"That's what I thought." He released my jaw but didn't step back. "Take off your shirt."
My fingers moved to the buttons before my mind caught up. The silk was Brioni, a deep navy I'd worn deliberately, hoping he might notice. He noticed everything.
The shirt fell away, and I stood exposed in the dim cabin. Cool air raised goosebumps across my skin, but my face heated. I was fifty-four years old, my body showing the inevitable signs of age:softening at the waist, silver threading through the hair on my chest, the scar on my shoulder from Beirut.
Algerone's gaze traveled over me, not with appreciation but with assessment, the way he'd look at a contract before signing.
"We're not the men we were," he observed.
"No."
His hand pressed flat against my chest, directly over my heart, and he had to feel how fast it was beating. "I've thought about this. Taking you apart. Watching that perfect composure crack. Every day you came to the penthouse with your grocery bags and your medical supplies and your quiet fucking devotion, I thought about what it would be like to break you."
The words settled something restless in my chest, and my cock stirred against my pants.
"Then do it."
His smile didn't reach his eyes. "So eager, just like always, ready to give me whatever I want before I've even asked for it. That's the problem, Maxime. You hand yourself over like a gift, and you expect me to be grateful."
I didn't understand what he wanted. I'd thought I knew him completely, but this Algerone was someone I hadn't met before.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"I want you to stop managing. For once in your miserable life, I want you to just stand there and take what I give you without trying to control the outcome."
He circled behind me, his cane tapping against the floor. Then it stopped.
"Hands on the wall."
I moved to the cabin's wood-paneled wall, positioning my palms flat against the surface. Behind me, soft rustling marked his movement, followed by the click of him setting aside his cane.
Then his hands were on my belt, unfastening it with none of the care I'd always shown him. The leather hissed through the loops. My trousers followed, shoved down without ceremony, and my cock sprang free, already half-hard from nothing more than his proximity and his commands.
"Every morning for eighteen months," he said against my ear, his clothed chest pressing against my bare back. "You put your hands on me and pretended it was medical. Pretended you weren't thinking about this every time you worked that oil into my skin."
I had no defense because he was right.
"Did you get hard during the massages?" His hand slid around my hip, fingers wrapping around my shaft.
"Yes." The word came out strangled. "Sometimes."
"And afterward, when you left the penthouse, what did you do?"
I closed my eyes. The memories remained vivid: standing in the elevator with my hands shaking, locking myself in my bathroom and taking myself in hand with the scent of him still on my skin.
"I touched myself," I admitted. "Thinking of you."
His grip tightened, stroking once, twice, thumb smearing the wetness already leaking from my tip. "That's pathetic. Eighteen months of jerking off alone in your bathroom like a teenager while I was right there. You could have said something."
"You hated me. You still hate me."
"Yes." He didn't deny it, and his hand kept moving, building a rhythm that made coherent thought impossible. My cock throbbed in his fist, aching for more pressure, more speed. "But hating you doesn't mean I didn't notice. Every time you touched my thigh. Every time your fingers got close to my cock, and then stopped. I knew exactly what you wanted."
I pressed my forehead against the wall, trying to breathe through the sensation. My balls were already drawn up tight, my body wound to a pitch after months of deprivation.
"You don't deserve any of this," he said, his other hand digging into my hip hard enough to bruise. "But I'm going to take it anyway."
His hand left my cock, and I bit back a groan of frustration. Behind me came the rustle of clothing, the sound of his zipper. Then, his hand was in my hair, yanking my head back.
