Chapter 13
Samuel
My office. The Crenshaw brief.
A cold, sick shockwave rolled from his gut to his throat. The Crenshaw brief was done. It had been bound, filed, and forgotten two days ago.
Samuel’s hands lay flat on the keyboard, perfectly still, while his insides churned.
The phantom sensation was immediate and vivid: the scent of sandalwood and starched cotton flooding his senses, the heat of a body standing too close behind him, the world narrowing to the point of contact and the low voice murmuring about enforceability clauses just the day before in the very office he was once again summoned to.
He had trembled then. He had leaned into it.
Disgust, hot and acidic, washed over him.
Sin. Sickness. That’s what it is. That’s what they said.
But a quieter, more terrifying voice whispered:
It was the only time the noise stopped.
He stood, the movement robotic. He pulled the Crenshaw file from his drawer. His hands, he observed with a strange detachment, were not shaking.
The walk down the corridor was a journey through a muffled, distant world. The photocopier’s thud was a heartbeat. A paralegal’s laugh from a doorway was a foreign language. All he could hear was the memory of his own ragged breathing in the elevator, and the two words that had followed.
Good boy.
He shoved the memory down, a mental flinch so violent it made his head pound.
The door to Gael’s office was ajar, a sliver of shadow and polished wood. Samuel knocked.
“Enter.”
He pushed the door open.
Gael was at his desk, his head bent over a sheet of paper, a fountain pen in his hand. The morning sun illuminated the swirling dust, the sharp lines of Gael’s profile, and the empty visitor’s chair directly in its path. Exactly where Samuel had stood last time. Where Gael had stood behind him.
Will he do it again?
The thought was followed by a shameful, curling warmth low in his belly.
No. Don’t.
“Sit.”
Samuel did. He placed the file on the desk with exaggerated care, aligning the edges with the wood grain, a futile attempt at order.
He’s going to get up. He’s going to come around the desk.
His palms were damp. He pressed them against his thighs.
Gael finished his note. He set the pen down with a definitive click. Then he looked up.
His eyes moved over Samuel’s face slowly. They cataloged the shadows under his eyes, the pallor of his skin, the tight set of his mouth.
Samuel looked down at the file, his shield now just a meaningless rectangle of cardboard. His pulse hammered in his throat, in his ears. The silence stretched, becoming a living, pressing weight on his chest.
“The brief,” Samuel began, his voice a dry rustle. He reached for the folder, needing to do something, anything, with his hands.
“Leave it.”
Samuel’s hand froze mid-air. Slowly, he retracted his hand, placing it back in his lap. The fine wool of his trousers scratched against his damp skin.
Samuel felt a fine tremor begin deep in his core, a vibration of pure, sustained alarm. He clenched his fingers around his own knee, the bite of his nails through the fabric a grounding pain.
“You’ve been quiet this morning,” Gael said. His tone was neutral, an observation of fact.
Samuel kept his eyes glued to the sharp corner of the desk. “I’ve been focused.” The lie tasted like ash.
“On what?”
Samuel’s mind went white.
On the way your hand felt.
On the sound I made when you touched me.
On wanting you to do it again and hating myself for it.
His heart was a frantic, trapped bird. “On the work,” he forced out.
A beat of silence, thicker than before. Gael leaned forward, just an inch. The movement was small, but it cast his shadow across the desk, over the file, toward Samuel. The proximity, even across the wide desk, felt immense.
“I do not like being lied to. Try again.”
A spark of desperate, wild anger ignited in Samuel’s chest, burning through the fear. He looked up, meeting that dark, all-seeing gaze.
“You don’t know me,” he said, the words sharp and brittle, like breaking glass. “You see a… a problem to solve. A broken thing to figure out. You don’t know the first thing about me, so don’t sit there and pretend that you do.”
He was breathing hard, the flush of anger on his neck quickly drowning in a flood of scorching shame.
You shouldn’t have said that.
Gael didn’t react. No anger, no offense. His expression remained unreadable, but his eyes… his eyes seemed to deepen, to focus more intently on the raw, exposed nerve Samuel had just revealed.
The air in the room grew denser, hotter, charged.
Then, Gael’s voice changed. It dropped, softening into a register that was nearly a whisper. “Did you sleep?”
