19. Henri
Chapter nineteen
Henri
T uesday had been Henri’s first day back on the executive floor. Quietly slipping into the office, breathing recycled air that smelled faintly of toner and lemon polish, letting muscle memory carry him from elevator to corner suite like he’d never left for London at all.
The day had been a masterclass in divided attention. Between quarterly projections and budget revisions, his phone had lit up with Marc’s demands:
Show me your desk. Now.
Hallway view.
Where’s your assistant?
Take a photo of your lunch.
Seventeen verification requests before noon, more than Marc usually demanded in an entire week. Each buzz had carved tension into his shoulders until he felt less like flesh and bone and more like something chiseled from stone.
Gabriel hadn’t been in. The door with his initials had stayed closed and dark, and the floor hummed with someone else’s authority.
He’d kept his head down, answered emails, and pretended not to notice the way Patricia Whitmore, head of HR, had paused when she saw him and David step into the same car that evening. Her pause had lasted three seconds too long.
Henri knew Patricia well enough to read the calculation behind her professional smile.
The mental notation being filed under “executive conduct review” or “inappropriate relationships.” No comment, no warmth, just the barest flick of her gaze between him and David before she tucked the observation into whatever file HR kept ready for when the board wanted ammunition.
They’d ridden the car service back to Le Ciel Tower in silence.
Henri angled toward the window, David sitting too carefully with his hands folded in his lap as if afraid of leaving fingerprints on the leather.
Henri had thought about warning him then, telling him to run while there was still time, to vanish before Marc’s orbit calcified around him.
But Marc’s number had already been lit on Henri’s phone too many times that day for the thought to be more than fantasy.
By the time the elevator opened onto the penthouse foyer, he’d put his voice away with his wallet and keys.
This morning began with espresso, and the first text before the crema settled.
Pic of your desk.
He obliged: a clean shot of blotter, monitor, pen aligned to the edge. Send.
Show me the clock.
He tilted the camera to frame the brass wall clock: 9:07. Send.
Hallway. Now.
Door cracked, phone out, the executive corridor empty except for the hush of carpet and a low murmur from legal three offices down. Send.
It wasn’t new. Henri was used to the rhythm. One or two checks a day, a drop-by in person if Marc was bored.
But this was different. Hungrier. Obsessive.
Each photo more invasive than the last. The frequency felt like fever, like Marc was trying to crawl through the phone and wear Henri’s skin from the inside.
Your responses are taking longer.
Henri stared at the message, pulse hammering. He’d been spacing replies, hoping to cling to work in the gaps.
I’m working. In meetings. The acquisition requires attention.
I should come first.
You do. Always. Nothing changed.
Prove it.
Then silence. Twenty minutes of it. Ominous, unnatural silence that rang louder than all the earlier demands.
The knock before eleven was soft, tentative, the kind that didn’t belong on this floor.
David slipped inside and closed the door, shoulders taut in his blue shirt. His face carried the particular strain of someone caught between instructions, as he crossed to the desk with his eyes already apologizing. Without speaking, he held out his phone.
Henri took it.
The first line on the screen was blunt:
Make it good for him. Send proof.
Beneath it, a scroll of further instruction written not for Henri, but for David:
Angle must show the desk.
I want your mouth. I want his hand in your hair.
You’ll know when I’ve seen enough.
Henri’s pulse hammered once, heavy, like a bell struck in fog. Marc had never laid out choreography this baldly. It was always breadcrumbs of insinuation, never a full script. Now it was written in black and white, and worse, directed through David, who stood waiting anxiously.
Henri pushed back from the desk and crossed to the credenza against the wall.
At first glance, it appeared to be any other piece of executive furniture.
Walnut veneer, discreet brass handles. But his fingers found the recessed panel beneath the lip.
A soft click revealed the biometric pad, and he pressed his thumb to the glass, then entered the six-digit code only Marc would ever have trusted him with. The lock disengaged with a muted hiss.
He slid the bottom drawer open to reveal the bundle he never let anyone else see.
Everything was organized with clinical neatness: a compact clamp, collapsible arm, a bottle of lube, and a small cache of toys Marc had once ordered him to keep on hand, just in case.
Henri’s stomach turned at the thought of how often “in case” had become “frequently.”
He took the mount, closed the drawer, reset the lock until the panel blended seamlessly back into the wood, and returned to the desk. Setting the arm into place with steady hands, he adjusted the knuckles until the angle was perfect, just as Marc demanded.
