Textual Confusion

23. Just spitting facts, babe.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

JUST SPITTING FACTS, BABE.

The cake was dry – and so salty Asher was half-convinced that the person who’d made it had confused the ingredient with sugar. Objectively, it was the worst cake Asher had ever had the displeasure of eating.

Regardless, he happily forked another bite into his mouth – and almost gagged.

Honestly, how could someone so successful in every other aspect of his life be so terrible in the kitchen?

“What do you think?” Markus asked.

“It’s delicious,” Asher said, lying through his teeth. No way was he about to hurt the man’s feelings. He’d put so much thought and effort into everything, throwing Asher a surprise party to celebrate the grand opening of his bakery.

(Turns out, Mr. Brittle had been more worried than angry when Asher had bailed on closing, and he’d been more than willing to forgive him the transgression – especially when Markus had tagged along to their rescheduled meeting and insisted on paying the man double what they agreed upon for the café – in cold, hard cash.)

Thus, Sweet Buns Bakery was born.

“It tastes like someone took a shit on a piece of cardboard,” Sasha said bluntly, pulling Asher from his thoughts as she spat the piece of cake she’d just shoveled into her mouth back out into a napkin.

“Sasha!” Asher exclaimed, scandalized. “It’s not that bad!” he rushed to assure Markus. “Tell him, Danny,” he ordered his other friend sternly.

Danny reluctantly nibbled on his piece of cake. “It’s… edible,” he said diplomatically, adding a “ you know, if you’re a raccoon who enjoys eating trash ” under his breath a moment later.

Asher kicked him under the table.

“You know, son, there’s no shame in delegating tasks we find beyond ourselves to others,” Abram, Markus’s father, pointed out tactfully, his own piece of cake sitting uneaten on his plate.

Markus scowled. “I wasn’t about to order a cake from another bakery when we’re celebrating the grand opening of Asher’s,” he pointed out.

“Why not order it from Asher then?” Maggie, Markus’s mother, pointed out.

“And force him to bake his own cake?” Markus scoffed. “That’s incredibly tacky.”

“At least it’d be edible,” Danny mumbled.

Asher glared at his friend. “Nigel,” he said, turning to address Markus’s driver, the only other person who’d been invited to his surprise party, “tell Markus his cake tastes good.”

They all watched as the man reluctantly forked a bite of the chocolate monstrosity into his mouth and forced himself to swallow. “It’s delicious, Sir,” he said, expression unchanged – although his face turned a particular shade of green.

“You don’t pay that man nearly enough, son,” Abram muttered at the same time that Sasha made a move to grab the cake. “That’s it. I’m getting rid of this atrocity before it makes someone sick.”

“What? No!” Asher denied, shielding the cake with his arms. “You can’t do that! You’ll hurt Markus’s feelings!”

“It’s okay, baby,” Markus assured, wrapping an arm around Asher’s shoulders and pulling him away from the cake. “My feelings aren’t hurt.”

“But you made it for me,” Asher continued to protest, watching Sasha remove the cake with sad eyes. “You don’t even like sweets, but you baked me a whole cake, anyway. She can’t just toss it out.”

An unladylike snort coming from Maggie’s direction distracted him from his woes. “Markus – not like sweets? Who on Earth told you that?”

Asher blinked. “What do you mean? Markus told me.” He turned to look at Markus, who appeared to be doing his best impression of a deer in headlights.

Maggie raised her eyebrows. “That man beside you has a bigger sweet tooth than anyone I know. He refuses to drink coffee without loading it up with milk and sugar, considers Toaster Strudels a top-tier breakfast, and once ate an entire cheesecake in a single sitting and made himself sick.”

Markus groaned. “I was twelve, Mom,” he pointed out.

But Asher hardly heard his protests over the white noise filling his ears. His awareness of their guests faded into the background as Asher continued to stare Markus down. “You lied to me?” he asked, voice small. “But… why? ”

An awkward silence befell the room.

Abram cleared his throat, threading an arm through his wife’s elbow. “Why don’t we step out onto the balcony, dear?” Taking the hint, Nigel quickly made an excuse to join them and Danny all but yanked Sasha out of the room to give Asher and Markus some much needed privacy.

“Do you really hate my baking that much?” Asher asked once they were alone. “And, what, you just said you didn’t like sweets to spare my feelings or something?

Too late for that.

Markus frowned, pulling Asher close and forcing eye contact. “What? Baby, no. You’re so talented. I love everything you make for me.”

“Then why lie to me?” Asher demanded, hating the hurt he could hear in his voice. “Was it some kind of cruel joke?”

