7. Levi
SEVEN
Levi
I’m sitting on the red couch, posed with my legs bent but open, one knee drawn up. He’s walking around behind me. I want to look over my shoulder and see what he’s doing, but I’m not supposed to move.
His fingers brush the back of my neck, making me shiver.
I feel strange, all hot and agitated. Something goes around my neck.
I feel it closing. Tightening. He leans down.
His lips brush my ear as he hums, “Mmm, perfect,” then his hand slides down my chest and stomach to my stiff, aching cock.
I’m suddenly aware of it as he touches it, like it didn’t really exist until his hand was on it.
I let out a long, needy moan that vibrates the collar against my throat. My body opens further. I arch, pushing myself up into the touch.
His lips are still at my ear. One of his hands grips the collar and pulls me hard against him.
With the couch between us, that’s all I can feel, his fingers and his lips—and the hand on my cock.
But there’s a phantom quality to it that has me desperate and straining. I need more, but it’s not there.
I whine in frustration. My body is so tight and hot. My heart is racing. I neeeeed—
My eyes fly open. I’m disoriented by the darkness, unsure where I am or what’s happening as my muscles seize and I start ejaculating.
My hands are balled up at my sides. Nothing is even touching my cock, but it’s spurting cum all over my clenched abdomen.
I gasp as it happens, and the sound is harsh and foreign to my ears.
It leaves me shuddering and shaky as reality sets in. I’m in my apartment, in my bed. I just came all over myself from a dream. From a sex dream.
I’ve never had a sex dream before.
I do come in my sleep pretty often, but it’s just something my body does. I wake up with a mess, but there’s never a dream attached to it. I’ve read that I could be having dreams that I don’t remember, but I find that so hard to imagine.
But that…
That was vivid. And it was gay.
Am I gay?
My mind skips past that because the fact that the dream was gay doesn’t feel half as significant as the fact that the dream was sexual. And that it was about Ethan. About him touching me. About him touching my cock while choking me. My hand flies to my throat, but of course there’s nothing there.
I find myself abruptly unable to lie still.
I kick away the covers that are tangled around my feet.
I slide from the bed and stumble the short distance to the bathroom, sidling into the narrow space.
I don’t turn on the light because there’s always enough light bleeding in through the cheap, broken blinds.
Besides, I don’t really want to see myself right now.
I lean over the sink and clean myself up. My hands are shaky. Everything feels unstable around me.
I go back to bed because there’s really nowhere else to be in this tiny apartment. I curl up on my side, pulling the covers over myself.
Why did I dream that? Where did it come from?
I feel the images at the edge of my mind, but I don’t let them fully form. I’m not ready to look at them.
Eventually, as minutes drag to hours, my thoughts lose shape and clarity, turning into a restless buzz that prevents me from getting back to sleep. I lie there, half dozing, until the sun pierces through the broken blinds into my eyes. Then I get up and shower.
The shower is so small that there’s barely room for me to reach between my legs and wash, but I do have a paranoia about being dirty.
I think that’s why I suddenly freaked out yesterday about not having shaved.
I know that hair isn’t unclean, but at the last second, that’s how I imagined it looking.
But it seems strange that it even occurred to me when I’ve never shaved down there. I feel like there are things suddenly popping up in my mind as though they’re familiar to me when they’re not.
Shaving.
Having a collar around my neck.
Having a hand around my cock.
Maybe it’s from things I’ve seen in the past. I mean, I have watched porn. I’ve tried to be normal. I’ve tried to feel the things that I’m supposed to feel.
In the cramped shower, I touch my dick experimentally, but it just feels like my hand touching my dick.
Even on the rare occasions that I jack off, that’s basically what it feels like.
I don’t picture anything. I just stroke until I come.
It doesn’t feel bad, but it doesn’t feel good either, not like people say it’s supposed to.
It’s more like relief, and then I feel kind of depressed.
That’s why I don’t do it unless I have to.
I’m well aware that there’s something wrong with me. Sexually. My body doesn’t work right.
But last night…
What the hell was that?
I turn off the water because it’s already cold. I towel off then shave in front of the tiny, cracked mirror. As always, I’m surprised by my reflection. I can see, objectively, that I’m not ugly. I’m not… gross.
