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)
“Not in the slightest, but…” Vic mused thoughtfully. “What if, rather than going shopping, we bring the shopping to you?”
“What are you planning?”
“A private tailor who can make anything you’d like on fairly short notice. It’s Friday now. Show her an idea of what you want, and she can have something custom fit for you by the gala Sunday evening.”
“Vic,” Amani chided. “That’s too much.”
“It’s making sure I don’t take you somewhere completely unsuitable, because I don’t even know what a takchita is.”
“Hopeless.” Amani thudded his head back against the wall with an amused sigh. “You’re just trying to spoil me so I’ll stop judging you so much.”
“Maybe a little.” Vic chuckled. “So how much is your time worth to be my date?”
Glancing back into the lecture hall, Amani pushed away from the wall, and shrugged his coat on as he stepped out of the corridor through the double doors and into the briskly chilly morning. If he was going to skip, might as well enjoy the day.
Wasn’t he the degenerate.
He thought back to that amount in his bank account, though, and shook his head. “We’ll call this one a favor. Free of charge.”
“My Master is generous.”
“Your Master is curious.” He rattled lightly down the steps and set off across campus. “I’d like to see you in your natural environment.”
“You won’t like it.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“If you say so.” Over the line, Amani caught the sound of keys rattling, then a shuffle of paper. “So should I call the tailor in for our session tonight?”
“That works. But I hope you know if anyone’s poking me with needles, you’re not getting sex tonight.” The only answer was silence, and Amani laughed. “I can hear you pouting, pet.”
“I’ll be good,” Vic mumbled sullenly.
“That’s my sweet boy.”
A rough breath rattled over the line. “Fuck, don’t do that to me when I’m around people. My secretary’s in here.”
“And you had this conversation in front of her?”
“She’s discreet, but…”
“…she doesn’t need to see you like that, hm?” Amani shouldn’t enjoy this feeling so much, tugging his toy mouse’s tail, but he couldn’t seem to stop smiling, either. “Tonight, Vic.”
“Tonight,” Vic promised. “Later.”
l
AMANI SPENT THE DAY AT a sidewalk café, working on his midterm paper. He should feel more guilty about skipping class, but he had a perfect average and missing the lecture wouldn’t count against him as long as he turned his work in and passed his exams. Everything was work for him, he thought…and in so many ways, that made him no different from Vic.
Maybe that was why he felt this sense of understanding around Vic, when despite the very different trappings of their lives they weren’t so different at all.
He lingered over that, drifting between thoughts of Vic and pondering the last few lines of his term paper, before setting his mug of tea down and rattling across the keyboard.
What matters, in the end, he wrote, isn’t how these music forms are different.
It’s how they’re the same, and how each carries our need to express ourselves in symphonic form when no one instrument can capture the full complexity of human emotion.
He eyed it. It was…florid. Poetic. Less about musical structures and more about emotion. More the type of thing Vic would say, than a straight A student looking for technical perfection.
Technical perfection might get good grades…but it didn’t have heart.
He hit Save, closed his laptop, and stood, gathering his things to catch the train to SoHo.
When he walked into Vic’s apartment, though, he just…stopped.
And stared.
At a room practically the size of a formal ballroom, and filled with massive display bolts of at least fifty different kinds of shimmering, fine-spun fabric in silvers and golds and glistening blacks, night sky blues and midnights and ivory hues. It spilled over furniture, propped against the marble columns, strewed across the couch, while Vic stood in the middle of it all, tapping his chin as he reached out to finger a skein of pale green organza with repeated embroidery patterns of fleur-de-lis.
Amani’s breaths strangled. “What…is all this?”
Vic looked up, then smiled warmly, crossing the room toward him. “Did you forget I own a textile company?” He swept an arm out. “Selections from our premium stock.” He paused, fingering the edge of a bolt of shining platinum-pale chiffon. “Silver,” he said softly.
Turning slowly, Amani just took it all in, then cast Vic a wide-eyed glance. “You picked these out yourself?”
“Most of them, with some helpful suggestions,” Vic said casually, but his smile was anything but casual—that shy thing that came out when he wanted to please his Master, boyish and warm and such a contrast to the three-piece suit he still wore. “I…was hoping to give you a range to choose from that might suit your tastes.”
Amani couldn’t stop an incredulous laugh. Too much. Vic was always just…too much. “Has anyone ever told you that you are completely extra?”