Page 35 of Hamartia
He smiles, intensely, and then turns towards a small ornate bar trolley in the corner of the lounge where he begins pouring something amber into a glass. He drinks whiskey then. I file it away. Along with all the other tiny bits of information I’d picked up, polished, and stored away in a Jae-shaped jewelry box to admire whenever I was alone.
“Drink?” he asks, without turning.
I busy myself by looking around the apartment. “Yeah, whiskey is good.”
He comes toward me holding out a glass and I take it from him, knocking back a large mouthful which burns its way down. He drinks his in the same way he drank his green tea, dainty neat sips, letting the whiskey sit on his tongue a moment before swallowing it. His pale smooth throat moving gracefully as it goes down makes my cock twitch, a filthy image searing itself to the inside of my brain. The whiskey settles comfortably next to the quarter bottle of tequila already sitting in there.
“So,” he says.
“So,” I echo. My voice sounds calmer, but I don’t feel it. My heartbeat loud in my ears and skin tight and stretched thin over my bones.
“Do you want to sit?” he asks me, glancing toward the large sectional.
He doesn’t wait for my answer, just floats toward it where he folds himself neatly into one corner. I follow, sitting somewhere in the middle, about an arm’s length from him. It feels further.
When I turn my body slightly to look at him, he looks smaller, younger. I’d noticed that he can make himself look like an entirely different person by turning his head or lifting an eyebrow or showing his teeth. Or in this case, widening his eyes just a little. It’s mystifying. Like he’s a million different people all at once.
“Where is your girlfriend tonight?” he asks, sipping on his whiskey.
It takes me as much by surprise as the last time he asked about her.
I hide it with a frown. “I thought you didn’t care about her?”
“I thought I told you not to put words in my mouth.”
This, said the way he just said it makes my cheeks heat, like I’ve been scolded. I find I don’t hate the feeling. Not from him anyway.
“I ask only because she seems like a nice person.”
“She is. She’s fucking fantastic. Beautiful, kind, talented, funny.”She’s just not you. “But can we stop talking about her?Please.”
His eyes widen with interest before it melts away and he lifts one shoulder. “If you like. Is there something else you would rather we talk about?”
“Fucking hell, Jae, I didn’t come here to talk. I thought that much was clear in LA? Wasn’t that the whole point of that call? Clarity?”
Did I miss something? No, I didn’t because he’d been clear. We both had. And I’d replayed it over and over in my head since. Is he…? Is ithimwho’s having second thoughts? It’s not the reprieve I might have wanted once.
“It was, yes. But I want to hear you say it now, here.” His voice is gentle, but there’s heat in the command. “I want to see your face when you say to me why you have come here.”
The words do something to my head. My dick. My entire fucking body. He’s going to make me say it. Here. In person. Under that powerful black stare of his. Fuck, the way him just looking at memakes me feel like nothing else on earth. Enthralled, raw, vulnerable. As though he can do and say whatever he wants to me, and I’d take it. As though he’d command me to do anything for him and I’d do it.
I despise too the way he seems almost completely unaffected by me. Almost. Those glimmers I see now and then though…he’s a master at hiding it, but there’s something under there. Something that’s slowly unfurling, getting ready to bare its stomach for me.
“I told you, I’m here because I want you. Because if I don’t get to have you at least once I’m gonna lose my fucking mind.”
Maybe I could have gone with something more poetic, something likeI’m here because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you for two and a half years. Because I’ve never wanted to touch and be touched by another person as much as I want to touch and be touched by you. Because just looking at you feels like I’m drowning, and I like that feeling more than I should.
But it seems to have worked because he’s looking at me differently now. He’s looking at me like he wants me a small fraction of the way I want him and I really fucking like how it looks.
I let out a sigh and sit forward on my thighs.
“Since you’re big on clarity I guess I should also say this: I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. I don’tunderstandany of this.”
It’s maybe the wrong move given how he reacted to my uncertainties back in LA, but I don’t have the strength to hold it in right now, every ounce of strength going to my heart and brain just to keep me alive.
Graceful as a swan he unfolds himself from the sofa and comes to stand in front of me, his drink dangling in his long-boned hand as he gazes down into my eyes. He knocks back the rest of his drink and then takes my empty glass and sets them both down on the coffee table. He looks unruffled. Utterly calm.
When he reaches down to take my hand, I feel his touch like a match striking, hiss and spark and then heat spreading all over.