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?”

“Almost. I’m struggling with the closing lines, but it’s not due for another week.” Amani unfolded himself and rose like a lily unfurling, tossing his hair back as he reached for his coat and the handle of his cello case. “I’ll see you Wednesday, Mr. Newcomb. There’s no need to tip me this time, since you’re doubling my fee.”

“Hey.” Vic started forward, then stopped, trying to keep a respectful distance. “Stay a little longer? If you don’t have other obligations, anyway.”

Amani cast him a wary sidelong look. “Why?”

“Just because.” Working his fingers until his knuckles popped, Vic tried a smile. “I’m being weird again, eh?”

“Just a little—stop that, you’ll stiffen your joints.” While Vic froze, fingers splayed, Amani assessed him for several moments longer, steady gaze measuring, tawny eyes cool and inscrutable—before he draped himself down against the sofa again, falling in a smooth flow of muslin and tumbling hair. “I can stay a bit longer.”

“Good. I…would you like something to drink?”

“Only non-alcoholic.”

Vic raised his brows. “You don’t drink?”

“I was raised Muslim.” Amani propped his temple against curled fingers, watching Vic almost expectantly. “I consider myself non-practicing, but…call it a matter of respect that I choose not to drink anyway. Plus I’m a year shy of legal age, remember?”

Vic glanced toward the kitchen, running through a mental catalogue of everything in the fridge. “Citrus sparkling water, then?”

Amani inclined his head, an amused smile playing about his lips. “That’s fine.”

Vic climbed the shallow steps to the central kitchen island and flicked on the hanging overhead lights, casting dim golden radiance over the raised dais—and dropping the rest of the apartment into further shadow. They’d been talking by starlight and citylight, and even in those long minutes while Vic had struggled with himself, they’d sat together in muted shadows made not so very dark by the brilliance of New York City spilling through every pane of glass around them. It felt…intimate, somehow.

Maybe that was why Vic had been reluctant to break it.

He retrieved two tall crystal glasses from the cupboard and a large glass bottle of sparkling mineral water that had been infused with fresh citrus fruits. He might as well skip drinking himself, especially if he might just end up making a tit out of himself in front of Amani if he let himself get even halfway tipsy. The man just threw him every which way, and if he got any more awkward he’d be lucky if Amani would even speak to him again, let alone continue teaching him anything.

If he could call making him sit without even touching a cello for nearly an hour anything like teaching.

So he wasn’t sure why, as he poured, he opened his mouth and asked, “May I ask you something very personal?”

Amani’s sultry laughter drifted across the room from the couch, picking up an echo of sighs in the massive space. He kicked his sandals off and pulled his feet up on the couch, shifting to face Vic as he wrapped his arms around his bent legs and rested his chin on his knees. “At this point, I can’t see why not. I can’t promise I’ll answer, though.”

“What made you afraid to play again? Was it because you were injured before?”

Amani’s eyes widened briefly, before darting away; his lashes lowered as he turned his head to gaze out the windows instead, resting his cheek to his knee. The silence held for long moments, moments in which Vic feared he’d stuck his foot in his mouth again, stomach sinking—and when Amani finally spoke it was in low tones, so quiet they barely carried to the kitchen.

“It’s because I was too young to know my own limits, and too angry at my body for failing me to respect what it needed,” he murmured. “You can’t have carpal tunnel surgery and then dive back in as if nothing happened, but…I tried. I tried because I couldn’t stand failing, couldn’t stand giving up, and I almost ruined my own recovery.” He stretched one arm out, gold bangles on his wrists chiming in soft melody as he bent his hand at the wrist, flexing it back and forth as if, from the pensive look on his graceful features, reminding himself that it still worked. “I was supposed to give a comeback performance at the music school my mother sent me to when I was young. This grand gala for their favorite little underdog story, this scholarship savant who’d become the best in his school. All the glittering rich people who loved to smile and dote on their little cello virtuoso, because somehow my hard work made them feel good about themselves.” The bitterness in his voice was clear, clear enough to make Vic ache, as was a loathing not entirely directed outward. “They all watched me sit there on that stage and fall apart when my hands locked up and I couldn’t even hold the bow. It wasn’t a performance. It was a disaster.” Each word thickened his voice, dropping lower and lower, until Vic had to move closer to hear him, picking up the glasses and stepping down from the kitchen island. “And the worst part was the pity in their eyes, in their voices, when they said ‘oh, that poor thing’ like I was ruined and really would never play again.”

