Chapter 21
Samuel
He should knock. His knuckles hovered, pale and trembling, an inch from the wood.
The door swung inward before he could touch it.
Gael filled the doorway, silhouetted against the cool, low light of the apartment. He wasn't dressed for work; dark grey trousers, a simple black sweater pushed up to his elbows. The casualness of it was somehow more intimidating than any suit.
gaze started at Samuel’s shoes, shined that morning in a fit of nervous energy, traveled up his too-stiff trousers, over the crisp white shirt he’d changed into just before leaving, and finally settled on his face.
It was a slow, comprehensive inventory. Samuel felt it like a physical touch, stripping away layers.
It saw the tremor in his lower lip, the frantic pulse in his throat, the way his breath hitched and held.
He felt transparent, a specimen pinned under glass.
Then those dark eyes dropped to the bag. “Put it by the door.”
The voice was calm. Flat. Completely matter-of-fact. It held none of the dark velvet texture from the car, none of the possessive bite.
“Yes, Sir,” Samuel whispered.
He bent, placing the bag neatly against the wall beside a sleek, empty console table.
The bag held his toothbrush, a change of clothes, a book; tiny, desperate anchors to his other life.
Letting it go was a physical surrender. He straightened, arms dangling uselessly, feeling weightless and terrifyingly exposed.
Gael turned without another word.
Samuel followed, his steps too loud on the hardwood.
The apartment felt different. He’d only ever seen it through the lens of crisis: the shocked, bloody haze after the mugging, and then the charged, earth-shattering space where he had first knelt.
Now, on a quiet Friday night with two entire days yawning before them, the space seemed vaster, its silence deeper, more pregnant.
The wall of windows highlighted the city’s glittering grid, but inside, the light was pooled and intimate, catching the grain of wood, the sheen of steel, leaving corners in soft, suggestive shadow.
“This is the kitchen.”
Gael had stopped in the doorway, not entering. Samuel halted a pace behind, his eyes skating over the spotless black countertops, the professional stove that looked barely touched.
“You may get water or food for yourself at any time. Glasses and dishes are here.” A tap of a long finger on a cabinet handle. A dull sound.
Samuel nodded mutely, though Gael’s back was to him.
He led him to the other end of the living room where three doors awaited. Gael pushed open the first door. A bathroom, all slate tile and white porcelain, smelling faintly of citrus and something antiseptic beneath. It was impeccably, inhumanly clean.
“The bathroom. Towels are here.” He opened a narrow cupboard. Inside, a stack of thick, grey linen towels, folded into perfect, identical rectangles. “You will use these.”
You will. Not ‘you can,’ or ‘feel free.’
They moved to the next door. Gael’s hand rested on the knob, but he didn’t turn it. He half-turned, and his gaze pinned Samuel where he stood.
“My room. You do not enter unless I bring you in.”
Sam stared at the door, the memory of his first time in this apartment flashing in his mind. He had been in a state of panic that morning, out of his mind, but he still remembered those doors, that room.
Why did Gael put him in his own room that evening?
The question echoed through his mind, almost slipping from his tongue as he looked at Gael, but he forced it back. Instead, he nodded once again, softly saying, “Yes, Sir.”
Finally, the last door. Gael opened it.
The room was… nothing. That was Samuel’s first, disorienting thought.
White walls, bare. A low platform bed, covered by a charcoal duvet pulled taut enough to bounce a coin.
A single, plain wooden chair in the corner.
A wardrobe with sliding doors. No rug, no lamp, no hint of personality.
The only light spilled in from the hallway behind them, throwing their long, distorted shadows across the bare oak floor.
“This is your room. Your things will go here when I decide it’s time.” Gael’s voice was neutral, as if discussing the weather.
Samuel stepped inside. The air was cool and utterly still. It smelled of clean cotton and, underneath, a faint, lemony tang of wood polish. He moved to the bed and perched on the very edge, his back ramrod straight, hands pressed to his knees. The mattress was unforgivingly firm.
Gael watched him from the doorway for a long moment, a dark, assessing silhouette. Then, he turned. “Come.”
Back in the living room, the familiar landmarks hit him like physical blows. The expansive grey rug. The armchair. The single cushion placed before it. His heart gave a single, hard, painful thump against his ribs.
The memory of kneeling there, the feel of the wool under his knees, the consuming fire of the kiss that had shattered every defense he had, flashed behind his eyes with blistering, sensory overload.
