Page 12 of Kade: Accidentally Bonded (Rogue Bonds #1)

Aiden

H oly fuck, he was naked. But not only naked. He was absolutely fucking gorgeous. Defined muscles, lean hips, and an absolute lack of embarrassment as he glanced over his shoulder at me. Right. So the door had been left open deliberately. He smiled at me from the edge of the shower stall, his hand under the water to check the temperature. “It’s ready when you are,” he said, and I couldn’t quite decide whether the innocence in his voice was earnest or contrived. Was he trying to be helpful, or was he playing me?

“Oh. Um…” He wanted to shower… with me ?

If I hesitated too long, I was going to see that crestfallen look I’d glimpsed a few times when I’d fumbled some detail about being his master. But the alternative was to get undressed in front of him and…

It was fine, I told myself, as I peeled my shirt over my head. Dimari were accustomed to doing all manner of domestic chores, and bathing their masters was just one more on a long list of things that Kade likely saw as his duty. I’d already shown him how to cook a meal and implied that keeping the kitchen clean was his job. Maybe he was just following my lead and running with it?

I undid my pants and slid them down my legs. I’d been naked in front of plenty of men before, of course. It was the sort of thing that was impossible to avoid when stationed on a military base.

But the difference here was that there was only one shower stall. And Kade was most definitely breaking the unwritten rule of keeping one’s eyes to oneself. His gaze slid down my naked body, as I tugged the pants off my feet. But before I could figure out quite what his expression meant, he was turning away, gathering shower gel and a wash cloth in preparation for my arrival. There was no fourth wall on my shower; rather, it was tucked into an alcove with just a drain on the open side, which made for plenty of room for the two of us. The water was warm – just on the pleasant side of too hot – and I groaned in pleasure as I stuck my head under the spray, letting the heat drive some of the stiffness in my muscles away.

“Would you like me to wash you, sir?” Kade asked from beside me, and I lifted my head, shaking water out of my eyes to see him standing unnervingly close. At this distance, the height difference between us was more noticeable, and I had to tilt my head up slightly to look at him. Fucking hell, it had been a long time since I’d been this close to a naked man. Particularly one who was bigger than me. The thought sent a rush of desire through me, and I hastily looked away. Did I want him to wash me?

“Yeah, okay,” I said, too tired to find a gentle way to turn him down. Let him fulfil his ingrained duty of washing his master, then we could both go to bed. He did so efficiently, starting with my arms, then my back, my chest. He leaned over me to get more shower gel, his hip brushing mine, his arm pressing briefly against my chest. The shower wasn’t small, but with two people crammed in here, maybe he was…

Nope, I realised, as I opened my eyes. He was very deliberately standing close enough that we couldn’t help but brush against each other. And there was plenty of room on his other side, if he’d wanted more space. He had started washing his own chest now, and I drowsily followed the trail of washcloth and lime-scented suds down his arms, over his chest, and down to his…

My tiredness vanished in an instant, my brain kicking back into gear as I suddenly realised what the fuck was going on, and…

Nope, I had no fucking idea what I was supposed to do about it.

What I did know was that Kade was hard. Really fucking hard. His erection curved up from his groin in a smooth line that ended just below his belly button. And his cock was a bright, ultramarine blue, in contrast to the rest of his body, which was still brown.

“I don’t have scales on my penis,” he said softly, seeing the object of my attention. “I can’t control the pigments there.” He sounded almost ashamed of that little detail.

“Yeah, no, that’s… totally fine,” I said, my mouth filling in the silence while my brain scrambled for some way to make sense of this. Fucking hell, what was I…? What was he…?

I, like pretty much every other human in the Alliance, had quickly and emphatically decided that sex with a dimari was thoroughly immoral. They couldn’t consent. They had no way to ask for their master to stop, if they didn’t like the way things were going. And according to the list of ‘skills’ I’d briefly glimpsed in his operations manual, Kade had already been subjected to systematic sexual abuse at the hands of his so-called trainers. Touching him right now would be about a thousand different kinds of wrong.

He slid the washcloth in his hand down, between his thighs, back up, to circle his weeping erection once, then around, to slide against the curve of his ass. And fuck me, but I was getting hard now. A part of my brain was trying to convince me that I should look away at the very least, and probably get right out of the shower, because this was entirely inappropriate.

But meanwhile, another part of my brain was putting two very interesting and unexpected facts together; one, if Kade had been anyone other than a dimari, his actions right at that moment would have been a neon sign that he wanted to sleep with me; and two, dimari were unable to ask for things they wanted. I wasn’t clear on the details of why that was the case, but somehow, as part of their training, they were taught that seeing to their own needs was inappropriate.

