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 his feet, trailing after Amani to at least see him out like a proper gentleman. At the elevator, he leaned one arm against the wall, unable to help how he gravitated toward Amani, how that magnetic presence pulled him in. “Monday?” he asked.
The doors slid open. Amani flashed him a warning look, one that stopped him just as he’d started to lean closer, as powerful as the strongest blow.
“Monday,” Amani said simply.
Then stepped into the elevator, the last glimpse of golden cat-eyes cutting into Vic before the doors closed and he was gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
HE’D THOUGHT IT WOULD HURT more than it did.
Amani slouched over his desk, mouth and chin buried into his folded forearms, and stared at his laptop screen without really seeing it, his midterm paper for his composition theory class sitting unfinished save for the last few closing lines he couldn’t seem to work out. He’d been skirting around it all weekend, in between taking a few appointments at the parlor and helping his mother around the house. He couldn’t seem to find the right way to wrap the essay up with a definitive conclusion on why classical composition was a sibling to baroque rather than its rebellious offspring, probably because he couldn’t seem to keep his mind on it for more than thirty seconds at a time.
He stretched his right arm out in front of him and splayed his fingers. Tendons and knuckles and nails and skin and bone, just like everyone else, ridges and valleys and all the little fascinating flexions that made it move and curl and grip and stroke and do all sorts of wondrous things. He’d thought, when he’d picked up that bow, when he’d dove right into Brahms after not playing for over six years…
He'd thought it would hurt.
He’d thought that old pain would come back, that grinding and sawing between his small bones; he’d thought that despair would strike him, as trembling and cramping fingers dropped notes and raised screeches and howls instead of sweet ululations. He’d thought his heart would break, as he realized he still couldn’t play.
Victor Newcomb would never know that in that moment, he’d witnessed triumph.
Witnessed joy, too, as Amani found beauty in his fingertips again and rediscovered what he’d thought was lost forever; what he’d been afraid to try to reclaim even though it had been hovering within his reach all this time, just begging him to reach out and take it because it had always been his. It had always been his, and it came back to him as if it had never left, the moment he picked up that bow.
No, Victor might never know…but he had been a part of it, too.
Because as Amani’s entire body had swelled with the vibration and flow of the cello’s resonant song, as he’d felt it flow through him with a passion and wonder that tore him to pieces and put him back together again in the shape he was always meant to take…Victor had been there. Watching him. Watching him with a gaze that felt like worship, that made Amani feel beautiful, that struck an odd sense of communion, as though the notes he’d played had crossed the space between them until surely Victor, too, must have shared in that rapt experience, that shivering euphoria.
Victor had looked at him like…like he needed something, something only Amani could give, something he didn’t even know he was looking for but that Amani recognized so deep it struck straight to his core, when he’d felt that need and searched and searched and searched until he found who he was. Victor had that same searching look, that same unspoken recognition of something missing inside him, something that needed another person to complete, something that wasn’t about sex or love or dominance or submission but about some strange place where they met all together into this tangle of give and take, push and pull, mutual needs answered.
Amani knew a submissive who didn’t even know he was a submissive when he saw one.
And he closed his eyes, letting his hand fall to rest on the desk.
Hell no.
He was not getting tangled up with some oblivious confused rich straight boy sorting himself out at other people’s expense. Victor Newcomb could figure himself out on his own.
Even if he would look beautiful on his knees.
That was the first thing Amani had thought, when he’d stepped into that ridiculously ostentatious penthouse apartment and seen Victor standing there with his designer jeans riding low on narrow, trim hips, denim hugging strong thighs, a heather-gray Henley clinging tight to his powerful shoulders, arms, and chest but loose over his slim waist. That Victor would look beautiful on his knees, those taut thighs spread, his head bowed in submission and all that raw strength and power in his body willingly caged, subverted, surrendered to put himself in someone else’s hands.