Lust, hot and immediate, coiled low in his gut, a live wire.
It was followed instantly, predictably, by a wave of nauseating shame so thick he could taste it, coppery and sour at the back of his tongue.
This is depravity. You are sick. You are exactly what they said you were.
“Sit.”
The command, sharp and clear, cut the spiral in half. Samuel’s head snapped up. Gael was pointing to the long, low sofa positioned to the side.
A thin, wretched strand of relief washed through him. He wasn’t being commanded to kneel. Not yet. It was a reprieve, and he was pathetically grateful for it. He hurried to the sofa and sat, folding his hands in his lap, his posture so correct it ached.
Gael moved to the floor-to-ceiling shelves that flanked the fireplace.
His long fingers, the same fingers that had gripped his hair, cradled his head, trailed over the leather and cloth spines with a soft touch.
He selected a book, a thin paperback with no dust jacket.
He turned and placed it on the coffee table in front of Samuel.
“Loving Dominant by John Warren and Libby Warren” Samuel read title. .His eyes widened.
“Read,” Gael said. “Until I tell you to stop.”
Then he walked away. He settled into the armchair and picked up a tablet from the side table. The soft blue-white glow lit the stark planes of his cheekbones, the firm line of his mouth. He began to work, his attention absorbed by the screen.
Samuel stared at the book. The silence in the room was a living, breathing entity. Every tiny sound Samuel made, the rustle of his shirt as he breathed, the soft click of his throat as he swallowed, felt obscenely loud.
He reached out. His fingers trembled, just slightly, as he opened the heavy cover.
The pages were thick, creamy, the smell of old paper and mild glue rising to meet him..
He read the first sentence. Then he read it again.
The words skated over the surface of his mind like stones on ice, leaving no trace. His awareness was violently split.
One part of his brain was a frantic, caged animal, trying desperately to obey, to parse the sentences. The other part, larger, more primal, was screamingly, agonizingly fixated on the man sitting six feet away.
He could hear the almost-silent tap of Gael’s finger on the tablet glass.
He could see, from the very corner of his watering eye, the steady, slow rise and fall of his chest beneath the black sweater.
He could smell him, not cologne, but the clean, dark scent of his soap or skin, something like cedar and vetiver and cool stone.
The attraction was a physical magnetism, a current in the air trying to pull him off the sofa, across the few feet of rug, and onto his knees on that dark square of fabric.
His own skin felt hypersensitive, too tight over his bones.
He imagined those fingers, currently swiping across a screen, on his jaw, in his hair, on his...
A hot flush spread from his chest up his neck, staining his skin.
Filthy. Desperate. Sick.
The old, internal catechism hissed, automatic as a heartbeat.
The illicit pleasure curdled instantly, turning thick and toxic in his veins.
Shame, his oldest companion, doused the heat, leaving him cold, hollow, and trembling.
Without thinking, he hunched his shoulders forward, trying to make himself smaller, to fold into the sofa and disappear.
“Posture.”
The single word, spoken without Gael even looking up from his tablet, cracked through the room like a gunshot.
Samuel jerked as if struck. His back snapped straight, shoulders wrenching back. He hadn’t even realized he’d slumped. How had he seen? His eyes had been on his screen.
“Eyes on the page, Samuel. Not on me.”
Sam flushed bright red at being caught and fixed his gaze on the dense block of text, but his vision swam, the letters blurring and dancing.
He couldn’t get a full breath. The panic, the old, icy fingers, began to unspool in his chest, winding tight around his lungs.
The words on the page morphed into meaningless black marks.
“Do you have family in the city, Samuel?”
The question was so mundane, so utterly, bizarrely disconnected from the silent meltdown happening inside him, that Samuel’s brain stuttered. He blinked, his gaze wrenching up from the book. Gael hadn’t moved. He was still looking at his tablet.
“My… my parents. Sir. In Queens.” His voice sounded thin, reedy.
“Siblings?”
“A brother. Jacob.”
“Older? Younger?”
“Younger.”
“Are you close?”
Samuel’s throat closed. The ghost of their last encounter in the bar rose in his mind.
You deserve more out of life than this.
“It’s… complicated,” Samuel managed, the evasion tasting like ash. “We don’t see each other often.”
“Why not?”
“We... we live different lives.” It was a pathetic, transparent dodge, and he knew it the moment it left his lips.
Gael made a soft, non-committal sound in the back of his throat. “Friends?”