I step inside. It’s a manual operation and he yanks the gate shut and cranks the elevator. It groans like it’s annoyed to be put to use and shudders back to life before rising.
We stand side by side. He’s a head and a half taller than me, even with the lift my boots give me. As we stand in silence, I canfeelhim. Being in Dorian’s presence is a bit likebeing in the room with a live grenade. The tense, wound-tight energy of him.
A smarter woman would deactivate him. But I’ve always been more of a let’s-pull-the-pin-and-see-what-happens-next kind of girl. I can’t ignore the tingle of excitement that starts in my chest and spreads through the rest of my body.
“You’re late,” he says.
I scoff. “By two minutes.”
“Try ten.”
“Was it very hard for you?” I ask with mock concern. The muscle in his jaw flexes, because we both know the answer.
The elevator comes to a harrowing halt. He pulls back the gate, and I step directly into his apartment. I found this particular quirk of his apartment building jarring the first time I experienced it—how do you keep strangers from walking right into your apartment by accident? Dorian explained to me that the elevator has to be manually “called” to each specific floor. Whoever uses the elevator last is in charge of sending it to the next floor when someone rings it—a loud, nagging buzz. More irritating than luxurious, but it’s from an era of Manhattan when buildings like these had twenty-four-seven doormen. Now, they’re lucky if they get their trash picked up on time.
In case it’s not clear: I know more about Dorian’s elevator than I know about Dorian. More on that later.
He’s got a great space—a wide, yawning living room, flanked by an open kitchen and bar. The apartment is a wash of deep, earthy red and brown tones. It’s clean, but cluttered, namely with books which overflow from his bookshelf, stack up against the wall, and cover nearly every inch of his apartment. He has a gorgeous half-moon window, but the curtains are almost always drawn, cursing the place to dim lamp lighting.
I step inside and shrug out of my coat, scarf, and beanie. Dorian takes them and folds them over a chair at his bar.
“Shoes,” I say. He kneels and begins undoing my laces, helping me out of my boots.
I tease my fingers through his hair. Soft hair. In the past, my type was typically rough, dirty boys. Boys covered in stains who needed to be hosed down before you jumped into bed with them. My Dorian is a vain, well-groomed boy, and his hair products are probably more expensive than mine. He always smells nice, fresh. And that is Dorian in a nutshell—he gives theappearanceof being put together so no one notices he’s really just pieces of a man duct-taped together with a caustic sense of humor and a generous heap of self-loathing.
A broken boy, maybe. But for the next thirty minutes, he’smybroken boy.
“I just had the weirdest fucking conversation,” I tell him.
“Tell me about it,” he says.
The funny thing is—he actually means it. Our play sessions have started doubling as my own personal therapy sessions. He doesn’t care what I talk about, so long as I keep teasing him. In fact, the more disinterested I am in pleasing him, the harder he gets. So.Win-win.
I use his head for balance as I step out of one boot, then the other. “I was grabbing a drink across the street, and this guy started hitting on me.”
Dorian stands. I put my fingers to his chest and nudge him backwards. I guide him into his adjoining living room and he follows my lead, sitting down on the couch.
“Was he attractive?” he asks.
I plop down beside him, cuddling up like we’re on a sleepover. I tickle my fingers down his chest.
“Very. Rugged. Rough. I wanted to suck the tattoosstraight off his body.” I pinch his sweater between my fingers. “Take this off.”
He makes a smallhmnoise. I can see him struggling with it—stuck somewhere between jealousy and desire. Dorian has an abundance ofI shouldn’t want thiskinks, which makes him especially fun to torment.
He pulls the sweater and the t-shirt underneath over his head and tosses them on the floor. He has a gorgeous figure, a trim chest with a light dusting of dark hair that runs a trail down the center of his body.
“What happened next?” he asks.
I touch his chest, savoring the heat of his skin. I trace my fingers absently over his body, feeling the hardness of muscles, the sweet twitches at his abdomen when I graze the line of his belt. “He discovered I’m thirty-five. And he saidgood for you.”
His eyes fix on me. “He complimented you? That asshole.”
“I’m serious. It made me feel…I don’t know.Old.”
“You don’t look a day over sixty-five, boss.”
I grab him by the chin. “Someone’s really asking for a beating today, aren’t they?”
