMs almost as much as he wanted to know the answer to his original question.
But the fifth course arrived, and it deserved their attention.
Kilian had a sesame-crusted tuna steak with seaweed salad and a perfect circle of rice while Damir enjoyed rabbit with collard greens and quinoa.
He gave Kilian until the end of the course, even fulfilling his promise of feeding Kilian bites of the rabbit off the tip of his fork when he was sure their corner of the restaurant was deserted.
“So?” he asked when those plates had been cleared as well.
Kilian sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Part of what I like about it is giving up control. If I start googling kink checklists and how safewords work and stuff, then I have to decide what we do. And I want you to do that.”
Damir narrowed his eyes. “You did look it up a bit.”
“Sue me, I was curious.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“Why’s it so important to you?”
“I could tell you anything. I could tell you it’s totally safe and consensual for me to tie you up with zip ties and gag you with no way to tell me to stop.” The thought made revulsion shiver along Damir’s spine and, with it, the need to protect Kilian from anything like it ever happening.
Kilian met his eyes. His Adam’s apple bobbed with a swallow, but he didn’t respond immediately.
The sixth course arrived—a rich, decadent chocolate mousse with a raspberry sorbet and a tiny, perfect pineapple upside-down cake surrounded by mint leaves and chocolate sauce. Kilian smiled up at the waitress and thanked her, reaching for the second-to-last fork to the left of his plate.
“You would never do that to me,” Kilian said once she’d left.
“I might not, but someone else could.”
“I don’t want to do this with anyone else.”
Damir paused, mouth open and ready for his first bite of sorbet. “I—” he said. “You—” He cleared his throat. “Oh.”
“I mean, I tried being with other guys, and it didn’t do anywhere near as much for me as you do over the phone.
I’m not promising we’ll be together forever or anything because then you might think I’m crazy.
But as far as I know, I don’t want anyone else for regular sex, let alone for the kind where you call me your good girl and make me hurt. ”
The sorbet dripped off of Damir’s spoon, making a tiny red dot on his immaculate plate. He took the bite. “I’m glad,” he rasped. “I’m…look, I will tell you how crazy I am about you in a moment, but before we do, I need to finish this properly.”
“Okay.” How could Kilian be so confident and calm when Damir was coming out of his skin at the thought of someone else touching Kilian and of no one else ever having the opportunity again?
Damir cleared his throat and tried to focus. “I’ve assumed I knew what you wanted a few times, and I was always wrong.”
Kilian made a questioning sound around his spoon.
“I thought you didn’t want a relationship, and I thought I ought to keep my struggles with what to do about my future to myself. If I’d spoken to you sooner…”
“Oh.” Kilian set his silverware down and considered. “I see your point about that, yeah. But that’s not sex. That’s feelings.”
“Keeping my feelings out of our sex life has been a resounding failure thus far,” Damir pointed out. “And I’d prefer if I didn’t have to.”
Kilian nodded slowly. “I guess that’s fair.
And it’s not like I don’t want to have a say.
If I’m in the mood for blowing you, or getting fucked, I want to be able to, like, initiate it.
The kink stuff doesn’t have to be all the time.
Last night was—” His eyes darted up to meet Damir’s for a second. “Last night was good.”
“It was. I think what you want is for me to take the reins, so to speak, and surprise you with what we’re doing.”
“Yeah.”
“Going through a checklist doesn’t mean it won’t be a surprise.
It means I’ll have a rough idea of what I can experiment with, but whatever precise thing I choose to do to you will be my prerogative to decide.
And a safeword…that’s a failsafe. In an ideal world, neither of us will ever have to use it.
But I need to know you can, if I ever go too far. And I need to know I can.”
Kilian’s brow furrowed. His fork scraped over the caramelized top of the pineapple. “Have you wanted to?”
“When I spanked you,” Damir admitted. “It got…intense, and I was flying blind. In the moment, I had no idea if I made things better or worse for you. It was very erotic but also terrifying not to know if I hurt you in a way you didn’t want with what I said or did.”