Chapter 14: Boardroom Claim
The boardroom table was a vast, polished lake of mahogany, reflecting the distorted shapes of the executives sitting around it. Taichi kept his spine very straight, his hands folded tightly on the leather binder in front of him. The air conditioning was set to arctic, a standard power play by Ryuu, but it did nothing to cool the flush on Taichi’s neck or the uncomfortable constriction around his middle.
His button-down shirt, a size larger than he’d worn just a month ago, was straining. The gentle, firm curve of his lower abdomen pressed against the starched fabric in a way that was no longer concealable by a slouch or a strategically held folder. He could feel it. A taut, warm presence. The clutch.
Mr. Ishikawa from Logistics was droning on about quarterly freight discrepancies. The numbers blurred on Taichi’s tablet. His focus was split between the monotonous report and the internal, alien sensation of subtle movement—not kicks, but a slow, liquid shifting, a settling of weight. He shifted in his chair, and the seam of his trousers dug in. He winced.
A quick, frantic glance down confirmed his fear. The top button of his shirt had popped open, revealing a sliver of skin and the distinct swell beneath. His heart leapt into his throat. He fumbled, trying to casually drag the fabric together, to re-button it under the table.
His eyes flicked up, instinctively seeking the head of the table.
Ryuu was watching him. Not the presenter. Him. Those gold-flecked eyes were nailed to Taichi’s fumbling hands, then to the exposed strip of his belly. The CEO’s expression was utterly unreadable to everyone else—a mask of polite attention. But Taichi saw the pupil’s flare, the subtle hardening of his jaw. A predator spotting a vulnerability. His own.
“...and so we see a net inefficiency of point-oh-seven percent, which, while minor, aggregates across the supply chain—” Ishikawa continued.
“Thank you, Ishikawa. That will be all for today.” Ryuu’s voice cut through the room, smooth as the mahogany, leaving no room for argument.
A beat of surprised silence. They weren’t halfway through the agenda.
“Sir?” the head of marketing ventured.
“The meeting is concluded. Please email your remaining reports. Dismissed.” Ryuu didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. It was a wave of pure, undiluted command that rolled over the table. Chairs scraped back. Muttering quietly, the executives gathered their things, filing out with confused, sidelong glances.
Taichi stood too quickly, his binder clutched to his chest like a shield. He intended to follow the crowd, to vanish into the safety of his cubicle.
“Taichi. A word.” The voice pinned him to the spot.
The last person, the CFO, gave Taichi a sympathetic little shrug on his way out. The heavy oak door swung shut with a soft, definitive click. The sound echoed in the sudden, vast quiet. The skyline glittered through the windows, a spectacle of indifferent steel and glass.
Ryuu didn’t move from his seat at the head of the table. He just watched Taichi, who stood frozen ten feet away, feeling the air grow thicker, warmer, charged with something that had nothing to do with central air.
“You’re uncomfortable,” Ryuu stated.
“It’s… it’s fine. The chair is just—”
“It’s not the chair.” Ryuu stood then, a slow uncoiling of power. He began walking around the table, his footsteps silent on the plush carpet. “You’re trying to hide it. From me.”
“From everyone,” Taichi corrected, his voice small. He took a step back, his heels bumping the window ledge. “People will talk, Ryuu. They’ll see.”
“Let them.” Ryuu was in front of him now, close enough for Taichi to smell the clean, sharp scent of his skin, to feel the heat radiating from him. “But you will not hide it from me. Not ever.”
His hand came up, not to strike, but to hover over the straining fabric of Taichi’s shirt. Taichi flinched anyway. With a deft, contemptuous motion, Ryuu flicked the remaining buttons open. They scattered across the carpet like tiny pearls.
Cool air hit Taichi’s skin, followed immediately by the searing heat of Ryuu’s gaze. His shirt hung open, revealing the full, smooth curve of his belly, pale and round under the sterile office lights.
Taichi shuddered, shame and a strange, defiant pride warring inside him. “Ryuu, not here…”
“Here. Everywhere. Mine.” The words were a low growl, the human voice fraying at the edges. Ryuu’s hands settled on the exposed flesh, palms warm and broad, spanning the curve. He splayed his fingers, possessive, reverent. A thumb stroked the tight skin just below Taichi’s navel.
