Chapter 5 #2
“He didn’t mean it like that, sir.” Elias throws an arm around my shoulders, making eye contact with Hollows. “Right?”
Hollows. “Right! I misspoke. I thought you had said January. Of course, we can do March!”
Elias smirks, leaning down to my ear.
“Can we leave yet, master?” Elias says, making me almost forget what we were even talking about.
He doesn’t look embarrassed; he looks conspiratorial and insolent. The posture is absurdly intimate and exactly the kind of provocation he knows will unsettle me.
A dozen eyes flick to me. My men—those not present—would have a stroke of decorum if they saw this. But the other bosses are human: flush with curiosity, shading glances with agendas already forming.
My first instinct is to be a man who apologizes, who restores the order the world expects.
But something in me that surprised me before rises again: pleasure.
He is challenging me, not in an act of submission but in a public, insufferable claim on my space.
It is both audacious and brave. It’s also exactly the disruption I want.
I keep my face calm. My hands move like a conductor reading a score, guiding the room back to the business at hand. I wrap an arm around Elia’s waist without ceremony—not to be tender, not yet—but because I will not be undermined. I move him closer to me so I can see my paperwork in front of me.
The move is both possession and protection. The contact there against my side grounds me. He tilts his head, eyes bright, and presses his weight in a way that’s equal parts need and provocation.
“Behave,” I say, in a dry, steady tone that flows into the room like oil into fire.
It is not a threat so much as a bargain. The other men hear it and shift.
Elias hums softly, smug. He leans forward with perfect insolence and rests a piece of his palm against the stack of documents between the opposing men and me, a small gesture that reads as a claim. He shifts his tight ass against my cock.
My fingers dig into his waist. “Proceed,” I say.
Hallows clears his throat, irritated and disconcerted, but the thread of the meeting continues, as if we have decided on an entente by the presence of his brazen disregard.
I finish the meeting the way I always do: precise, unflinching, and I leave no loose threads. Men filed out, hands shook, contracts nodded, grudges recognized. Through it all, I feel Elias in my lap like a weight that’s both inconvenient and necessary.
When the last man leaves, when the room empties and the door clicks behind the last expectation, I allow myself a brief exhale.
He stares at me with that look of someone who’s delighted he managed to poke the sleeping bear.
“That was fun,” he says, voice low, pleased with himself. “You looked very…unruffled. Impressive.”
“Impressive?” I echo. I let the word be both a compliment and an edge. “You’re insolent.”
He pouts theatrically. “I was tired,” he says again, with a smugness that is both childish and delicious. “I sat down.”
“When there was a chair against the wall?” I add, because the truth of it is the only truth that matters when it comes to this house. “You enjoy seeing me lose the thread.”
“You enjoy being ruffled,” he counters. His smile is small and private, triumphant. “Or at least your cock does.”
It’s true. I do. I don’t like admitting joys to myself; they look like weaknesses in the glass.
But the way he works at me—bratty, unashamed, bold in a way that gets under my skin—warms the colder rooms in my house, lights small, inconvenient candles.
I realize it as if a man noting a stain on a shirt: there it is, impossible to ignore.
“Get up,” I say finally, an order that tastes like propriety. His expression falters for the briefest second, something like disappointment sharpening his features, then he moves, skirts from my lap with the practiced skill of an athlete and the affected grace of an actor taking a bow.
We walk out together in a silence that is not uncomfortable.
The path back through the mansion is familiar, but the dynamics are changed by the small, intimate transgression.
I sense today will make stories in people’s heads—a Moretti son sitting like a spoiled prince on the Romano’s lap.
It’s a tableau that will be gossiped over, analyzed, and used.
I don’t much care. The game is more private than that now.
Later, in my study, I let the thought sit where it will.
I study the ledger, the contracts, the black lines of accounts, but my mind keeps returning to the small rebellions of the man resting upstairs.
I had intended to control him, to use him as a device in a larger campaign of reputation.
Instead, he has become something else—a test, a constant, an irritant that teaches me new ways to feel.
There is a warmth in my chest that has nothing to do with fire.
I file it under amusements and keep it close.
The notion that I might want a distraction in the house is a dangerous one; distractions lead to errors.
Errors have a habit of being fatal in this life. Still, I am not sure I care quite yet.
I let it sit. I let it marinate into a private plan to test him more, not to break him but to see how far he will go, how soft he will become under pressure, and if the softening will be a mercy or a weapon.
I intend to keep him close. I intend to see what happens when a man like me—careful and cold and ordered—decides that a boyish insolence is worth the trouble of ownership.
For now, I roll the day back in my head and savor the small, infuriating stings: the kiss, his ass, his smug little victories.
In the quiet of my office, with the papers spread like maps and the night shut out by glass, I let the new plan take shape.
He will be useful. He will be entertained.
He will be disciplined. He will be rewarded if he behaves.
And perhaps, I think with a small, private smile, he will teach me how to be amused again.