“Of course not,” Markus immediately denied before pressing his lips together, clearly gathering the nerve to say something. “This is embarrassing to admit, but… I guess I just liked having your attention.”

It was Asher’s turn to frown. “But you already had my attention. You always have my attention.”

“I know that now, sweetheart, but I didn’t back then. Do you remember when you showed up at my office with those cookies?”

Asher blushed. How could he forget? “Of course.”

“It was so fucking sweet.” Markus tucked a wayward curl behind one of Asher’s ears. “It made me so fucking happy to know you were thinking of me. That you cared enough about me to bake me cookies. No one outside of my family had ever done anything like that for me before. The way it made me feel… it was downright euphoric. And I didn’t want to lose that feeling… which is why I lied and said the cookies only tasted okay. It was immature, I know, but I knew you’d try again, and it was the only way I had of guaranteeing your attention.”

Jeez, when he put it like that , it was hard to be mad at the man. On the other hand… “You really hurt my feelings,” Asher admitted.

Markus sighed. “I know, sweetheart, and I’m very sorry for lying to you. I was just being a stupid boy, pulling the pigtails of a girl I liked so she’d notice me.”

Asher snorted. “Except we’re both full grown adults. And I’m a man.”

“That may be true, but you’re also my baby boy.” Markus kissed him on the nose. The cheek. His forehead. He hovered over Asher’s lips. “Forgive me?”

Ugh. The man was so smooth, and sweet, and fucking hot . What could Asher possibly do except grant him forgiveness?

“You’re forgiven,” he assured, using the grip he had on the man’s shoulders to balance on his tiptoes and connect their mouths when-

“Would you two hurry up and make up already?” Sasha demanded, peeking her head in through the balcony door. “In case it escaped your notice, it’s January, and I’m freezing my tits off out here.”

Asher groaned and a muscle in Markus’s jaw twitched. “Have I ever told you how annoying I find your friends?” he asked loudly enough for Sasha to hear.

“At least he has friends!” she shouted back.

“Sasha,” Asher complained, finally stepping out of Markus’s embrace to turn and face the blonde, “don’t be mean.”

“You think I’m the mean one? He’s the one trying to debauch you against the frickin’ kitchen counter while the rest of us freeze our asses off outside in the middle of winter.”

“Sasha,” Asher hissed, pointedly eyeing Markus parents, who’d taken all the yelling as their cue to shuffle back inside.

“Oh, don’t mind us, sweetheart,” Maggie assured. “We remember what it’s like to be young and in love,” she added with a wink.

Everyone, sans Abram, grimaced.

“How did I wind up here again?” Nigel muttered to himself, in a way clearly not meant to be heard by anyone else.

“Like I said,” Sasha said pointing at Markus, “the man has no friends.”

A couple bottles of wine and several hours of good-natured squabbling and riveting, if vaguely disturbing, conversation later, the sky had darkened and everyone had made their way home for the evening, leaving Asher and Markus as the last two at the apartment.

Ignoring the empty take-out containers on the coffee table and the droopy decorations half-hanging/half-falling from the walls, Asher was content to leave the mess for another day. Cuddled up on the couch with Markus, he was much too comfortable to move.

A muffled Netflix documentary buzzed in one ear and Markus’s heart lub-dub -ed in the other, and Asher was on the verge of sleep when the man beneath him began to shift, causing Asher to whine in protest.

“As comfortable as you look, sweetheart, we should move this to the bedroom, or we’ll both wind up with a crick in the neck and sore backs in the morning.”

“Speak for yourself, old man,” Asher muttered.

Markus scoffed. “I’m thirty-four.”

“Like I said, positively elderly.”

A pointed poke to the ticklish spot underneath his ribs had Asher yelping. “Come on, baby,” the man insisted, “I’ll carry you.”

Asher sighed, and he shook his head before forcing himself to sit up. “That’s okay. If you bring me to the bedroom, I’ll end up falling asleep and then I’ll never get home.”

“That is the goal.”

Asher mocked glared at Markus as the man sat up on the couch beside him. “You know I have work in the morning,” he reminded him. The only downfall of work as a baker: early mornings. His alarm was already set for 4:30. “I really should get going.” Despite his words, Asher laid his shoulder on Markus’s shoulder and remained pressed to his side on the couch for several more minutes.

Eventually, though, he made himself stand.

Or he tried to make himself stand, anyway. Markus tightened his grip on him and refused to let him up from the couch.

“Babe, I have to go,” Asher whined.

“Not yet. I have something for you first. To celebrate the opening of your bakery.”