David’s eyebrows lifted, confusion and realization colliding. “You just… have that?”
“I do,” Henri said. Explaining Marc’s demands only made them larger. Better to treat them as weather: inevitable, survivable, utterly beyond his power to change, not worth questioning.
He set the arm, tightened the knuckles until the mount held steady. Marc liked the desk he’d bought for Henri in frame. It was old and absurdly heavy, paneled wood on all four sides, more drawers than Henri had uses for. A courthouse relic masquerading as modern office furniture.
Marc said it made Henri look established. Henri suspected he meant owned.
Henri guided David onto the desk’s edge, pushing his keyboard aside. His hands settled David where Marc’s camera eye could frame him best.
The phone chimed with an incoming video call request. David’s throat bobbed as he accepted. Marc’s face didn’t appear, only a blank wash of static-black. His voice came clearly through the speaker, low and commanding.
“Good. Now, Henri, devour him. I want to see him undone.”
Henri bent to David’s mouth, brushing soft at first, trying to fake tenderness for the lens. He’d learned to mimic desire, to counterfeit intimacy. But David leaned forward with something unperformed, lips parting, breath catching, hands clinging. Hunger poured out of him raw and real.
“More,” Marc said, sharp enough that Henri flinched. “Kiss him like you own him. I want his mouth swollen when I’m finished watching.”
Henri’s hands slid from David’s jaw down the boy’s throat, thumbs pressing into the hollow, feeling the frantic beat there.
David’s fingers clutched at his sleeves, then his shoulders, pulling him closer with an urgency that wasn’t feigned.
Henri felt the tremor of his body arching up against him, and forced his own chest to match it, reminding himself to mirror him, make it look real, lean the way he does, breathe like he does.
Marc’s voice cut sharp through the speaker. “Harder. Don’t coddle him. Yank his head back. I want to see him marked.”
Henri’s grip tightened. He caught a fistful of David’s hair and wrenched his head back until his throat stretched taut, pale skin bared to the camera’s eye.
David gasped, a raw sound that shivered into want instead of protest. Henri bent and dragged his mouth down the line of that throat, teeth grazing, tongue punishing.
He pressed hard enough to know it would show later, marks that would linger.
And as he did, the scene blurred. For a heartbeat, it wasn’t David beneath his hands but Michael. Michael pushing him back onto rumpled sheets, Michael’s grip in his hair uncoiling every locked place inside him, Michael’s teeth at his throat, marking him as owned. The memory seized him whole.
Henri mimicked it now with brutal accuracy, mouth moving against David’s skin in the same pattern Michael had burned into him, trying to pour the ghost of that moment into a counterfeit.
David arched again, clinging tighter, his breath broken and hungry. Henri forced his lips back to the boy’s mouth, kissing hard, punishing, swallowing the sounds Marc wanted.
Every move was obedience. Every move was a betrayal.
Marc’s voice purred through the speaker, thick with satisfaction. “Yes. Keep going. Don’t let him go until I tell you.”
A sharp knock rapped on the door.
“Henri?”
Gabriel.
Reflex ruled Henri. He cut the call, shoved David toward the floor with one hand. “Under. Now.”
David dropped without question, folding himself beneath the desk’s solid wooden paneling.
Henri’s hands moved on instinct—yanking the phone from the mount, unhooking the stand, shoving both under the desk into David’s arms. He rolled his chair in hard; the wheels scraped against the floor with enough noise to mask the soft thud of David settling into place.
By the time he said, “Come in,” his mask was back in place.
Gabriel filled the doorway. His suit was immaculate, his tie neat, and his eyes were sharp with something probing. They flicked to the blinds, to Henri’s face, to the desk. The calculation in them was worse than suspicion.
Henri swiveled his monitor casually. “EcoSphere’s models are strong. Conservative ROI at forty percent—”
“Spare me,” Gabriel said, voice low steel under warmth. He stepped closer, taking the guest chair directly across the desk. “I didn’t come for projections. I came for you.”
Henri forced neutrality as David’s fingers crept up his thigh, a gentle pressure asking permission. “I’ve been home for over two weeks. You could’ve asked sooner.”
“I tried.” Gabriel leaned in, his eyes narrowing. “Phone off. Emails ignored. Why did you come back early?”