Page 9 of Ice & Sweet

CHAPTER NINE

Luke

Waking up with André still in my bed was a dream come true. The nightmare was the blaring of my alarm and the fact it was seven in the morning—a time that should have felt like a lie-in but after the stress of yesterday, not to mention my late night, felt more like an executioner’s summons.

André groaned from his spot beside me where he was stretched out naked with his arms curled around the pillows. I could barely see him in the glow of my phone, but I didn’t want to turn the lights on because that would end our time together and I wanted to drag it out for as long as possible. “What time is it?” he asked in a low, rumbling voice that made my cock pulse under the covers.

“Seven,” I said with a yawn as I flicked the alarm off and shoved my phone under my pillow.

“The wedding isn’t until two,” André said, the bed dipping as he shuffled across and put his arm around my waist, pulling me against him. “You don’t need to get up yet.”

“I have to finish the cake. And there’s breakfast, photos, make-up, getting ready…” I trailed off as the heat of André’s body enveloped me, the smell of sweat and cum and red wine lingering on his skin. It made me want to stay in bed all morning so I could explore every inch of him, ordering room service when we got hungry, and finally rolling out of bed at one to rock up to the wedding in time to grab seats.

But that would be impossible because I was Kane’s best man and I had shit to do. Kane was my best friend and I was going to make sure his wedding was as fucking fabulous as he’d dreamed and that his cake was the closest thing to perfection I’d ever created, because if anyone deserved the perfect day it was Kane and Austin. They might have taken their time getting here, but I’d never met two people so devoted and in love, cheesy and sickening as it sounded.

André’s lips trailed down the back of my neck and across my shoulder, making a sigh escape from my lips. “You’re not helping.”

“Was I meant to?” he asked with a soft chuckle. “What if I don’t want you to escape?”

I groaned and rolled over in his arms because fuck, I had to kiss him again, morning breath be damned! “You’re the worst,” I said as I slid my fingers in his hair and kissed him deeply, ignoring the stale taste of wine and cum on his tongue. “I have shit to do.”

“I’m not stopping you from getting up.”

“You could.”

He smirked, his eyes glittering in the small amount of light trickling in under the heavy curtains. “Do you want me to?”

“Maybe?”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“I’m not,” I said. “Because while I really want you to fuck me again, I also want to make sure Kane’s stress levels don’t go supernova. And I literally have my business reputation involved, which took me forever to build.”

“You better get up then,” André said, putting his hand on my chest to gently push me away. I hooked my leg over his, laughing as I attempted to stay in place.

“If I go, you’re coming too. I’m not letting you lounge around in my bed while I get up.”

“Are you asking me to be your assistant? Because I can do that. As long as it doesn’t involve anything more than handing you things and standing around looking pretty.”

“Done!” I kissed him again before rolling off him, laughter bubbling out of my chest. I felt almost weirdly happy and more relaxed than I had in a long time, but I wasn’t sure if that was due to one night of good sex or if André had something to do with it. I didn’t want to give him the entirety of the credit because good dick made things better no matter who it belonged to, but as I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed, a tiny voice in the back of my mind teased me that I wouldn’t have wanted it to be anyone else.

“First things first,” I said, attempting to ignore all the tiny, irritated voices in my brain trying to point out just how many nights I’d spent fantasising about André. “Shower. We can’t go and set the cake up smelling like sex. For one thing, it’s unprofessional. And for another, I know the moment I set a foot out of this room looking like I got laid, the universe will summon up Kane and Austin and at least one of them will know exactly what I’ve been doing as soon as they see me. And then Austin’ll force me to spill all my secrets just by smiling at me.”

“Do you want to keep this a secret then?”

“Maybe?” I flicked on the lamp beside the bed, casting a warm pool of light across the floor. When I looked over, André was also sat up and I couldn’t stop myself from staring. His shoulders were well-muscled and there was a smattering of freckles across his skin. The sheets were still gathered around his waist, but I could see the top of his ass and my fingers itched to reach out and grab it. “It’s not because I don’t want them to know and I definitely don’t want you to think I want to hide what we did but—”

“But it’s their wedding day and we don’t want to add anything to their plate or cause any sort of drama or give anyone a reason to talk about anything other than how gorgeous and happy the grooms look?”

“Exactly. I know they’ll be fine with it, but I don’t want to take any focus away from them, even for a second.”

“Agreed,” André said. “This is their day, not ours. If we want to, we can tell them after the wedding.”

“Sometime next year.”

André laughed as he stood and stretched. My eyes widened at the full view of his ass, and it did not disappoint. Fuck, I just wanted to lean over and bite it! Not hard… more like a playful nibble… a taste. André turned and caught me looking, a playful smirk curling the corner of his lip. “I know you said we couldn’t stay in bed, but the shower isn’t a bed…”

I grinned and sauntered over to him, my cock already hard and aching between my legs. “And I can’t go downstairs like this. Especially not if we’re trying to do the whole subtle thing.”

André put his hand on my waist and pulled me in for another kiss. “Better get in the shower then.”

