Kefir’s curiosity might as well have been a flashing red light above his head.
“If you have a question, ask it,” Ellery ordered.
“You knew what was going to happen tonight, sir?”Kefir asked, as he looked over his shoulder toward the rest of the house.
There were a lot of questions he expected Kefir to put to him.He even had answers mentally prepared for some of the more important ones, but that query hadn’t even made his list of possibilities.
“Meaning?”Ellery prompted, as he moved to lean against the workbench that ran down one side of the room, making himself comfortable for a conversation that might not be brief.
Kefir glanced through the door to the rest of the house.“You made a space for me out there, sir.”
Ellery didn’t try to deny it.A good master didn’t lie to his sub, not about the important things.“Yes, I knew I wanted you here,” he acknowledged.“But, no, I didn’t know you’d be here tonight.”
He might not have had his chance to invite the boy into his life the way he’d planned.And he might have found himself in unfamiliar and perhaps slightly uncomfortable position of merely accepting someone else’s offer rather than making his own.But Ellery couldn’t bring himself to regret any of it.
Kefir was in his home.Details weren’t important.Collaring ceremonies could wait.
The space that Ellery had made in his life would have still been there waiting for Kefir, no matter how long it had taken.It hadn’t even occurred to Ellery to doubt that in what felt like forever.The timing might have been feline, but Ellery’s need to have him there eventually, and his desire to be ready for that day when it came, was undeniably human.
“But not in here, sir?”Kefir asked, his voice softer than ever.
Ellery looked around the room.There weren’t any cleared shelves, that much was true.But a space he been made for him.Mostly by cancelling any upcoming scenes he’d had planned with other men and making it clear that he wouldn’t be available to play in the future.Perhaps Kefir didn’t need to know all about that in that particular moment.
“A dom doesn’t necessarily need to make room for their sub’s toys—they can make room for their new sub to join them in playing with those toys they already own instead,” Ellery suggested.
Kefir’s eyes ran over the room again, and Ellery knew he was fitting himself into the picture, imagining his wrists in the cuffs, his eyes behind the blindfolds, his skin under the paddles.Without saying a word, Kefir turned and walked across the room toward him.
Kneeling at Ellery’s feet, Kefir looked up at him, eyes very serious as he seemed to wait for Ellery to reach out and pet him.
“Tell me what you want,” Ellery ordered, his thumbs still hooked into the loops on his jeans as he ignored his own inclination to rush to touch.
Kefir shook his head, a slow determined motion, never once breaking eye contact.
Ellery raised an eyebrow.
“You said I wasn’t allowed to ask for that, sir,” Kefir reminded him.“You said that was my master’s decision.”
Ellery smiled as he gave in and ran his hand through the little kitten’s hair in quiet praise for such determined obedience.As the seconds ticked passed, Ellery’s slid his hand down to Kefir’s collar.
Kefir was already a good sub—with a little bit of training, he could be fantastic.
“This will never come off now,” he reminded Kefir, mostly just for the joy of hearing the words said aloud.
Kefir hesitated for a moment.“Never, sir?”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
Kefir thought about it.Part of Ellery tensed at the very idea he should need to think about it, but he forced himself to wait while Kefir worked out what he wanted to say before he reacted.
“A lion’s neck is bigger than a human’s, sir.”
Ellery ran his fingers inside the collar as he pictured Kefir’s feline form.As much as the more possessive part of him hated to admit it, the boy had a point.Reaching into his pocket, Ellery took out a key and unlocked the padlock to let the collar lie open around Kefir’s neck.
He nodded to Kefir, and he had no doubt that he understood the silent order, but Kefir still didn’t shift forms immediately.
“My clothes, sir?”
Ellery nodded again, allowing him permission to take them off, but even when Kefir stood naked in the middle of the playroom, it seemed to take him a few minutes to build up the courage to shift in front of Ellery again.When it finally began, the process was seamless.
