Page 47 of Power of the Mind

11

Diem

Irealized my mistake before we rounded the second-floor landing and aimed for the third. Tallus walked ahead, seemingly impervious to the heat, while I considered the fact that I didn’t have a shower in my apartment and had been baking in a fucking wool suit for the past couple of hours.

Tallus waited as I unlocked the door. Refreshing and recirculated icy air hit me in the face the instant I entered the room, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Of all the things that didn’t work or were falling apart in my office slash homestead, the air conditioning unit was not one of them.

My head cleared as I followed Tallus into the other room. He bypassed Baby’s aquarium, checking to see where she was—in her log—and aimed for the loveseat. He didn’t sit. He flopped across the entire thing, kicking his shoes off and shucking his tie like he belonged there. Next, he undid a few buttons at his collar before reaching for the remote and turning on the TV.

When I stalled in the middle of the room, he hitched his chin to the partitioned-off area I used for a bedroom. “Go change. I thought you were cooked.”

I had been steeled for an attack, for Tallus to insist on undressing me like he’d threatened more than a few times while we were out, but his attention returned to the TV as he flipped through channels.

Only when I was sure he was preoccupied and didn’t have an ulterior motive did I move my ass, find fresh clothes, and escape to the bathroom adjoining the office.

Naked, breathing easier for the first time since I’d put on the fucking suit, I stared at my reflection in the mirror. It was impossible not to notice the lifetime’s worth of damage. My body was a canvas of scars, some self-inflicted, most done by another person. Tallus had seen many of them but never all at once. The worst of the injuries, or the ones I was particularly ashamed of, were covered with tattoos, but they were still visible.

I wet a washcloth with cold water and doused it with soap, using it to clean up as much as possible, cursing my living conditions and life. The hottest guy on the planet was in the other room, expectingsomethingfrom me, and I was taking a fucking sponge bath in my bathroom sink.

When I’d spent an inordinate amount of time getting clean, when my skin was red from scrubbing, I dried off and added deodorant. In a clean T-shirt and cargo shorts, I examined the man in the mirror again, but I didn’t like what I saw.

I never did.

Returning to the other room, I found Tallus exactly how I left him, except his shirt, socks, and belt were now missing. Lounging across the loveseat in nothing more than a thin tank top undershirt and cotton trousers, he watched a sitcom like it was normal to be at my house for nothing more than entertainment. Like I wasn’t having heart palpitations at thethought of where the night was heading. Craving a drink. A smoke.

When he noticed me, he moved his feet and motioned for me to join him.

I sat, tentative and unsure, since the loveseat was a cramped version of a couch, and Tallus was taking up more than half of it. When my ass was planted in the far corner, he once again stretched his legs and rested his feet across my lap like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like we’d done it a thousand times in the past.

Like we were a couple doing coupley things.

I was trapped. Mentally and physically.

Tallus focused on the show, so I didn’t think he registered my discomfort. If he did, he was going out of his way to feign obliviousness. Tense, frozen in place, and unsure what to do with my hands, I waited for Tallus to advance, to take things to the next level. It was a matter of time. It was why he’d come upstairs. Wasn’t it? The situation was not in my control, and I didn’t like it. I was used to drunken midnight visits to his house, not this.

Tallus didn’t move. He barely acknowledged my presence or distress. It was an act. It had to be.

I waited.

But no. Tallus lounged on the loveseat and watched TV with his feet pinning me down like a restraining bar on a roller coaster. Every so often, he would laugh at the comedic antics, his face lighting up the room and stealing the oxygen.

He had a great laugh. A beautiful laugh. It made me queasy with envy every time I heard it, knowing he freely shared it with random men—Memphis—all the time.

Still, I waited, but nothing happened. I earned a few Tallus smiles I didn’t know what to do with, but he never took it further.

Fifteen minutes and a commercial break later, I decided he wasn’t going to initiate anything and was content to watch TV. I relaxed a fraction, doing my best to appear engaged in the show when I had no idea what was happening.

Tallus’s feet in my lap were distracting. Pale skin. Long toes. Manicured nails. A faint smattering of dark leg hair peeking out from the cuffs of his pants, circling his ankles. I’d never been so close to his feet or paid attention to such a trivial part of his body before, but I couldn’t stop admiring them. He had a tiny freckle on the third toe of his left foot and another on the inside ankle bone of his right.

My gaze skipped up his long legs, over the formfitting pants, and lingered a second on the slight mound beneath the zipper. With his belt gone, the waistline had shifted lower, and his hip bones protruded. A tease of skin peeked out from the bottom of his shirt. The tank top pulled tight over his flat stomach and covered the miles of smooth chest I’d seen a handful of times. With his arms folded behind his head, the groomed hair in his pits showed, a dark contrast to his milky skin. It drew my eye and stirred my imagination.

In porn, men often shoved their faces in the other guy’s pits and inhaled. I’d never understood how it could be sexy until this very moment. The impulse to do exactly that, inhale all that was Tallus, was so strong and virile that it stirred my blood and tingled my groin.

I had to fight the urge to squirm or adjust myself before it became a problem.

I shifted my attention to Tallus’s profile. His face was turned to the TV, high cheekbones prominent, shapely jaw like a razor’s edge, dusted with a shadow of stubble. His perfectly mussed auburn hair over a broad forehead and sharp nose always gave the impression he’d just been fucked.

While I was lost in thought, replaying snippets of our history, Tallus snuck his foot under my T-shirt and grazed his big toe against my abdomen. I startled from my daze and sucked in a breath. Tallus was no longer riveted by the TV. Alluring hazel pools were aimed in my direction, full of mirth and mischief as only Tallus could pull off.

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