Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Vic hurried to comply, shifting to straighten his spine and square his shoulders, adjusting the position of the cello to what he hoped Amani wanted, gripping it carefully by the neck with one hand, the other resting on the upper bout to steady it. “Like this?”
Amani narrowed his eyes, lips pursing as he tapped his finger against them again and again. “Perhaps. Can you hold that position for ten minutes without moving?”
“…I might need to book another massage session after, but I can try.”
A flat look slid toward him. “Don’t try to be cute.”
“I wasn’t aware I had to try.”
That flat look turned into pure disgust. “Ten minutes,” Amani said, and sat down on the couch primly, crossing his legs and tossing his hair back before reaching to the side of his cello case and detaching a long leather bow tube that had been affixed with Velcro. Popping the tube open, he let the cello bow slide out into his fingers, the bow just as well-worn and loved as the cello itself.
And, while entirely ignoring Vic, he picked up a little black rectangle of bow rosin inside its wooden casing and began working over his bowstring, gaze fixed on his hands and his concentration utterly absorbed, as if Vic wasn’t even in the room.
Vic watched as deft, slim hands played over the bow, caressing it up and down again and again with a sweetly sensual touch, delicate and familiar. Stroke after stroke after stroke, creating a slow, enticing rhythm that drew his gaze back time after time, and made him remember the rhythm of Amani’s hands on his body, the way he’d stroked and kneaded, and for a minute the tension had bled from Vic and he’d just melted.
Amber eyes snapped to Vic, striking him like a knife, that stroking hand never stopping on the bow, the sound as soft as a whisper. “You’re slouching.”
Shite. Vic straightened his posture, clearing his throat. He was going completely fucked in the head tonight, and he didn’t know why. “Sorry.”
“You’re starting that ten minutes over.”
“Fuck. I mean, yes. All right.”
Amani said nothing, and only returned to rosining his bow.
Frozen silence it was, then. Right.
Vic wasn’t sure how long he let it go on. He was only focused on maintaining his posture, while that repetitive sound lulled him and made him want to just slouch and doze off. When he felt himself drifting, though, he cleared his throat and ventured, “So that was your mother, at the parlor?”
“Why are you so interested in my personal life?” Amani answered, without even looking up.
“I…I’m sorry, I’m just trying to be…”
“I know what you’re trying to be.” Words like razors, while those molten gold eyes locked on him, dissecting him and flaying him open. “You’re that type of man who needs everyone to like him, even in situations where it’s not necessary, because your ego can’t handle anything else.” Amani’s mouth thinned, and he looked down again. “Focus on your posture. Not on me.”
Well if that didn’t cut a little too close to home… “I’m starting to feel like you kind of hate me on principle.”
“It’s possible.”
“Is it just because I have money?”
“It’s because you have more money than you need. Than anyone needs. And what do you do with it?” Amani flicked his bow like a pointer, gesturing around the apartment, with its ceilings so high that the lamplight couldn’t reach, only the starlight through the glass silvering the edges of the steel framing. “You sit here in this ivory tower and waste it.”
Vic did not consider himself an impulsive man—or at least, he hadn’t until last week. Yet suddenly he was full of new things, new compulsions, new questions, and it was those new things that drove him to say,
“Tell me to quit.”
Amani blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Tell me to quit and I’ll do it right now.” Vic leaned forward, pressing against his cello, and posture be damned. “Someone else will step in, and the hundreds of thousands of jobs provided by Newcomb Textiles worldwide will still remain. The charity foundations we manage, the research we do into sustainable growing and production, the ethical sourcing programs—all of it will churn on without me. I wasn’t even supposed to be the heir to this damned company, but somehow it fell on me as the only child not in disgrace,” he said tightly. “So tell me to quit.”
Amani fixed him with a long, measuring look, then scoffed softly under his breath. “I’ll tell you to sit up straight,” he said pointedly, laying his bow across his lap and beginning to tighten the string. “Anything else is your business. Don’t put culpability for making moral choices on someone else demanding it of you. And don’t ask someone else for permission to run away, if this life isn’t what you want.”
“I can’t run away,” Vic said softly. “That’s the problem. Because maybe if I run away, someone else will step in and do all those things for me…but it’s my responsibility. It’s my responsibility to take this corporate power and use it for something good. But now you look at me like I’m complete useless filth and I wonder if I’m doing anything good at all, and if it would be better if I stepped down and chose a less comfortable life—because no matter what else the company does for others, in the end it’s just propping up a life of excess.”