Vic didn’t know what to say. He felt like anything he said would be trite, useless, a platitude that wouldn’t do anything for old hurts that had already been cut into Amani and couldn’t be erased. It would be disrespectful, too, he thought—so out of respect for Amani he held his tongue for now, giving him a moment to himself, a moment to compose himself without Vic intruding. Moving to the coffee table, he set one of the glasses down for himself, then settled down on the sofa near Amani, draping himself to face him with one leg drawn up and offering him the second crystal glass of sparkling water.

That wary look again, as if judging if the distance between himself and Vic was safe, and just in case Vic eased back a few inches, still offering the glass. After a moment, Amani took it, his fingers briefly brushing Vic’s before withdrawing as he took a slow, testing sip, then a longer one.

“…thank you.”

Vic only smiled slightly and retrieved his own glass, taking a sip and letting the cool, tart fizz roll over his tongue before he ventured, “Is that why you hate rich people?”

“No, I hate you because you’re useless drains on society with absolutely zero perspective on what life is like for real people.” Yet there was no real venom in the words; if anything Amani sounded tired, and his brows knit together as he looked down into his glass. “Even those people who were so happy to patronize the music school…they did it because someone like me gave them an excuse to feel superior. They were better, you know, and just granting some poor nameless kid the grace of their presence because no matter how talented I might be, they knew I could never hope to be them.”

“Do you want to be them?”

“No. I want to be me.” Amani lifted his head, golden eyes simmering as he looked at Vic. “Do you have any idea what that feels like, Mr. Newcomb?”

“In my own way, yes. Like I said, I…I was never supposed to be the one who took over the company. That was originally my older brother’s place.” He couldn’t help a small, aching smile as he reached over to set his glass down once more. “Maybe if I hadn’t had to step up, I could have been the sort of philanthropist you wouldn’t despise so much when you look at him. The profligate younger son, throwing every bit of money he could get his hands on into charities before running away to Tibet to live as a barefoot monk.”

“That would still be privileged,” Amani shot back. “What makes you think those Tibetan monks want you there?”

“Fair call.” Vic tilted his head, draping his arm over the back of the sofa. “Do you think that’s how I see you? Some strange marvel for me to gawk at like an object, here for my entertainment?”

“I don’t know how you see me, Mr. Newcomb. Like you said…we don’t really know each other, do we?”

“Maybe I’d like to change that,” Vic murmured.

Amani’s eyes narrowed. He studied Vic with a skewering gaze, before snorting softly, mouth turning downward at the corners. “Is that so,” he said flatly. “When are you going to ask me what you really want to ask me?”

“I…uh…fuck.” Vic rubbed the back of his neck. “Am I that transparent?”

“You’re curious about my sex life. It’s painfully obvious, and has been since you first caught on to my particular…tastes.” It came out almost defiantly, but also with the first breaking hint of laughter creeping past that bitterness, softening the harsh lines that had started to settle into Amani’s face. “Are you really that sheltered? Hiding behind your glass walls in your little fishbowl of a world?”

“No. And yes, but no.” Vic sighed. “I wasn’t going to ask you. I admit I’m curious, but I wasn’t going to ask.”

“Weren’t you?”

“No,” Vic repeated. “But you seem more comfortable talking about that than everything else. So if you want to talk about it, we can.” Vic shifted closer to him. “I’m not trying to upset you, Amani.”

“You’re not. What you are upsets me. Not who you are.”

“That’s progress, I suppose.”

“Progress toward what?” But before Vic could respond, Amani held one hand up, stopping him. “Don’t answer that,” he said, as he took one more sip of his sparkling water and then tilted forward to set the glass on the coffee table. Settling back, he curled his legs up again, his bare feet barely visible past the cuffs of those flowing trousers, toenails painted a soft shimmer of gold. He tucked his hands under himself, looking down at his feet. “I guess it is easier for me to talk about sex and kink than anything else. It’s…it’s my safe space. It’s where I feel in control. And it’s something that can be so gentle and loving and fulfilling, and it pisses me off that people demonize it, so…” He shrugged one shoulder, dark hair playing over bare skin, tangling in skeins along one slender arm. “I guess I prefer to talk about it. Just to help make it more normal.”

