Page 75 of Devotion

Very, very wrong.

Maybe the president didn’t like his plan. Gabriel is proud, and he’s worked so hard on this project. He might be reluctant to admit it wasn’t as successful as he’d hoped.

But why lie to me about it?

He knows I’ll support him through anything.

Maybe he needs more time. He was closed off when I first met him, but he’s opened up to me over the past months. He’ll tell me what’s going on soon. He always does.

I do my best to ball up my worries into a hard knot in my gut.

Gabriel will tell me.

He’ll tell me soon.

He doesn’t tell me.Two days pass, and he pretends everything is normal even though I know it’s not. He does nothing but work and brood. Barely even talks to me.

I ask him to take a break the first afternoon and he agrees, but he’s so distracted it takes a lot of effort to get him fully aroused and then even more effort to work him up to climax. The following morning, we do have sex like normal after hisswim, but it’s silent, tense missionary that doesn’t last very long. He doesn’t talk to me, and he doesn’t kiss me much. He doesn’t even stare at me in that focused, fervent way I’ve come to expect during sex.

I offer to give him a massage afterward, but he doesn’t want it. He says he needs to work.

And that’s what he does. Work. All day until late afternoon, only pausing briefly to go to the bathroom.

He doesn’t eat the food I plate up and set beside him. He takes only a few sips of water.

It’s misery. I know something is terribly wrong, but he won’t tell me what it is so that I can try to help him through it.

Starting at midafternoon, I watch and wait for an opportunity to suggest he take his normal break, but he won’t even look up from his notebook.

Finally I can’t take it anymore. I bluntly announce, “It’s time for your break.”

He blinks a few times, his eyes still pointed at his notebook. Then he slowly raises his head.

“It’s late,” I tell him, my voice cracking despite my best effort to control it. “You’ve worked all day without stopping. You need at least a short break.”

For one horrible minute, I think he’s going to refuse. Reject me. But he finally inclines his head in a slight nod, and that’s all the permission I need.

I walk around to the back of his chair so I can rub his shoulders. He hasn’t been this tense and tight for a long time.

“Don’t take too long,” he mutters gruffly, closing his eyes as I dig my fingers into his clenched muscles.

“I won’t. But you know you always work more productively after you take a break.”

He doesn’t reply to that. He doesn’t make any sounds at all. Not even the normal soft moans he often makes when I massagehim. His breathing is a bit raspy, starkly audible in the silent room. I can even hear my own soft, uneven inhales as I fight against tears of helpless confusion.

I knead his neck and shoulders for almost ten minutes since I can’t seem to loosen him up. He’s getting kind of restless, so I stop before I want to, afraid he might simply call an end to the break before it barely gets started.

After moving around to the front of his chair, I kneel down on the small rug and part his legs to make room for my body between them. He’s watching silently as I unfasten his pants and reach into his underwear to draw out his cock.

He’s only partly hard. Not even halfway. I stroke him gently and then lean forward to take him in my mouth. He smells strongly of his natural scent. It’s deeply familiar and has always been comforting to me, but for some reason today it breaks my heart.

I hollow out my cheeks with the normal strong sucks I use to get him all the way erect. When it has only a small effect, I make the throaty sound around his cock he’s always liked.

He doesn’t even look at me. One of his hands is clenching the armrest while the other is loosely curved around the back of my head.

I moan again as I suck some more, hard and fast.

He sighs and moves both his hands to my face to ease my head back. “I can’t do this today, baby.”

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