Page 29 of The Call of Azure (Unexpected Love #3)

I open to the first page for the second time and find myself staring at the image of a tan, muscular man bound in ropes.

His skin is half-covered by strands of white, and he’s suspended from some type of hook-based framework in the ceiling of a darkly painted, warmly lit room.

There are soft pillows and furs on the floor beneath him, and even though I can’t see his face in the image, his body looks…

relaxed somehow. There is no way he can move a muscle, and the position looks awkward as fuck, and yet, there is something about the scene that feels deliberate and soft, instead of anxiety-inducing.

There are so, so many ropes covering his skin.

The man is trussed and tied and contorted, wrapped and bent, and absolutely indescribably beautiful.

He’s strong lines and dark skin and one small, bright tattoo on his ribs.

A tattoo that I can see sitting across from me.

“This is you!”

“It is, and like I was saying before…it’s not a sex book. I mean, look at it. I have shorts on, and I’m not hard or anything.”

Jesus, he’s deliberately drawing my attention to his dick in a picture of him tied up and suspended while wearing only spandex booty shorts. He’s trying to kill me. After all the things I’ve survived, and this is the way I go.

“This picture, this rope, it isn’t a sex thing.

I mean, it can be a part of sex. It can actually be really floofing sexy, but that’s an individual choice and preference.

For some people, rope play is always related to sex, and for some, it never is.

Personally, I like it no matter what, but I haven’t had someone to incorporate anything sexual into it with for years.

I have a few regular partners that aren’t sexual, though, and with them it’s just… freeing.”

His palm is gripping his coffee cup tightly, and he’s nervously tapping his rings against the porcelain. He’s holding tension in his shoulders, and his jaw is clenching and unclenching as he watches me. He looks so much the opposite of the man in the photo.

“I can see that. There is so much peace in your body here. So much trust.” I let my fingertips trace along the path of the rope in the photo.

“Yes.” His voice cracks for a moment when he continues.

It’s barely a whisper. “I don’t often get…

” He pauses and sighs deeply. “I don’t feel…

” He glances down at his hands around the cup and nearly growls before he clears his throat and looks back up, his eyes filled with determination.

“I don’t trust easily. Blue is the only relationship I’ve ever had that’s lasted more than a couple of months.

I don’t really know what it is about me that seems to scare people away, but I can’t ever seem to hang onto anyone for long.

Not for any relationship that requires intimacy anyway.

I have hookups and occasional first or second or third dates and surface-level friends, but not deep friendships and not relationships.

The shibari gives me something…close enough.

It gives me moments of trust and intimacy and connection.

It gives me time to just let go and believe that I’ll be taken care of for a few minutes.

When I’m in the rope, even when I’m tying someone else, I don’t have to worry or think or plan.

I don’t have to work or perform or smile or try. I can just…be.”

Something heavy settles in my chest, and it’s hard to remember that I need to breathe to survive as he describes how I feel every minute of every day.

I know that I’m too broken to have any real relationships with other people, probably even in the form of friendships.

No one wants to be around the guy who has to research the club before they go out to make sure he knows where the exits are.

Not often anyway. Sure, James and Hazel invite me and make a fuss about me joining them from time to time, but I know they wouldn’t want to have to worry about me every time they go out.

No one wants to talk someone down from panic attacks and deal with the fact that there are more nights I wake up sweating and screaming than not.

I know that I’m broken. I’ve spent my whole life jumping from one struggle to another.

But Gabriel…Gabriel is fun and light and perfection.

He shouldn’t ever have to feel alone if he doesn’t want to.

He should be surrounded by people who want to laugh with him and support him and love him.

How can it possibly be true that no one sees just how amazing he is?

Before I can come up with a way to tell him that he deserves so much more than that, he keeps talking.

“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what you said about the way water makes you feel, and well…

you said you like the sensation of being both embraced and weightless.

The way it makes you feel like, even though you’re in control enough that there isn’t any real serious risk, you’re also restricted enough that you can’t do much.

You get to just close your eyes and exist. The way you describe the water taking over until the world disappears, and there is only the sound of the surf or the burning of your lungs and blood rushing through your veins.

That’s how the rope makes me feel. It makes me feel like I’m floating above my body and watching the universe slip past unhurried and unmarked.

Like I’m sinking deeper under the surface where cool tides lap at every atom of my skin until I can’t feel anything else.

I think, for me, it feels the same way you describe water.

And I think…if you trust me enough to try…

the rope might offer you the same kind of release. ”

I jerk my head up fast enough that my neck twinges. “You want to do this to me?”

His head falls back in laughter once more.

It’s bright and vibrant and so full of life as it reverberates through the open floor plan apartment.

“Not TO you. It’s a partnership, not something you do to someone.

I didn’t know if you knew shibari even existed, or if you’d seen it around and maybe thought it was only a sexual thing.

A lot of people stumble onto it in that context and don’t realize that the sexual component is optional.

They don’t realize that it can just be intimate and freeing instead.

When you told me about the water thing, I immediately thought about the way the ropes feel for me during non-sexual encounters, and I just wanted you to know it exists in case it’s something you’ve never heard of.

Maybe it’s something you want to think about or explore in the future.

Maybe not. If you do decide you’re ever interested.

I’d be honored to do it with you.” He snickers once more before tilting his head back to drain the last drops of his coffee and standing to make his way toward the kitchen.

His laughter-tinted words fading as he steps away. “Not TO you.”

Gabriel’s coffee is terrible. It honestly tastes a bit like burnt plastic, and I’m struggling to even take a couple of sips just so I don’t insult him.

I have no idea how he’s going to drink another cup of the shit.

He works at a coffee shop. Surely he should have a better coffee maker than whatever is creating this…

sludge. Even if it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, he probably doesn’t want more coffee at six at night.

He’s just giving me time to sit with everything he said and flip through the images in the book on my own, and I’m grateful for that.

I’ve seen shibari before, of course. Well, maybe not correctly executed shibari like Gabriel clearly practices, but rope play.

The way I’ve seen ropes used on bodies has been nothing like this.

I’m not a particularly kinky guy, and the porn I watch on occasion is pretty vanilla, so the few times rope has come into the picture, it’s been more of an improvised handcuffs for the sake of trying to set a “kinky” scene kind of thing.

I’ve never seen it practiced without a sexual component, and I’ve certainly never seen a body covered with so much rope or that looks so blissfully relaxed while hanging from the ceiling.

The photo book isn’t very large, and it doesn’t take me long to flip through it the first time.

There are maybe thirty photos of five or six different people.

Some are tied with meters and meters of rope.

They have knots pressing into their skin and beautiful patterned lines decorating their limbs and torsos.

Some are hanging in suspension, like the first one of Gabriel.

Some are simply kneeling or sitting cross-legged on a pillow or the ground, with their arms or chests or shoulders tied with a few simple lines.

Each one of them looks lost to the world.

Their faces are calm and relaxed, their bodies boneless. They look the way I long to feel.

When Gabriel returns, carrying Cupcake instead of more coffee, he looks almost embarrassed.

“I’m sorry. That probably wasn’t something I should have just sprung on you like this.

I mean, we don’t know each other all that well, and it’s not exactly a professional move on my part to hand you a book with images like that and suggest you try it.

I tend to just say whatever’s on my mind without really considering that my directness might make other people feel uncomfortable.

Not everyone is as open about sex or kink or sexuality or dress or even passionately held opinions about pizza toppings as I am, and that’s totally okay.

I just tend to forget to filter myself sometimes. ”