Vic tried to bite back his laugh, earning him a mock glare. “So this is normal coffee table conversation for you?”

“Not quite.” The beginnings of a smile played around Amani’s lips, as he rolled his eyes. “There’s this thing called bystander consent. When you talk about your sex life with people who haven’t invited it, you’re essentially inviting them into your bedroom and making them a passive witness to your sexual activity without their consent.” Another shrug. “So I only talk about it with people who consent.”

“I’m consenting,” Vic said. “You can say anything. Feel free.”

Amani blinked, then blinked again. “Now I don’t know what to say.”

They just looked at each other. Vic glanced to one side, then back at Amani again, before lifting his brows; Amani’s mouth twitched at the corners, and Vic’s tried to follow suit no matter how he struggled to stop it—and when the first snicker burst out, he clapped a hand over his mouth, only for a light, husky laugh to slip past Amani’s lips. Then the dam broke, and they both broke out in helpless laughter, Vic’s rolling so deep he felt it in his chest, like this storm sucking up his every breath to make charges through him. That was how it felt, laughing with Amani, as the air cleared between them and the heaviness lifted.

Like he was run through with electric charges, lightning striking every time Amani smiled.

He finally managed to stop when his breath gave out on him, pressing a hand to his chest and taking a few deep inhalations. Amani quieted after a few more moments, wiping his knuckles against his eyes.

“There,” Vic said, grinning. “See? I’m not the devil.”

Amani flashed him an amused look. “Yes, you are.”

“But I’m the devil you know.”

Swaying in, Amani reached out and prodded one slender finger against his chest. “I still don’t know you.”

Before he could pull back, Victor caught Amani’s hand. It was small and warm inside his own, and yet there was such strength in it, captured in every slender bone. “I’m inviting you to.”

Amani’s smile faded, something flickering through his eyes as he looked down at their clasped hands, something uncertain—before he gently disentangled, pulling back until his hand slipped free. Uncurling himself, he rose, dipping to catch up his glass before turning to glide toward one of the glassy walls on drifting strides, coming to a halt near one of the thick marble corner supporting pillars. “Where is this confidence coming from all of a sudden, hm?” floated over his shoulder.

“Oh, I’m not confident at all.” Vic let himself linger on Amani, watching his every move, how he carried himself with such languid ease, such composure; how the light from outside fell across the angles and slopes of his features. “I’m just fascinated, and that’s overwhelming the fact that you completely and utterly terrify me.”

Another soft burst of gilded laughter. “How do I terrify you?”

Vic rose to his feet, unfolding from the couch and slipping his hands into the pockets of his jeans, making his way toward Amani. He stopped a few feet away, looking not at Amani but at their reflections in the glossy floor, before turning to face the panoramic glow of the city skyline.

“You have flayed my entire existence raw from the moment I met you,” he murmured. “I’ve seen you face to face three times now, and every time you’ve bluntly and pointedly destroyed my preconceived notions about myself to leave me floundering without any solid ground, reaching for you to pull me back up before I sink—and you’re four years younger than I am. That’s unfair.” He half-smiled. “Any man would be afraid of someone who can hold a mirror up to him and make him see himself in the light of reality, instead of his own self-image.”

Amani tilted his head toward him, watching him sidelong with a sort of veiled, silent laughter in feline eyes. “So how do I make you see yourself, Victor Newcomb?”

“As a weak man,” he admitted, and there was nothing to laugh about now. He couldn’t take his eyes away from the city lights, their lavishness, nothing but people stretching as far as the eye could see, and on the surface it was all glitter and gold but underneath…

Underneath was where it got truly dirty, and he doubted he’d ever seen once past the gilded surface of the world he knew.

