Page 55 of The Associate
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.
Chapter 14
Samuel
Samuel lay on his back, staring at the ceiling he couldn’t quite see in the gloom. His alarm had blared, been silenced, blared again, and finally been hurled against the wall.
He hadn’t gone to work. The thought of pulling on the armor of his suit, of knotting a tie around his throat,the throat Gael’s mouth had been on, was a physical impossibility. The idea of the subway, of fluorescent lights, of the elevator bank, of the sixteenth floor… it was a mountain he could not climb.
He hadn’t made a decision. His body had made it for him. A deep, systemic lockdown. His limbs were heavy, filled with wet sand. His mind was a shattered pane, each shard reflecting a different horror.
Gael’s eyes in the second before the kiss, the taste of his mouth, the desperate keen he himself had made, the Director’s voice asking for repentance...
Eventually, he moved. He pushed back the rumpled duvet, the sheets cool and tangled. The air in the apartment was stale, silent but for the hum of the refrigerator. He walked, barefoot, to the closet. The sliding doors were a dull white in the half-light.
He opened them.
He didn’t turn on the light. He pushed past the hanging garments until he reached the back wall. He slid down, his back against the cool drywall, and drew his knees to his chest.
The air in the closet was cool, raising goosebumps on his skin. He reached out blindly, his fingers finding the worn, soft fabric of an old college hoodie discarded on the floor. He pulled it on. He wrapped his arms around his legs, making himself small, a tight ball in the dark.
Time lost its shape. It became measured in heartbeats, in the slow crawl of a sliver of light under the closet door as the sun moved outside. He drifted in and out of a shallow, troubled sleep that was no different from wakefulness. Both states were filled with the same looping reel.
The soft, searching pressure of Gael’s lips. The question in it.
Have you repented?
The hot, wet slide of his tongue, the taste of coffee and mint and want.
