Chapter 5: Across the polished mahogany table, Eleanor's lip curls as Jamie's fingers slide higher up Adrian's thigh under the table, his pinky teasing the growing bulge in Adrian's slacks. 'Something wrong, Eleanor?' Jamie purrs while his thumb rubs slow circles over Adrian's hardening cock through the fabric, watching with satisfaction as Adrian's breath hitches and his knees tremble under the table.
The boardroom was a glacier—all sharp edges, cold light, and silent, immense pressure. Adrian sat at the head of the polished mahogany table, the quarterly reports a blur of numbers before him. He’d chosen a higher-collared shirt, but the fabric chafed against the fresh bite mark on his shoulder, a persistent, throbbing reminder of Jamie’s declaration that morning.
Eleanor Vance, seated to his right, had been a steady, quiet force of scrutiny for the past hour. Her questions were needles, precise and aimed at the seams of his presentation. Now, her gaze lingered not on his eyes, but on his neck.
“The projections in the Asian markets seem… optimistic, Adrian,” she said, her voice like smoothed marble. “Almost as optimistic as your sudden change in lifestyle.”
A soft chime cut the air. Jamie, slouched in the chair beside Adrian—a chair he’d dragged in from a side office, refusing the offered seat at the table’s distant foot—fumbled with his phone. “Shit, sorry,” he muttered, all practiced awkwardness. The device clattered onto the gleaming table, skidding towards the center.
It came to rest face-up directly in front of Eleanor.
The lock screen was active. The photo was dim, lit only by dawn’s grey-pink light through the penthouse windows. It showed a close-up of a man’s bare back, muscles taut, the line of his spine leading down to where the curve of his ass was barely hidden by rumpled sheets. The skin was marked—red scratches, the distinct purple bloom of a love bite on the shoulder. It was an intimate, ravished portrait. It was unmistakably Adrian.
The room froze. The hum of the air conditioner seemed to roar.
Eleanor’s eyes snapped from the phone to Adrian’s face. Her own was a mask of cold, triumphant fury. The bite mark peeking above his collar now made a different, damning sense. She’d seen the curated photo from the terrace shoot earlier; this was the negative. The raw, uncensored truth.
“How… convincing,” she breathed, the word dripping with venom.
Adrian’s blood turned to ice. This wasn’t part of the plan. This was a wrecking ball.
Then he felt it. Jamie’s hand, under the cover of the massive table, settled on his thigh. Not a brush, not an accident. A heavy, possessive weight. His fingers curled, digging in through the fine wool of Adrian’s trousers, and began a slow, insistent slide upwards towards his inseam.
Adrian jerked, a full-body flinch he couldn’t suppress.
“Is there a problem, Ms. Vance?” Jamie’s voice was a lazy drawl. He didn’t reach for the phone. He left it there, the evidence glowing between them. His thumb found the sensitive inner seam of Adrian’s trouser leg and pressed down, hard. “Just a little reminder of what’s waiting after the meetings are done. Gets me through the boring bits.”
His hand moved higher, cupping Adrian through his pants. Adrian’s breath hitched, trapped in his chest. He was painfully, instantly hard, a traitorous response to the shock and the brazen, public groping. He could feel every eye at the table, even if they couldn’t see. Eleanor’s gaze was a scalpel, dissecting his paralysis.
“No problem, Mr. Lawson,” Eleanor said, her voice dangerously soft. She finally picked up the phone, handling it with two fingertips as if it were contaminated, and slid it back towards Jamie. “The… authenticity is quite apparent.”
Jamie took the phone, his other hand never leaving Adrian’s cock. He gave a slow, deliberate squeeze. Adrian saw stars, a white flash behind his eyes. He gripped the edge of the table, knuckles white.
“If we’re done with the financials,” Jamie said, standing abruptly, his chair scraping loud in the silence. “My fiancé and I have a prior engagement. Don’t we, darling?”
He pulled Adrian up by his arm. Adrian stood, legs unsteady, his arousal a blatant, uncomfortable press against his zipper. He could only nod, avoiding the stunned faces of his board.
Jamie propelled him from the room, down the hall, not towards the elevators, but into a small, empty conference room. He locked the door with a click that echoed like a gunshot.