“Even if I have power,” he continued, “even if I control wealth that nations would envy…I only do it because it’s what I’m told to do. And I follow the plan of what I’m told to do, maintaining the company as an institution as if, just because it’s always been there, it’s always supposed to be there. I use that money to make more money, and make even more money after that, in a company that feeds on itself to grow larger and larger so it can eat other things. Even the help we try to offer through charity and sustainability programs…” He tore his gaze from the skyline, looking up at the waning November moon. “It’s just swallowing other things into that feeding organism. And there I am, riding so high up on its back, out of the reach of its devouring teeth yet thinking that just because I hold its reins, I can control its direction and rein it in before it harms anyone.”

“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.”

Yet if anyone was drawing anyone in with penetrating looks…it was Amani, the knowing surety in his heavy-lidded gaze seeming to tug at the strings holding Vic together, threatening to unravel him into pieces and put him back together as something else. Someone else. Someone he didn’t know or understand, when the self he’d thought he’d known would never have lingered on the coolly mocking curve of Amani’s mouth, the fullness of his deeply red lips, the way the sweeps and angles of his lashes turned his gaze into a sly thing of catseye curiosity and alluring distance that only dared Vic to try to get closer.

To touch the untouchable.

And perhaps one part of him wanted to accept that dare, to challenge it, for he drew another step nearer, closing the distance between them. “You think I’m trying to make you fall at my feet, Amani?”

“Not deliberately.” Amani cocked his head, the tumbling fall of his glossy black hair drifting across his face, teasing against his mouth, as he regarded Vic. The slender gold chains in his hair chimed softly, beckoning with their whisper. “But I think you don’t know how to turn off, even with people you aren’t interested in. Is that the real reason you don’t date?” His eyes glittered, his gaze pointed. “Because you like to chase, but not to catch. You like to lure people in, capture them, but never keep them.”

“I…I don’t know.” The sarcastic rejoinder on Vic’s tongue dried. He was accustomed to having an easy answer for everything, but he didn’t have an easy answer for this—and it ached, when he thought about it. When he thought about the emptiness of it. Still he drew closer, until he drifted to a halt before Amani, looking down at the man who, if he were honest with himself, was entirely beautiful in the shimmering evening light. “You don’t even know me. How do you know me?”

“I know men,” Amani murmured, leaning toward him. “Part of who I am and what I do is seeing people. Intuiting them. Understanding them.”

Vic chuckled briefly. The closer Amani drew, the harder it was to think, the heady scent of smoky vanilla and a hint of that subtle, softly sweet scent of the oil he recognized from the parlor washing over Vic and stealing into his veins until his blood ran too hot, seeming to sear him from the inside out until his voice was a raw and tattered thing in his throat. “So you think you understand me?”

“I think…” Amani’s lips curved slowly, a cunning and enticing smile of white teeth against dark skin. “…you might want to stop flirting with me. Just because I’m pretty doesn’t mean I’m one of your society women or social climbers.”

“I never said you were. Nor did I say I was flirting.”

“You didn’t have to say it.” Yet still Amani was leaning into him, and somehow Vic was swaying in to meet him; for such a small, lissome man, Amani had the gravitational pull of a neutron star. His gaze dropped, lingering on Vic’s mouth with a near-physical touch, then rose to his eyes again. “You couldn’t handle me, straight boy.”

“No doubt,” Vic whispered, and closed the distance until their bodies brushed.

Amani flowed into him for one moment of wild pulse-beats, of lean sleekness leaving imprints on Vic, giving him just a flirting taste of what Amani could feel like. Then Amani fell back, draping his shoulders against the pillar once more, and Vic couldn’t stop himself from leaning after, reaching up to brace his hand against the marble over Amani’s head, creating a single pocket of shadowed space captured like a secret between them. He almost dropped his own glass, fumbling to set it onto the shelf next to Amani’s, nearly knocking over a spherical crystal vase bristling with water lilies. He didn’t know what he was doing, right now. What he was feeling.

But as long as Amani was looking up at him that way with his lips parted and his eyes darkened with a thousand untold things…

It didn’t seem to matter.

“It’s a good thing I am straight, then,” he murmured.

Amani arched a sardonic brow, lifting his chin, head tilted so invitingly up toward Vic. “Entirely.”