Asher pouted. “But you already baked me a cake a nd threw me a party,” he pointed out. “Not that you had to do that, of course. It’s not like it’s my birthday or anything. Not that I expect you to get me anything for my birthday, obviously!” he quickly backtracked. “In fact, I insist that you don’t. Christmas was already bad enough, with all the gifts you forced upon me-”

Specifically, the man had bought Asher a car: a brand new hot pink Mercedes Benz. ( “You did say it was your favorite color.”)

Markus had also bought him a new stand mixer, diamond jewelry for his belly button piercing-

A hand on his mouth stopped Asher before he could really start laying into Markus (again) about all the expensive gifts he’d gotten him. “Sweetheart, you’re rambling.”

Asher flushed. “Sorry,” he mumbled when the man released his mouth.

“It’s fine,” Markus assured. “I like listening to you talk… at least, when you’re not trying to tell me I can’t spoil my own boyfriend at Christmastime – or any other time for that matter.”

Asher’s flush deepened.

“Now, hold out your hands,” Markus commanded.

Asher huffed, but he did as he was told.

“Close your eyes.”

Asher obeyed, feeling something small and rectangular placed in his palms. He wondered what it could be.

“Now open.”

As soon as he opened his eyes, Asher’s gaze immediately went to examine what the man had put in his hands. His eyes widened at what looked suspiciously like a jewelry box. Surely this wasn’t…

“This isn’t…” Asher started before trailing off, tittering nervously… “I mean, it’s not, right?”

Markus raised a pair of unimpressed eyebrows. “You think when I ask you to marry me, that I’m going to settle for something as uninspired as this?”

Asher stared helplessly at Markus in response, forcing himself to ignore the man’s wording – he'd said when he asked Asher to may him, not if .

Markus sighed. “No, baby,” he clarified. “You can relax. There’s no ring inside that box. But, for the record, if I thought for even a second that you would agree, I’d have already asked.”

Asher released a strangled-sounding noise similar to what he imagined a dying cat would make on its death bed. “You can’t just say stuff like that, Markus,” he protested.

“I’m a billionaire, baby. I can say whatever I want.”

Asher groaned, the noise filled with half-exasperation/half-affection.

“You want to keep arguing with me like a brat, or are you ready to open your present?” Markus pressed, sounding amused.

Asher pouted, and he was tempted to refuse to open the box out of sheer principle, but curiosity got the better of him, and he carefully uncovered the top. He blinked stupidly down at its contents. “What’s this?” he asked, although he already knew the answer.

“It’s a keycard to my penthouse,” Markus explained. “I want you to move in with me.”

He made it sound so simple. So logical.

Like they had known each other for longer than a handful of months. Like their relationship hadn’t started out as an arrangement – an arrangement based on a lie , at that – before evolving into what it was now.

Asher chewed nervously on the inside of his cheek. “I feel like we’ve had this discussion before…”

“You didn’t take me seriously then,” Markus pointed out, taking Asher by the wrists and forcing him to look at him. “I don’t want any room for misunderstandings this time.”

Asher swallowed around nothing. “I… I don’t know what to say,” he admitted.

“Say yes,” Markus said bluntly. “My closet is half your wardrobe at this point, and you already stay over most nights. Plus, this way you won’t have to stop at the front desk anymore. I know you don’t like Natalie.”

Asher scoffed. “More like she doesn’t like me,” he corrected on autopilot, his brain still stuck on the fact that Markus was genuinely asking him to move in with him. (Although Asher was absolutely correct. Natalie had been downright hostile since finding out their breakup hadn’t stuck. At least, her glare was hostile. She didn’t dare say anything to him when Markus was around.)

Markus refused to be distracted. “Then there’s the fact that my apartment is closer to the café than yours is. You’d get to sleep in an extra half hour every morning if you lived here.”

“You’ve thought about this,” Asher accused.

“Every day since I originally brought it up,” the man freely admitted.

Asher’s face warmed, his stomach swooping with something undeniably pleasant. But s till. “I can’t just move out of my apartment, Markus,” he pointed out weakly. “I’m under contract until July-”

“I’ll buy you out,” Markus hastily assured. “Or you can keep the apartment, if that’s what you want,” he immediately retracted upon spotting Asher’s fast-forming scowl. “That’s fine, too. Whatever you want,” he reiterated. “Whatever it takes to be able to come home to you, to hold you in my arms every night, I’ll do it.”

Jesus. Was Markus trying to kill him? Why did the man have to be so fucking sweet? He was making it impossible to say no.

Probably because you don’t want to say no, a voice pointed out.

