Ibis by Leviathan Laroche (best summer books TXT) 📖

offensive term—such a slut.

"Your friends? You blow them?"

"Hell yeah. I love it."

"But why? I mean, I'd get if it was sex. But what do you get out of blowing a guy?"

I saw her usually calm, serene eyes light up with a true passion within as she leaned forward. "What do I get out of it? Duuuuude..." She grasped for words as her eyes wandered around the room, clearly searching for a way to put into terms a notion too big for terms. "I don't even know if I could explain it to you. Well, here's the thing, I'm into the whole submission and handcuffs thing. You know, I like being put in my place."

Now it was starting to make sense. Personally, I've always been the most typical, vanilla kind of guy. Never was interested in that whole Fifty Shades business, but I knew there were people out there who were into it, and who was I to judge? Turns out Zoe was one of them, but to my surprise, she was on the submissive side of the spectrum.

"I'm surprised, to be honest," I said. "I would have placed my bet on dominatrix."

She laughed. "Me? No way, never. I know; it's not the vibe I give off if you look at me in everyday life. But man..." She sighed and looked at the window like in a cheesy movie. "I'm completely different when it comes to sex. I want men to take charge of me."

"That's why you like sucking?"

"Bingo. I'm on my knees, there's a hard cock in my mouth—you get the point. Dude, I NEED to feel submissive. That's why I suck my friends when I'm not in a relationship; no way I'm waiting months until I hopefully find a boyfriend. I need to feel submissive on a regular basis."

She was smiling completely, something I had never seen her do before. "You like the fetish that much?"

"It's so much more than a fetish, dude. I... I deal with a lot of stress. Anxiety too. There's my job, and there's the rent, and my parents need help with the mortgage... Being submissive helps with the stress. It feels good to give up control whenever I can."

"Then call your friends," I chuckled. "Go hang out with them."

"They're in the same city as my boyfriend."

She sighed with much sorrow. The poor girl had been forced to move here for her job, thereby separating herself from what was effectively her therapy. And on top of that, she had anxiety and stress building up within her. I did feel bad for her, but I had left my computer for 5 minutes by now, and the clock was ticking.

I rose and apologized, explaining the situation I was in. Thankfully, she understood, and I went back to writing that goddamn article. I had an hour and a half left, and I was only one paragraph in. I needed to type as fast as I could.

Still, the words appeared slowly on the screen. I couldn't focus. A short moment of prolific writing came, but I lost focus of it when my cellphone fell below my desk and I had to pick it up. God dammit, it was hard. I just needed to write three simple parts: an introduction to the fashion designer, his biography, and his style and workflow. So why was it so hard to write? Well, I knew why.

I just couldn't keep Zoe out of my mind. What she had told me was so... not strange, that word sounds too negative. Unique, yes, that's a better term. Her sexual lifestyle was something I had never heard of before. Not being sexually submissive; that's about the most common fetish you can find; I'm talking about her willingness to suck off platonic friends. No, not willingness, I chose the wrong word again.

Desire. Actual desire, rather than willingness. What she had described wasn't her complying to her male friends' desire of being sucked—it was HER actively seeking to do it in order to find some escape from life's anxieties through submission. Zoe was basically just a promiscuous version of a BDSM sub, not shocking or anything, but... Still, it's unusual to hear of a girl partaking in BDSM dynamics with platonic male friends. It's stranger still to barely know your roommate, and then have a conversation that reveals such intimate parts of them. The journalist part of me was absolutely fascinated—I loved interviewing people and learning about them, after all.

The simple straight guy part of me was fascinated too, for an entirely different reason. I mean, here's Zoe, a cute girl with beautifully plump lips, and now that I know what she does with them, I'm supposed to not constantly think about it? I just couldn't keep the image of a penis in her mouth out of my mind. Or would it be penises? She said she will blow her male friends, but did she mean many of them in one session, or separately, how did that work?

"Fucking focus", I told myself. I tried, but how could I? Plus, I was hard now, not that I could control it. You have to understand, I studied Finances and then Journalism, my entourage was always made up of typical, standard people living standard lives. Kylie had studied photography, and so she knew more artistic people with more broad-minded views, but these anecdotes of more eccentric behavior had only made their way to me as that: mere anecdotes.

Now I realized I was living with someone pretty wild, which was unusual for me. And honestly, just by looking at Zoe, you could never picture a wild soul from someone so calm and collected—certainly not a submissive wildness. "Focus, focus." The intro was done and I could now start the biography part. I looked at the hour on the screen. 8 PM. I had an hour left. "Fuck." In an hour, I had only managed to write the short introductory paragraph—barely a fifth of the entire article. I needed to speed it up.