But… was that just my own interpretation of the situation? Kade was an incredibly attractive man, but was I using his behaviour to justify my own desires? And to make matters worse, I was not yet anywhere near skilled enough with my sly questions and subtle interpretations of his answers to be able to deduce whether he was experiencing an unfortunately timed bodily reaction, or a conscious desire for sex.

I needed more information. I needed to be doing this when I wasn’t so tired I wanted to pass out.

I needed to damn well not fuck this up.

“Kade? Um…” I swallowed, my throat feeling tight. I forced my gaze up from his groin to his face. “In your, um… training. Were you given rules about sex? About what you’re allowed to do, and what you’re not, and all that?”

I wasn’t entirely sure where my question was going yet, but Kade said, “Yes, sir,” in a voice that sounded half hopeful and half apprehensive.

“And what were you taught about sex?” I prompted him, when he didn’t continue. “I mean, the context of it, not the details on how to do it.”

Kade shuddered. “Our bodies belong to our masters. The master owns all pleasure. The master decides when a dimari should receive the reward of sex. If the master is pleased, he will allow us pleasure. If he is displeased, he will withhold pleasure. He owns every part of us.”

There were two distinct aspects to his answer that caught my attention. I decided to tackle them one at a time. “Your master controls when you’re allowed pleasure. So… are dimari allowed to masturbate?” It was a far more direct question than I’d been expecting to ask him at this early juncture of our relationship. Then again, I hadn’t expected to end up naked in the shower with him anything like so soon. Or at all, for that matter.

“No, sir,” Kade answered me, his eyes avoiding mine as he stared at the tiled wall over my shoulder.

“So when are you allowed to climax?”

“When – if – you give me permission, sir.”

“So… if I have sex with you, are you allowed to come then? ”

“Only if you permit it, sir.”

I wasn’t sure what Kade was making of this conversation. Did he realise that I was just trying to understand what he’d been taught? Or perhaps he thought I was reinforcing the rules, to remind him that though he was aroused as hell, he wasn’t allowed to do anything about it.

And that, right there, was a massive problem. If every dimari on the planet was silently waiting for their master to give them permission to experience sexual release, and none of their masters ever explicitly permitted such a thing, then there would be a hell of a lot of sexually frustrated dimari. And that was surely one of the missing ingredients in my quandary of figuring out why they became so depressed. How would I feel to realise that I was never going to have sex again for the rest of my life?

But there was another detail that Kade had mentioned, and given how thorough his training had been, I decided to assume that he hadn’t used the word he’d used accidentally. “You said that sex is considered a reward, is that right?”

“Yes, sir,” Kade said, his voice cracking just a fraction. What did that mean?

“Do you consider it to be a reward?”

“Yes, sir,” he breathed, with no hesitation.

“Do you want me to reward you for your work so far?” I fully expected the rote answer this time, that he was only here to fulfil my desires. A good dimari, I was quickly learning, would never ask to be rewarded. But the way he said it, the way his body reacted, might give me more information.

Sure enough, he leaned towards me, the tip of his erection just brushing my thigh. “I am here to fulfil your desires, sir,” he said. “It is not my place to decide reward or punishment.”

I had to make a fast decision here, knowing full well that I didn’t have a definitive answer. But based on his body language, Kade was thoroughly on board with things getting a little more heated. That was going to have to be enough for now. But nonetheless, I decided to keep things simple. If it turned out I was wrong, an unwanted hand job would be far less traumatic than most other things we could do together.

God, I hoped I wasn’t wrong.

I stepped towards him, pressing him back until his hips hit the tiled wall. Then I slid my hand down, starting at his chest and watching his reactions closely as I passed over his abdomen and landed on his groin. His gaze remained fixed on mine, and as I reached my destination, his hips curled towards me, a subtle but noticeable motion.

I stroked his erection slowly and firmly, watching as his eyes fluttered halfway closed and his breath hitched. His hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides, the forgotten washcloth still clutched between his fingers. And then another thought occurred to me. Perhaps he didn’t just want a clinical hand job, but something more… personal.

Acting on that gut feeling, I slid my free arm around his shoulder. “You can touch me, if you want to,” I said, hoping it was phrased well enough to give him clear permission, but not so firmly as to make it an order. But that was one of the grey areas I had yet to learn to navigate; how to get Kade to do anything based on his own desires, rather than mine.

