“I lose my head around you, and then you say these kind of things…”
Leonidas smiled and licked the bottom of Andy’s lip.
“I would have protected you.” He reached down and rubbed his palm across Andy’s dick. “Fear not.”
Andy scoffed, taking Leonidas’s hand, but not moving him away.
“I thought you wanted to make art,” Andy mumbled, his head dropping back, his throat bared.
“Aren’t we?” Leonidas nibbled the thin skin on the front of Andy’s throat, but forced himself to the foot of the bed. “But you’re right.”
He stood up and held out his hand for Andy, and he took it, standing and straightening to his full height. Andy was handsome, with his bleached hair and sun-kissed skin. He was shorter than Leonidas by a few inches, but in his posture and his silence, he commanded respect. Even though Andy had been receptive to all of his advances, Andy’s words during the thunderstorm echoed in his ears.
Ask first.
May I.
Open my pants. Take out my cock.
Leonidas took a deep breath and detoured them through the kitchen where he grabbed the half drank bottle of merlot by the neck. He needed a blurry mind to keep from losing himself completely. It was a wild night, a wild thought, that maybe here he could…
He could fall…
No.
“Are you ready?” he asked, tugging Andy out of the apartment and onto the landing.
“I don’t know,” Andy said and it sounded so honest and true. “Is Alain still downstairs?”
“He leaves at dusk.”
They made it downstairs and Leonidas turned down the hallway that led to the studio. The door was unlocked, because Alain never locked anything, and Leonidas pushed the door open and stepped aside to let Andy in. The space was dark, and Leonidas flicked a switch, casting the room in a dim glow from a single bulb that barely lit the space.
There were more lights of course, it was, after all, an art studio, but Leonidas liked seeing Andy in the haze of twilight. He liked the liberties that people felt comfortable to take in the dark.
“Do you like to work with your hands?” Leonidas asked, gesturing toward the corner set up with the pottery wheel and the racks set up for drying bowls and vases.
“I haven’t.”
Leonidas held out his hand, palm up and Andy mirrored him, putting the top of his hand in Leonidas’s palm and displaying his own. Leonidas traced his fingertips over the lines of Andy’s smooth palm and down the bumps of the heel of his hand to his fingertips. He worked the robust piece of Andy’s palm near his thumb between his fingers. Andy’s jaw tightened, and he watched Leonidas’s face, not his hands.
Leonidas knew the look. Even if he’d never seen it before, inherently, he could feel the intent of what Andy silently told him. He made a quick fist of his hand and took a step backward.
“Do I overstep?”
“Often,” Andy answered.
“Do you mind?”
Andy tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. “Not as much as I should.”
“Should I stop?”
“You should ask.”
“I like to touch you,” Leonidas said, turning away from Andy and leaning over to flick the power switch on the pottery wheel. “I don’t like to ask for the things I like.”
Andy didn’t answer him with words, but his face spoke volumes.
