Chapter Text
Sweeter Than Honey
Rey Johnson moved to the Atlanta suburb of Stone Mountain two years ago. Her first few years out of college, she lived in the city and enjoyed what most young professionals did about the hustle and bustle with a dash of nightlife. There was always something to do or someplace to be, but Rey wasn’t like everyone and soon moved out of the city.
In her late twenties, she enjoyed the quiet life of her two-bedroom cottage on three acres of land. She traded martinis for gardening gloves, and blind dates for trips to the farmer’s market. Her friends often asked if she got lonely so far away from the city, but Rey had her hummingbirds and a family of rabbits who lived in the garden to keep her busy.
Rey wasn’t wholly unsociable. She went to mixers after work and dated from time to time, but she found that men her age were stuck in the fast lane of life, and she was looking for something different. So, she had trashy romance novels on her Kindle and a nice variety of self-pleasure toys to keep her satisfied.
Her job allowed Rey to travel often, and meeting new people across the country kept her desire for human contact in check. Rey was a new product buyer for Whole Foods, so she spent most of her day touring organic farms or zero-waste factories and her favorite perks of the job was taste-testing. She had more handmade soaps and clean beauty products than any one person could ever use.
This is where her best friend, Rose, came into play. Every two weeks, the girls would get together, drink a bottle of wine, and test out new products that were trying to make it onto the store’s shelves.
They had just returned from a trip to the farmer’s market and were sitting on Rey’s couch with organic seaweed face masks, a crisp white wine, and a spread of smoked salmon, cheese, grapes, and peach preserves from a local grower poured over a wheel of Brie. They were testing three different brands of whole-grain crackers. Rey stacked a sesame seed flavored cracker high with salmon.
“This really is a thankless job,” Rose said with her mouth full of Brie.
Rey nodded and took a swig of wine. “You are right. I really should contact the union about the horrible working conditions.”
They both laughed and clinked their glasses together while a Hallmark movie played in the background.
Rey’s phone vibrated on the table, and she picked it up to check the notification. “Hmm…” she hummed and clicked on the new email that came into her individual account. “Interesting,” she remarked.
“What’s that?” Rose asked, and leaned over to try to catch a glimpse of her friend’s phone.
Taking another sip of wine, Rey turned her phone for Rose to see. “I got an email from a local beekeeper about his products. But I don’t remember honey being on my list of items the store is looking for, and it came into my personal account.”
Rose downed the rest of her wine in one go and loaded up another cracker. “I think I got the same email. Must be from the information cards I filled out at the famer’s market.”
“Aw, Rose! You know I don’t like getting spammed with all these emails.”
“But this one looks pretty neat. You might even find something you didn’t know you were looking for.”
Rey pulled back her phone and sighed while downing the rest of her wine. “Fine. Let’s take a look.” She clicked on the link embedded in the email, and it took her to a straightforward website. “Kylo’s Honey Pot,” she read aloud before scrolling down. “Oh my! He might be the hottest beekeeper I’ve ever seen!” She turned her phone again to show Rose the picture on the site.
“He is hot!” Rose agreed with a giggle.
“Kylo Ren—“ Rey read the name under the photo. The man, Kylo, is perhaps in his thirties by the looks of some gray hairs that streak his otherwise dark, almost black hair. The photo was lit in a way that his eyes shone a deep amber-like honey, and his nose was long and proud—but not disproportionate to his face. Rey was caught by his lips, full and pink and somehow quirked into something between a pout and a smirk. His shoulders look broad, and his hair curled around his shoulders and covered his ears. He was a striking man, and Rey wouldn’t mind taking a tour of his hives just to get a closer look at him.
Scrolling further down the site, she read, “Your honey pot will overflow with Mother Nature’s sweetest nectar after just one visit with Kylo.” Rose seemed to continue to shove food in her mouth and coughed. Rey patted her friend’s back and poured more wine. “Rose, you have to slow down, or you will choke.”
“Right,” Rose confirmed and sipped her wine.
“Or you will get drunk! You’re blushing already.”
“Yep—it’s the wine,” Rose snickered into her glass and sipped.
Rey focused back on her phone, and finally got to the bottom of the page. “Looks like he gives private tours of his farm and hives. His place is just a little ways away in Peachtree Corners.”
“You should check it out. Could be a new resource for you,” Rose suggested.
“We could go together. Maybe next weekend? The weather is supposed to be good.”
“I’ll be in Tennessee visiting with Finn’s family next weekend. But that shouldn’t hold you back from enjoying yourself.”
