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’s very poetic,” Amani murmured. “But poetry doesn’t change anything.”
“James Baldwin would disagree with you. ‘Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’”
“Reading James Baldwin doesn’t make you smart, straight boy. It just makes you educated.” Amani traced his lips against the rim of his glass. “So what are you going to do with what you’ve faced?”
“I don’t know yet,” Vic said. “But I wasn’t thinking about it before, and I am now.”
“Now. All of a sudden, when this information has been in front of you your entire life. People who aren’t like you, people who have lives you can’t even fathom…we’ve been here, always. And now you suddenly decide you have some crisis of conscience about it?”
“That’s what I mean. You won’t let me flinch away from looking at these things.” Vic leaned his shoulder against the steel framing the glass panes, facing Amani. “Maybe you’ve always been there…but no one’s ever been around who challenged me. Who told me not to flinch away, instead of telling me it was all right to cover my eyes and not look.”
“So you’re looking now?”
“I’m trying to. I’m looking, but I’m not quite sure I see.”
Amani flicked him one of those up-and-down looks, then conceded softly, “That’s a start.”
“It is.”
“Speaking of starts…” Amani’s tone shifted, airy and light, that mocking deflection that always seemed to come when Vic touched on certain subjects. Amani took another sip of his drink. “You’ve yet to ask me a single question about kink.”
“We seem to have gotten distracted by class warfare.” Vic chuckled. “How do you know all these things when you’re only twenty?”
“You don’t have to be old to know what you want,” Amani countered. “And you don’t have to be young to be unsure. There is no age limit on when and how we find ourselves.”
“And if I’m still trying to find myself?”
“Then that’s okay.”
“It helps to hear that.” Vic couldn’t seem to stop smiling, couldn’t seem to stop looking at Amani. “So you found yourself through sex?”
“It’s not necessarily about the sex,” Amani said after several moments, each word measured, thoughtful, edged in warmth, as if he was recalling a fond dream, a memory. His eyes softened, reflecting back the lights of the city. “It’s about the focus. About completely losing myself in someone else, my every sense attuned to theirs. Teasing them into responding to me, following every cue of their breath and body to learn what they crave, driving them to the edge between denial and gratification until they become nothing but…soft.” He breathed the last word almost raptly, the edge of the glass misting against his lips. “That is how I find myself, Mr. Newcomb. By coaxing someone to surrender trust so fully that they become soft for me, and utterly yielding in my hands.”
“Vic.”
Amani seemed to pull from a trance, glancing at him. “Hm?”
“If you’re going to be telling me things like that, maybe we should try first-name basis.”
“Ah.” Amani hid a smile behind the rim of his glasses, watching Vic over its edge, glimmering eyes almost coy. “Sorry if I made you uncomfortable, straight boy.”
“You didn’t,” Vic said frankly, and let himself be drawn a step closer by that force Amani exuded, that small body taking up so much space. “I wish I could trust someone that much. I wish I had something that let me lose myself that way.”
“Cello helps a little, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. But I’m not like you.” I’m nothing like you. He ran his fingers through his hair, forcing himself to look away, and yet…and yet he found himself gravitating back, unable to tear his gaze from Amani. “It’s something I want to be good at because I can’t stand doing anything if I’m not going to try to master it. It’s not something that bleeds from my fingers. I don’t breathe its passion like smoke.”
Toying his glass between both hands, Amani turned to face Vic fully. “Is that what you think I do?” he lilted.
“It’s how it seems when I watch you play.”
Amani flicked Vic over with an odd look, tawny eyes skeptical. “Are you like this with everyone?”
“Like what?”
“Suave.” Setting his glass aside on a shelf built into the pillar, Amani leaned back to rest his shoulders against the marble corner pillar. The faint light from outside slipped through the glass like a thief, stealing secret and quiet to play over the high angles of his cheekbones, the delicate point of his chin, pulling his darkness from the night to define him with silvered edges against burnished skin. “There’s a subtle air of cockiness, with you. You’ve got this disarming charm, and apparently you’re terrified of me, but underneath there’s this confidence that if you just say something intimate, linger with a penetrating look…anyone will fall at your feet.”