Kert buried his face in his hands. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” he mumbled through his fingers.
I tugged his hands down. “Don’t be.”
He shook his head, confusion marring his brow. “Why did you stay friends with me? And why haven’t you told me?”
“When I witnessed you willingly subjecting yourself to all that and enjoying it, something snapped in me. Kert…” I kissed the inside of his palm and put it on my chest. “The ecstasy on your face was proof of how much you enjoyed it. It was the most erotic experience of my life, and I was only watching from a distance. Not only did I realize that I wanted you, but it also hit me that I wasn’t equipped to give you what you needed, even if you wanted me back.”
“That’s not true. You gave me so much then without sex.”
“Yeah. I could be your friend but not more. I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t ready to be what you needed.” I pulled a blanket over his legs, tucking his cold feet under it.
“And now you are?”
“I don’t know. But I left vanilla behind that night. I’ve never seen an expression as happy on your face as then. That’s when I knew.”
“What exactly did you know?” He slid his hand to my neck and caressed the edge of my gills with gentle strokes, filling me with courage.
“That I want to put that expression on your face one day.” I saw Kert open his mouth to respond, and placed a tentacle over his lips to silence him. “Let me say this. Please. I wasn’t ready to come out to you then without figuring out what I was into first. Seeing you in that basement was more than a sexual awakening. I was beginning to understand what I was looking for in sex with so many female partners before. That realization helped me find myself as a person. My awakening was thanks to you, but it was just the start.” I took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Thoselast months in Berlin my head was a mess. I knew there were two sides to my Kert and I loved my friend, but I was also turned on by the feisty submissive side of you. If I’d told you, I would have blown our friendship because I was not ready to do anything with that knowledge. When I moved to New York, I researched clubs. As it turned out, experimenting with kinks in a BDSM environment got me hard. So I began my training.”
Kert opened his mouth and I nodded for him to ask his question. “Training for what?”
“To be a Dom. To acquaint myself with the ins and outs of BDSM.”
“Wait.” He sat up and grinned. “Are you saying you did that for me?”
“No.” I smirked. “I did it because of you and because it fascinated me. But I couldn’t even hope to use my knowledge with you back then.”
“Now you can.” He thrust his chin up like he had when I had wrapped my tentacle around his throat before he’d come.
“Would you want me to?” I was fucking with him now. His arousal was in the air and in the tent he’d made of the blanket on his lap.
“Marin, my pretty tentacled himbo.” Kert gave me an exasperated look. “If your vanilla ass way back then told me you were attracted to me even a little bit, I’d impale myself on those tentacles faster than you could sayrollkragenpullover.”
I snorted. “What’s that?”
He waved his slender hand in dismissal. “The sweater with the standing neck thing.”
“A turtleneck sweater.”
“You get my point.” He flicked the end of his tail like a bull whip.
“I didn’t know you were attracted to me. You joked about my muscles, but it was just our banter—your usual Kert stuff. Howwas I supposed to know I was special?” I sneaked a tentacle under the blanket and stroked his thigh.
“Oh, I don’t know.” He pursed his lips in a very kissable way. “You carried me around like I was royalty and let me snuggle with you in bed. How was I not supposed to not crush on you?”
“You were always cold. And you’re very compact, fitting in my arms so well. I just thought you were touchy-feely like that. It was nice. Freeing. Being at ease with each other without expectations.”
Kert shook his head. “I was so smitten.” He covered his eyes with my tentacle then cradled it in his hands. “You were chasing pussy day in and day out. Well, more like girls fell on your lap and your dick like it was magical.”
“Dicks.”
“What?” He sat straighter and I repositioned my tentacles around him.
I shrugged. “I have two.”
Kert’s laughter filled the room. “I thought that was a rumor that you just never corrected for shits and giggles!”
“The first evening at the dorm, one guy made a weird-ass comment when he saw me in the shower and his buddies sniggered. I wasn’t ashamed of my body, but people can be weird. So, after that, I’d wear boxers to the communal shower and try to score the ones that still had shower curtains on when I could.”