Forty minutes and one jelly-leg-inducing orgasm later, André and I stepped out of the lift and began to head towards the reception space where Natalia had promised me there would already be someone around who could direct me to retrieve the cake and all my accessories.

Even at this hour, the hotel was a hive of activity with smartly dressed members of staff already starting to set tables with polished crockery and sparkling glasses. I knew Kane and Austin were going for a winter elegance feel with a touch of glamour but nothing so over the top it screamed tacky or kitsch. They didn’t want hundreds of crystals or millions of flowers that screamed look how much money we have . They just wanted something that felt like them.

Which was why there was going to be an ice cream bar instead of a plated pudding, because one of the core memories Austin had of Kane was him eating three bowls of pistachio ice cream smothered with melted chocolate at a party in LA when they were seventeen and first starting to hook up.

It was another of those perfectly sweet and almost sickening details about their relationship, but the fact that Austin remembered something so simple all these years later was the perfect encapsulation of if he wanted to, he would .

I flagged down a member of staff and introduced myself, and they were happy to take André and me back towards the kitchens to retrieve everything. André tried to insist on carrying the cake but gave up when I pointed out that if I tripped and fell, it would only be my fault, but if he tripped and fell while carrying it, he’d have to deal with that guilt for the rest of his life.

Instead he settled for opening doors and carrying all my tools and extra decorations, clearing a path for me with military precision, and warning me about every bump and step on my path. It was sweet to see how seriously he took helping me, and I tried not to focus on catching glimpses of his ass in his jeans instead of where I was putting my feet.

When we got back to the reception space where the cake would be displayed during dinner, I noticed the florist had arrived and was unloading various boxes of centrepieces on the tables. They were deep in discussion with someone else who was holding some large candles, so I didn’t disturb them.

“What do you need from me?” André asked once I’d slid the cake onto the display stand and made sure it was completely secure.

“I think the berries,” I said, walking around the stand and scrutinising my work, looking for any flaws or imperfections that needed fixing. Despite all the setbacks yesterday, the cake had made it in perfect condition, so it had been worth driving with the three layers already assembled for that alone.

André held up a tub of small, bright red berries that I’d painstakingly made last week and dusted with sugar. “These ones?”

“That’s the bastards.”

“Bastards?”

“Yeah,” I said as I took them carefully. “I don’t usually like including decorations that aren’t edible, but that’s hard with wedding cakes, especially in the winter when we’re really limited with what fresh fruit we can get. I mean, it’s easy to buy imported stuff, and I do, but I don’t know… I’m a picky bastard and I like challenging myself, so I made these.”

“You made them?” André’s surprise was adorable and the look on his face made my internal temperature skyrocket. I’d never seen anyone look so impressed over something so small. “How? They look almost real.”

“Thanks.” I grinned as I began arranging them carefully, using some of the wooden sprigs I’d made from modelling chocolate to make it look like there were real clusters of berries sitting on the tiers. “They’re tiny chocolate truffles dipped in tempered white chocolate and then airbrushed. They’re a bit fiddly to make, but that’s more due to the size.”

“I can’t believe you made them,” André said again. “Did you make the branches too?”

“Yeah, they’re more chocolate.”

“That’s incredible.”

“It’s… thanks.”

He smiled at me and raised an eyebrow. “Were you going to say it’s nothing?”

“Maybe,” I said as I added the last of the berries around the base of the cake. “But I’ve been trying not to talk down to myself about this stuff. Because I am good at my job and I do make amazing cakes, and I need to remember that. So I’m learning to take compliments and not brush them off as no big deal, because, yes, actually, this is a big deal—I made this fucking beautiful cake and all these bastard berries and they all turned out perfectly because I am amazing.” I laughed and then bit my lip because a couple of the staff members were looking. “And yes, I’m aware that sounds egotistical as fuck, but what are you going to do?”

“If I could, I’d kiss you.”

André’s words were so quiet I almost missed them but then I felt lightning shoot straight down my spine, jolting my muscles and making me do a double take as I stared at him with my hand hovering in mid-air. “What?”

“I’d kiss you,” he said, like it was no big deal. Maybe after last night it wasn’t, but still he couldn’t just say that shit in public and expect me not to react. “Because I like that you’re proud of yourself and that you openly acknowledge you’re good at what you do.”

“Yeah, but aren’t you going to say it’s tasteless or something?”

“No, why would I? Maybe if you were going around bragging about being the greatest baker in the world while making something that belonged on an episode of Nailed It! , then yeah, I might think you were a bit of a dick. But your work is amazing, Luke, and I’m glad you know that.” He smiled at me and it felt like I’d been bathed in warmth, like opening an oven door onto a tray of beautiful meringues.

I glanced around and realised nobody was watching us.

So I leant across and kissed him.

It wasn’t anything more than a quick brush of my lips over his, a hasty acknowledgement of his sweetness and a reward for his belief in me, but André still flushed. And when I turned back to the cake to work out where to put the rest of the decorations—the ones that sadly weren’t edible like the whole cinnamon sticks and sprigs of greenery—my mouth was still tingling.

The sensation took a long time to fade.