He chuckled at my lame joke. “Sure.”
I looked down to see what he withdrew from a snap-on pouch. It was some weird star-shaped metallic object. A weapon? My voice didn’t sound like myself when I stammered, “They’re going to invite you to join them, Levon.”
“Who? The Assassins? I know.” He played with the flat metal thing.
I licked my lips watching him, realizing all my capillaries were opening up, my pupils were dilating, my nipples were erecting. All classic signs of arousal. “You know? What are you going to do?”
He made as if to casually throw the thing. “Join. Listen, about this asshole boyfriend of yours.”
Why was he asking? Now I felt my innards go all soft and gooey, like a woman who was being fought over by two men. Except that Giovanni didn’t care, and wouldn’t fight for me. I said, “He’s not my boyfriend anymore. I broke up with him.”
Now, that was definitely delight flickering in those cornflower eyes. He even looked devilishly boyish with his haircut that looked done at home in front of a mirror. Still fingering the disk, he came toward me. His free hand was uplifted, already in the shape of my jaw, which he cupped in his palm. He always made me feel so small and feminine, so delicate and breakable. I inhaled deeply of his natural scent of fresh sweat—his pheromones.
“You know,” he said softly, “logically you and I don’t make much sense. I’ve been thinking about what you said the other night, logic versus emotion. I realized there’s lots of emotion in my framework of beliefs. Like, I loathe Ladell Pratt with the rage of a volcano. It’s based on the logic of what he’s done to me. But my logic is really a slave to my passions.”
“Yes,” I whispered. At that moment, I would’ve encouraged him in anything, really. But I did like where he was going with that. “Me being attracted to you doesn’t make much logical sense. Logically I should choose a doctor, someone in the medical field.”
He grinned adorably. “But you’ve got a hooker turned biker instead.”
“Who runs an occult arts shop.”
When he kissed me this time, I stood on my toes, the better to slide my hands around the back of his neck. I speared my fingers through his soft hair, reveling in massaging the damp sweat into his skull. His body was all hard and marble, not soft and doughy like Giovanni. Levon was arousing me in every sense of the word, his sweat in my nostrils going straight to my brain, to the hypothalamus flooding me with dopamine, with oxytocin.
But because I, too, wasn’t thinking logically, I allowed Levon to lift my short sweater from my torso. I even broke the kiss, staring like a star-struck teenager into his eyes, as he gently pulled it over my head, then my arms. He dropped it on the floor without batting an eye, and he said,
“The greatest freedom is obedience.”
I didn’t know how this applied to our situation, but it excited me nonetheless. I always felt embarrassed to have a man look at me shirtless. I felt like an underdeveloped gymnast, a freak with an adult head and a child’s body. For some reason, Levon didn’t make me feel that way. He traded places with me in a sort of dance, leaning me back with my butt against the desk’s edge. Skillfully he unhooked my tiny bra. Even the slightest brushing of his fingertips against my skin sent shivers straight to my pussy. He was so talented, so self-assured!
“You want me to be obedient.” I leaned back with my palms flat against the desk, trying to ignore the bra dangling from his finger. When that dropped, I was bared to him. If I was ashamed, I couldn’t show it. I had to lift my chin and give him a challenging look.
His eyes were hooded with craftiness. He finally brandished the star-shaped thing with a hole in the center. “Indeed I do. I want you to accept everything I do to you. Let the sensations roll over you like waves on an ocean.”
I giggled nervously. “My body is a cruise ship.”
“A party boat,” he agreed good-naturedly, then dipped at the knees to slurp a nipple into his mouth.
“Oh!” Did I really cry out that loudly? My stupid yelp echoed to the rafters of the nearly empty room when Levon nibbled away. His tongue squiggled wildly around my areola—I could feel him tasting the raised bumps on my tiny nubbin, sipping from my nipple.