Chapter 9
Silver felt Nuri’s entire body lock up beneath his and he gave the other man a moment to process what he’d said.
It must have come as quite a shock, considering Silver had never alluded to his desires for his secretary before.
He’d been too concerned about scaring him off, or losing interest and losing the one person he’d felt he could rely on his whole life.
But now that he’d seen the determination to go in Nuri’s eyes, Silver knew he was out of time. It’d been either this or release him, and letting Nuri leave was not an option.
“Since you kept insisting, I took away the choice.” Despite their recent bonding, Silver had intended to allow Nuri time to understand and adjust to their new roles in each other’s lives.
Initially, he’d brought Nuri up here for the exact reason he’d given when asked.
He’d intended to keep him close, locked in his room while he slept so that there was no way for the other man to attempt to sneak past his guard a second time.
But when he’d felt Nuri’s body reacting to him… A switch had been flipped.
The connection worked both ways apparently.
Nuri wasn’t the only one who would be affected whenever Silver’s Swift form took hold.
So now here they were, Nuri’s perfect little body trapped beneath his, all that pale skin and chocolate-colored hair a sharp contrast to the blood-red sheets.
Earlier, they’d only done it once and that hadn’t been nearly enough to satisfy Silver.
There were things they needed to talk about, but since he’d found Nuri trying to sneak out it was obvious the other man wasn’t currently in the mood to do so.
If that gave Silver an excuse to try and fuck answers out of him?
He wasn’t a saint; he wouldn’t let an opportunity like this one slip past.
“How much of it do you remember?” he asked, and with the way Nuri turned almost as red as his sheets it was clear he understood what Silver was referring to. “What about the way you pleaded with me to go faster? All those sounds you made when—”
“It was a mistake,” Nuri snapped. “I wasn’t in my right mind and you took advantage of that.”
“Of course I did.” He wasn’t even slightly insulted by that accusation. It was the truth. Still… “I did try to tell you.”
“Not hard enough.”
He grinned. “You said that too.”
Nuri glanced away. “Can’t we just…forget it?”
“Forget it? If this,” he rolled his hard length against Nuri’s, almost groaning, “hadn’t given you away, I would have continued believing that innocent act of yours. All this time, and I never knew you had this side to you, now that I do that’s not something I’ll ever willingly forget.”
Silver buried his face against the crook of Nuri’s neck and inhaled deeply, relishing the familiar scent of ripe cherries and mahogany.
He’d developed a fondness for the smell ever since he’d placed it when he and Nuri had first met and shared a room.
The smell was a little bit tart, a little sweet, with a woodsy afternote, perfectly embodying Nuri’s major facets in one.
Nuri was fastidious and bright, always alert and ready at a moment’s notice. He took his job as both secretary and companion seriously—or, at least he had—and was the one and only constant in Silver’s life.
So the fact he actually had the gall to try and change all that on his own had Silver’s fury bubbling over.
Reminded of that fact, he nipped at the spot where Nuri’s neck met his shoulder, chuckling when that had the other man startling for what had to be the millionth time that night alone. He didn’t do it hard enough to break skin, just enough to get his point across.
He was in control here. Always was and always would be.
“You thought you could just walk away from me?” He pulled back and shook his head, noting the way Nuri’s cheeks still stained a bright crimson and how his rosy lips had parted seductively. “We haven’t even started yet, Narek.”
From the way his pupils were blown and his breathing was already labored, Silver thought for sure Nuri was about to give in, which was why his next words caught him off guard.
“Since when did you make it a habit of sleeping with your employees, CEO Rien?” He searched his gaze, a glimmer of accusation sparking behind his eyes.
“Or is this an occurrence I simply wasn’t made aware of?
Do you insist on sampling all of your workers before allowing them to quit?
If so, I have no qualms about reporting you to the proper authorities if you don’t put a stop to this at once. ”
“The fact you can still string all of those words together and threaten me means I’m not doing a good enough job of this,” Silver stated. “But don’t be ridiculous. Of course I don’t sleep with those under my employ.”
“What do you call this then?”
“You don’t count, Narek. You never do.”
Nuri flinched, but before Silver could ask why, he’d gathered himself and that stubborn disposition of his all over again.
