8. Ethan
EIGHT
Ethan
Levi cries out sharply as I suck the precum from his tip. His hips jack up, spearing his cock into my mouth.
I brace myself for the familiar surge of dark, ugly feelings. For a second, my anticipation of those feelings distracts me, threatens to drag them up, but Levi moans, and I refocus. I get out of my own head and into his, experiencing his emotions instead of mine.
God, they’re delicious.
He’s nearly out of his head but not so much so that he doesn’t know what’s happening. He’s very aware that his cock is being sucked.
He’s watching me right now, head lifted, stomach contracted.
His lips are parted with lust and shock as I draw up to his tip.
He mewls and whines when I lick the underside of his cockhead then dab my tongue into his slit.
He leaks more for me, so I suck, hard, and his head slams back again. His hips thrust upward.
I have both my hands on his ass now, gripping, squeezing, massaging. He whines and whimpers. It’s so new to him to be touched like this. He has no control over his responses.
I eat them up. I make them my own. I use them to ignore the way my cock is throbbing against the bars of its cage, leaking around the metal.
I swallow around Levi’s cock, eliciting another cry. I hum, knowing how it will vibrate against his dick, which kicks and swells in my mouth. He doesn’t warn me that he’s about to come. I don’t think he knows. I think his body is entirely foreign to him.
I force my thumb between his ass cheeks and push it against his tight hole. The way he thrusts into my mouth makes something ugly flash inside me, and I get so angry that I suck as hard as I can. Levi shouts and jerks against me and floods my mouth with cum.
For one second, my mind goes somewhere else, away, and there’s nothing but white. But Levi’s cries, desperate and shocked and beautiful, pull me back.
I grip his ass as his cock pulses in my mouth, shooting more cum down my throat.
My own cock throbs inside its cage with something like an orgasm, though I don’t actually ejaculate.
I spasm against Levi as it happens. My thumb pushes slightly into him, and he cries out, shuddering, as the last of his release spills into my mouth.
He stares at me as I lower him. His cheeks are flushed, his lips are parted. There’s still a fog of lust in his blue eyes, but it’s fading fast. He’s shocked. Maybe a little confused. Maybe a little scared.
I think he needs me to talk to him, but I don’t think I can right now.
The experience is over, and I can no longer overwrite my emotions with his.
My own are boiling up hot and fast, and it’s all I can do to keep them to myself and not push them onto him.
It would be so fucking easy. I know exactly how to hurt him right now.
But that’s not what I want. I won’t fucking do it.
So it makes me really goddamn angry that I’m working so fucking hard and Levi’s eyes still skip away from me. His legs try to draw up. I smash his knee down so he can’t do that. His eyes jump back to me.
“I’m sorry,” he says in that breathless tone of his.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” I try to keep the sharpness from my voice, I try to reassure, but his flinch tells me that I’ve failed.
I grit my teeth and try to smother my unwanted emotions. I close my eyes and picture a cold, dark room. In my mind, I kneel on the concrete floor.
“I ruined the picture,” Levi says, making my eyes pop open again.
“You are the picture,” I retort. “There’s no way for you to ruin it. Only I can ruin it.”
I’m ruining it right now. I’m confessing that to him, but he doesn’t understand. His eyes slide away.
He mumbles quietly, “I-I should go.”
Rage flares inside me. “You will go when I say you can go, and that is not now.” I slam my eyes shut again, forcing myself to disengage. “Fuck,” I mutter, shoving myself up from the couch.
I worked so goddamn hard yesterday to fix myself. I was fine. Why the hell am I not fine now?
I turn away from Levi because I’m not in control. This hasn’t happened to me in a long fucking time, and I don’t like it. I don’t understand why it’s happening now.
I have to lock this shit down.
For fuck’s sake, be still. If you can’t be it, perform it. You know how.
“You want to go home?” I ask, sounding cold and steady.
“Y-yes. I… yes.”
“Fine.”
I walk over to the pile of Levi’s clothes and pick them up, but when I turn, intending to carry them to him, he’s right behind me. He’s so damn quiet.
His eyes are on the floor. He’s ashamed. Rage boils up inside me again, but this time it hits the cold outside layer of myself and retreats.
As Levi gets dressed, I go behind the bar and put on my shoes. Levi doesn’t jump to any conclusions from that, but when we walk out to the living room and I grab my keys and phone, he halts.
“Isn’t… but Patrick…”
“I’m taking you home,” I tell him when he can’t seem to form a full question.
“I can take the train.”
“No. Come on.”
Levi follows me out of the apartment and down the hallway to the elevator. He’s uncomfortable, but he doesn’t argue with me.
When we get to the parking garage, I lead him to my green Porsche. He recoils slightly like he doesn’t want to get in it, but when I open the passenger door and let a little of the anger flash out in my eyes, he obeys.
For the entire drive across the city, Levi is stone still in the passenger seat. We don’t speak. The drive should calm me, but it doesn’t. I’m still cold and tight when we reach his building.
“Thanks,” he says softly when I pull up to the curb.
I don’t reply. He clearly thinks I’m just dropping him off, but I’m not. We get out. He freezes on the sidewalk as I walk around the car to him. His eyes are huge and worried but not really focused on me.
He has something to say, but before he’s able to find the words, I tell him, “Get moving.”
Levi does as he’s told, and now I’m the one following him, into his building and up to the fifth floor.
