Chapter 19 #2
A violent shiver wracked his frame, and he pressed his forehead against the side of Gael’s thigh, a silent, helpless plea for the anchor to hold as the tidal wave of emotion washed through him.
After some time, Sam wasn't sure how long, the hand on his head shifted. Fingers threaded through his hair, gently at first. Then the grip tightened, a firm, unyielding claim on the root.
The pressure guided his head up.
Gael was watching him. The world narrowed to the sharp line of his jaw, the curve of his mouth, the dark, intent eyes holding Samuel captive. Samuel’s lips parted on a shaky, silent breath.
The kiss, when it came, did not crash over him. It began as a soft, searching pressure. Gael’s lips were warm, surprisingly soft, moving with a slow curiosity over his own. It was a tasting. An exploration of the shape and give of him.
Samuel melted.
All the tension, the fear, the overwhelming devotion, dissolved into liquid heat.
A helpless, broken sound escaped him, a moan that was swallowed by Gael’s mouth.
His hands, which had been limp at his sides, flew up of their own volition, clutching fistfuls of the soft black fabric of Gael’s shirt.
His fingers twisted the material, needing something solid to hold onto as the ground fell away.
As if the moan were a permission, an answer to the question, the kiss changed.
It deepened. The softness vanished, replaced by hunger. Gael’s mouth opened over his, and the wet, hot slide of his tongue swept in, claiming the intimate space. Samuel yielded utterly, opening for him, his own tongue meeting the relentless stroke in a shy, eager mimicry.
The hand in his hair became a vise. It tilted Samuel’s head back, exposing the vulnerable line of his throat, forcing his mouth up at a more ravaging angle.
Gael consumed him.
The kiss grew wet, messy, desperate. Samuel was lost in it, drowning in sensation.
Whimpers vibrated in his throat, swallowed by the hungry press of lips and tongue.
He arched his back, his bare chest straining, seeking contact, friction, more.
He was hard and aching in his trousers, a throbbing, insistent pulse of need that was secondary only to the need for air, for the relentless possession of this kiss to never end.
He clutched harder at Gael’s shirt, a silent, frantic plea for more, closer, don’t stop.
Just as suddenly as it had transformed, it stopped.
Gael tore his mouth away, pulling back. But the grip in his hair remained, holding him in place, forcing his head to stay tilted back. He stared up, dazed, his vision swimming, his body screaming at the loss of contact.
Gael’s breath was uneven, his chest rising and falling against Samuel’s clenched fists. His eyes were black, pupils blown wide with a hunger that mirrored Samuel’s own. For a long, suspended moment, they simply existed in the fractured silence.
Then Gael spoke, his voice a ragged, low vibration that seemed to come from deep in his chest. “I’ll drive you home.”
He released Samuel’s hair. The sudden absence of the anchoring pressure made Samuel sway. Gael stood up in one fluid motion, the distance between them now a yawning chasm. He extended a hand.
Sam stared at the offered hand, his mind still white noise, his body thrumming with unmet need and shock. Slowly, he placed his trembling hand in Gael’s and he was pulled to his feet.
He walked on wooden legs to where his shirt and jacket lay discarded on the floor.
He bent, his movements clumsy, and picked up the shirt.
His hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t align the buttons with the holes.
He fumbled, a button slipping again and again from his useless fingers, a wave of frustrated helplessness rising in his throat.
Then Gael was there. He didn’t speak. He pushed Samuel’s trembling hands aside and took the edges of the shirt. His own hands, in stark contrast, were perfectly steady. He began to button the shirt from the bottom up, his movements slow.
Samuel could only stand there, staring at the top of Gael’s bent head, at the movements of his fingers against the white cotton. It was an intimacy more devastating than the kiss; this quiet, wordless care, this re-doing of the thing he had just so thoroughly undone.
When the last button was fastened at his throat, Gael smoothed the fabric over Samuel’s shoulders, his palms resting there for a weighted second.
Then he retrieved the jacket and held it open.
Samuel turned, sliding his arms into the sleeves, feeling the weight of the wool settle back onto him.
Gael’s hands came to his shoulders once more, adjusting the lie of the jacket with a few brief, precise tugs.
He moved then, turning around and leaving the apartment without another word.
Sam followed.
The drive was quiet.
Samuel floated beside Gael, encased in a haze that was part deep calm and part frantic, unmet arousal. The peace of the evening still hummed in his bones. But it was overlaid now with the raw, aching memory of the kiss, the possessive grip in his hair, the sudden, devastating stop.
