7. Levi #2
My heart jumps like I’ve been caught doing something, but I’m supposed to be here.
Ethan wants me here. He left two doors open for me.
He let me walk through his house like he trusts me.
He gave me seven thousand dollars to make my life easier, and I can’t even process how relieved I am to have my rent caught up and my credit card paid off. I’m practically floating.
But more than all that, Ethan drew me yesterday, and I liked it. He’s going to draw me again today, and I want him to. I’ve been waiting all day for this.
So I open the door and go in.
Ethan is behind the bar sipping amber liquor from a tumbler.
His dark eyes burn on me over the rim of it.
He’s wearing jeans and a white V-neck T-shirt that reveals the muscled contours of his chest and shoulders.
The sleeves hug his biceps, which I find myself staring at. This is the most I’ve seen of his body.
“Hello, Levi,” he says as he lowers the glass.
“Hi.” God, why do I always sound out of breath when I talk to him?
“Get undressed.”
My heart skips. I don’t move.
His head cocks slightly to one side. “You did it yesterday.”
“I didn’t,” I remind him. “You did.”
His eyes half shutter. He makes a sound like, “Mmm,” and starts walking around the end of the bar.
My heart starts absolutely hammering. I don’t know why I said that. I don’t what I was thinking.
Except… I do.
Ethan comes to stand in front of me. He sips his drink, watching me over the rim of it.
He asks in a low, rasping voice, “Do you need me to help you?”
“Yes,” I reply, breathless and almost inaudible. I feel like I’m possessed, like I’m not controlling the words coming from my own mouth. Blood is pumping hot and fast through my veins. My body has a light, electric feel.
Ethan sets his drink on the bar. He unzips my jacket and takes it off like he did yesterday, pushing it from my shoulders, tugging it off my hands.
Then he pushes up my T-shirt. My thoughts seem to have vanished.
I feel strangely floaty as my limbs move in concert with his actions.
When he crouches to take off my shoes, my hands settle on his shoulders without him commanding it.
He removes my shoes but leaves my white crew socks. Then, staying on his knees, he reaches for the button of my jeans. I don’t panic this time. I watch, fascinated, as he opens my pants.
His fingers curl into my waistband on either side, catching my jeans and briefs. Yesterday, I was so caught up in the terror and excitement of being stripped bare that I didn’t fully experience the physical sensations.
Now, however, I do.
His knuckles skim along my flanks. The elastic of my briefs drags over my dick in a way that makes me gasp. Ethan pauses with the material just below the tip of my cock—my bare, exposed cock.
I can’t see Ethan’s expression fully from this angle, but his eyes squeeze shut for a second. With my hands on his shoulders, I can feel them rise and fall with his breaths. There’s an unfamiliar feeling in my groin. Not just warm but heavy and full. I think…
I think maybe…
Ethan pulls my pants down the rest of the way. As I step out of them, my cock swings with a weight I’m not used to, but then Ethan stands so fast that my thoughts trip and scatter. He turns away and faces the bar, planting his hands on it.
He tells me gruffly, “Go sit down.”
At his abrupt withdrawal, things lock up inside me. It’s suddenly hard to move, and yet I don’t want to disobey.
In nothing but my socks, I walk stiffly over to the velvet couch and crawl onto it, glancing at Ethan. His back is still to me. I want to ask if I did something wrong, but I know it would sound dumb, so I keep quiet.
I don’t know how to sit. I try to sit like yesterday, but I end up with both legs drawn up and canted to one side.
I check on Ethan again. His head is bowed and his back is curved. Then he straightens and turns to face me. His expression is somehow both blank and heavy. Snagging his glass from the bar, he approaches.
His emotions captivate me. As long as they’re coming directly at me, I don’t feel scared even when he looks scary. I notice that as he’s moving my way. I settle. I stop worrying.
Ethan crawls onto the couch. I feel it dip under his weight. He holds out his glass, obviously wanting me to take it, so I do. Hands free, he starts repositioning me. He opens my legs. The heavy feeling has mostly left my groin, but heat blooms there again as he exposes me.
He pulls my right leg out straight. My left he leaves slightly bent but open, more open than yesterday.
He lifts my left arm and settles it on the back of the couch.
The bandage on my hand is gone, but when he positions my fingers, he’s careful of the healing cut.
My right arm is still bent, holding the glass.
He nods at the drink. “Do you want to try it?”
I lift the glass to my lips. Ethan watches like he’s as fascinated by me as I am by him. It makes my whole body tingle.
I sip. There’s a hint of sweetness and smoke, but then it burns.
I cough as the burn goes into my nose. Ethan rescues the glass.
There’s a slight smile on his face but not like he’s making fun of me.
More like he’s enjoying me. I feel my face heating, but my embarrassment doesn’t have the anxious feeling that I’m used to.
Ethan sips from the glass then offers it back to me. I shake my head. He doesn’t tease me. He just smiles slightly again and adjusts my right hand where it’s fallen on my thigh. He’s got a really nice smile.
He crawls off the couch and goes to sit in his black wingback chair. He sets the drink aside and grabs his sketchbook from the table. He opens it, picks up a pencil, and starts to draw.
During yesterday’s session, I went into a strange state. Nudity was so foreign to me that I half drifted out of myself. I couldn’t process it, so I didn’t. I simply existed. It was almost relaxing.
Today is different. I’m more comfortable being naked, so I’m able to stay inside my skin and fully experience it.
The couch is velvety and soft. The air is light and clean, so different from the mustiness of my apartment.
It’s quiet too, with no noise from the street, no intrusion of neighbors.
It’s like we’re in another world, just us, separate.
The strange space compounds that feeling.
I didn’t pay attention to the chains and odd furniture when I walked in today.
I was focused on Ethan. I’m still focused on him: the way he has one socked foot resting on his opposite knee to hold the sketchbook.
The way his hand moves, quick and precise, over the page.
The way his expression intensifies as he works.
I like his intensity. I like seeing how deeply he feels things.
But the longer I sit here the more my view expands to our surroundings.
I don’t understand them, but they still evoke something in me, with the red walls bleeding down to black, the silvery chains, and the unexpected dips and curves of the furniture.
The space is dark and moody, somehow alluring and vaguely threatening at the same time.
Like Ethan, I realize.
Unlike the living room, this space feels like an extension of him. But it’s all hints. Nothing is completely clear, and of course there’s the long curtain hiding the rest of the room.
In the corner of my eye, there’s the mysterious leather coffin with all its little doors. It’s more than decoration, I think. It’s something to be inside of. Then there are the shackles and collars. They’re behind me somewhere, like Ethan was in my dream.
My face heats at the memory. I’ve done a pretty good job today of not thinking about it, at least not in detail. But sitting here on this couch like in the dream, naked like in the dream, I can’t help it.
In that dream, the hand that’s now lightly holding a pencil was wrapped around my cock, and he was stroking the hard, aching length of it. He was choking me too, with one of those collars.
I close my eyes, trying to drive the memory off, but the darkness behind my eyelids makes me hyperaware of my body.
The heat building in it. The heaviness settling in my groin.
It’s the same heaviness I felt when Ethan pulled down my pants, when the waistband grazed my cock, when he squeezed his eyes shut just like I’m doing now.