When he stops at 512, he says, “I can pay you back.” I’m briefly dumbfounded, which gives him time to add, “It might take me some time—”
“What the fuck do you think is happening here, Levi?”
He is so close to crying. “I-I don’t know.”
“Open the fucking door.”
He digs his key from his pocket. It’s the only key he has.
His hands are shaky, so it takes him a second to get the door open.
He looks over his shoulder at me. Shock has taken over his emotions because I’m crowding into him, planting my hand on the door to push it open further and shepherding him into the room.
The dim evening light hides some of the ugly reality, but it can’t hide the fact that this place is basically a closet. The twin mattress is on its side, leaning up against the far wall to make space. There’s some furniture, which he must move into the kitchen at night to lay the bed down.
It’s clean though. I can tell that even in the dimness.
Levi turns on a light under the cupboard. It’s small and weak, battery powered. It reveals the fact that his kitchen has no sink or oven. He’s got a minifridge and hotplate. The only sink is in the bathroom.
“So this is where you want to be?” My voice is cold, colder than I want, but I can’t help it. When Levi doesn’t reply, I demand, “Answer me: this is where you want to be right now? Instead of where you were.”
“I just… felt like I should go.”
“Because you were scared of me?”
Again, there’s no reply, so I go stalking toward him. Finally—fucking finally—he really looks at me. But it only lasts for a second. When I’m close enough to touch him, he looks away. He tries to anyway. I catch his face and force him to meet my gaze.
“Were you scared of me?” I ask again.
His reply is quiet but sure. “No.”
“But you were upset. Because you came?”
His eyes squeeze shut. He tries to pull away, but I don’t let him.
“That’s what you were supposed to do,” I tell him sharply. “You did it beautifully.”
His eyes open, showing me a vulnerability, a tender, frightened hope, that melts all the cold from my body. Heat suffuses me, and though there’s still anger in it, it’s different from before. It’s something I can control.
Levi senses the difference. I can feel it in his body as my hand slides down from his jaw to rest lightly on his throat. He relaxes just enough to talk to me.
“But you didn’t,” he says in a rough voice that tells me this is hard for him. “It wasn’t the same for you. It was just me.”
“That’s what bothered you so much? You didn’t think I responded, so you didn’t think I wanted you?”
He swallows hard. I feel it against my hand, and it’s answer enough.
I find myself relaxing. I rub his jaw with my thumb and tell him, “I didn’t want to scare you. I could tell it was new for you.”
When his eyes slide away from me, I squeeze his throat lightly to bring them back. I’m in enough control now to trust myself with force, to manage how much I use.
I tell him, “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Your body is perfect, and it did exactly what it was supposed to. But…”
I stall, debating whether he’s ready for this—and whether I am. But, God, the way he’s looking at me. So open. So receptive.
I confess, “Things are more complicated for me.”
With my free hand, I pop the button of my jeans and pull down the zipper.
It sparks no fear in Levi’s eyes. He wants to look down, so I release his throat, letting him glimpse, in the opening of my jeans, my cock in its cage.
I’m not wearing underwear, only the metal.
The light is dim, but it’s enough to reveal my dick pressing against the long, curving bars.
“Wha…” Levi’s voice fades on a breath, then he tries again. “What is that?”
“It’s a cock cage. It keeps me from getting hard.”
“But… why?”
“So I can focus on the art. So I can focus on you.”
“Does it hurt?”
With his face tilted down, I can’t see his expression, but he’s riveted. Does he want it to hurt me? Is he a sadist too?
“A little,” I admit. “When I’m aroused like this.”
Levi’s eyes flick halfway up, like he’s going to look at my face, but he can’t get his eyes off my dick. He licks his lips. I wonder if he wants to touch me.
He says, “I don’t understand.”
“I’m not a good person, Levi. You’re not safe with me.” He still doesn’t understand, so I get blunt, “If I took this off, I would fuck you and I would hurt you. I’m trying to be careful.”
His eyes jump to mine. “You don’t have to be.”
“Yes, I do. You’re not ready for me.” His eyes drop, but they pop up again when I add, “But you will be. You’re a masochist. I don’t know if you realize that about yourself, but to me, it’s obvious. You need intensity, and you’ve never had it.”
His eyes are now as riveted on my face as they were on my caged cock. He wants this, and he’s ready, finally, to understand what this actually is.
“What I want, Levi, is your experience. That’s what I want to capture. There’s an innocence to you now, but there’s darkness underneath it. I can see it. I can feel it—and I’m going to draw it out of you.”
His lips have parted. He’s not frightened, not at all. He looks, in fact, relieved.
A smile creeps across my lips. “You know it, don’t you?”
Something in him closes, and he looks away from me. It’s automatic, I can see that. It’s something he’s used to hiding. I take hold of his jaw and make him look at me again.
“You don’t need to hide your darkness. That part of you is safe with me, Levi. It’s the rest of you that’s not.”
He stares at me, unblinking, still unafraid. It’s strange because he seems so soft, so uncertain, but the more force I exert, the stronger he proves himself to be.
I think he’s been neglected. Maybe abandoned. I think it happened young. I think that’s why he’s so numb, why he’s never been sexual. He doesn’t know how to be with people. He doesn’t understand intimacy. But he wants it. He fucking needs it.
And since God didn’t give it to him, the Devil will.
“Get your shit,” I tell him. “You’re mine now, and you’re coming home with me.”