A Daddy for Damian by Joe Satoria

15. DAMIAN

Hot and intense. It felt wrong.

He helped me clean myself with a packet of wet wipes, and he asked me how it was.

We dressed and he sat me on his knee. He kissed at my face and cuddled me close. It felt like we were the only two people here. He continued to squeeze at me and tell me how much he liked the cute dinosaur underwear I had.

“What is your favourite dinosaur?” I asked.

Staring at me, he smiled. Nodding. He kissed my nose. “You are,” he said. “Maybe next time I can have two ropes, one for each arm and you can be my little T-Rex.”

An odd sensation inside me, and not from where I could almost still feel him inside my hole, but almost like I’d broken him from the man who sat beside me in the back of his car.

“You want to go again?” he asked. “I haven’t put my tie on yet.”

“I’m kinda hungry,” I said.

“Right,” he chuckled. “I haven’t eaten. Let’s order food, and we can book those flights. And I can tell you about the trip. I guess now that we’ve had sex, there is nothing stopping us from continuing this.”

I wondered if that was a fact, I wondered if there was nothing stopping us. It felt like I was stopping us now. I didn’t know what to say or do, the hot and cold charm, the sizzling sensation he had on my body, and the way I would’ve had sex with him again right now. But I decided against saying that.

Kristopher left the office to order food, leaving me alone with my thoughts and phone.

I immediately messaged Emile.

—We had sex!

His response was immediate.

—WHAT?

—NO!!

—REALLY?

—DAMN.

—At least someone is getting some.

I was glad I had Emile in my life. This wasn’t something I could tell my brother, especially not the explicit detail I was about to go into with Emile.

—We did it in his office. He used the ropes we got today. I couldn’t touch myself.

A shiver crept through me as I sent it him.

—And his touch! He held me so tight. I didn’t want him to let go. Even when he came, he pulled me on him!

Emile sent back several WOW face emojis.

—I’m jealous. You’ve got this job and someone to fuck. Did you ask if he has a friend? He responded.

I chuckled to myself, picturing Emile and Theo together. Theo was the only friend I knew, and I was sure he was gay, or at least bisexual. There was just something in the way he looked me over, almost like he was taking a physical assessment of me and comparing me to Kristopher’s previous assistants.

Kristopher arrived minutes later with a smile on his face, still looking a little dishevelled from what had just happened. “Reception will call when it arrives. I ordered from a sushi place. You’ll love it.”

I’d never had sushi before, and the thought of eating raw fish after he mentioned it made me feel a little sick. I think he realised by my expression that I hadn’t eaten raw fish before.

“It’s a new experience,” he said. “There’s also some tempura. I figured, since you ordered the kind prawn when we were at the restaurants.”

Well, at least he remembered my order from the restaurant. “Try everything once, right?” I offered, less than enthusiastically.

That was a good motto to live by, at least where it mattered. I was always taught that meat and fish should be cooked before eating, and that continued to go through my mind as the food arrived and I stared at the large box filled with all types of small rectangular pieces of sushi.

“So,” Kristopher began. “They have different names. We have two types here. Nigiri and maki. Nigiri,” he said, pointed to the ones with fish on top of the rice. “Is sushi but like this, with salmon or something on top. And then there’s maki. That’s the one with the nori, it’s dried seaweed.”

“And what’s inside those?” I asked, looking at the cross-section of filling inside the seaweed.

“It looks like a selection,” he said. “Avocado, tuna, this one looks like spicy tuna. Probably a couple vegetable rolls too.” He passed me a set of chopsticks inside a paper slip.

I looked at them. They were together. I watched as he snapped his. Copying his movement, I placed the sticks between my forefinger and thumb. “I’ll try the tuna one.”

“So, we’ve got some soy sauce,” he said, gesturing to the small plastic pot of black liquid. “I can mix in some wasabi if you want, but it’s spicy, packs a punch to the back of your throat.”

I shook my head, almost violently at the thought. The last thing I needed was to be overrun by spice, and my body would’ve rejected that. “You first.”

Kristopher grabbed one of the fish-topped sushi rolls, almost expertly with the chop sticks. He dipped it into the sauce so delicately, and quickly into his mouth.

His eyes rolled as he smiled with pleasure.

“Is it good?” I asked.

He let out a humming moan. “Amazing.” He stuck a thumb up at me. “So, you’ve got to be quick, dip, dip, and then eat, otherwise it might disintegrate.”

I did as he did, after several attempted at getting my fingers right, and making the clicking sound with the chopsticks against each other, I finally grabbed at a piece of the slippery rolled sushi. I raised it, hovered about the soy sauce. It splashed into it.

Kristopher was quick to rescue it with his chopsticks. “Oh. You’ve still got to eat it,” he said with a smile. “Open up.”

I raised my eyebrow at him. He hadn’t said that earlier. The rice had turned an almost brown colour. And with one bite, I chewed on all the textures and flavours swirling around inside my mouth. It was salty, but tasty. I swallowed it and opened my mouth, sticking my tongue out to him. “All gone.”

“As a reward, there’s some tempura in this one,” he said, opening the second box I feared was also filled with more sushi. “So, this one is battered fish and vegetables. You’ll probably like this one more. It’s cooked.”

I hadn’t even told him that thought. It looked like a box filled with beige and lightly golden pieces of fried chicken. There was one shape I knew. Prawns, that curved shape and the tail gave them away. It was much more my type.

As I helped myself to one of the tempura prawns and dipped it into the sauce they provided in the box, I noticed Kristopher had stopped to stare at me, his gaze was too intense not to notice.

“We should talk about the rest of the week,” he said. “Flights needs to be booked. But we probably won’t see each other.” He broke eye contact, looking away to the box of food on his desk. “Which is annoying, because I definitely want to see you.”

“Why can’t you?” I asked.

He chuckled. “You’re my assistant,” he said. “My family already think I’m out here doing nothing but fuck random men every night, I don’t want them to know—to know—”

“Are you?” I asked in a chuckle, but half serious. I wanted to know if that was the case.

“Wow, how about you ask me one serious question, and I’ll ask you one.”

That didn’t bother me, I was honest to a fault sometimes, just blurting myself out.

“So, to answer your question,” he began, grabbing at a sushi roll. “No, I don’t. I don’t do one-night stands.” He looked me over. I wondered if that was an invitation for us to have sex again, although he’d already thrown that idea out earlier. “My turn. Why do you like dinosaurs so much?”

I didn’t know. The question stumped me. I ate the last bit of meat from the prawn. “I always watched them. You know the cartoons when I was younger.” My forehead wincing slightly to wonder if that was a serious question. “Are you asking me if I want to be a little dinosaur?”

“I want to know what extent you love them,” he said.

“I have teddies,” I revealed, blushing. “And onesies.”

“Ok.” He nodded. “Bring them over. I wanna see them.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

My heart raced as I nodded back at him. “Yeah. Ok.”

“I’ll have a car pick you up from your house,” he said. “And just so you know. This is an invitation to stay the night.”

I didn’t know how to react. I’d never had such a formal offer.

“Your question,” he said.

“Um. How many people have you—”

“Question time is over,” he chuckled. “That’s not important, right?”

Now that he was avoiding it, I wanted to know, but I knew the number was going to be high. A man who invested in kink clubs up and down the country, who owned ropes, and all that. He had to have a high number.

He reached out, a hand behind my neck. He craned his head close. Kissing my forehead. “You’re number ten.”