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)
Victor just stared at him for a moment longer, then cleared his throat and lifted his chin. “Er. Wouldn’t the fact that I’m straight make me not easy at all?”
“Maybe.”
Victor’s tongue darted over his lips, leaving a wet sheen against their pinkness. “So…what now?”
“You’re going to stay that way for the next forty minutes.” Amani slipped his phone from his pocket and tapped on the GDocs icon. “I have a term paper to finish.”
Victor made a strangled sound. “You can’t be serious. I’ll be sore as balls!”
“I assure you, I’m quite serious.” Amani kept his eyes on his screen, pulling up the saved document with his paper, but he couldn’t help a slow smile. “Maybe I can recommend a good masseuse when you’re done.”
“You’re a sadist.”
Amani glanced up, locking eyes with Victor. “Yes. I am that, too.”
That flash behind Victor’s eyes the moment it clicked was rather gratifying, as he sucked in another breath. “O-oh.”
“Posture, Mr. Newcomb,” Amani said, looking down at his phone again, pulling up the touchscreen keyboard and beginning to tap out sentences with his thumb-tips. “I’ll tell you when you can move.”
“But—”
Amani lifted one finger sharply. “And when you can speak.”
A few moments of silence…and then a murmur edged in laughter. “Yes, Sir.”
Amani only smiled to himself, and settled in to work.
CHAPTER FIVE
BY THE TIME FORTY MINUTES had passed, Victor’s arse felt like he’d been sitting in a hard saddle for forty damned days, and his spine was a rod of fire. He’d been trained to have perfect posture and poise, but that posture was normally supported by expensive ergonomic chairs that let him lean into the proper position while still conveying authority and command, as if a king seated on a throne. This was more like a prisoner captured in the stocks.
And it shouldn’t have him so fucking hard he wished Amani would let him hold his cello, if only to shield the rise straining against his jeans so firmly the pressure of the denim was killing him, and not even the slickness soaking slowly into his boxer-briefs could ease the friction and the ache.
He could still feel Amani’s breath on his throat, Amani’s hands on his thighs, that silky voice purring music into his ear, the mocking way he called him straight boy. The way he’d smelled, too, a rush of human warmth and vanilla singed with smoke and something else subtler, more elusive.
Sitting in concert position while his diminutive and entirely tyrannical little taskmaster ignored him for his phone?
Was not how Vic had wanted to start questioning his sexuality.
He’d never been attracted to a man before, not even a beautifully effeminate one—and he’d lived through Ash’s month-long obsessive celebricrush on Ezra Miller, and if anyone could have converted Vic without even trying, it was Ezra Miller. But Vic had only endured Ash’s lurid fantasies with weary patience, and tuned him out when he’d started wondering things Vic didn’t particularly want to know. At this point he was fairly inoculated to the mundanity of gay sex after sharing a double room with Ash both in boarding school and in uni, but apparently that inoculation wasn’t enough to make him immune to a lovely, graceful man with a stubbornly proud jaw and the smoothly flowing body of a dancer and the poise of a queen delivered with the command of a king.
The question was…
Was he really attracted to Amani, or to what he represented?
Had Vic been…was he…did he like being ordered around like this, by someone whom he knew took pleasure in commanding and dominating others? Vic spent all day, every day giving the orders. Maintaining control. Everyone at Newcomb Textiles looked to him with something close to deference. In the office his word was law, unless he was facing down a combative Board determined—and failing—to catch him in a mistake.
And in some strange way it was a relief to let someone else give the orders, to take that out of his hands and let him just give in and do as he was told, even over something as simple as maintaining his posture until that tiny drill sergeant was done with him.
So was it Amani that was attracting him, making his cock throb against his jeans with hot sensitivity…
Or just the newness of discovering that maybe, just maybe, Vic might enjoy being bossed around a little?
“You can stop staring at me,” Amani murmured, swiping something on his phone screen and then settling it down to rest against his thigh as he looked up at Vic. “I’m aware it was something to pass the time, but your forty minutes is up.”
“Oh, thank God.” He slumped, curling forward to ease some of the pressure on his arse, and reached back to rub the back of his neck; his shoulders twinged, and he rolled them before pushing to his feet. His entire body protested, creaking and groaning, joints that had been locked into place stiff and hurting, his muscles practically burning. He lifted his arms over his head in an expansive stretch, working himself loose, then dropped his arms and rolled his neck. The soreness left behind after stretching was almost pleasant, melting into him like the stretch and pull after a good workout—but it wasn’t doing anything to calm the erection he was rather casually trying to ignore. “Did you finish your paper?”