The fight vanished. It was sucked out of the room, leaving Samuel hollow, defenseless. All the air left his lungs in a silent rush. The nightmares, the cold closet floor, the scripture chanted like a spell against the darkness; it was all there, laid bare.
Samuel couldn’t speak. Couldn’t lie. He just stared, his mouth slightly agape, his eyes wide with a horror.
The silence was the loudest thing Samuel had ever heard.
He stood up. The movement was jerky, uncoordinated, his body moving before his mind could command it.
His chair screeched against the floor, a raw, ugly sound.
He didn’t look at the file. He didn’t look at Gael.
He turned, a stiff, graceless pivot, and walked to the door.
His steps were too fast, a frantic, fleeing rhythm.
His hand was an inch from the cool brass of the doorknob. Escape was a tangible promise. The air from the corridor beyond seemed to beckon, a whisper of safety.
“Stop.”
The word was low, soft even, but it was cut from bedrock. It held no room for argument. It was a command, the first direct one since ‘look at me’ in the elevator.
Samuel froze. Every muscle locked. His fingers hovered, trembling, just shy of the metal. The single syllable echoed in the silent, sun-bleached room, wrapping around his spine and holding him in place.
Slowly, as if moving through deep water, he turned around.
Gael was still behind his desk, but he was standing now. His expression was stark, intense, a landscape of pure, focused intent. His dark eyes pinned Samuel to the spot, seeing through the panic, through the flight, to the raw, trembling core beneath.
The tension was a solid thing, a pane of glass about to shiver into a million pieces. Samuel could hear his own blood roaring in his ears. His mind was a frantic, static-filled blank.
One part screamed, a shrill, wordless alarm: Danger. Sin. Run.
But his legs were stone. His breath was caught somewhere high in his chest, a trapped, painful thing.
Gael moved.
He came around the desk slowly. He stopped less than a foot away, entering Samuel’s space so completely that the scent of him was all Samuel could smell.
He was so close Sam could see the faint striations of grey in the stubble along his jaw, the individual, dark lashes framing eyes that saw every fracture in his soul.
He couldn’t move. His own hands hung uselessly at his sides, shaking with a fine, constant tremor.
Gael’s gaze dropped to Samuel’s mouth.
Then he lifted his hand.
His knuckles brushed Sam’s jaw, a whisper of contact, soft against the stubble and warm skin.
The touch was a spark on dry tinder. Samuel’s breath hitched audibly, a sharp, desperate little sound that seemed to hang between them.
Gael’s fingers trailed upward, cradling the line of his jaw, his thumb settling just below Samuel’s lower lip.
And then he leaned in.
His lips pressed against Samuel’s.
The first contact was a question. A soft, searching pressure, tender in a way that dismantled every defense Samuel had left.
It was dry, then instantly warm. The texture of Gael’s lips was smooth, firm, and they fit against Samuel’s with a shocking, innate rightness.
Samuel’s eyes slipped shut. His mind went utterly, blessedly silent.
The static, the screams, the scripture; all of it vanished, washed away by the shocking, simple warmth of Gael’s mouth on his.
He remained perfectly still, suspended. Waiting.
When Samuel didn’t pull away, when he didn’t run, Gael’s other hand came up to frame his face, his thumb stroking the high arch of Samuel’s cheekbone.
The kiss deepened. It was no longer a question. Gael’s lips parted, and the tip of his tongue traced the seam of Samuel’s mouth, a hot, wet promise.
A helpless sound, half-whimper, half-sigh, escaped Samuel’s throat.
And then he broke.
He leaned in. His body moved of its own volition, tilting into the solid warmth of Gael’s chest. His lips parted in surrender.
Gael’s tongue swept inside, and the sensation was a revelation; a slow, deliberate exploration that tasted of dark coffee, of mint, and beneath it, something uniquely, fundamentally Gael: clean, sharp, and utterly intoxicating.
Samuel’s own tongue, tentative at first, met the glide of Gael’s, a shy, answering caress that sent a violent shiver down his spine.
His hands, which had been hanging numb at his sides, flew up and fisted in the fine, crisp cotton of Gael’s shirt. He wasn’t pulling him closer, nor was he pushing him away. He was anchoring himself, gripping the only solid thing in a universe that had just dissolved into sensation.
