Thwack-crack. Thwack-crack. Thwack-crack.
Each strike landed true, building a pattern of pink and red across his back. His skin flushed deeper with every impact, marks overlapping, heat visible even from this distance. His moans had become a steady rhythm now, punctuated by the crack of the whip, his body pushing back into each blow like he couldn't get enough.
Landen watched it and felt nothing.
Not the familiar stir of appreciation he might have felt months ago. Not the dull hollow absence of recent weeks. Tonight the nothing was different. Sharp. Impatient. Edged with something that had been building since he'd stood at the door of that wine bar and leaned in too close and known, with the particular clarity that four bourbons and Adriel's upturned face could bring, that he was in far deeper than he'd been willing to admit.
He watched the woman's hand rise and fall, watched the submissive's body writhe and surrender, and all he could think about was the way Adriel's lips had parted. The way his breath had gone shallow.
He lifted the bourbon. Put it back down.
He'd come here tonight with the expectation that it would settle him, ground him, return him to himself. He'd taken a willing submissive through a scene that should have emptied his mind of everything but the present. The boy had been beautiful. Landen had gone through every motion, delivered every strike, taken his release.
And through all of it, his mind had been elsewhere.
Now he stood at this railing thinking about the way Adriel had looked at him tonight. Close enough to feel his breath. About to do something profoundly unwise before Felix pulled him away.
He was furious about it. Not the wanting, he'd made a kind of uneasy peace with the wanting, but the fury. The specific, directionless anger of a man who has no claim on something and resents that fact with an intensity entirely disproportionate to the situation.
He had no claim on Adriel. Adriel was his employee. Twenty-four years old and soft and bruised in ways Landen was only beginning to understand, and absolutely no business being the focus of what Landen was currently feeling.
Below, the scene was reaching its peak. The woman had set aside the whip and was working the submissive's bound body with her hands; stroking, slapping, gripping the flushed skin of his ass with enough force to leave fingerprints. His cries were ragged, desperate, his hips rocking forward into nothing, seeking something he couldn't reach.
He still felt nothing.
A presence materialized at his shoulder. Silent as a shadow.
Gael leaned against the railing, mirroring his posture, his gaze directed at the scene below. For a long moment neither of them spoke. The woman's hand connected with the man's ass again, a sharp, wet slap that made him cry out, and the sound drifted up to them, swallowed by the ambient noise.
"You've been quiet lately," Gael said.
"Have I?"
Gael ignored the tone.
"You're usually a pain in the ass. So yes."
Landen said nothing. He knew what Gael meant; the needling, the dry commentary, the particular energy he brought to a room. He had none of it tonight. He'd had none of it for weeks, but tonight was worse. Tonight he felt like a wire pulled too tight, humming with something that had no outlet.
"I feel off."
Gael turned. The light caught the sharp planes of his face, the dark assessing eyes that had always seen more than Landen wanted them to.
"Off how?"
Landen looked down at the glass. He'd been rolling it between his palms without realizing. The condensation was cold against his skin.
"Off," he said. Then, because Gael would wait him out forever if necessary: "Irritable. Distracted." A pause. "Possessive about something that isn't mine."
He hadn't meant to say that last part.
Gael went very still beside him.
"Possessive," he repeated. Careful.
Landen's jaw tightened. He stared at the scene below; the woman now easing the submissive onto his back, her hands gentle on his overheated skin, the aftercare beginning.
"There's someone," he said. Flat. "At work. And before you say anything…"
