Chapter 4 #2
“No, I’m not firing you. Hopefully, no one will know.
If IT or HR shows up with questions, then I’m going to pretend I have no idea what they’re talking about.
If they ask you to go see them, tell me.
I’ll go with you. They’ll leave you alone if I’m there.
We’ll get past this, and we’ll pretend it never happened.
Go back to how it was before,” he says, and realizes he’s been making too many sharp hand gestures.
“Right. Wow. Thank you. I wasn’t sure how you’d react. You were so angry yesterday.” The boy’s shoulders slump, so disappointed in himself that Bryan doesn’t want to add to it.
Bryan leans back in his chair. “I was… surprised,” he lies. Admitting that he was angry would give the wrong impression. “I don’t like disorder and problems. You having proclivities outside of the office is your business. So long as it doesn’t interfere with work, it’s irrelevant.”
“Proclivities?” Samuel repeats, gaze narrowing.
Okay, that was definitely a poor word choice. And he did sound stuffy as hell.
“Look, I just figured out my brother and his wife are swingers and will never look at a pineapple the same way again. My perfect assistant, who I value immensely because you always stay as late as I do, and you make me look like a genius, is looking for a relationship. Which means your time will be divided. It will be exciting for you. My disappointment is misplaced, and I apologize. I should not have used that word.”
The silence is lengthy.
“Wow. I didn’t expect that, either,” Samuel says. His eyes are wide.
Bryan looks away from him. The problem with knowing that Samuel likes men is that now he’s thinking about it. And he knows that Samuel considers himself a power bottom.
Bryan googled it at two in the morning.
He has even more questions now. Questions he cannot ask, or else he’ll be written up for sexual harassment.
This sweet, competent, attractive young man considers himself to be a boy in the bedroom. He wants a Daddy. He wants to be Daddy’s ‘hole’ and get praised. He wants to be sore and he wants to cry and be comforted while sitting on Daddy’s cock.
Remembering what Samuel wrote while the young man sits across from him is awful. There’s a bizarre sensation in his stomach like a thousand angry butterflies have just crashed into his guts.
A wide range of activities and behaviors fall under the umbrella of Daddy and boy in the gay community.
Which, again, isn’t something he knew before 2 am.
“This isn’t any of my business, but I promised Wendy I would check in with you regarding your potential sexual partner.”
“My… oh?” He asks and crosses his legs. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth briefly and then sits up straight. His bottom lip glistens. Has Samuel always had these mannerisms? Does he mean to convey the idea that he is sexually eager and available?
Bryan is uncomfortably hard in his pants, and he can say with complete honesty that this isn’t a problem he’s ever had before. To be aroused at work is ridiculous.
“I think the power dynamic is too unequal at work,” Bryan says, wanting the conversation to end.
He needs to relieve his arousal, and then he can talk with Samuel about this.
“I’d hate for you to think you have to answer questions you don’t want to.
If you’re willing to go for a drink after work to discuss it, then I will make myself available.
Not a drink, dinner,” he corrects, because that would be even more inappropriate.
“We can discuss it, and I can reassure Wendy that you will be safe. Then we can go back to how things were before all this.”
Bryan realizes he’s sweating. Again. He’s nervous and can barely look Samuel in the face this feels so wrong. Is it embarrassment he feels? And he hates how formal and pedantic he sounds. Why does he sound like a god damn robot?
“Power dynamic?” Samuel repeats. He enunciates it in such a way that Bryan knows his young employee has an opinion about the words, but he doesn’t know what the opinion might be.
“Yes. I’m your boss. You might feel like you have to tell me things you don’t want to.” Bryan is definitely feeling embarrassed. Plus the arousal. It isn’t a nice combination.
“So… you want to go to dinner, and we’ll talk about my being a… power bottom?”
Bryan tries not to flinch. “Among other things.”
“What things?” Samuel asks. His voice is soft and his gaze is narrow. He isn’t sure what Samuel is thinking. His long lashes are chestnut in color. Fitting and somehow attractive.
“Daddy things.” Did those words just come out of his mouth? They don’t even make sense! “The things you discussed in the email.”
Samuel swallows. He jerks his gaze to the window and shakes his head. “I have something to do right now. I should go—” he stands up and his hands clasp together in front of his groin.
“Samuel, sit. You can say if you don’t want to discuss any of this.”
Samuel sits. He leans forward and puts his head in his hands. He might be trembling.
The reality of what Bryan is suggesting sinks in. “I’m so sorry. This is completely inappropriate. I’m going to tell Wendy to leave it alone. Your personal life is not our concern. I’m trying to fix this, and I am making it worse.”
“No. Please, don’t,” he says, leaning forward in his chair. “Please. I like that she cares and wants me to be safe. And it is risky, at least a little. If you want to know, of course I’ll tell you.”
Bryan nods. This really isn’t a very good idea. And he shouldn’t ask any more questions now. They can discuss it after work. His heart is beating too fast. “To be clear, we both…care.”
Samuel’s lips twitch. “Did that hurt?”
“What?”
“The admission that you care about me?”
Bryan laughs sharply, happy to have the mood lightened even if it’s temporary. “There are many more painful things in the world. You are a good person and a good employee. I do value you, and I want you to be happy. And no, it doesn’t hurt to say that.”
Samuel blushes and looks down. “Thank you, Mr. Demarco.”
“You know you can call me Bryan.”
“I’m aware,” he says, still looking down. He runs his palm over his knee absently.
“Of course you are,” he says, voice oddly husky.