He felt like a instrument that had been played to a crescendo and then abruptly silenced, its strings still vibrating with a note that had no resolution.
Gael pulled the car to the curb outside Samuel’s building twenty minutes later. The engine cut off. The sudden quiet was immense, a vacuum that pressed in from all sides. The only light was the sickly green glow of the dashboard, painting Gael’s profile in stark, unreadable planes.
The silence stretched. Samuel could hear the faint, rapid beat of his own heart.
Finally, Gael turned his head. In the dim light, his eyes were pits of shadow, his expression carved from stone.
“From now on, I expect you to arrive at my apartment each Friday at 8 pm sharp, and stay until Sunday morning. Is that understood?”
The words did not compute at first. They were sounds. Then they were concepts. Friday. Sunday. Stay. They assembled into a structure of time and demand that was so vast, so all-consuming, that Samuel’s mind simply whited out. A blank, static screen.
He can’t. He shouldn’t. That’s… that’s a weekend. That’s… living there. It’s wrong. It’s insane. It’s...
He floundered, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly.
Movement. Fast and brutal. A hand, the same hand that had gently buttoned his shirt, fisted in his hair again, near the crown.
It yanked, not with enough force to truly hurt, but with enough to pull his head back sharply against the headrest, exposing the line of his throat in a jarring, uncomfortable angle.
Gael leaned across the center console, his body a dark, overwhelming presence, his face now inches from Samuel’s.
“Is. That. Understood. Samuel?”
He bit off each word, his breath hot against Sam’s skin. On the final word he did something devastating. He closed the last fraction of an inch. Their lips brushed. A whisper of contact, dry and shocking. The faint scrape of stubble, the heat of his mouth, the promise and threat held within it.
The combination was deadly. It shattered the last of Samuel’s crumbling resistance. His will dissolved. A thin, helpless whimper escaped his trapped throat.
His head, held fast, managed a slow, dazed nod. His voice, when it finally emerged, was a broken, breathless thing. “Yes… Yes. It’s understood, Sir.”
A faint, dark smirk touched the corner of Gael’s mouth; a flash of white in the gloom, there and gone. The punishing grip in his hair eased, but his hand didn’t leave. It slid to cup the back of Samuel’s head, holding him firmly in place.
“Good.”
And then he kissed him again.
It was not like the earlier kiss.
Gael’s mouth covered his, swallowing the shaky breath Samuel tried to draw. His tongue swept in with a languid, filthy ownership. He mapped the inside of Samuel’s mouth with a slow, thorough stroke that left no part untouched, unknown.
It was a kiss that said mine.
Samuel could only take it, a low, desperate moan vibrating in his chest as he was devoured. His hands clutched at nothing in his lap, his entire body tightening, blood rushing south, making him painfully, overwhelmingly hard again in an instant.
The kiss was a brand, searing away every other thought, every shred of doubt, leaving only heat and shameful, dizzying need.
Just as Samuel felt himself tipping over an edge, Gael withdrew.
But not before his teeth caught his swollen lower lip. He bit down, not hard enough to break skin, but with a sharp pressure that was both a punishment and a promise. A jolt of pain-pleasure shot straight to Samuel’s groin, so intense he cried out, a sharp, choked sound against Gael’s mouth.
Then it was over.
Gael released him and leaned back into his seat as if nothing had happened. He straightened his shirt with a slight tug, his eyes forward, fixed on the dark street ahead. His breathing was the only sign of the encounter, slightly elevated, a quiet counter-rhythm in the silent car.
“Good night, Mr. Ruiz.”
Samuel fumbled for the door handle, his fingers numb and clumsy. He stumbled out onto the cold curb, the night air a shocking slap. He turned, a half-formed thought, a phantom plea on his ruined lips.
He was too late.
The car’s engine snarled to life. The tires bit into the asphalt with a short, sharp screech, and the sleek black vehicle pulled away, accelerating down the empty street, its taillights shrinking to tiny red dots and then vanishing into the night.
Samuel stood alone on the curb. The cold seeped through his jacket. His lip throbbed where Gael’s teeth had marked him, a persistent, aching pulse. Inside the silent vacuum of his skull, the new rules echoed:
Friday. 8 pm. Sunday morning.
And as he stood there, shivering, hard, and utterly possessed, he knew he would be there when Friday came.