HOW I FELT

CHAPTER 13– HOW I FELT

Aaron’s POV

I watched him scramble for that notebook and genuinely had to take a second.

A notebook. He pulled out an actual notebook.

I let him get the pen moving, let him bend his head over it like whatever I’d just said was scripture worth preserving—and then I laughed. Loud enough to cut. Sharp enough to sting.

Then I crossed the room and took it right out of his hands.

The tear was nothing. A thick notebook, two hands, one pull. I barely registered the resistance before it gave, and I tossed both halves without looking at where they landed. Pages scattered everywhere. I watched Leon’s face do that thing—that frozen, short-circuited blankness where his brain was trying to catch up with what his eyes had just seen.

I liked that look on him. I wasn’t going to think too hard about why.

“Lesson two. Being a nerd is not attractive. At all.”

He came back fast, I’ll give him that. The irritation hit his eyes before the words even left his mouth. “So what should I do? Tell me, expert. What does Damian like?”

I studied him.

He was flushed already—just from being laughed at, just from having his notebook ripped in half—and he was standing there trying to weaponize it, trying to turn embarrassment into attitude. The aggression was all surface. Underneath it was something needier, something that had walked into this room with Damian’s name in its mouth but was already forgetting to say it as often.

I shifted on the desk. Let my legs spread a little. Watched his eyes track the movement before he caught himself.

“Come here.”

He came.

I knew he would. That was the thing I’d already figured out about Leon—the mouth runs hot and the feet move forward anyway. He talks like he’s deciding. He’s already decided. The talking is just how he processes the decision he’s already made in his body.

“Sit on my lap.”

The breath he pulled in was sharp enough that I heard it. His eyes cut to the door—quick, instinctive—and I could see the whole calculation happening in real time. Someone could walk in. This is weird. I shouldn’t.

“Do you want to learn or not? Or are you just wasting my time, Leon?”

And there it went. All that deliberating, dissolved. Because the one thing Leon couldn’t stand was the suggestion that he was the one failing here.

He sat down.

The weight of him settled onto my thighs and I kept my face exactly where I wanted it—neutral, mildly entertained—while my hands found his hips on autopilot. His warmth bled through immediately, this immediate, specific heat that I catalogued and set aside in the mental folder labeled not relevant.

I was already opening that folder again two seconds later.

“Nope. Face me. Properly.”

He started to protest and I just guided him, thumbs pressing into the jut of his hips, turning him until he swung one leg over and we were chest to chest, his face inches from mine, his thighs bracketing me on either side.

I took one slow breath.

Okay, I thought. Fine.

He was trying so hard to look unbothered. 

The flush on his neck betrayed him completely—pink crawling up toward his jaw, his ears, the tips of his cheekbones—and he was holding eye contact like it was a fight he could win if he just refused to blink.

I liked that too. Probably more than I should have.

“Good,” I said, and let my thumbs settle into his thighs, just enough pressure to remind him I was holding him here, that he was staying because I was letting him stay. 

“Now, I need you to give me a lap dance.”

“Hell no—”

He moved to stand and I tightened my grip without thinking. Held him down. He went still instantly, and the sound he made—this short, cut-off thing that wasn’t quite a gasp—did something to my pulse that I immediately overruled.

I laughed, low. “Running already? Where’s that bold little rebel from earlier?”

“You’re enjoying this way too much,” he snapped. Still glaring. Still flushed. Still completely, stubbornly on my lap. “This isn’t some game for me.”

“Isn’t it?” I tilted my head. “You came to me, remember? Begged for help. Now you’re squirming on my lap like you hate it… but you’re not actually leaving. Interesting.”

I watched the comeback die in his throat.

That was the moment I felt it properly—that particular satisfaction that comes from watching someone’s resistance crumble in real time, not dramatically, not all at once, but in increments. A word at a time. An inch at a time.

“You want to know what Damian likes, right?” I kept my voice easy, conversational, like we were discussing something completely ordinary. “Well, this is it. How you move. How you submit without looking weak. Think you can handle that, or are you all talk?”

He stared at me for a long moment. 

Something moved behind his eyes—too many things, honestly, cycling through faster than he could manage.

And then he started moving.

I was not prepared for that.

I’d expected hesitation. Stiff, self-conscious motion, the kind that needed coaching and correction. What I got was Leon rolling his hips in this slow, careful rhythm, grinding down in deliberate circles, and I felt every single shift of it with a clarity that hit me somewhere below strategy.

My hands tightened on his thighs.

I held my expression in place through what I can only describe as significant personal effort.

“Slower,” I said, and heard the roughness in my own voice before I could smooth it out. I pressed on anyway. “Own it. Make me feel like you’re desperate to please.”

He rolled deeper. His jaw was set, eyes locked on mine, furious and focused in equal measure, and I tracked every micro-expression crossing his face the way you track something you can’t look away from. The flush on his cheeks had spread. His breathing had changed—I could feel it, the way his chest rose differently now, shorter, less controlled.

Mine wasn’t exactly steady either.

This is fine, I told myself. This is an exercise in observation.

I was observing the hell out of it.

He leaned in—not on purpose, I don’t think, just his body forgetting to maintain distance—and our faces were close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off his skin. He didn’t pull back. Too stubborn. He held the proximity like a dare, chin slightly lifted, eyes saying I know what you’re doing and it’s not working.

It was working on me a little bit.

“I’m doing this for him, not you,” he said. Breathless enough to ruin the delivery. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

I pulled him flush against me. One second. I felt his sharp exhale against my jaw, felt the way his whole body stuttered before he caught himself and went rigid with the effort of not reacting.

“Keep telling yourself that,” I murmured. 

“Your body’s saying something else entirely.”

I meant it to land as a deflection. 

Something to put the focus back on him, back on the flush and the unsteady breathing and everything Leon was desperately trying to manage. Not on the fact that my thumb had been tracing a slow, absent circle on his waist for God knows how long. Not on the fact that I had completely stopped thinking about Damian. Not on the fact that some part of me—a part I was actively refusing to acknowledge—didn’t particularly want this lesson to end.

I stilled my thumb.

We didn’t speak. The desk creaked faintly under us. I was very aware of his weight, his warmth, the way his thighs had relaxed almost imperceptibly against mine somewhere in the last few minutes without either of us deciding that was happening.

This is for his education, I thought. Purely instructional.

Then the footsteps hit—sharp, close, echoing down the hallway—and we both froze at the exact same moment.

My hands were still on his waist.

I noticed that a full second too late.