Somehow, Vic found himself leaning down. Somehow he found his lips parting not on words, but on the ache to taste that luxuriantly full-lipped mouth. Somehow he found himself closing the distance between them yet again, and his chest was tight and his body felt strange all over, and the only sounds between them were his heartbeat and a breath of, “One hundred percent heterosexual.”

“So…”

“So…?”

Amani lifted one long, angular hand and lightly circled a finger against the V of Vic’s T-shirt, the slightest pressure and yet the intimation of contact set off tiny explosions inside him. “So you shouldn’t be so close to me.”

“No. I really shouldn’t.”

Amani said nothing. Yet the taunting curve of his mouth spoke to Vic, to some ignored and hungry thing inside him, something that asked if he knew himself at all when ever since he had met Amani, ever since the fey, wild thing had lilted words such as dominance and submission, craving and deprivation, surrender and gratification, the pleasure in denial and the freedom in complete abandon of control…

Vic had been fascinated, this thing building inside him like the answer to an unasked question.

Without realizing it, he’d dipped further toward Amani, drawn in by his whisper-soft scent, by the feathering touch against his chest, by the warmth and grace of his body—but now he stopped, as Amani teased huskily, “You going to do it, straight boy?”

“Do you want me to?”

“I haven’t kissed a straight boy since high school.” Slim fingers spread, splaying against Vic’s chest, stroking upward with a touch as confident as if Amani were already so very certain that he could and would possess Vic, toy and tease his secrets from him, expose and own his buried inner self. Amani tossed his head, his hair flowing gracefully around his shoulders and down his chest. “He wasn’t when I was done with him. You ready for that?”

Yes, that hidden thing inside Vic cried, winding the strings of his body shiver-tight with a heady and breathless anticipation, tingling his mouth with the longing for a phantom touch, but he only rumbled, “I’m curious.”

“Then do it,” Amani whispered, as hot, knowing fingers curled against the nape of Vic’s neck, collared him…and drew him down toward Amani’s waiting lips.

No hesitation. He’d thought he would balk at kissing a man, but the moment Amani’s mouth touched his he lost all trepidation and fell into the lush, soft pressure of those lips against his, groaning in the back of his throat as he caught the first taste of him: a deep, wild thing, smoky and hot, rolling over Vic like the first heady vapors of sweet-sharp whiskey and leaving him just as drunk.

He leaned in harder, craving more—only to catch his breath as Amani’s fingers wove into his hair, curled, gripped up a handful, and pulled just enough to rein him in. Just enough for him to feel it, pleasant prickles and tingles sinking down to his scalp and pouring over his entire body in echoes against his skin. Amani held him just tight enough to maintain control; just tight enough to leave Vic frozen, heat sparking through him in sharp shocks, debilitating waves that left him weaker and weaker, gasping shallower and shallower, as Amani showed him what it meant to submit.

Vic had always expected that dominance would be about force, about strength, about brutality and pain—yet Amani kissed him with a slow, deep-searching certainty that coaxed him with gentleness, that seared him with lingering heat, that overwhelmed him with luxuriant strokes of friction and pleasure and slow-melting intimacy. That pretty mouth controlled him not by forcing him to accept Amani’s kiss, but by making him need the velvet touch of knowing lips so deeply that everything in his body turned powerless and willingly gave over in complete surrender.

He wasn’t ready for this. Wasn’t ready for the way he went boneless, as slim fingers tightened in his hair just enough for a delicious tingle of pain, drawing him down. Wasn’t ready for the way his knees slowly gave beneath him, giving in to that gently commanding pull as he sank down, down, and Amani’s mouth followed him all the way. The way Amani kissed could only be described as luscious, a thing of wet, heated slickness and slowly penetrating invasion that promised Vic would show every inch of himself to this man, bare every part of his body and soul, give himself over to be known and touched and needed and caressed.

And as his knees struck the floor, as his cock pulsed and roused and surged to dripping hardness, as Amani’s tongue slid along the length of his and left him gasping in shallow pants, he trembled and grasped desperately at Amani’s slender, subtly curving hips as he leaned in deep and completely let go. He didn’t have to think. Didn’t have to maintain control. Didn’t have to do anything but let Amani guide him, take him over, show him with such warmth and sensuality what his brand of dominance tasted like.