It was almost laughable, how aloof he could manage to be while pinned on a king-sized bed with another man’s cock rubbing against his.
But Nuri was acting like that wasn’t the case at all, as if the two of them were merely having a talk in the office.
Business as usual.
Silver hated that.
This afternoon he’d been all warm and inviting, cute even in his desperation. Now it was like a completely different person was lying beneath him and Silver was both annoyed at the lack of attention and thrilled at the idea of getting to taste the version of Nuri he’d always known.
“Take this seriously,” he ordered, only to have Nuri scoff at him.
“There’s only one of us here that isn’t, and it’s not me. What you’re currently doing is amoral, and frankly, appalling.”
Silver ground their hips together and quirked a challenging brow.
“Mere physical reaction on my part,” Nuri declared. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“And when you begged me for it before? What do you call that then?”
“You could have turned me down.”
“There was no way that was going to happen.”
“Right,” he scoffed, “because you never turn down sex.”
Silver rolled his eyes. “That was childish. If you’re so set on using that sharp tongue of yours on me, I can think of a dozen or more better ways you could be doing it.”
“It was the drugs,” Nuri said, and it didn’t take a genius to tell he was reaching. “I was out of my mind. It didn’t mean anything. If you’d been anyone else the same—”
“You called me by name.” And he really didn’t like Nuri insinuating he would have fucked any able body that was present, even knowing it was a deception. “You admitted you’ve dreamed of me often, like this, dominating you, filling you up—”
“Please,” Nuri squeezed his eyes shut, “stop.”
“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Silver told him. “I enjoyed it too.”
“I didn’t,” he lied again, this time with more vitriol in his tone. “And I barely remember a thing.”
That much had become apparent already. If Nuri recalled they’d done it while Silver had looked like this, he’d be panicking a hell of a lot more. That was the only reason Silver had yet to clarify things for him.
He’d already secured the prize. He could afford to ease Nuri into this new reality of theirs.
“Is that so?” If it’d been anyone else beneath him, Silver would have tossed decorum—what little of it he had—to the wind after hearing something like that.
His mind was racing with all the ways he could punish Nuri and make him scream, but he refrained at the last second, holding himself by a thin thread.
Timing was everything, and conquest of any kind was made all the sweeter by making the opponent succumb.
Silver didn’t just want to have sex with Nuri, he wanted to brand his soul, wanted to stain the other man with his very being so that there was no way for him to ever even think of leaving on his own.
Nuri was his. End of story.
“It’s my own fault really,” he mumbled to himself as he shifted over Nuri’s smaller form, altering the angle slightly so he could rub against a different spot. He shouldn’t have assumed Nuri would remain the same forever, shouldn’t have put off making a move out of fear or any other such nonsense.
What did he have to fear really? He was the Emperor.
“We’re going to fuck again,” he said then, the matter well and truly decided, “and then you’re going to sleep and heal. Tomorrow we’ll deal with the rest.”
Nuri sputtered, momentarily unable to find his voice before finally blurting, “Absolutely not.”
“Give me three good reasons,” Silver countered, continuing with those rolling motions, teasing them both into a heated frenzy. But that’s what he wanted. He needed Nuri so turned on and lost to lust that he forgot all those pesky reasons he believed he didn’t want this.
“I—” He swallowed, clearly trying to hold back a moan, “I don’t have to do that. No is a full sentence.”
“Reasoning rejected.”
“You can’t—”
“Who will side with you, Nuri?” Silver switched tactics. Was it low of him to play the ruler card? Sure. Did he care? Not really. As long as he got what he wanted in the end, there were worse things he was capable of doing. This he’d do without even batting an eyelash, even against Nuri.
Maybe especially against him, considering why they were here.
“You pushed me, Narek. You shouldn’t have done that.” He pressed the pad of his thumb between Nuri’s brow, smoothing the frown there. “Think things through. If you do go to the authorities, what will you say? Everyone already thinks we’re fucking anyway.”
“They do not!”
He shrugged. Whether he was aware of the rumors wasn’t important. “They’ll assume you’re merely another jilted lover trying to get revenge after being tossed aside. You’ll only end up ruining your own reputation, not mine.”
“The board won’t keep you on as CEO if there’s a major scandal,” Nuri shot back, but that only caused Silver to laugh.