Chapter 10 Nine
The plane dipped, then steadied. I glanced across the cabin at Algerone, noting the details I'd memorized through five hundred and forty-seven days of enforced proximity: the white-knuckled grip on his cane, the subtle tension carving lines around his jaw that hadn't existed before the explosion, the almost imperceptible shift of his weight away from his damaged left hip.
The changing barometric pressure tormented his injured leg.
He would rather die than admit such weakness, but I knew his body better than my own now.
I knew every tell, every compensatory movement, every silent admission of suffering he thought he'd hidden.
Shaw's poison had mostly cleared my system, leaving only a dull headache and waves of nausea that crested every forty minutes or so.
What demanded my attention were the bruises hidden beneath my collar, four distinct marks from Algerone's teeth and three from his fingers during our encounter on the plane to Zurich.
Each pulse of blood against the tender flesh sent heat spiraling through my chest. We hadn't crossed the final line then.
He'd pulled back, left me marked but unsatisfied, and I'd spent the hours since replaying every second like a man dying of thirst remembering water.
"The pilot says we'll be in this weather for at least two hours," I said, reading the message on my tablet. "He's requesting permission to climb to forty thousand feet."
"Granted." Algerone's voice betrayed nothing. "Tell him to prioritize stability over schedule."
I typed the response, then set the tablet aside.
Another lightning flash transformed the cabin into stark relief, followed by turbulence violent enough to rattle the crystal decanters in their custom holders.
Algerone's jaw clenched tighter, and his hand moved toward his thigh before he caught himself, fingers curling into a fist instead.
"Perhaps some whiskey," I suggested. "The Macallan. It might help with the chill."
His eyes met mine. "Fine," he said after a moment.
I poured the whiskey the way he preferred it: two fingers, one cube of ice. The amber liquid caught the cabin's low light as I brought it to him, and our fingers brushed during the exchange. The contact sent electricity arcing up my arm.
He noticed, because nothing escaped those eyes.
"Thank you," he said, and the formality was a wall I'd built myself, brick by brick, through thirty-two years of "sir" and "of course" and carefully maintained distance.
"You're welcome, sir."
Another wave of turbulence passed through the cabin.
He sipped his whiskey, shifting position in a futile attempt to find relief for his hip.
I knew that particular restlessness well.
On bad days at the penthouse, he'd move from chair to chair, bed to couch to the specially designed recliner in the therapy room, never finding comfort.
"You're in pain," I said. "The barometric pressure."
"And?"
"I can help." The words came automatically, the same offer I'd made every morning for eighteen months. I moved toward the couch to retrieve a pillow for my knees, already planning the sequence: start with his calf, work upward, spend extra time on the hip.
"No."
The word stopped me mid-stride.
"You don't get to do that anymore." His voice was quiet, which made it worse. Algerone's anger I could weather, but his quiet was something else entirely. "You don't get to kneel at my feet and pretend you're helping when what you're really doing is trying to make me forget."
"I'm not trying to make you forget."
"Then what are you trying to do, Maxime? Seduce me into forgiveness? Touch me until I stop seeing my sons’ faces every time I look at you?"
"No," I said. "I know you won't forgive me."
"Then what?"
I didn't have an answer, or rather, I had too many answers, none of them adequate. I wanted to touch him because touching him was the only language I had left. I wanted to ease his pain because his pain was my pain. I wanted to kneel because kneeling was the only position that felt honest anymore.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I just want to be useful to you."
He rose from his chair, testing his weight on the damaged hip, and crossed the distance between us. His gait was uneven instead of the smooth stride I remembered from before. I'd done that to him too, in a way. The stress of my revelation had delayed his recovery by weeks, according to Dr. Pierce.
He stopped close enough that I could smell the whiskey on his breath, the subtle cologne he'd started wearing again last month.
"You want to be useful?" His hand came up to grip my jaw, fingers pressing hard enough to leave marks. "Fine. But you don't get to set the terms anymore. You don't get to decide what form your service takes."
"I never—"
"You always have." His grip tightened. "For thirty-two years, you've been managing me.
You decided what I needed before I knew I needed it.
