Chapter 16
Samuel
Awareness trickled in, a bitter brew of sensations.
First, the deep, resonant ache in his ribs, a throbbing counterpoint to the sharper, insistent sting in his temple.
Then, the low, purring vibration humming through the seat beneath him.
And the scent; rich, supple leather and, woven through it, the clean, spicy note of sandalwood.
He groaned, the sound raw in his own ears. He tried to shift, to find a position where his body didn’t feel like a single, massive bruise.
“Don’t.”
The voice was low, firm, cutting through the cottony fog in his skull.
“Just stay still. You are hurt.”
Samuel froze. Slowly, carefully, he turned his head on the headrest. A hot lance of pain shot through his side, stealing his breath. His eyes, blurred and struggling to focus, found the source.
The profile was etched in the soft, ambient glow of the dashboard lights. The sharp line of a nose, the strong set of a jaw shadowed with evening stubble, the dark sweep of hair.
Gael.
“What…” The word was a dry rasp, scraping its way out of a parched throat.
Gael’s head turned slightly. The dashboard lights painted his face in planes of soft light and deep shadow, turning his expression into a stark, unreadable mask. His eyes, dark and assessing, flicked over Samuel for a fraction of a second before returning to the road ahead.
“You were mugged,” he said, his tone flat.
Samuel blinked, the world tilting. He tried to assemble the fragments.
A wave of memory crashed over him;: the shove, the tearing strap, the bright star of pain, the wet concrete.
The dizziness returned, a sickening swirl.
He lifted a trembling hand to his temple, his fingers coming away clean but his head pounding as if they hadn’t.
A fine, uncontrollable tremor began deep in his core, vibrating outwards until his hands shook in his lap.
The city streamed by the windows; a blur of light and dark. They were in a part of the city he couldn’t afford to breathe in.
Gael’s voice came again, lower now. “It’s okay. Everything will be alright.” He didn’t look over.
The car slowed. They turned into an underground garage. The car glided to a perfect stop in a numbered bay.
The engine cut off.
Samuel’s tongue felt thick, clumsy.
“Where are we?” His voice was a cracked whisper, barely audible in the quiet.
The driver’s door opened and closed with a solid, hushed thunk. A moment later, his own door was pulled open. Cool air washed in, along with the presence of the man now leaning in.
“Here. Come on. Easy.”
Gael extended a hand.
Samuel’s mind screamed a chorus of refusal.
I’m fine. I can do it. Don’t touch me. Don’t.
He couldn’t be weak. Not in front of him. He had to prove he wasn’t broken.
Ignoring the offered hand, he placed his own on the doorframe and pushed himself up, intending to stand on his own. His legs, treacherously, were made of water. They buckled instantly, folding beneath him, sending a fresh, nauseating spike of pain from his ribs up his spine. He pitched forward.
Gael was there. An arm banded around his waist, strong and unyielding as an iron bar, hauling him upright before his knees could meet the concrete.
The contact was a shock; a jolt of searing shame at his own helplessness, immediately overridden by the undeniable, terrifying solidity of the hold.
He was held, completely, against the solid wall of Gael’s body.
For a second, he couldn’t breathe, and it had nothing to do with his ribs.
Gael didn’t ask if he could walk.
He adjusted his grip, his arm a solid, inescapable band around Samuel’s torso, and guided, or rather, steered him across the garage floor.
They reached a set of brushed steel doors. Gael tapped a key fob against a discreet panel. The doors slid open without a sound, revealing a small, mirrored elevator.
Samuel caught a fragmented glimpse of himself as he was guided inside: pale, disheveled, a dark smear of blood on his temple and underneath his nose, leaning heavily into the tall, dark form beside him. He looked like wreckage.
The doors sighed shut.
The silence was absolute, insulated, thick as velvet.
The only sound was the faint hum of ascent and Samuel’s own ragged breathing.
Gael kept his arm around him, bracing him against the wall, his body a firm, warm line against Samuel’s side.
The heat of him was a brand through their layers of clothing.
Samuel’s internal state was a silent, screaming war.
He was hyper-aware of the solid muscle of Gael’s arm across his back, the hard plane of his shoulder against his own, the scent of him, sandalwood, cold night air, and something indefinably male, filling the enclosed space. The urge to pull away was a physical itch.
Sin. Danger. Run.
But warring against it, with a violence that stole his breath, was a desperate, aching pull.
A need to lean into that support, to let the strength of that arm hold him upright, to surrender.
It was the same treacherous impulse that had made him arch into Gael’s touch.
His body remembered the peace of that surrender, even as his mind condemned it.
The memory of the kiss was a live wire in the confined space. It crackled in the air between them, in the inches separating his bruised mouth from Gael’s impassive profile. He could almost taste it again; the coffee. His skin prickled with the ghost of those hands on his face, in his hair.
He felt utterly exposed. Broken open. Every vulnerability was on display in the mirrored walls.
Yet, within the cage of Gael’s arm, in this silent, ascending box, he also felt a perverse, terrifying safety.
No one else could get in. The world with its muggers and its judgments was on the other side of the doors.
He said nothing. Words were impossible. Any sound might shatter the fragile, charged stillness and force a reality where he had to acknowledge what was happening.
So he stayed silent, his head bowed, his body a tense, trembling line where it met Gael’s unyielding support.
His silence was a battleground, and he was losing the fight to the part of him that just wanted to close his eyes and be held.
∞∞∞
Gael
Gael guided Samuel down a short hallway, the younger man’s shuffling steps the only intrusion in the perfect calm. He pushed open the door into the bathroom and sat Samuel on a wide, cool limestone stool beside the deep basin of a sink.
“Sit still,” he said, his voice low but stripped of its usual sharpness.
