Santi’s House
Conching: Not just your Tita’s nickname. A step in the chocolate-making process where cocoa butter, sugar and other flavoring are very slowly added to the refined chocolate, in set hour intervals, essentially putting the final touches on what your chocolate is going to taste like, how smooth and fine it will be.
Santi didn’t know if circadian rhythms were one of those things dictated by nature or nurture. Maybe it was dictated by your star sign (Kira would know, and he really didn’t want her to catch him Googling), but if they were, he and Kira would be on the opposite sides of the birth charts. Again.
He’d never considered astrological compatibility before. When someone tried to explain it to him, how your entire personality is defined by the moment you were born, he rejected it immediately. Astrology was too random, too nonsensical to mean anything to Santi.
But here he was, at the start of the New Year, wondering about the stars. That maybe it wasn’t a definition of a personality, but a way to see the world. To try to make sense of something that normally made no sense. It was natural, to try to put an order to things, after all. And it was almost...comforting, to know that somewhere out there, there was an explanation for why his life was the way it was.
Maybe the stars didn’t know everything, but there was probably a reason why people kept looking to them for answers.
The first night they slept together, he wasn’t sure she’d done any sleeping. Partly because they were preoccupied with, um, not Virgo things, and partly because she just didn’t seem to. Santi remembered catching glances of her reading on her phone, or feeling her shift restlessly in bed beside him until he kissed her and asked if she wanted him to tire her out.
He was an early riser. Santi was always awake just before 5:00 a.m., and hell or high water, jet lag or no, he was awake at that exact hour of every morning.
You rise with the sun, I wake with the moon,Kira had said to him, which was a nice way to say that she slept late, and he woke early.
But what Santi realized about their situation was that he was the perfect person to rouse Kira from his bed so she could sneak back to hers. They’d been doing that the last few nights, keeping things between them, lost in a lovely, intoxicating haze of kisses and lovemaking (she laughed every time he called it that). One would think she would be used to it by now.
But Santi liked being the one to wake her.
“Kira,” he said gently, kissing her bare shoulder as she continued to sleep soundly on her stomach, her cheek smooshed against his pillow. Sunrise light was filtering through his trees and into his newly acquired curtains, but she was unfazed, continuing her deep slumber. “Kira, wake up.”
“Mmm, convince me,” she said, burrowing deeper into his sheets. Santi grinned and kissed the same spot on her shoulder. “More.”
“It’s five,” he reminded her gently. “You said you wanted to sneak back into your house before then.”
“Too cold to move,” was her dissatisfied response, even as her eyes were still closed.
To be fair, she wasn’t wrong. He’d forgone the aircon last night, and left a couple of windows open, but the room was so open, and the air so chilly that it felt like there were two aircons on. He suddenly understood the wisdom of Kira’s insistence that the bed be near the window, although she claimed it to be more of a luck thing than anything practical.
His houseplants, all new, all gifted from Sari Tomas one day after New Year’s (she claimed it wasn’t too late because “it’s not Three Kings yet,” and not bad feng shui if he kept them far from his bed), all seemed to be enjoying the cool breeze, swaying just slightly. Kira pulled his bamboo sheet duvet (a Christmas gift from Gabriel when Santi said specifically that he wasn’t expecting gifts) over her shoulder.
“I think I can persuade you,” Santi murmured, hovering so he could bend close to her ear before he nibbled lightly at her earlobe, which actually made her giggle and swat his hand away.
“Can’t we stay in bed forever?” she groaned, rolling over and wrapping her arms around his neck, her breasts pressing up nearly to her chin. Her eyes were still closed, and Santi chuckled, kissing both her lids before he wound his arms around her back.
“Sorry, darling,” he said, hoping she didn’t catch his tiniest bit of hesitation at the affection, burying his face in her neck to kiss her, and she lazily scooted up the bed to give him a little room. “Big day today. Hotels to run, worlds to conquer.”
“Oh yes, a verybigday indeed,” she joked, arching her hips slightly and wiggling, and the groan she managed to illicit from him was a sound he was sure he’d never made before—he was sure he never sounded likethatduring sex. “Mmm. Morning, Anton.”
“Kimberly,” he scolded playfully, moving from her back to trace the curve of her waist, pulling the covers over his head so she could still stay warm and snuggly as he kissed the underside of her bare breast, making his way lower. He kissed the soft skin on her belly, nipping at it lightly and making her giggle above.
“What are you doing?” she asked, lifting his duvet to peer down at him like she had no idea, and he looked up.
“Waking you up,” he explained like it was obvious. “May I?”
“Oh,” she laughed. “Go right ahead.”
And he did. With a light touch, her legs fell open, draping lazily over his shoulders as he kissed the side of her knee, lightly skimming his fingers along her thighs. Kissing Kira Luz was a delicious experience, one Santi savored. He kissed the deepest part of her thighs, close enough to where she needed him that she squirmed, making him chuckle.
“Are you lost down there, Santi, I can—oh!” she exclaimed, because Santi knew exactly where she liked being touched, being licked. He focused his efforts on her clit, coaxing it with his tongue, his fingers stroking lower and lower, enjoying the sounds Kira was making above him, the way her heels dug into his back. She didn’t dig her hands into his hair, but thrust her hips brazenly against his face, asking for more.
“Mmm, awake yet?” he asked her, although the words were lost between him nuzzling against her and the blanket over his head. It did have the intended effect of making her shudder at the vibrations.
Santi had always been a fast learner, and it had taken him a mere two tries (both very successful endeavors, tysm) to know how to make Kira Luz writhe, make her squirm. He knew that the fastest way to make her come was via her clit, that she liked it when he focused his attentions there. He knew that when her thighs squeezed around him she was too blissed out to speak, that when she started to gasp he was close.
“Shit, Santi, ikaw—” she gasped, and the covers were thrown off over his head, and he looked up just in time to see Kira watching him, her face completely flushed, her lips dry and slightly parted. It was that look of absolute desire in her eyes that spurned him on, let him slip his fingers in a little deeper with a wet squelch. He wrapped his lips around her clit and moaned.
