Emil stood still, unmoving as the stranger accepted the tumbler of whiskey with a graceful reach. Yet, those dark eyes never reached him, no matter how he craved for them to meet his. The man's gaze remained fixated forward, upon the woman bound, gagged, and thrusting herself backwards upon something so monstrous and silicone. Emil wondered, for several moments, whether it was the rope-work, the red hair or the entire scene that held this gentleman's attention. Perhaps he simply is not interested. The Devil within Emil would not stand to be unconsidered.
"Just fine?" Emil lifted his own tumbler, the crystal glinting in the low light as the rim was smeared over the pulp of his lower lip. Wet, it shimmered as Emil studied the profile of the gentleman's face. It was one that had the slender of Emil's fingers curling into a loose fist within the pocket of his satin pants, so very tempted and keen to reach between them and map the shape of the man's sharp jaw and broad nose. So very beautiful and, yet, so very different from what usually draws me.
The corner of Emil's mouth lifted in a smirk behind the rim, sip yet to be taken. "What a shame. I had hoped to impress you with the top shelf." That, in itself, was amusing. For while it was true, it was equally odd. Emil had never been a man who'd sought to impress another; who simply was just himself.
Only then did liquor wash over tongue, warming the back of a throat in a deep swallow. Smooth, it was, as it pooled within Emil's belly where something else had already begun to flutter. A weird thing. An odd little feeling. Emil wasn't sure the last time he had felt something such as this, or if he had ever.
Emil, a proud creature, was unabashed in his appreciative stare. The longer the gentleman looked away and to the stage, the more time Emil was granted to peruse the side of his beautiful face. Sculpted in shades of ebony, dark cocoa, and obsidian, the man before him should have absorbed the two-toned light of the space that blanketed them both. Yet, he didn't. It seemed to reflect from him—from the high points of his cheekbones, the deep of his brow bone, the broad of his nose—in shades that were not just crimson and cobalt, but opalescent. The colours danced across his skin, bathing him, but also reflecting something that seemed utterly intrinsic.
It was then, as Emil was running the rim of his tumbler across the pulp of his lower lip with a slight cock of his head in appreciative curiosity, that the gentleman finally cared to grant him the attention he, only now realised, was aching for. Those eyes… They were molten and warm, two things that had Emil fighting the urge to edge closer. The gentleman's reaction was not at all what Emil had anticipated, but he supposed that was fitting. None of this was as usual, or regular, and that was precisely what Emil had been encouraged to chase.
A laugh nearly tumbled free of him as he watched that dark gaze sweep low over the bronze of his skin, bare within the deep V cut of his shirt, before rising to meet his own. The small smirk upon his lips reached his eyes, shimmering like diamonds and ice. "You say that as if you were not crafted by Venus, herself, signore." The man was so very honest, a trait that was rare.
A question posed, and perhaps it would have been easier to look away with his answer. Emil did not do so. He couldn't, and didn't wish to. The man before him was the only thing that captivated him now, worthy of his attention and then more. Instead, Emil held the man's gaze. "New to this Club, perhaps. To others, no. I have made a recent move to this city, but have long felt…disconnected from the demands of this lifestyle." The slow lower of arctic blue to the seam of thick lips. A linger of a look. A gentle rise of that same gaze to fall back into glittering, dark abyss. "Submission can be such a wondrous thing to evoke in another, but there comes a time when the chase for something more has one's usual seeming less."
The liquor within Emil's tumbler was long forgotten, posing only as something to stimulate the pad of his forefinger as it gently swept over the pattern within the crystal. It was held at chest height, swirled a little, and then dropped down by his thigh where the rim was clasped in his hand like a claw. Emil's glacial eyes glittered with something wicked as he said, "You understand, yes? That craving for something other?"
Rhetoric, that question was, but Emil let it hang between them in a comfortable silence. The gentleman had been slow to turn and grant Emil his attention, and the wickedness the Italian possessed had him turning some towards the stage. Let him yearn for it—my gaze—like he left me aching for his own. He let the scene before him hold his eyes, but he wasn't truly watching. Emil's attention remained within his peripheries, all too aware of the man at his side.
"The rope work," he said after another beat of silence, "is indeed creative, but I do not believe what you've said to be true. Artistry is in all, it merely requires inspiration." Turning his face to his shoulder, the muscles within his neck tensing with the hold of the angle, Emil's eyes fluttered first to the man's mouth and then up into those dark, tourmaline pools. When Emil spoke next, it was low and silken, an unspoken meaning held between his words. "Perhaps you are yet to find your muse."