Chapter 28 Waking call
BASTIAN'S POV
I’ve never willingly gone down on my knees for anyone.
Not once.
Men usually rush to do it for me. Eager...almost competitive. As if getting there first earns them some invisible prize. They don’t care that I never return the favor. They never ask. They never expect it.
Because they always leave with something. Payment for their time. And that’s the arrangement. It's clean, predictable and efficient. Which makes this situation particularly fucking ridiculous.
Because here I am, in the walk-in cooler of my own club at four in the morning.
Kneeling.
The cold air bites through my shirt, somewhere beyond the thick metal door the club is quiet now, long emptied and closed. The sight in front of me makes something dark and electric curl low in my stomach.
Then I look back up.
Kaden is breathing hard, chest rising and falling, his head tipped slightly back as he stares down at me. There’s anticipation in his expression....but something else too.
Frustration.
Anger.
I should be at home....I tried.
Tried to sleep. Tried to pretend I wasn’t wide awake with my mind circling the same thought over and over again like a predator pacing a cage. But it didn’t work. Because my body kept pulling me back here. Back to one specific bartender. The same one I’d spent the entire day intentionally ignoring. The same one I’d wanted, more than once, to drag into my office, lock the door, and fuck until the tension burned itself out of my bloodstream.
But I didn’t. Because restraint exists for a reason. Because lines exist. Because men like me do not lose control over pretty bartenders with sharp mouths and reckless eyes.
And yet here I am.....
I look up. His cock is thick, jutting out toward me, eager and pulsing with a life of its own. It’s a beautiful, desperate thing. Then I look at Kaden. He’s still staring down at me with a lethal cocktail of anticipation and pure, unadulterated rage at his own surrender.
I realize right then that there was nowhere else this night could have ended.
This is a bad idea. A very dangerous, bad idea. Every instinct I possess is telling me this is a mistake. The exact kind of boundary I spent my entire adult life learning not to cross.
But as I reach out and wrap my hand around the base, anchoring him, and finally slide my lips around the head of him, the logic fails. I feel him shift forward, a frantic, reflexive movement, and I hear him curse. It's a broken sound that vibrates against my tongue.
He tastes like salt and heat and it’s more intoxicating than anything I’ve ever bottled.
My own heart is racing, a frantic thudding in my chest that I haven't felt in years. I ignore it. I shut it out, focusing instead on the way his thighs tremble against my shoulders and the way his fingers are currently trying to scalp me. I use my tongue, circling the head before taking him deeper, wanting to feel exactly how much of him I can possess.
I’m a man who buys what he wants. But as Kaden lets out a low moan that sounds like a prayer, I realize I’m not buying him. I’m sinking into him.
I work him with a feverish, clinical precision that’s quickly becoming neither clinical nor precise. He's a mess above me, a string of mindless, audible curses spilling from his lips as his hips jerk reflexively against my mouth.
Internally, I’m a wrecking crew. My mind and body are in a violent state of confusion. This is a total deviation from the norm. Something unfamiliar coils low in my chest, somewhere between adrenaline and something dangerously close to panic. My brain is firing warning signals. Saying this is wrong. This changes things. This complicates everything. I shut the alarms down one by one.
Kaden suddenly fists both hands into my hair, his grip bruising and desperate as he wrenches my head back. He’s panting, his face flushed a deep, beautiful red, eyes blown wide and glassy.
"What's the matter, Kaden?" My voice sounds like it’s been dragged through a rock crusher. "Tapping out already?"
“Did you show up here cause you were starving for this?” he asks, his voice thick and wrecked. A bead of sweat rolls down his temple despite the cold air. "You were desperate to have me cum down your throat, weren't you?"
The mental image.....the unfiltered reality of what I'm doing, makes a part of me want to recoil. It’s the part of me that remembers that I don't serve.
But then I look up. I see the way he’s looking at me, like I’m the only source of heat in a frozen world. He looks fucking perfect. My own cock twitches, a hard, agonizing throb that sends a spike of genuine shock through me. It’s never felt like this. Never this sharp, this demanding.
I don't say a word. I don't need to. I inch forward and lick along his length. Kaden mutters a curse and throws his head back, his throat working as he gasps for air. Then he looks back down, and the eye contact is electric.
He grips my head with both hands and pushes, forcing me forward, demanding that I take all of him back in. I gag as he slides deep, my eyes instantly tearing up, the air in my lungs disappearing. I don't pull away. I reach out, my fingers digging into the his ass, pulling him even closer, letting him use me however he needs to.
I can feel it when he breaks. The subtle change in the rhythm, the way his entire body goes rigid. He lets out a strangled sound, and then he’s coming, thick and hot, spurting down my throat.
I take every drop. I swallow it like it’s the only thing keeping me alive, my eyes locked on his as he sags against the metal rack, his chest heaving, completely and utterly ruined by me.
The silence that follows is thick and heavy with the heat and taste of him.
It hangs in the cold air like something alive, something breathing between us. I’m still on my knees and for a moment, I don’t move.
I inhale slowly, the air sharp in my lungs, and only then...like someone surfacing from deep water...do I begin to understand what I’ve just done. The realization comes gradually. Piece by piece. Like glass pressing through skin.
It’s something I decided a long time ago...quietly, privately, with a kind of iron certainty....that I would never allow. Something my own body has rejected for years with instinctive, immediate resistance.
A line. A boundary.
And somehow, tonight, I crossed it without hesitation. Without even thinking. The awareness hits me all at once. A flood of panic rushes through my chest so abruptly it steals the air from my lungs. Shame follows close behind it, sharp and corrosive, curling low in my stomach.
And something worse. Something uglier. Not directed at Kaden but at myself. I push to my feet slowly, my movements mechanical, distant, like my body belongs to someone else.