Rey looked at her friend with suspicion as Rose tried to control her giggling. “What percent alcohol is this wine - because it has you batty!”
Rose tipped her glass. “This just means that you need to catch up!”
They both laughed and continued to eat and drink and make predictions about the big city girl who meets the handsome, but rough around the edges, bartender in the movie that they had almost forgotten was playing.
There was no way that Rose was driving back to the city in her condition, so Rey sent her to the bedroom to sleep it off. The girls had been having sleepovers since they were twelve, so sharing Rey’s queen-sized bed was not uncommon.
It was just past eight in the evening, and, if it had been two glasses of wine ago, Rey would have known that it was too late to be calling a farmer, but she couldn’t get the handsome Mr. Kylo Ren out of her mind. So, she opened the website again, scrolled to the bottom, and clicked on the attached number.
The phone rang four times before the most resonant voice she had ever heard answered.
“Kylo’s Honey Pot, this is Kylo speaking. How may I fill your pot tonight?”
Rey was momentarily stunned by the voice on the other end of her phone, and the wine made her head swim.
“Uh—hello?” The man asked again.
“Oh! Sorry! I’m here,” Rey said, still in a daze.
The deep voice chuckled. “You called me, ma’am. Is there something I can help you with?”
Rey felt her cheeks burn, and she almost lost her nerve and was going to hang up, but her lips moved faster than her brain could process. “Honey!” She yelled into the phone, and then slapped herself on the forehead before lowering her voice. “I’m calling about your advertisement about honey, and you said your name is Kylo, so you must be the owner.”
The man tried to hide another snorted laugh by clearing his throat. “You are correct, ma’am. I am the owner and operator of Kylo’s Honey Pot, and who do I have the pleasure of speaking with tonight?”
She felt her insides melting with each word he spoke. “Rey,” she again said too loudly. “My name is Rey, with an ‘e’ and a ‘y’.” She had no idea where her intelligence went in the span of a few minutes.
“I’m guessing it also has a ‘r’ in it as well.”
“Yes—yes. R-E-Y, Rey.” She was somehow back in primary school, learning how to spell her name.
“Well, Miss Rey, what questions did you have about what I do with honey?”
She tried to think why she called in the first place, but she also wanted to keep the man with the panty wetting voice talking. “I saw on your website that you give tours, but only by appointment.”
“This is correct. I run a small operation, so appointments work best.”
“I see.” Rey chewed on her lip and thought that a smaller farm wouldn’t be able to supply honey to the grocery chain, but she couldn’t deny that she also wanted to meet the man from the picture with the voice on the phone. “How does one go about getting an appointment with you, Kylo?” She tried his name out and found it rolled off her tongue.
She could hear him groan, then wood creaking, and then papers shuffling around, and she imagined him sitting at an old desk in his farmhouse. She wondered how tall he was—in the photo, he appeared to be very large, and she wasn’t surprised that a chair would protest him sitting in it.
“Typically, my customers pay half upfront and then half after the appointment.”
“What is your fee?”
“A hundred and fifty dollars.”
“That seems a little expensive.”
“All of my appointments are private.”
“Interesting. I’ve only ever done these types of things in groups.”
“Well, then you are more adventurous than most of my customers.”
Rey had never heard herself described as adventurous, and she worried about how boring Kylo’s life must be to think she was anything but ordinary. She squared her shoulders and thought if she would shell out $150 to a beekeeper, she wanted to know about his product. “I’m guessing for that price, I will be getting quite a bit of honey.”
She swore she could hear his smirk over the phone. “My customers have never complained about the amount of honey they get.”
“Is it raw?”
He coughed as if he wasn’t expecting the question. “It can be, depending on the customer’s desire.”
Rey thought that was a strange way to answer the question, but figured that some people might prefer their honey to be filtered. She tried to think of anything else she would need to know before booking an appointment. “Oh! Should I bring my own honey pot to the appointment?”
This time when he chuckled, Kylo did not try to hide it. “Yes, please. The majority of my customers bring their own honey pots for me to fill.”
Tapping her finger to her lips a few times, Rey tried to think clearly through her wine soaked mind. But there was only going to be one answer she had for Kylo and his offer to fill her honey pot, and it was, “Yes. I think I would like to book an appointment.”
She provided Kylo with her information and gave him her credit card number. He stayed on the phone with Rey until she received the appointment email. She read the instructions on how to log onto his website and book an appointment convenient to her schedule.