"What's the article about?"

I noticed Zoe was standing right next to me. "Some fashion designer in the city." I quickly turned back to the screen, hoping she would go right after, but instead, she stayed.

"So you interview people and then you write an article?"

"Yep." I really tried finding the right balance between cold and stern with that yep. I did NOT have time to chat.

"And the photos in the article? Kylie takes them?"

"When she can."

"So sometimes you take photos yourself?"

"Yup."

"That's a pretty cool job, not my type but—"

"Zoe..." I cut her off and turned to her. "I really don't mean to be rude," I said, as politely as I could. "But I have an hour to write this and I haven't made it very far. I really can't chat right now."

She instantly blushed and nodded, you would never have believed it was strong, cold Zoe standing there. "You're right I'm so sorry. I'll let you get back to work."

She left with a speed uncharacteristic of her. Seems like despite her confident attitude, she was still not immune to embarrassment and awkwardness. I did feel bad, though I will admit there was something quite adorable in seeing such a usually collected person exhibit embarrassment.

"OK, focus now." My eyes returned to the screen and my fingers returned to the keyboard. I typed out his birth year, his childhood, how it influenced his art, etc, etc. Faster, I needed to go faster. Now there were fifty-five minutes left, and the dire nature of my situation was dawning on me faster than I could churn out words. If I did not deliver the article in time, my boss would NOT be happy, he had made that very clear during the phone call.

"Jake?" There she was again, standing next to me. She was fiddling with her fingers uneasily. "It's gonna sound stupid but... Can I sit next to you? I won't talk, promise, I'll just wanna look at what you write. I don't wanna be alone right now."

I was a slightly taken aback by the vulnerability she was expressing, but I couldn't refuse such an innocent request. I told her to come over, and she dragged a chair from the living room and sat right next to me, giving me an adorable smile as a "thank you." I kept on writing despite the unusual feeling of having Zoe next to me. We were nothing more than acquaintances, but if sitting next to me could give her a bit of solace, then so be it.

My fingers traveled across the keyboard as I typed on and on. "...believes in authenticity in style...the clothing is the expression of the soul... fashion is a cultural movement..." The words came pouring out of my fingers and onto the screen. Strangely, I was able to focus better with Zoe next to me, probably because I didn't want to think of her sucking cock when her leg was almost touching mine. Not that she would ever be able to see my boner anyway, seeing as the desk completely extended over to my belly, hiding my lower body. Still, it would have been too awkward to have a boner thinking of a roommate you barely knew—one who stood right next to you.

The minutes went on with Zoe silently looking at the screen. It was funny to have an audience witnessing your writing coming to birth—I would write a phrase, then delete it and replace it by a better one, and I could hear an approving chuckle to my left.

Apart from that, there was no sound, and the total silence of the apartment allowed me to sharpen my focus. There was the thunder and the heavy rain outside, but that was more of a relaxing white noise, like the ten-hour videos people open on YouTube. The writing was speeding up, and it was going well, very well.

From time to time, I noticed Zoe looking at me. I didn't reciprocate the gaze, as I had seen her do that often with me and Kylie. She didn't talk much and usually preferred to stay in the corner of a conversation. Her intelligent, thinking eyes would squint under her frown and dissect you from afar—I guess she liked analyzing people.

I payed her no mind and kept on writing, though it did prove slightly distracting after a while to have her cold eyes probing me. She would look away, but every minute or so, her eyes would come back and linger on my face for a while.

Then, I heard a sigh. Confused, I watched as Zoe rose and walked to the kitchen. Keep in mind, the kitchen is not separated by a wall, so I could very much see her from the corner of my eye. She walked around the counter in the middle of the kitchen, going around it at least five times before leaning against it with her back to me. I really tried to focus on what I was doing, but even with her back to me, I could sense a storm brewing within her. She looked... Damn, she looked genuinely bothered by something.

"Her boyfriend left her," I told myself, "it's normal." Still, I could not help but look at her fiddling with her fingers. When she stopped leaning against the counter, her face was visible to me again, and gone was the assured, cold, calculating Zoe that was the norm; now her frown was that of a confused person lost in a sea of doubt. Something was off, I could definitely tell.

Zoe threw a quick glance at me, then looked away. She kept on pacing back and forth with an uncertain gait, chewing her lips and fiddling nervously with her dark hair. Finally, after a minute or two of this inexplicable behavior, she walked over to me.

Confused, I looked at her, not knowing why she was facing me awkwardly without saying a word. "Hey, Jake, uh..." Her usually confident eyes had to look away from mine, and she quickly sighed. "I'm sorry, it's nothing."

She walked back