The change in Leo is violent. He is focused and alive with every motion. Covering his face with protective gear, I study him as the machine he uses sings as he guides the metal, sparks flaring briefly like dying sparklers. For something so dangerous he looks so serene and elegant. Like he belongs. Like he is an extension of the metals he shapes.
This is who he is when no one is watching, and the jealousy hits me without warning. Not for the work he is creating, but for the version of him I do not own yet.
He leans closer to the sculpture, examining the curve of a welded joint, adjusting, correcting, reshaping. His hands are confident and exact, touching the metal the way most people touch lovers.
I feel something dark and feral stretch inside of me. He belongs here, and not in a mailroom, not inside a life that shrinks him to half the person he is.
He steps back, removing his face guard, assessing his work. That beautiful face is now covered in a sheen of sweat. So hot.
For the first time since I've known him,he smiles without restraint, a smile only reserved for here. I’m watching the only honest version of him that remains and I want to see more. Before I know it, I step closer, the sound of my shoe against concrete is barely audible.
He doesn’t turn as he’s too lost in what he is building. The sculpture is abstract, bones of something that might become wings or a spine rendered in metal. It leans forward, unfinished, and I’m eager to know what the end result will be.
He circles it slowly, touching it here, adjusting there, murmuring to himself too quietly for me to hear. He then steps back far enough that I can see his face fully. Sweat darkens his hair near his temples, and those beautiful eyes are bright. Unburdened. I've never seen him like this and it angers me that there is a version of him untouched by me. It feels like theft.
I retreat back to the corner, not wanting to be seen as this is his moment, and I just watch. I watch and learn more about him. Memorizing every single detail. I want to know what he is thinking. I want to know how fast his heart is beating. I want to know if his sweat tastes different here than the sweat from when he has been fucked within an inch of his life.
These are desires that I can get the answers to, because I decide I will give him a workshop. But not something hidden away, something vast and private, closer to the inner city, nearer to my home. After planning a checklist in my head of the steps I need to take to secure a unit, I see that he has stilled, his shoulders tense. For one moment, I think he has sensed me, but he quicklyrelaxes and returns to his work. He continues to sculpt with love and care, before it’s time for him to say goodbye. His reluctance to leave confirms that this is where he is meant to be. I watch as he tidies up his work area and leaves. I step forward only after the door closes behind him and look at the sculpture in more detail.
It’s rough and incomplete, but it’s his. Soon, everything will be his if that is his wish.
I turn away, already planning the architecture of his freedom, figuring out how to remove the last thread tying him to a life that does not deserve him. His wife.
CHAPTER 23 - LEO
Iknow I’m not alone. Just like I knew I wasn’t alone in the workshop.
It begins the way it always does, with an internal pressure. Not the sound of footsteps, but something subtler, like the air behind me has learned my name and taps me on the shoulder in warning. But I won’t call him out on it. Let him have this one thing for himself. To be honest I don’t mind it, there is something quite fulfilling about someone wanting to know everything about you, enough that they will follow you to learn more. Actually, that sounds wrong, doesn't it? I should be angry, I should feel like he has invaded my privacy, but I can’t summon that feeling.
As I walk home, the street is wet and smelly from the heavy downpour earlier. Neon bleeds from a laundromat window, staining the sidewalk a sickly blue. In the distance a train screams, the metal grinding into the dark. An orchestra of music that drowns out your thoughts.
I keep walking and don’t turn around, because I know Ethan is there. I can feel him all around me. It should scare me and make me want to run for the hills, but it doesn’t.
Deciding to play my own game with him, I increase my pace. I sense him the way animals sense storms, the way they sense a predator about to pounce. With no thought or care I cross the street without reason.
He crosses with me, and now his footsteps are audible. Cars pass by, horns blare in the distance, lights flicker across the street. For half a second I consider looking. I don’t.
Something intimate coils in my chest at the idea of meeting his eyes like this, out in the open, unprotected and vulnerable. I imagine the way he would look at me, demonic but calm, too wound up not to kiss me. To own me.
I swallow hard as my building appears ahead. I’m so close to home now, to victory. Or so I thought as two strong hands grab my shoulders and slam me into a wall just inside the entrance of a dark alley. My cock is so hard. This is the hottest foreplay I’ve ever experienced.
I look into his manic face. He thinks he’s won, but it was my game. I wanted this.
“You could sense me, couldn’t you?” he says as he presses me into the brick wall with his entire body. My hands grab onto his hips, trying to steady myself just as the first drops of rain start to fall.
“And now you dance to the beat of my drum, dickhead,” I say before I allow myself to kiss him like it wasthe first time. His hands grasp at my hair, tilting my head back so he can kiss me as deeply as possible. Our tongues massage together in long, languid movements. The rain mixes with our saliva, creating the most erotic sensation as our mouths battle for more. Slippery and wet. Intoxicating. Our hard dicks firmly press together through the fabric of our pants, needing contact more than ever. I can’t get enough. And I allow myself this moment to admit it.
I don’t know how long we kiss, but Ethan breaks away first and watches me, his eyes moving from my mouth to my face. He’s soaking wet from the rain just as I am. This is the most intimate moment we have shared, completely spontaneous and real, where I let myself want it. Want him.
“You taste good,” he says, low and deep in my ear before pushing away. After one final look, he leaves the alley and walks away into the night, leaving me in a state of horniness that only he can satiate. Maybe that wasn’t the best idea after all.
Leaving a trail of water in the corridor leading to my apartment, I open the door, desperate to get inside and dry off, but when I open the door, the light nearly blinds me. Sarah has every single light on in the apartment, making it painful to the eyes.
She sits at the small kitchen table, coat on, purse open beside her like she is getting ready to leave.Judging by the tapping foot on the leg of the table, she is pissed off. The noise of the tapping grates on my ears.
“You’re late,” she says, her voice sharp enough to cut metal.
“I texted you.”
