Page 86 of The Associate
This was wrong. He shouldn’t be looking.
He was staring, gaping like some starved, pathetic creature. But he couldn’t look away. The sight was a physical force, pinning him to the doorway.
Then, Gael turned.
Samuel’s mind short-circuited, whiting out into a static hum.
The front view was worse. So much worse.
His eyes, entirely without his permission, dragged across the expanse of Gael’s chest. It was broad, sculpted with the same efficient muscle, dusted with a faint smattering of dark hair that tapered down his sternum. His stomach was flat, defined, the muscles lying in long, quiet bands. The trail of dark hair narrowed, drawing a deliberate line down from his navel, disappearing beneath the low-slung waistband of those damn pants.
The waistband, which was hanging for dear life on the sharp points of his hips. The V-shape it created leading downward was obscene. The sight made Samuel feel dizzy. A violent, unspeakable impulse flared; to press his mouth there, to trace that line with his tongue, to taste the skin at the border of fabric.
The thought was so raw, so shamefully specific, that he ripped his gaze away as if burned. He stared fiercely at his own feet. His cheeks were on fire, a scalding blush he could feel spreading down his neck.
What is the matter with you?!his mind screamed, a hysterical shriek. He was disgusting. Obscene. Standing in his boss’s kitchen, staring at his bare chest, having…thoughts.
The silence stretched, thick with his panic. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.
Then, he heard the soft clink of the knife being set down on granite.
Footsteps. Deliberate, unhurried. They crossed the short space of the kitchen floor.
They stopped right in front of him.
Samuel could feel the body heat radiating from him, a warmth that seemed to penetrate the cotton of his t-shirt and sear his skin.All that skin, so close…The thought was a whimper in the back of his skull.
He kept his eyes down, praying for the floor to swallow him.
Cool, firm fingers slid beneath his chin.
The touch was electric. A bolt of pure sensation that straightened his spine. The fingers exerted a gentle pressure, urging his head up.
He resisted for a fractured second, a last, futile stand of his shame. Then he yielded. His head lifted, his eyes, wide and helpless, dragged upwards.
They met Gael’s.
The world shrunk. The kitchen, the humiliating spiral of his thoughts; all of it dissolved into meaningless noise. The only real things were the fingers beneath his chin, anchoring him to the earth, and those eyes. Dark, deep, endlessly knowing. They held him, not with force, but with a gravitational pull. There was no judgment in them. No amusement.
“Morning, Samuel.”
Gael’s voice was low, a quiet rumble in the silent space between them. “Sleep well?”
Samuel blinked, his brain struggling to parse the simple English. He managed a jerky, mute nod. His voice was gone, his throat a parched desert. He tried to swallow; couldn’t.
The thumb of the hand cradling his jaw moved. It stroked once, slowly, across the crest of his cheekbone. A shiver racked Samuel from head to toe. Then the thumb journeyed downward, tracing the line of his cheek until it reached the corner of his mouth.
It paused. A moment. Two.
Then, slowly, it swept across his bottom lip.
Samuel’s lips parted on a sharp, silent inhale. The pad of Gael’s thumb was slightly rough. It pressed down on the soft flesh of his lower lip, tugging it down just a fraction, exposing the vulnerable inner skin.
A helpless, broken sound escaped Samuel’s throat; a half-whimper, half-sigh. His eyes fluttered closed for a second, adesperate retreat. He tried to marshal his body, to wrest back some shred of control over his reactions.
It was a lost battle. It had been lost from the moment he’d walked into the kitchen. Any time this man was close to him, Samuel ceased to be a person with will. He became a collection of raw, exposed nerves, singing a song of surrender only Gael seemed to know how to play.
“Would you like coffee?”
