TORTURE ME_ The Bandits MC(111)

“Let me ask you this,” he started. “What about guys?”



I groaned. “What about them?” There weren’t many guys. In fact, what I had thought of as desire in the past was probably just sheer physical need. I felt like with Gage, I was finally starting to understand was true desire was. If what I felt for him was how it felt to want someone, then I hadn’t wanted anyone else in my entire life.



“How does it work when you have guys over?” he asked.



“I don’t,” I answered quietly, turning away and looking out the window at the nighttime cityscape passing us by.



“I’m sorry?”



“I said I don’t usually have guys over.”



“When was the last time you had a guy over at your apartment?”



“Tonight,” I said with a smile, teasing him.



“Before tonight.”



I looked back out the window and didn’t say anything.



He didn’t pursue it any further.



Soon, we pulled into the parking deck behind his apartment building. It was a tall glass building. It didn’t look like apartments at all from the outside. From the outside, it looked like a tall office building, but as we entered through the parking deck, it quickly became obvious that the outward facing windows were all apartments.



We took the elevator up to his floor. As he unlocked and opened his door, I was floored by the exquisite beauty of his view of the city. When we walked in, he flipped a light switch by the door and the apartment was filled with atmospheric accent lighting along the walls, the bar in his kitchen, the fountain where I would have expected there to be a fireplace, and along the floor in the hallway leading to his bedroom.



Outside, against the backdrop of the beautiful night sky, the city was lit up like so many stars. I hurried to the window and stared out into the night. “It’s so beautiful,” I told him. “So, so beautiful.”



I stood like a child in a candy store, looking back and forth, trying to take in everything I could possibly see. I could see the headlights and taillights of cars speeding along the streets below us. I could see traffic lights, streetlights, and the lights in all the windows of every building downtown.



“Do you ever get dizzy standing here?” I asked him.



He chuckled behind me. “No. Honestly, I don’t really pay it much attention. Like yourself, I’m usually working and not giving myself time for things like the view from my apartment.”



I turned to face him, and he towered over me, an intimidating, looming figure carved in stone. I wanted to touch him, but he seemed so unapproachable in that moment, as if he had somehow been removed from the scene.



His apartment was not at all what I expected. I would have expected someone as rough around the edges as Gage to live in a place more like mine—small, old, cramped, and cluttered. I hadn’t pegged him for the kind of guy who would have smooth immaculate wooden floors, tall ceilings, mostly bare walls, and a wall of glass overlooking downtown. I expected posters for old rock bands, his favorite movies, girls in bikinis, that sort of thing. I walked around in a dreamy daze, looking at how every surface in his apartment was completely spotless. It was rather impressive indeed, and it just made me want him more.



“So, were you serious about the bed and the couch?” I asked him at end of my impromptu self-guided tour of his apartment.



“Absolutely,” he said, putting his hand on the small of my back again and leading me down the hallway to his bedroom. “Step right this way and I will show you the amazingly comfortable king-size bed I’m offering you for the duration of your stay with me.



He pushed the door to his room open, and the lights were already on around the top of his king-size canopy bed. The four posts around the bed were like wooden columns carved out for the temple of some Greek god or goddess. Sheer curtains were gathered at the posts, hanging from the railing at the top of the canopy.



This is where you’ll be sleeping,” he said, stepping over to the bed and putting his hand down on the mattress. “Here, have a seat.”



I sat down on the bed, and the mattress welcomed me like an old lover wrapping their arms around me for the first time in many years. I lay back and sank into the bed. “Oh my God, it’s perfect,” I told him. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m never leaving this spot. You’ll just have to sleep around me whenever you want to sleep in your bed.” As the words came out, it occurred to me how they might have come across as teasing or tempting, but I didn’t care. Part of me wanted to tempt him.