Rey didn’t tell Rose about the hot honey guy the next morning as she waved to her friend from the front door. She figured that once Rose got back from Tennessee over the long weekend, they could have another girls’ night, and Rey could dish about how she utterly embarrassed herself—because that was a given.
At work that week, she checked to see if Whole Foods was even looking for a new honey vendor. Rey wouldn’t mind having to see Mr. Kylo from time to time if she could get him to sign a contract. Thinking of contracts, she was not surprised to see a waiver come through her email from [email protected]. She signed plenty of these over the years to limit the farmers’ liability if she was to get hurt on their property.
She digitally signed it without much fuss and then joined her team to start planning a trip out west to visit their corn suppliers. On her next break, she saw there was another email from Kylo.
Rey, with an ‘e’ and a ‘y’,
Thank you for booking with Kylo’s Honey Pot. I look forward to seeing you at 9 am on Saturday, May 27th.
Kylo
P.S. - Remember to bring your honey pot ;)
Rey blushed. The morning after she called Kylo, she almost canceled out of sheer embarrassment. She made a mental note that she was no longer allowed to make phone calls while intoxicated.
As the week went by, she became more and more nervous. Rey didn’t know where the nerves were coming from. She had met with vendors hundreds of times, and this should be no different. But why did Kylo have to be so damn sexy?
She absolutely did not pull up the website every night that week just to look at his pictures. She—did—not.
The night before her appointment, Rey stood in her kitchen washing out quart sized mason jars. She wasn’t sure how many she should bring—a hundred and fifty dollars would buy a lot of honey, even at the inflated farmer’s market prices. But she didn’t want to appear greedy, so she only packed three into a canvas tote bag.
She was up with the sun on Saturday morning. She showered, shaved, and drank two cups of coffee while still having thirty minutes to spare. Rey tried to waste time checking her emails and scrolling through Instagram, but she still left her house ten minutes early.
The drive up to Peachtree Corners took her about half an hour, and she tried to keep her heart rate down by listening to the easy listening station on the radio. Kylo’s place wasn’t hard to find, only one of four houses down a county road.
It was almost as she had imagined it—a white farmhouse with a wrap-around front porch and a dusty blue front door. There was a pickup truck in the driveway - as if any respectable farmer would drive anything else. Rey pulled up just beyond the mailbox and checked the clock on the dash—right on time.
Rey tucked her wallet and phone into the canvas bag with her three mason jars to lighten her load before turning off her car and getting out. The driveway’s gravel crunched under her feet, and she tried to peek into the back of the property to see where the hives were kept. The path up to the porch was lined with red and white flowering plants, and she found the house very quaint.
She smiled at the knocker shaped like a bee, and rapped it three times against the door. A few seconds later, she heard heavy footsteps coming towards the door, and she shifted her bag on her shoulder as she felt her palms start to sweat.
The door opened, and Rey felt like her heart fell into the space between her legs. The man in front of her was so much more than the photo online showed when she was able to piece together his over six-foot height and broad body. His eyes were so expressive, even though she had only been looking into them for all of five seconds, and she couldn’t help but swallow the thick knot in her throat when she saw his full lips quark up into a heart-stopping smirk.
“Hello.” His voice somehow seemed deeper and shook her to the bone. “You must be Rey.”
She blinked a few times as if her brain had to reset. “Rey...yes. That’s me. With an ‘e’ and a ‘y’.”
“I remember.” His smirk grew into a full-blown smile. “I’m Kylo. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Would you please come in?”
“Oh, sure—sure. Right.” Rey had apparently turned into someone only capable of stuttered one-word answers. It took more mental effort to tell her feet to move when her gaze was doing only what she could describe as eye-fucking Kylo from the top of his silken looking hair to his enormous feet.
He wore all white. Linen pants somehow flowed around and hugged his muscular thighs, and Kylo’s tee-shirt was a thicker material than those in a six-pack at the megastores. Rey had to pinch herself to prove that she was still alive, and this man was not an angel come down to collect her soul.
Her mind was so busy processing Kylo that she almost missed the original wide plank pine floors, the fireplace on the far side of the living room, and the way he had decorated the home in a tasteful mix of farmhouse chic and modern masculinity.
“Would you like something to drink? Water or tea?”
Rey noticed that she had followed Kylo into the kitchen. “Tea would be great. Hot, if you have it.”
He nodded and picked up a kettle from the stove to fill it at the sink. “You can set your things in that room just through there before we start.” He motioned with his chin towards a set of French doors with gauzy material covering the glass panes.
