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 let out a thoughtful rumble, before his breaths stirred warm against Amani’s hair as he kissed the top of his head, gentle and soothing pressure. “She doesn’t mind?”
“No.” Amani chuckled. “She raised me to know my own mind and find my own way. To be just as stubborn as she is. It wouldn’t make sense to reject me for doing just that.”
“Your mum sounds like someone I’d like.”
“I think she’d like you, too.” Amani tilted his head back, looking up at Vic. “She has a fondness for puppies. I’ve been thinking of getting her one.”
“I am not a puppy!”
“…are you sure of that?”
“If your mother’s anything like you, she’s a monster.”
“Only a little.” Chuckling, Amani subsided to settle once more, and reached over to tug at the duvet. “Are we going to sleep like this?”
Vic jostled him lightly with his shoulder. “Someone is on me and I can’t move to get under the covers.”
“…I weigh about as much as your left leg, and you could pick me up without even trying.”
“Ah, but that would be disrespectful to my Master, wouldn’t it?”
Vic’s wicked grin was Amani’s only warning—before Vic tumbled out of bed, taking Amani with him, sweeping him up into his arms with effortless strength. Amani yelped, clutching his arms around Vic’s neck, his stomach bottoming out; with a grand flourish Vic tossed duvet and top sheet back, then dropped them both down in a tangle on the bed, tumbling back with Amani still clinging to him with a little screech and Vic laughing, entirely too satisfied with himself as he dragged the covers over their heads.
Growling, Amani thrashed his arms out, pushing off Vic and to his knees so he could shove the bedding aside. His hair was a mess, and he blew a skein of it out of his face, glaring at Vic.
“Did you enjoy that?”
“Yes,” the wretch said unrepentantly, smirking and reaching up to brush Amani’s hair back. “You can punish me for it later.”
“You—you—oh, I do hate you,” Amani muttered, and flopped himself down to fit sulkily back against Vic’s side.
“I kind of think you don’t,” Vic teased softly, but subsided to just pull Amani close once more.
Amani would have been content to let it go, then—let silence come, and bring with it darkness and sleep and quiet dreams. But after long moments, as stillness settled around them, Vic turned his head to murmur into his hair.
“I really don’t know much about you, do I?”
Amani glanced at him carefully. “Do you need to, for what you want and need me for?”
“No. But I’d like to. I know you’re a childhood cello prodigy, you work part-time as a masseuse, you go to university for musical composition and performance theatre, your family’s from Morocco, your mother is Muslim, you hate my money but you don’t hate me, you’re amazing in bed, and you are—bizarrely—the gentlest sadist I could ever conceive of.” With a thoughtful sound, Vic tilted his head. “Surprisingly short list. Can’t blame me for wanting more.”
More, here, could only mean trouble. Sighing, Amani shifted about to face Vic fully. “Don’t fall in love with me, Victor. You and I? We don’t work, outside the boundaries of this. We’re too different.”
“All right. I promise I won’t fall in love with you,” Vic replied a little too airily, then leaned in and pressed his nose to Amani’s, nudging him with a sly smile. “But I can at least be friendly with the man who just made me come harder than I ever have in my life, can’t I?”
“You’re so vulgar.” With an exasperated groan, Amani slumped. “Fine, friend. What do you want to know?”
“Favorite color.”
“Really?” Amani rolled his eyes, then lifted a hand and wiggled his shimmer-painted nails. “Silver.”
“That’s not a color, that’s a metal.”
“It’s a metal that gave its name to the color.” He poked Vic’s chest. “Your turn.”
“So we’re doing this like badminton? I get to answer too?” Vic grinned. “Black.”
“So edgy.”
“Oh come on, I can’t catch a break with anything.” Vic laughed. “It’s a simple color, but it’s…powerful, somehow. It evokes so many things. Contradictory, sometimes, but the subtlest change in texture or depth and suddenly it means something completely different. Death. Sleep. Bad luck. Good luck. A soft and starless night. The aftermath of a fire. That soothing secret place inside. A mirror, throwing back your shadow self that you may not want to see.”
As he’d spoken, his voice had drifted lower and lower, quieter and quieter, that rolling accented baritone seeming to evoke shadow selves of their own, leaning out from the obsidian gloss of the walls to peer and whisper and wonder at this moment between them. Amani almost caught himself leaning in, almost caught himself wanting to kiss that tempting mouth and feel Vic’s pulse race against his palm again and watch him melt to my sweet boy…