The moment they were alone, the performative arrogance dropped from Jamie’s face. What remained was raw, chaotic anger. “You see her face?” he snarled, pushing Adrian back against the cold glass wall overlooking the city. “She knows. She fucking knows it’s a lie, and it doesn’t even matter because the lie is so goddamn good.”
“The photo—” Adrian choked out.
“Was for you!” Jamie hissed, his hands fumbling with Adrian’s belt, his zipper. “A fucking reminder. But it worked, didn’t it? It worked perfectly.” He yanked Adrian’s pants and briefs down to his thighs. The cool air on his heated skin was a shock. “She looked at you and she didn’t see a CEO. She saw a whore getting owned.”
Adrian should have shoved him away. Should have been furious. Instead, a ragged moan tore from his throat as Jamie’s hand closed around his exposed cock. It was rough, no finesse, just a brutal, slick stroke from tip to base with the precome already leaking from him.
“Is this what you want?” Jamie demanded, dropping to his knees on the sterile carpet. His eyes, furious and bright, locked on Adrian’s. “This, in some fucking boardroom, after she eviscerates you?”
Adrian couldn’t speak. He could only watch, hypnotized, as Jamie spat into his palm, slicked himself, and then took Adrian deep into his mouth in one vicious, swallowing motion.
The heat was absolute. The wet, tight suction was a shock to his system, a direct counterpoint to the cold glass at his back. Jamie’s mouth was a punishment and a claiming, his tongue a ruthless pressure along the underside of Adrian’s shaft. He didn’t bob gently; he fed on him, driving Adrian’s hips back against the window with the force of his rhythm. The city sprawled below them, oblivious.
“Jamie—fuck—” Adrian gasped. His hands tangled in Jamie’s sun-streaked hair, not to guide, but to hold on as the world narrowed to the agonizing pleasure of that mouth. Jamie hummed, the vibration traveling straight up Adrian’s spine. He was being consumed, undone in the most clinical of spaces.
Jamie pulled off with a wet pop, his lips swollen, a string of saliva connecting them to Adrian’s glistening tip. “You gonna come?” he panted, stroking him with a filthy, fast rhythm. “You gonna come on this floor so some janitor finds it tomorrow and wonders what kind of animal fucking businessman works here?”
The profanity, the vulgarity, the sheer debasement of it shattered the last of Adrian’s control. His orgasm ripped through him with silent, violent intensity, stripes of white painting Jamie’s hand, the window, the grey carpet. He shook with it, his climax wrenched from him in a place of pure calculation, turning it into something feral and true.
He slumped against the glass, spent. Jamie rose, wiping his hand on his own trousers. He looked at Adrian, his anger spent, replaced by a hollow, weary disgust—mostly at himself.
“Get dressed,” he said, his voice flat. “We have to be seen leaving together.”
The car ride home was silence. The kind that was thick and choking. Adrian stared out at the blurring city, the ghost of Jamie’s mouth still on his skin, the echo of Eleanor’s knowing fury in his ears.
Inside the penthouse, Jamie headed straight for the kitchen, pulling two beers from the fridge. He handed one to Adrian. Their fingers brushed. The casual intimacy of the gesture, after everything, was somehow more devastating than the sex against the window.
“I’m sorry,” Jamie said quietly, not meeting his eyes. “About the phone. That was… too far.”
Adrian took a long pull of the beer. It was bitter. “Was it?” he asked, his own voice strange to him. “It worked. You said it yourself.”
Jamie finally looked at him. The kind brown eyes were shadowed with confusion and a pain Adrian hadn’t placed there before. “What are we doing, Adrian?”
Adrian had no answer. He had a board member who now possessed lethal ammunition. He had a best friend who fucked him with contempt and kissed his bruises with something like regret. He had a contract, neatly filed away, that outlined every term except the one that mattered: what happened to your heart when the performance became the only thing that felt real?
“I don’t know,” Adrian said honestly. He finished the beer. “Order some Thai. The usual.”
He walked towards his bedroom, needing the shower, needing to scrub the day away. Needing, more than anything, for Jamie to follow him. And terrified that he would.