The door opened with a quiet squeak of old hinges in need of oiling, and Rey almost tripped over her feet at the sight of the room. The walls were white, with the same pine boards on the floor and a fireplace burning at the end of the room, but what caught her attention was the massage table set up in the center of the room. On the left wall was a bank of windows with the same gauzy curtains, and on the right wall was a sideboard lined with lit candles and an assortment of bottles filled with what looked like oils.
“Um—Kylo?” She said as she reached into her bag and pulled out one of her jars as she turned back towards the kitchen.
He was wiping his hands on a towel, and there were two teacups on the center island. “Yes, Rey?”
Their eyes met, and then he looked down to the jar clutched in her hands. “What’s that?” He asked, cocking his head to the side.
Rey’s throat felt dry, and the words almost hurt to say. “My honey pot—for, you know—honey.”
The house was deafeningly quiet, and then the kettle whistled behind them. Kylo moved almost robotically to the stove to turn off the fire. He stared at the subway tile backsplash for a long moment, then turned his head to look at her. “You read over the papers that I sent to you, correct?”
“I skimmed over them. I’ve signed plenty of liability waivers before.” She had not moved, her feet rooted to the floor.
“Those weren’t just for liability, but also consent forms.”
“Consent?” Rey furrowed her brows, and wished that she had read through all of the PDF pages.
Kylo took a step towards her, but stopped right at the edge of the kitchen island. “I think there has been a mistake.”
“A mistake?” Rey parroted. “So, there is no honey? Your business is called Kylo’s Honey Pot. I expected honey.”
“Rey, my business is to make women come, and the honey pot is your—well—“ he made a hand gesture to her lower half.
Rey wanted to be swallowed by the floor. Her heart raced, and her body felt clammy. “I’m sorry, but you do what?”
Kylo took a step back into the kitchen. “Would you like that cup of tea?” He picked up the kettle and glanced back at what was possibly a terrified expression on her face. “Or you are free to leave if you would like. I will refund your money, of course.”
Part of Rey wanted to run and never look back, but also part of her wanted to know exactly what Kylo did for his customers. “Tea would be nice,” she said and walked to the opposite side of the island and placed the empty mason jar on the marble top.
“English breakfast, okay?” Kylo asked as he filled the two cups with steaming water.
“That’s fine.” She took the packet of tea, removed the bag, and dipped it into her cup. “Do you have any honey?” She asked out of instinct.
Kylo snorted. Rey looked up at him, catching her joke a second too late, and then she was giggling along with him. He turned and pulled open a top cabinet and placed a honey bear on the counter. Rey picked it up and shook her head at the run-of-the-mill store brand honey. “It’s obvious now that you clearly don’t care about honey.”
He smirked and picked up the honey bear to squeeze some into his teacup. “Obviously.”
They were quiet again, and Rey took a sip from her cup. “So, tell me again what you do.”
Kylo set down his cup and twisted it a few times on the countertop. “By education, I’m a massage therapist. I did that for a few years and then it kind of evolved into this,” he gestured to the room off to his left.
“And by ‘this’, you mean making women orgasm for money.”
“Yes.”
Rey cupped her face in her hands. “I’m such an idiot. Surely this sort of misunderstanding has happened before.”
“Not often. My business is mostly word of mouth since what I’m doing is not technically legal.”
Her mind was spinning. “But my friend said that she signed us up for an email list at the farmers market.”
Kylo chuckled. “Your friend set you up then.”
“Rose,” Rey cursed.
“My offer stands,” Kylo said, and then took another sip of tea.
“Your offer?”
“I will refund your money—unless…”
His gaze drifted over to the room again, and Rey let hers follow. She looked back at Kylo and saw how his large hands made the teacup look like it was from a child’s playset, and she thought about what those hands could do to her.
Her expression must have made him think he had gone too far, because he held his hands up in the air in surrender. “It could be a regular massage. I keep my license up. But you have already signed the consents, so if you wanted more, all you would have to do is ask.”
Rey bit her lip and thought for a long minute. Rose had set this up for a reason. Sure, it had been a while since Rey had a boyfriend, but that is why she kept a variety of toys available. Looking back over Kylo, Rey had to admit that letting that man bring her to orgasm seemed thrilling. She downed the rest of her tea like she wished it was a stiff drink and squared her shoulders. “Let’s keep it PG and see how things play out.”
Kylo smiled and picked up her cup to place it in the sink. “How about PG-13, since technically you need to be topless.”
Rey blushed but nodded.