You decided who I'd spend my nights with, which companions were appropriate, which ones might become inconvenient.
" His thumb pressed against my lower lip, the touch almost bruising.
"You decided my children were inconvenient. "
He was right. I'd looked at Imogen Duchaucis and seen an obstacle, not a person. I'd made a decision that wasn't mine to make, and I'd made it without hesitation.
"Yes," I said against his thumb. "I did."
"You're not sorry you did it. You're sorry I found out. But if Xavier hadn't forced your hand, you'd have taken that secret to your grave."
I wanted to deny it, but the words wouldn't come.
"That's what I thought." He released my jaw but didn't step back. "Take off your shirt."
My fingers moved to the buttons before my mind caught up. The silk was Brioni, a deep navy I'd worn deliberately, hoping he might notice. He noticed everything.
The shirt fell away, and I stood exposed in the dim cabin.
Cool air raised goosebumps across my skin, but my face heated.
I was fifty-four years old, my body showing the inevitable signs of age: softening at the waist, silver threading through the hair on my chest, the scar on my shoulder from Beirut.
Algerone's gaze traveled over me, not with appreciation but with assessment, the way he'd look at a contract before signing.
"We're not the men we were," he observed.
"No."
His hand pressed flat against my chest, directly over my heart, and he had to feel how fast it was beating.
"I've thought about this. Taking you apart.
Watching that perfect composure crack. Every day you came to the penthouse with your grocery bags and your medical supplies and your quiet fucking devotion, I thought about what it would be like to break you. "
The words settled something restless in my chest, and my cock stirred against my pants.
"Then do it."
His smile didn't reach his eyes. "So eager, just like always, ready to give me whatever I want before I've even asked for it. That's the problem, Maxime. You hand yourself over like a gift, and you expect me to be grateful."
I didn't understand what he wanted. I'd thought I knew him completely, but this Algerone was someone I hadn't met before.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"I want you to stop managing. For once in your miserable life, I want you to just stand there and take what I give you without trying to control the outcome."
He circled behind me, his cane tapping against the floor. Then it stopped.
"Hands on the wall."
I moved to the cabin's wood-paneled wall, positioning my palms flat against the surface. Behind me, soft rustling marked his movement, followed by the click of him setting aside his cane.
Then his hands were on my belt, unfastening it with none of the care I'd always shown him. The leather hissed through the loops. My trousers followed, shoved down without ceremony, and my cock sprang free, already half-hard from nothing more than his proximity and his commands.
"Every morning for eighteen months," he said against my ear, his clothed chest pressing against my bare back. "You put your hands on me and pretended it was medical. Pretended you weren't thinking about this every time you worked that oil into my skin."
I had no defense because he was right.
"Did you get hard during the massages?" His hand slid around my hip, fingers wrapping around my shaft.
"Yes." The word came out strangled. "Sometimes."
"And afterward, when you left the penthouse, what did you do?"
I closed my eyes. The memories remained vivid: standing in the elevator with my hands shaking, locking myself in my bathroom and taking myself in hand with the scent of him still on my skin.
"I touched myself," I admitted. "Thinking of you."
His grip tightened, stroking once, twice, thumb smearing the wetness already leaking from my tip. "That's pathetic. Eighteen months of jerking off alone in your bathroom like a teenager while I was right there. You could have said something."
"You hated me. You still hate me."
"Yes." He didn't deny it, and his hand kept moving, building a rhythm that made coherent thought impossible.
My cock throbbed in his fist, aching for more pressure, more speed.
"But hating you doesn't mean I didn't notice.
Every time you touched my thigh. Every time your fingers got close to my cock, and then stopped. I knew exactly what you wanted."
I pressed my forehead against the wall, trying to breathe through the sensation. My balls were already drawn up tight, my body wound to a pitch after months of deprivation.
"You don't deserve any of this," he said, his other hand digging into my hip hard enough to bruise. "But I'm going to take it anyway."
His hand left my cock, and I bit back a groan of frustration. Behind me came the rustle of clothing, the sound of his zipper. Then, his hand was in my hair, yanking my head back.
"Turn around."