Why the hell did I say that to him? Why did that have to bubble up?
You’re beautiful.
I blink, looking at my face like it’s not mine. Like it’s just a face that someone else might be looking at. Like he’s looking at it.
I see it, just for a second.
I take my comb and scrape my hair back like I had it the other night when I was trying to hide how scruffy it is, the night I met him. But something about trying to see it makes me lose the image. I scramble my hair and walk away.
* * *
I’m sitting on the steps of my apartment building when the black Mercedes pulls up at 3:58. My heart thumps.
I take a deep breath and walk down the steps.
The driver, Patrick, is typing on his phone, so I’m hoping I can get to the door before he’s done.
He’s out in a flash, however, and striding around the rear of the car.
My face heats as he opens the door for me.
With his neatly trimmed dark hair, gray at the temples, his stern, handsome face, and the sharp black suit covering a tall, powerful body, he’s very intimidating.
“You don’t have to do that,” I mumble, not bothering to project my voice when I know he’ll ignore my protest just like he did yesterday. As expected, all I get is stony silence. I drop into the seat, and he closes the door, leaving me sitting there with my face flaming from embarrassment.
It makes me uncomfortable even when Ethan does things for me, but he’s so forceful about it that I feel like he actually wants to. But Patrick’s cold. He must hate having to drive me around.
Last night, he picked up food for me too. I didn’t know that’s what was happening until he handed me a paper bag that smelled like heaven. I didn’t know how to react, so I think I just stared.
I still can’t believe Ethan ordered food for me, expensive food, from an Italian restaurant. That must have been what he was doing when he was on his phone after the session. I thought he was upset with me, but he wasn’t. He was, however, upset about something. He got really intense.
The ride to Ethan’s building takes about 45 minutes, which I spend combing through my memory of yesterday. I mostly manage to avoid thinking about my dream. It doesn’t feel believable in the daylight. I would never have a dream like that. I would certainly never act like that.
It’s impossible, so it fades.
As the car pulls into the parking garage, my heart gives a heavy thump. Yesterday, I was just nervous. Today, I’m nervous and… I don’t know. Something I’m not used to. It’s a hot, almost dizzy feeling.
“Do you want me to go up with you?” Patrick asks in his blunt way. Yesterday, he rode the elevator with me then pointed me toward Ethan’s door.
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
Patrick stops the car near the elevator. I scramble out so there’s no chance of him getting to my door in time.
“Thanks,” I say. The word plunks awkwardly into the car’s silent interior, so I quickly shut the door. Patrick drives away to park.
He definitely doesn’t like me.
The penthouse level has its own elevator, so I quickly ascend forty-some floors and step into the hallway that startled the hell out of me yesterday.
It’s not news that there are lots of rich people in New York, but it’s never been relevant to me before, so the glossy hardwood floors, decorated walls, and skylights feel like an alternate reality.
I stop dead at Ethan’s door. It’s cracked open. For me? I look over my shoulder, but I’m alone in the hallway. He’s expecting me, right?
Of course he is. Patrick brought me.
I put my hand on the handle then take it back then reach out again. Stomach twisting with doubt, I go inside. I close the door behind me, hoping that’s right, and walk cautiously through the foyer. I peer into the huge, open space of the kitchen and living room. Ethan is nowhere to be seen.
“Hello?” I call out.
There’s no answer. I walk in, hovering in the space between the living room and kitchen. It feels weird being in here without Ethan. In his absence, though, not distracted by him, I’m better able to take in my surroundings.
I don’t know much—anything really—about rich people, but this place seems way too impersonal. It’s luxurious but kind of soulless, like a movie set. There’s some artwork, but it’s the type that could be anywhere, like the pieces in the hallway.
Ethan is an intense, complicated person. I saw that yesterday when his mood shifted. This nice, neutral space doesn’t feel right for him.
I crane my neck to see down the hallway, where there are a bunch of doors, but there’s no sign of him.
After a couple minutes, I walk through the living room to the dark, transitional space with the shadowy statues.
The door to the room where we worked yesterday is cracked open like the front door was.
I’m hesitating outside it when I hear Ethan call out, “Come in, Levi.”