He didn’t feel like himself—and yet he felt more fully himself than he ever had, the plying strokes of Amani’s kiss refusing to allow any illusions, refusing to let Vic come to him with a false face. There was only the naked, vulnerable truth of himself, and that naked, vulnerable truth was a shivering and quiet thing who could only exist in this breathless space between them, as the pressures of the world fell away.

It felt like it lasted for hours, and yet it ended too soon. As Amani slowly parted their lips, reality came crashing back in, knocking the breath from Vic and leaving him struggling, reeling, vertigo a subtle and yet entirely disorienting thing. Falling forward, he rested his brow against Amani’s stomach, muslin cool against his skin—and Amani let him, relaxing his grip on Vic’s hair to curl a warm, soothing hand against the back of his neck, just resting there, anchoring him to the world again.

“Fuck,” he gasped. “Fuck, that was…”

Amani’s body shook lightly against him in a gentle laugh. “I had a feeling you would be lovely on your knees.” He bent down, sultry voice purring against Vic’s ear. “I was right.”

All it took was that knowing voice, those lips so close against his skin, and Vic’s cock jerked hard against his jeans; he closed his eyes, taking in a shuddering breath. “That…wasn’t anything I expected. I feel…” He couldn’t find words. Couldn’t find words for the tight, clenching feeling that started in the center of his chest and plunged down to his stomach, this thing like heat and terror and lust and loneliness all at once. He shook his head, leaning harder into Amani. “Fuck.”

Lightly roughened fingers brushed under his chin, coaxing him to look up, meeting those half-lidded eyes that seemed to know him without knowing him at all; that smile that seemed just on the verge of whispering all his secrets. “Did you really think you would kiss me and make me melt for you, straight boy?”

Vic let out a shaky laugh. “Seems like I’m not really straight now, am I?”

“Mm.” Amani traced Vic’s lower lip with the very edge of his thumbnail, making it tingle with the reminder of the soft yet insistent pressure of that mouth, the taste of him still wet on Vic’s lips. “So the little straight boy’s now the little bisexual boy.”

“I’m not little,” Vic protested, and Amani laughed again.

“Being called ‘little’ is the part of this that bothers you?”

Vic hesitated, asking himself—asking himself, really, how he felt about the fact that he’d just kissed a man. A beautiful, enticing, entirely confusing, immensely frustrating little wildfire of a man, all passion and conviction hidden behind cool control. A man who had, in a matter of days, completely flipped his understanding of his own sexuality without even trying; all Amani had had to do was breathe to make Vic realize he might not know himself as well as he thought.

No, he thought. That was the easy part. Amani was attractive. Vic was attracted to him.

The rest of this, though…

“There’s nothing wrong with being a little bit bisexual,” he murmured, bowing his head once more and leaning into Amani again.

With a thrumming, thoughtful sound, Amani laced those warm hands together against Vic’s nape. “Just like that, hm?”

“Bi or not, I’m still me, eh?”

“You are,” Amani assured softly.

“Way I see it…I’m not really changing. I’m just learning something that was already there, I just didn’t know it.” Yet Vic still felt like a ship adrift, and right now Amani was the anchor keeping him stable. “Nothing to be scared about with that, eh?”

“Not in this situation, no.” Every word was surprisingly gentle, considering how Amani had so frequently challenged him before—but he needed that, right now. Needed that gentleness. “I can think of a number of straight men who’d react much more violently.”

Vic couldn’t help a soundless laugh, body shaking. “You forget that I’ve spent my life with Ash Harrington.”

“Ah, yes,” Amani retorted. “Our favorite TMZ tabloid prince.”

“The one and only.” Vic sighed. “I’ve watched him go down on three dicks in a row and not bothered stopping my homework. He was a bit of a wild one, back then.”

“You speak of him with fondness.”

“He’s my best friend. Almost like my brother. And, well…now that he’s settled down, he actually seems happy. So I’m happy for him.”

Those fingers against his nape circled gently, inviting him to melt, to shiver himself apart. “And envious, I think.”

The sting of that made his next breath hurt, swallowed in his throat like a knot of spikes, and he closed his eyes again. “What would I have to be envious of?”

“Have you ever made time in your life to just be happy?”

“No,” Vic whispered. “I don’t think I have.”