It used to be a topic of frequent conversation between them.
Bryan has asked Samuel to use his first name multiple times over the years, but Samuel has been resistant.
Maybe that’s part of being a boy? Perhaps he likes keeping Bryan elevated, maintaining a power differential.
He’ll never hear the boy call him that and think of it the same way again.
“Is it true you don’t know his real name?” The question slips out.
“I’ll get it before I go anywhere with him,” he mumbles, sounding ashamed.
Lack of sleep and the things Bryan looked at in the middle of the night are brimming in his mind, and he imagines making Samuel come over to him, imagines Samuel sitting on his lap to be chastised.
Then he imagines draping the boy over said lap and spanking some sense into him.
Would he still call Bryan Mr. Demarco? Would he be Sir? Could he be Daddy?
The thought shocks him and Bryan makes a sound, some odd grunting sound he tries to turn into a cough.
“Sir?” Samuel whispers.
Bryan shakes his head, wanting the idea to go away. “What do your friends think of him?”
Samuel doesn’t answer right away. “They don’t like it. They think I’m… settling.” He frowns. “They think I’m desperate.”
It’s such an earnest confession, and it pains Bryan to hear it. The boy isn’t desperate! Samuel is smart, attractive, and good company. He is a catch. He has to be!
“But they know him?”
“A little,” he says.
“I won’t tolerate lies.”
Samuel freezes in his seat. He looks up at Bryan from under his lashes, as if he can’t look at him head-on. “No one’s met him in person except me. But that’s not that unusual in the kink scene. Lots of people are only online and don’t want to go to public events.”
“That's also a good way for a bad actor to hide. Perhaps I should meet him. That would put Wendy and me at ease.”
Samuel gasps in horror. “You want to meet Lex?”
“Is that his name? It sounds only slightly more real than Ballbuster69.”
“That’s what Wendy said. I suppose his name really could be Mr. Ballbuster,” Samuel says, and tries to laugh. “Lex Ballbuster.”
It’s funny enough that Bryan smiles.
Wait.
“You’d call him Sir?” Bryan asks. That makes him angry. It comes through in his tone. He’s never used such a tone with Samuel. He hates the idea of Samuel calling some sleazy man Sir as if he deserves respect.
“No, I… I would not. That’s— you are Sir. I wouldn’t,” he sounds apologetic. “And that’s not what I want. I want, well, you read it.”
Right. The boy wants a Daddy.
“And that’s what you’d call him? This stranger with a fake name would get that from you?” Why does that disgusting pervert get such an honorific? He hasn’t earned anything and doesn’t deserve devotion from someone as good as Samuel.
Samuel flinches. “I should get back to work, Sir.” Samuel crosses one leg over the other. He’s never seen the boy sit like that. And then he’s tugging at his pants, near his groin.
He’s hard.
He’s a young, naughty boy with an erection in his boss’s office. His Sir’s office. That hangs between them. It must. Bryan can feel it. His own cock is hard and throbbing in his pants.
It’s a loss of control, and it makes him angry. Being aroused at work isn’t something he’s dealt with. This isn’t Bryan’s problem. This is Samuel’s problem. He’s the one who made Bryan hard, he should take care of it.
Bryan shakes his head because that thought is deeply inappropriate. It was Samuel’s email and the things he read and saw in the night that made him think that.
“Can I go… Sir?”
He can feel the boy waiting, perched and expectant, as if Bryan has the power to release him, as if he controls Samuel physically and mentally. Like he’s some sort of god. As if he really is his Sir.
He is the most important man in Samuel’s life.
He knows that. Samuel doesn’t have any real family, and he’s been with Bryan for years.
His first real job. He knows how important he is to Samuel, and the truth is that he likes it that way.
He hates the idea of Samuel giving his respect and energy to some other man. A man who won’t even have earned it.
This man who’d be more than a Sir or Mr.
Daddy.
“We will leave here at five o'clock. No distractions and no outside emails or contact for the rest of the day. Do you understand?”
“Sir. Yes,” Samuel says, and blinks rapidly.
“You are here at work and your time and attention need to be with me,” he says the words slowly, with Samuel still watching him, wide-eyed and vulnerable. Bryan knows it isn’t appropriate to exercise his authority over Samuel like this but he can’t help it.
Samuel nods. He looks at Bryan in a way no one ever has. Not just right now but always. Neither his family nor his ex-wife nor anyone who has ever known him has looked at him with so much… love or want or whatever the hell it is. Willingness. That’s the word that comes to mind.
This is power. This is dangerous, and he must be careful with the young man before him.
Samuel is needy. Susceptible to harm. He cannot let this innocent boy be hurt.
Samuel could be easily taken advantage of, and he’s pretty.
What the boy needs is to know that someone cares about him. He needs to know what it feels like to have a man take care of him with actual feeling rather than sexual lust.
How can he let some awful man have Samuel?
“Yes, Sir.”
“You may go.”
Samuel leaps up, practically running to the door.
“Good boy,” he says. He doesn’t know why he says it. They’re oddly easy words to say.
But the effect on Samuel is profound.
He stumbles on his way to the door. Hurrying like he needs to escape.
“Samuel?”
“S-sir?” Samuel asks, pausing under the doorframe, as if he’s desperate to flee.
“Close the door on your way out.”
He does.
There’s no hope for it. Bryan unzips his pants, takes out his cock, and jerks off during the middle of the day, in his office, to thoughts of what it is Daddy’s do to boys so they know they’re important.