It was true. Asher was practically burning alive with the desire to say yes. But he couldn’t quite forget what had happened the last time he’d agreed to move in with someone he loved. Someone he’d thought loved him, too.

“I’m scared,” Asher admitted, voice hushed. “The last person I moved in with was Trent, and things didn’t exactly turn out the way I’d hoped…”

Gaze glued to his own lap, Asher didn’t see the way the man’s eyes darkened at the mention of his ex. He did, however, notice when the man abruptly removed himself from the couch and kneeled before him.

“What…?”

Asher stared uncomprehendingly as a man who begged for nothing put himself on his knees before him.

Markus took Asher’s hands into his own. “I can’t promise to never make mistakes when it comes to you,” he said, like it pained him to admit it. “But I can promise to always do everything in my power to keep you safe, to always put your well-being above my own, and to sooner rip my own heart out than ever hurt you on purpose. I love you, Asher. Will you please do me the honor of moving in with me?”

That was all it took for the last of Asher’s defenses to fall.

He nearly knocked Markus over in his rush to throw himself into his arms, their teeth clacking in his haste to slot their mouths together. Regardless, Asher didn’t pull away until he’d nearly turned blue in the face from lack of oxygen.

“Is that a yes?” Markus asked, the gravel in voice causing a pang of desire to shot down Asher’s spine, straight to his dick.

“Sasha’s going to kill me,” he muttered, eyeing Markus’s spit-shiny lips and unconsciously leaning closer, eager to get back to what they were doing moments before.

Unfortunately, Markus’s commanding grip on the back of his neck stopped him from reconnecting their mouths. “Words, baby. I need words,” he ordered in a near growl.

Asher whimpered, forcing his eyes to leave the man’s mouth so he could meet his gaze. His answer was the same as it always was when it came to Markus.

“Yes, Daddy. My answer is yes.”

So… don’t freak out.

Danny

You’ve got to know that saying shit like that will only serve to freak us out.

Sasha

Who do I have to kill?

Danny

See?

Why is it always murder with you?

Sasha

What can I say? I feel very strongly for the people I care about, and I want the people that hurt them to suffer for it.

Regular people call that psychopathy.

Meh. To-may-to, to-mah-to.

So… what’s the problem?

It’s not a problem, per se. You just might not exactly approve…

Danny

Spit it out already, would you? You're giving me secondhand anxiety.

Fine.

Markus asked me to move in with him.

And I said yes.

Oh. Well, in that case, congratulations.

Sasha

That’s great, babe!

Wait.

So… you’re not going to yell at me and call me an idiot and tell me what a horrible idea it is to move in with a man I met three months ago?

Do you want us to yell at you?

No.

I just thought that after everything that happened with Trent…

I thought we agreed not to speak his name.

Danny

This isn’t like with Assface, though.

Sasha

What he said.

Really? A rich, older man asking me to move in with him isn’t like with what happened with You-Know-Who?

Danny

So, it’s a little bit like that.

Sasha

Except the way Big Daddy looks at you is nothing like with Assface at all.

How does he look at me?

Like you hung the moon and stars and hold his entire heart in your hands.

Danny

Like he wants to rip your clothes off and fuck you against the nearest, most convenient surface.

Sasha

Also, a bit like you’re a sword-wielding elfin prince with waist-long ebony hair and eyes that sparkle like jewels, who regularly sneaks away from the palace to feed war orphans. Big Daddy’s the guard that’s been assigned to keep you safe, but you’re constantly putting yourself in danger and giving him mini-heart attacks. And lots and lots of erections.

That was oddly specific.

Danny

She’s been reading that kinky fantasy porn disguised as literature again.

Ah.

Sasha

Point is, I trust Big Daddy to take care of you.

And if he doesn’t, I’ll take care of him.

Again with the death threats.

I’m just saying, I know a guy.

Danny

Are you, by chance, referring to me?

Sasha

Wouldn’t you like to know?

Danny

I think what Sasha is trying to say is that we’re always a phone call away if you need us.

Unless you’re just calling to complain that he bought you a car again. That was fucking nauseating.

Sasha

Wah! Poor me. My hot, billionaire boyfriend cares about me so much he bought me a Mercedes Benz for Christmas.

You see how ridiculous that sounds?

You guys are the worst.

Also, the absolute best.

Danny

That makes no sense.

Sasha

We love you too, sweetie!

Samesies.

And he lived happily ever after with his billionaire boyfriend in his huge penthouse, getting railed by the man’s ginormous cock 24/7. The end.

Danny

Just spitting facts, babe.