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)
“That was different,” Vic whispered, and Amani smiled.
“It was.”
“Was it bad?”
“No, Vic. No.” He captured his chin, and drew his sweet boy up for a lazy kiss. “It wasn’t bad at all.”
l
BY THE TIME THEY MANAGED to put themselves back together, the speeches were beginning, the lights in the main ballroom darkened, and no one looked their way as they crept along the edges of the room to find their seats, hands linked under the table.
And when the grand tributes and promises and obligations had ended and they were ushered to the terraced concert hall, Amani settled with his head resting to Vic’s shoulder, their clasped hands resting between them, silent as he watched the orchestra warm up and felt every flex of fingers and stroke of bowstring against skin with muscle memory, and when they played he was a ghost inside, haunting himself with every note. He remembered the stage, the lights, the tension of it all, the breathlessness building up to something that created awe and emotion and an understanding so hard to find when people clashed and broke away and never seemed to hear each other the way they heard each concerto, each cadenza.
Vic gripped his hand tight, stroking his thumb over Amani’s knuckles and bent to his ear. “Do you miss it?”
“Yes,” Amani breathed, as his eyes prickled and burned.
“Maybe this time, it wouldn’t be so hard to try again.”
“Maybe,” he said, and turned his face into Vic’s shoulder as if he could hide the wetness blurring the hall into nothing but color and sound.
l
IT SEEMED NATURAL TO RETURN to Vic’s apartment, then—no question, as they trailed into the building together, leaning in hard as if holding each other up. Loosened buttons, discarded cummerbunds, unlaced heels, and they tangled in the bed together atop the spreading lake of Amani’s disarrayed gown, drifting and quiet and now again remembering to bridge the silence with murmured words.
Amani fingered the open throat of Vic’s shirt, trailing down the line of unfastened buttons to stroke over his chest. He followed the dip and grove between his pectorals, traced the sharply defined cut of one flat plane of his chest, stopped on the faint raised definition of one of those many old scars.
“I’ve wondered about these since I first saw you,” he said, finding it by touch when it was nearly invisible by starlight. “These scars. They’re old.”
“Almost fifteen years old. Some of them, anyway.” Vic’s hand covered Amani’s, weighing it warm against his chest. “They were for Ash.”
“Ash…?”
“Mmhm.” Vic smiled faintly, eyes lidding. “He was always a small thing. Smaller than the other boys. There’s just…something about him that makes you want to protect him. We went to boarding school together, and the moment he showed all those little rats started picking on him for being American, or pretty like a girl, or anything else they could think of. Didn’t matter as long as they could toss the new kid around.” He sighed a tired laugh. “The one day he tried to fight back, he started a food fight with me in the cafeteria when I hadn’t even been bothering him. Somehow when it was over we were fast friends—and on cleaning punishment for a month—but the other blokes still never much liked him. Tried to have a go at him all the time.” Vic twisted his lips, then finished softly, “I didn’t let them. But I didn’t fight back, either.”
“You made yourself his human shield.” Amani moved his hand beneath the rough one covering his, seeking out another scar, tracing his way to its faint roughness. “And you just…took it, when they hurt you?”
“‘Course I did. I was bigger than they were.” Vic nuzzled into Amani’s hair. “I could take the pain. What if they couldn’t take what I’d have done back to them?”
“You are at once entirely misguided and yet bizarrely noble.”
“And you find it charming and irresistible.”
“Do I?” Amani tilted his head back enough to catch Vic’s lower lip for a sharp nip. “So now you’re telling me what I like.”
“Shit,” Vic said, “I’m sorry, Master.”
No matter how many times he heard it…Amani liquefied inside when Vic said Master, and he pressed into him, sliding his body against the honed sculpture sprawled against him, his next breaths shuddering, breaking. “Call me that again, sweet boy.”
With a gasping sound, Vic tightened his arm around Amani, dragging him in close. “…fuck. Master.”
“Again.”
“Master. Master.”
Yes. Just like that. Completely abandoned, completely responsive, Vic flushed and bending to Amani’s will without ever breaking. Amani pushed himself up, draped in the tangles of his gown as he slid across Vic’s body, mounting his hips and moving himself in slow circles just to feel the thick surge of Vic’s cock pressing up against him.
“You’re so deliciously obedient.” He stroked his palms up Vic’s chest, fingers splaying. “So you can take the pain?”