Elias stands behind my chair. The act is deliberate. He doesn’t plant himself like a trophy; he leans like a shadow, quiet and knowing, as if he’s chosen exactly where to be. It irritates some of the men, delights others. Above all, it undermines their expectations. They expected me to stand alone, austere and untouchable. Instead, there is someone else in my orbit, someone with the nerve to remain present in a space that is not his.
“Good,” I hear an elder family friend murmur, an almost imperceptible note of surprise. “He brings a page boy now. Times change.”
“Boy,” Elias sneers under his breath, loud enough for me to hear as my chair creaks when I shift. He’s close to me. I feel theheat of his body behind my spine. The proximity is comforting and dangerous. He’s a living thing leaning into my silhouette.
The meeting spirals through the necessary things: shipments diverted, ports to be softened, a dock in the south that needs more careful management. Men grandstand and fold; figures are tossed like chips. I handle the negotiation because it’s my rule. I speak softly and it carries like a knife. The others listen because what I say has teeth.
Elias’s presence is a constant. He leans when he laughs, an easy sound that makes a few men glance. He presses his hip against the back of my chair, and I feel the small invasion of his body, deliberate and explicit. Elias does not enjoy standing for long periods of time. He gets particularly whiny at these kinds of meetings.
He’s testing, and I test back: a slight motion of my hands, the placement of a pen, the smallest tightening of the knot in my head.
“Lucian, you can’t expect us to meet this quota in such a short time,” Peter Hollows says, an annoying fly in my ear.
“I’m sorry, I must have misheard you.” I level my hands against the table. “Are you tellingmewhat I can and can’t do?”
The room shudders. I notice hands reaching under the table, breaths held. A needle could drop, and we could hear the twang of it against the tile floor.
Suddenly, Elias slips into my lap.
My body tenses. It’s ridiculous and bold, and every man in the room shifts, the sound like a single animal noticing a new threat. The room’s air changes, a space recalibrating to a new axis.
“He didn’t mean it like that, sir.” Elias throws an arm around my shoulders, making eye contact with Hollows. “Right?”
Hollows. “Right! I misspoke. I thought you had said January. Of course, we can do March!”
Elias smirks, leaning down to my ear.
“Can we leave yet, master?” Elias says, making me almost forget what we were even talking about.
He doesn’t look embarrassed; he looks conspiratorial and insolent. The posture is absurdly intimate and exactly the kind of provocation he knows will unsettle me.
A dozen eyes flick to me. My men—those not present—would have a stroke of decorum if they saw this. But the other bosses are human: flush with curiosity, shading glances with agendas already forming.
My first instinct is to be a man who apologizes, who restores the order the world expects. But something in me that surprised me before rises again: pleasure. He is challenging me, not in an act of submission but in a public, insufferable claim on my space. It is both audacious and brave. It’s also exactly the disruption I want.
I keep my face calm. My hands move like a conductor reading a score, guiding the room back to the business at hand. I wrap an arm around Elia’s waist without ceremony—not to be tender, not yet—but because I will not be undermined. I move him closer to me so I can see my paperwork in front of me.
The move is both possession and protection. The contact there against my side grounds me. He tilts his head, eyes bright, and presses his weight in a way that’s equal parts need and provocation.
“Behave,” I say, in a dry, steady tone that flows into the room like oil into fire.
It is not a threat so much as a bargain. The other men hear it and shift.
Elias hums softly, smug. He leans forward with perfect insolence and rests a piece of his palm against the stack of documents between the opposing men and me, a small gesture that reads as a claim. He shifts his tight ass against my cock.
My fingers dig into his waist. “Proceed,” I say.
Hallows clears his throat, irritated and disconcerted, but the thread of the meeting continues, as if we have decided on an entente by the presence of his brazen disregard.
I finish the meeting the way I always do: precise, unflinching, and I leave no loose threads. Men filed out, hands shook, contracts nodded, grudges recognized. Through it all, I feel Elias in my lap like a weight that’s both inconvenient and necessary.
When the last man leaves, when the room empties and the door clicks behind the last expectation, I allow myself a brief exhale.
He stares at me with that look of someone who’s delighted he managed to poke the sleeping bear.
“That was fun,” he says, voice low, pleased with himself. “You looked very…unruffled. Impressive.”
“Impressive?” I echo. I let the word be both a compliment and an edge. “You’re insolent.”