The kiss caught fire.
Gael surged against him, a tide of uncontrolled hunger.
A low, rough sound vibrated from his chest into Samuel’s.
Samuel met him, kiss for kiss, his lips moving now, learning the rhythm Gael set; a deep, languid stroke of tongue that became more urgent, more possessive.
The kiss grew breathless, a shared gasp for air that was immediately stolen back.
Samuel could feel the faint scrape of Gael’s teeth against his lower lip, a hint of roughness that made his knees weaken. The taste of him flooded his senses, a dark, addictive flavor he knew he would crave in the deepest hours of the night.
Gael’s body pressed him back, one step, two, until Samuel’s shoulders met the solid, unyielding wood of the office door with a soft thud. The pressure pinned him there, a delicious, inescapable weight.
Gael was everywhere. The heat of him, the hard lines of his body braced against Samuel’s, the scent of his skin filled Samuel’s lungs. He was lost, adrift in a sea of feeling he had spent a lifetime damning.
He could feel the hard ridge of Gael’s arousal pressed against his hip, a blunt, undeniable truth that burned through layers of wool and cotton.
One of Gael’s hands tangled in his hair, gripping firmly at the roots, tilting his head back to deepen the angle of the kiss.
The slight sting was a bright, delicious pain.
The other hand slid down from his jaw, over the frantic pulse in his throat, down the front of his shirt.
The palm was hot, even through the layers of clothes.
It mapped the planes of his chest, the dip of his sternum, descending lower, over the trembling flat of his stomach, the heel of his hand applying a firm, thrilling pressure just above Samuel’s belt.
Samuel’s skin was on fire. Every nerve ending screamed.
He arched into the touch, a silent, desperate plea, his hips canting forward of their own accord, seeking friction, seeking more.
He needed that hand under the fabric, on his bare skin.
He needed the rough scrape of Gael’s palms, the proof of his own desperate want mirrored in Gael’s touch. He needed Gael.
“Samuel…”
Gael growled the name against his mouth, the vibration searing into him.
Then his lips were gone, leaving Samuel gasping, his own lips swollen and wet.
They trailed down, over his jaw, along the taut cord of his neck.
They found the frantic, hammering pulse at the base of his throat and settled there.
He sucked then, a hot, wet, deliberate pressure, his tongue swirling against the sensitive skin.
The sensation was electric, a bolt of pure, undiluted pleasure that shot straight to Samuel’s cock, tightening his stomach and pulling a groan from deep in his chest. A sharp, broken keen tore from his lips.
His head fell back against the door with a dull thud, his eyes rolling shut.
His fingers clenched impossibly tighter in Gael’s shirt, the fabric twisting in his fists.
A thin, desperate sound of pure need whimpered in his throat.
More. Please, more. Don’t stop...
For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me…
The scripture slammed into his mind like a fist.
Against you, you only, have I sinned…
A flash, blinding white: Elias’s wild, blond hair in moonlight. The taste of smoke and boyish want.
…and done what is evil in your sight.
The Director’s hand, heavy on his bare shoulder in the cube. The smell of cheap soap and sanctimony. The voice, cold and sure: “Have you repented?”
The pleasure curdled, transforming in an instant into a viscous, choking poison of guilt.
His body went rigid. Every muscle seized, locking in a rictus of pure terror. The warmth, the need, the glorious silence; all of it was ripped away, replaced by the familiar, crushing weight of shame.
He tore himself away as if burned.
A ragged, wounded sound ripped from his throat as he shoved against Gael’s chest with a frantic, spastic revulsion. He stumbled back, his shoulder scraping against the doorframe, putting two feet of horrified space between them.
His eyes were wide. His breath sawed in and out of his chest, loud and ragged in the sudden, shattered quiet. He looked at Gael, but he didn’t see him. He saw the Director. He saw the cross on the chapel. He saw his own reflection in the darkness of the cube; a sinner, corrupted, unclean.
“I can’t...” he gasped, the words a torn shred of his soul. “I can’t...”
He fumbled blindly behind him, his shaking hand finally finding the cold brass of the doorknob. He wrenched it open.
And then he ran.