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)
Amani didn’t know if he could ever reach that level; he preferred to focus his attention on one partner rather than multiple encounters, another reason why he’d never quite fit into the fetish scene—monogamous practitioners often kept their business at home, or in smaller, more private circles. He was struck by an image of himself all in leather and stilettos, grinding his heel into the back of some nameless man while the man thrust wads of dollar bills at him and begged for more, ten more lined up and waiting for their turn.
A cracking, wheezing laugh escaped his lips, until he clamped it down.
Not his style.
Then again, neither was hyperventilating like this, just because one gorgeous asshole of a man was willing to go to these lengths to have him.
Some Dominant he was.
He didn’t even understand why he was so shaken. He’d likely even enjoy the session, and if he didn’t he had just as much right to stop it as Victor did. Victor was attractive, and there was an inherent submissiveness in him that Amani thought went deeper than either of them could see just yet. Making this transactional would help keep boundaries in place, rather than tempting Amani to yield to those searching, needy looks that tugged at something deep inside him. He wasn’t selling himself cheaply, and that kind of money…
He dragged his hands down his face, lifting his head to glance around the living room. It was cozy with clutter, poufs and layers upon layers of scattered rugs, furniture draped with patterned blankets, hanging lanterns, fringed wall hangings, the framed black and white photo of his father over the mantle, the little lamplit niche with his mother’s well-worn, well-loved, beautifully woven prayer rug facing east by northeast for Qibla. These were all the familiar trappings of his life, but they were only layered over the cracking walls, the flaking paint that the landlord would never address and never agree to let them paint over, floorboards so worn they’d turned gray where the grain had absorbed decades of trod-in dirt, crumbling sheetrock exposing tiny holes where the walls met the ceilings, missing bricks in the front steps. Even now he could hear the pipes groaning in the walls, threatening to spring one of their many annual leaks again, while the radiator ticked and moaned and struggled to heat even this tiny house.
So he’d sleep with Victor a few times. Pay his tuition in full up until graduation, and get his mother out of this drafty, run-down cottage. She’d be stubborn about it—he knew her too well to expect otherwise. She’d spent years making this her home, their home, but her flesh was beginning to cling to narrow bones and she couldn’t take the cold anymore; her hands shook at the smallest things, moving her from her old job as one of the Dehbi masseuses and to a position behind the reception desk.
He could work through his conflicted feelings over fucking a man like Vic Newcomb for money, if it meant taking care of her.
Flattening his hand against his chest, he rubbed at the ache there, until the feeling started to subside. And when his mother came down the stairs, a frown knitting between her eyes, he was able to smile when she said, “You’re home so late, habibi. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Mama,” he said, and pulled her into a tight hug, pressing his lips to her cheek. “Everything’s fine.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SO.
Vic was really, honestly, and truly about to sign ten thousand dollars over for one night with a man he’d barely met, a man who kissed like a combustive chemical reaction, a man who could bring Vic to his knees with a single gentle hand and soft, coaxing lips.
Not a development he’d expected to crop up in his life any time soon.
Or at all.
At least, when life threw him curve balls, it kept things interesting.
Yet the past two days with no contact had been torture. He’d understood why Amani had insisted on it. On space, for the reality of this to sink in without the two of them pushing and pulling on each other in a way that might influence a decision. A one-night stand, even a one-night stand with a five-figure price tag and a rather hefty dose of kink, shouldn’t be something so very life-changing.
Yet the way Amani described it, the way he spoke of dominance and submission…
It sounded like the kind of thing that could transform how someone fit in their own skin. A revelation that might show him things about himself he wasn’t ready to see.
And he had to know if he was prepared for that.
Though it was hard to think right now, with a tension headache crawling up the back of his neck, cupping the back of his head in feelers of pain, creeping around in tendrils toward his temples and making them throb. It had been edging up on him since this morning, since he’d woken up at dawn and turned on the news to find the face of his Chief Marketing Officer, Mike Wotkiss, plastered on the news as the latest in the line of nationwide corporate figures accused of sexual harassment.