Dante - Daryl Banner Page 0,32
of bacon left on my plate. I ate so fast. “I thought—”
“I’m sorry.”
I peer at him over the island counter. “Sorry?”
“For making you … cross the line with me. I know about your reputation. I know it’s gotta be, uh … conflicting.” He rubs his buzzed head, then squints at me with a wince. “I didn’t mean to force my desires onto you. I’ve just never felt this way before. About anything.”
Anything.
Not anyone.
I take hold of my emptied plate and bring it to the sink without saying a word.
“Uh … Did I say something?”
“Nah,” I answer automatically, filling a glass with water from the tap, then taking a sip.
When I turn around, Tye has come around the counter as quiet as a cat, startling me. “I meant it when I said I’m sorry. But maybe what we have going on is different than ‘client and photographer’, don’t you think?”
He’s so close to me. “Of course it’s different.” I find that funny suddenly. “I don’t play around like we just did with any of my clients.”
“I know. Your reputation, like I said.”
“So what’s your point?”
“My point is, even now maybe your reputation is still intact. Maybe you still haven’t broken your own rules.” He comes up even closer, then takes hold of the bottom of my shirt for some reason, giving it a gentle tug. “Maybe we aren’t just … client and photographer …”
My eyes drop to his lips.
“I know I’m young,” he goes on. “I know. I see it in your eyes, too, how you look at me, thinking I can’t possibly know what I want, thinking I could be confused, or experimenting, or just lonely.”
I smirk. “Crossed my mind.”
“But I’m not any of those things. Well, except maybe the last one.” His fingers slip under my shirt and hook into the waistband of my pants—and my underwear. “I know there are parts of me that will be young no matter what I do, because I haven’t seen as much of the world as you have. But I’m not like guys my age either. So where do I go? Who do I hang with? Where do I … belong?”
When his eyes rise to mine searchingly, I feel a deep, inescapable hunger consume me—a hunger that no late-night snack on a plate can satiate.
Unless Tye can be put on a plate.
In a very non-Hannibal-Lector context.
“You belong where the hell you want, Tye.”
“Can I kiss you again?”
I smirk. There’s no fucking way I’ll ever say no to that question. “You want me to order you to kiss me? Or are we not in the playing mood?”
“Oh, I’m always in the playing mood,” he says on his way to my lips.
Then we crash together, once again consumed with the unexpected world of safety, comfort, and long-unfulfilled sexual desires between us.
The kissing moves to my bedroom, which is a large square area in the corner of my apartment separated by hanging curtains and a tapestry of a lion, where I lay his sweet, supple body on the silk sheets of my large, king size bed. His clothes dress the floor along the way, and by the time I’ve got him on my bed, he’s down to just his white socks and underwear—a pair of tiny black bikini briefs, skimpy and showing every inch of what he’s got.
“Remember the look of anguish on his face?”
Tye is on his back, staring up at me as I hold myself over him, straddling his waist. “Anguish?”
“Your wrestler boy. Your muse. Your fantasy.” I bring my lips to his, kiss him deeply, then pull my face away and give him a look. “You’re gonna feel exactly what he felt … except it won’t be just a job of a model to portray an emotion for the lens. Boy, you’re gonna be the emotion.”
With that, I draw each of his hands to each of the posts of my headboard, where I bind them with silken ropes already attached there. Then I bind his still-socked feet to either leg post of the bed while he excitedly watches.
Now spread-eagle and helpless, I put myself on top of him again, straddling his waist. “I don’t even need to gag you. You already know you’re mine.”
Tye bites his lip, staring up at me. “Is now the time when I thank you and beg for more?”
“Now is the time when I tell you you’re not my client anymore.”
Tye’s face changes. “What?”
“You’re my muse.”
He opens his mouth, then appears confused, as if unsure whether that’s a