As a result, I was a little surprised when Kade leaned down to rest his head on my shoulder, his hand sliding around my waist. I could feel his hot breath on my skin, the water of the shower still cascading down my back. I gave a brief moment of thought to my next command.

“You’re allowed to climax whenever you’re ready,” I said. It was a deliberate decision to once again make the order slightly vague. Saying something like ‘You can come now’ might have the undesirable effect of making him think he needed to climax immediately. And god knows what those twisted fucks had taught him to do. It was possible he’d been trained to come on command, but I couldn’t imagine that that kind of pressure would make the experience very enjoyable.

I kept up the rhythm on his erection, wondering how long it had been since he’d had any kind of release. He’d been in the container for three days, then three more days in the jungle, then one at the base… and there was no telling how long it had been before he’d been shipped out to meet his master. His body shuddered, his hips thrusting slightly, and his breathing sped up. He made a faint moaning sound, and he dug his fingers into my back. And then he gave a husky cry, his hips jerked roughly into my hand, and…

And his entire body switched to a deep and vibrant blue. I felt the spurt of fluid against my hand as he came, warm pulses that were quickly washed away in the spray of water from the shower. He stayed where he was, sagging against me slightly. I stroked his hair, tangling my fingers in the slightly longer strands up the back of his head.

A minute or so later, he lifted his head, now looking as tired as I felt. I glanced down at his blue body with a smirk. “Looks like you enjoyed that.”

Kade looked down, then made a startled noise. “I’m so sorry,” he said, getting control of himself and reverting to his previous brown colouration. “I was… distracted.”

“It’s quite alright,” I assured him. “I really don’t mind you being blue. It’s a beautiful colour.” I avoided specifically telling him that I wanted him to be blue. I didn’t yet understand enough of his training to know whether I’d be creating an internal conflict for him. If he’d been taught that he had to blend in with his master, I didn’t want to contradict that.

But now that he’d climaxed, a degree of tension returned to Kade’s body. He glanced down, then over to the side, seeming to be waiting for something. Apparently flustered by my lack of response or instructions, he said, haltingly, “Would you… like me to… assist you? With, um…” He glanced down again, and I followed his gaze to my own erection. My eyebrows rose in surprise. I hadn’t actually noticed that I was hard.

“You said I could touch you, but I wasn’t sure exactly what you meant,” he clarified his own hesitation. He seemed to find that admission disturbing, his shoulders tensing and his jaw clenching.

I hesitated to reply. The truth was, I was probably too tired to come tonight, and I wasn’t sure which would be worse; letting him touch me and being unable to climax, or telling him not to touch me at all.

But then I tried to look at this from Kade’s perspective. Sex for a dimari was a reward, he’d said… but he’d also stated multiple times that he was here to fulfil my desires. If I didn’t let him touch me, he might well reach the conclusion that he was undesirable. Unworthy. Unwanted.

Fuck, this was a mess. I was stomping all over my own morals, doing things that I’d thought were entirely taboo, and all because Kade might look sad if I didn’t give him his own way?

No, I reminded myself. It was because if I got this wrong, enough times over a long enough period, then Kade would kill himself because he was too damn depressed to deal with life anymore.

“Yes. Please,” I said, stepping back a little to give him room to move.

A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He took my shoulders in his hands and turned me, until it was my back up against the wall, and then he slid his hand down my chest, just as I’d done to him, until he had my erection in his grasp. I couldn’t help the moan that rumbled out of my throat as his grip tightened and his hand moved. Yes, I was tired enough to pass out where I was standing. But it had also been over a week since I’d had the opportunity to jerk off, and more than a year since I’d had another man’s hands on me. Actually… oh, bloody hell, it was closer to two years, now.

Kade knew what he was doing, and I was equal parts relieved and aghast by that realisation. I still didn’t want to know exactly what he’d been forced to do as part of his training, but his level of skill was undeniable. His touch held just the right pressure, the right timing, and…

“Oh, fuck!” I blurted out, as I came all of a sudden, all over his hand and thigh. That had taken far less time than I’d expected.

Kade waited a moment for me to catch my breath, then turned to wash the evidence of my pleasure down the drain. Once he was clean, I reached around him to shut the water off. I threw a towel around my shoulders, then realised I hadn’t got one out for Kade, so I pulled one out of the linen hamper in the corner and wrapped it around him. “Is it okay if you sleep in my bed with me?” I asked him, knowing what the answer was going to be. And yet …

A cheeky smile lit his face, and he bit his lip in an adorably coy expression. “Yes, sir,” he purred, looking like the cat that had just got the cream.