He opened a mirrored cabinet, retrieving a small first-aid kit. He snapped the case open, selecting antiseptic wipes, gauze, a tube of antibiotic ointment.
He took Samuel’s right hand first, turning the palm upward. It was scraped raw, embedded with grit from the alley floor. Samuel hissed as Gael began to clean it, the antiseptic cold and stinging, but he didn’t pull away.
Gael worked methodically, wiping away the grime and blood with firm, careful strokes, revealing the abraded skin beneath. He repeated the process with the left hand, his focus absolute on the task, a bulwark against the other sensations: the warmth of Samuel’s skin, the fine tremor in his fingers.
He moved to Samuel’s face next, tilting his chin up with a finger under his jaw. The scrape on his cheekbone was superficial. Gael dabbed at it, his eyes unavoidably drawn downward.
To the lip.
It was split at the corner, swollen, a dark blush of red against the pallor of Samuel’s skin.
Gael soaked a cotton swab in saline, his hand steady.
He dabbed at the wound gently, cleaning away a faint trace of blood.
The touch was minimal. But the sight of those lips parted slightly from pain and shallow breathing, the same lips that had been soft and yielding under his own just days before, sent a jolt of dark, possessive heat straight to his core.
The urge to lean in, to soothe the hurt with his mouth, was sudden and shockingly powerful. He locked the impulse down. He filed it under later, never, dangerous.
Samuel remained pliant through it all, his body swaying slightly with exhaustion. A fine shiver ran through him, but he offered no resistance. His eyes were glazed, fixed on some middle distance in the stone tiles, seeing nothing. It unnerved Gael more than defiance would have.
Finished with the first aid, he left Samuel sitting and went to his bedroom. He returned with a pair of soft, heather-grey sweatpants and a plain black t-shirt. He placed them on the counter.
“You should change,” he said. He turned to leave, to give him privacy.
A glance over his shoulder stopped him. Samuel was still sitting, staring at the clothes as if they were instructions in a foreign language. He made no move toward them. His shoulders were slumped, the line of his back a curve of utter depletion.
A quiet, internal sigh. The professional detachment threatened to crack. He turned back.
“Here. Let me.”
Samuel blinked slowly, but said nothing. Gael moved quickly. He unknotted the ruined tie, slipped it off, and began undoing the buttons of the dress shirt. His gaze was deliberately averted from Samuel’s face, fixed on the task. But he could not avoid the body being revealed.
Pale skin, stretched over a frame that was leaner than it should be. Sharp collarbones, a taut stomach. The dark, blossoming bruise on his right side, an ugly stain against the white. Gael worked the shirt off Samuel’s shoulders, down his arms.
And then he saw them.
As the fabric cleared Samuel’s back, the light from the vanity caught them.
Faint, silvery lines. Not one or two, but a network, a grid.
They crisscrossed the space between his shoulder blades and down the ladder of his spine.
Old, healed, but unmistakable. They were too straight, too parallel, too evenly spaced to be anything accidental.
A cane. A belt. A whip.
The clinical detachment shattered.
A cold, razor-sharp clarity sliced through Gael, colder and sharper than any blade. The puzzle pieces he’d been collecting, the instinctive flinches, the tremor of surrender, the terror masquerading as defiance, snapped into a horrifying, coherent picture.
He did not react. He did not freeze, or gasp, or ask a question.
To acknowledge them now, with Samuel in this state, would be another violation.
Instead, with hands that felt suddenly too heavy, he gathered the soft t-shirt and guided it over Samuel’s head, down over the evidence of old pain.
He helped him into the sweatpants, then took his arm.
“Come on,” he said, his voice softer than he intended, as he guided Samuel out of the bathroom.
The hallway was a short, dark tunnel. Samuel moved beside him like a sleepwalker, his steps slow and uncoordinated on the polished floor. Gael steered him not towards the guest room, but to the door at the end of the hall. His own room. He refused to think about why.
He pushed the door open. The space within was as ordered as the rest of the apartment: a wide platform bed made up with charcoal linen, a single low cabinet, a wall of windows looking out over the city’s glittering grid, the blinds half-drawn.
Gael guided Samuel to the edge of the bed.
The younger man stood there for a moment, swaying, his eyes struggling to focus in the dim light filtering from the hall.
Then, as if the last of his strength had been spent, his knees gave way and he collapsed onto the like a felled tree.
He lay on his side, curled slightly around the ache in his ribs, his face turned into the pillow.
For a moment, Gael simply looked at him.
The sight of someone else in his bed was an anomaly.
Then, moving on an impulse that felt both alien and instinctive, he reached for the duvet.
He pulled it up and over Samuel’s body, tucking the edges around his shoulders carefully.
The gesture felt strange, unused to such softness.
“Get some rest,” Gael whispered into the quiet.
He moved to the doorway, intending to leave, to return to the living room, to pour a drink and process the cold fury those scars had ignited in him. But his feet stopped on the threshold.
He turned back.
His gaze went to the bed, to the dark shape beneath the duvet. He watched the slow, deep rhythm of Samuel’s breathing, the slight rise and fall of the blankets.
The conflict within him raged.
On one side: the cold, analytical drive.
The predator. The part of him that saw a fascinating, broken puzzle.
The part that recognized the deep trauma in those scars and understood, with chilling clarity, how it could be mapped, how the fractures could be used to elicit the profound surrender he had already tasted.
That part wanted to catalogue, to experiment, to own the mechanism of Samuel’s breaking.
On the other side: something raw, startling, and far more dangerous. The protector. It was a primal surge, a need to stand between this vulnerable, wounded creature and any further harm. It was a fierce, quiet vow forming in the silence: No one will make a mark on him again.
Except me.
He watched for a long time, until the lines between observer and guardian began to blur. Finally, with a slow sigh that felt like the release of a tension he’d carried for years, he made a decision.