The touch sent a jolt through Taichi, straight to his core. He gasped, his head thunking back against the cool window glass.
“Do you feel them?” Ryuu murmured, bending his head, his breath ghosting over Taichi’s skin. His lips followed, a soft, devastating press against the apex of the swell. “The clutch. Growing strong. Because of me. Inside you.”
Taichi could only nod, a moan trapped in his throat. His binder fell to the floor with a muffled thud. His fingers scrambled for purchase, tangling in the rich fabric of Ryuu’s suit jacket.
Ryuu kissed his way across the taut plane, laving, nipping gently with blunt human teeth, marking the territory with his mouth. His hands slid around to cup Taichi’s backside, pulling their bodies flush. Taichi could feel the hard, demanding line of Ryuu’s arousal through two layers of fine wool and cotton.
“You walk into my boardroom,” Ryuu said against his skin, his voice vibrating, “filled with my heirs, and think to cover them? To shame them with cheap fabric?” He straightened, his eyes blazing. “No.”
With a sound of tearing linen, he gripped the sides of Taichi’s shirt and ripped it clean off. Buttons pinged against the window. Taichi cried out, half in shock, half in raw arousal, standing bare from the waist up in the pinnacle of corporate power.
Ryuu didn’t stop. His hands went to Taichi’s belt, making quick, brutal work of the buckle and the zipper. The trousers and boxers were shoved down his thighs in one rough push, pooling at his ankles. Taichi was exposed, utterly vulnerable, pinned between the cold glass of the city and the volcanic heat of his mate.
“The table,” Ryuu ordered, his own breathing ragged now.
“Someone could—”
“The. Table.”
Hands shaking, Taichi obeyed, hobbling the step to the enormous boardroom table. The polished wood was shockingly cold against his bare stomach and thighs as Ryuu guided him down, bending him over it. The city sprawled beneath him, a million windows watching, blind.
Ryuu covered him, his suit an abrasive contrast to Taichi’s nakedness. He didn’t bother undressing, just freed himself and pushed in, one deep, conquering stroke that made Taichi shout, the sound echoing off the high ceiling.
“See them?” Ryuu snarled in his ear, one arm banded across Taichi’s chest, the other hand splayed possessively over the swell of his belly, pressing him down into the table. “Out there? They build their little empires of glass and debt. They know nothing. This,” he thrust, deep and hard, “this is an empire. This is a dynasty. You hold it.”
Taichi was beyond words, reduced to shattered gasps and pleas. Each drive seated Ryuu impossibly deep, each grind of his hips felt like a claim staked directly against the clutch within. The boardroom, the skyline, the ghostly reflections in the table’s surface—it all blurred into a panorama of pure sensation. Ownership. Creation. A frantic, sacred joining atop the altar of mundane power.
Ryuu’s climax was a silent, shuddering violence, a flood of heat that had Taichi following him over the edge, his own release smearing the pristine mahogany. For a long minute, the only sounds were their ragged breaths fogging the polished surface.
Slowly, Ryuu withdrew. He gently turned Taichi onto his back on the table, like an offering. Taichi lay spent, staring at the recessed lights in the ceiling, his mind blank and buzzing.
Ryuu leaned over him, his suit still perfectly tailored, his hair barely out of place. He looked down at Taichi—naked, marked, displayed on the boardroom table with his rounded belly gleaming under the lights. A slow, utterly satisfied smile touched his lips. He bent and placed one last, tender kiss on the taut skin.
“Much better,” he said, his voice back to its normal, CEO calm. He picked up his own suit jacket from the back of his chair and draped it over Taichi’s torso. “No more hiding. We’re going to see the physician tonight. The clutch is progressing. It’s time we knew exactly what to expect.”
He offered a hand to help Taichi sit up. Taichi took it, his legs watery, the reality of their location crashing back in. He was naked in the boardroom. In Ryuu’s jacket. He started to laugh, a slightly unhinged, breathless sound.
Ryuu’s smile widened, showing a flash of very white, very human teeth. “Come, little one. Let’s go home. The nest awaits.”
And Taichi realized, with a jolt that was pure anticipation, that he was already thinking of the penthouse, the silks, the safety of the nest they’d built. The boardroom was just a place they’d visited. Home was where the dragon kept his treasure.