Page 101 of A Mistake of Worth
Your responses are taking longer.
Henri stared at the message, pulse hammering. He’d been spacing replies, hoping to cling to work in the gaps.
I’m working. In meetings. The acquisition requires attention.
I should come first.
You do. Always. Nothing changed.
Prove it.
Then silence. Twenty minutes of it. Ominous, unnatural silence that rang louder than all the earlier demands.
The knock before eleven was soft, tentative, the kind that didn’t belong on this floor.
David slipped inside and closed the door, shoulders taut in his blue shirt. His face carried the particular strain of someone caught between instructions, as he crossed to the desk with his eyes already apologizing. Without speaking, he held out his phone.
Henri took it.
The first line on the screen was blunt:
Make it good for him. Send proof.
Beneath it, a scroll of further instruction written not for Henri, but for David:
Angle must show the desk.
I want your mouth. I want his hand in your hair.
You’ll know when I’ve seen enough.
Henri’s pulse hammered once, heavy, like a bell struck in fog. Marc had never laid out choreography this baldly. It was always breadcrumbs of insinuation, never a full script. Now it waswritten in black and white, and worse, directed through David, who stood waiting anxiously.
Henri pushed back from the desk and crossed to the credenza against the wall. At first glance, it appeared to be any other piece of executive furniture. Walnut veneer, discreet brass handles. But his fingers found the recessed panel beneath the lip. A soft click revealed the biometric pad, and he pressed his thumb to the glass, then entered the six-digit code only Marc would ever have trusted him with. The lock disengaged with a muted hiss.
He slid the bottom drawer open to reveal the bundle he never let anyone else see. Everything was organized with clinical neatness: a compact clamp, collapsible arm, a bottle of lube, and a small cache of toys Marc had once ordered him to keep on hand, just in case. Henri’s stomach turned at the thought of how often “in case” had become “frequently.”
He took the mount, closed the drawer, reset the lock until the panel blended seamlessly back into the wood, and returned to the desk. Setting the arm into place with steady hands, he adjusted the knuckles until the angle was perfect, just as Marc demanded.
David’s eyebrows lifted, confusion and realization colliding. “You just… have that?”
“I do,” Henri said. Explaining Marc’s demands only made them larger. Better to treat them as weather: inevitable, survivable, utterly beyond his power to change, not worth questioning.
He set the arm, tightened the knuckles until the mount held steady. Marc liked the desk he’d bought for Henri in frame. It was old and absurdly heavy, paneled wood on all four sides, more drawers than Henri had uses for. A courthouse relic masquerading as modern office furniture.
Marc said it made Henri look established. Henri suspected he meant owned.
Henri guided David onto the desk’s edge, pushing his keyboard aside. His hands settled David where Marc’s camera eye could frame him best.
The phone chimed with an incoming video call request. David’s throat bobbed as he accepted. Marc’s face didn’t appear, only a blank wash of static-black. His voice came clearly through the speaker, low and commanding.
“Good. Now, Henri, devour him. I want to see him undone.”
Henri bent to David’s mouth, brushing soft at first, trying to fake tenderness for the lens. He’d learned to mimic desire, to counterfeit intimacy. But David leaned forward with something unperformed, lips parting, breath catching, hands clinging. Hunger poured out of him raw and real.
“More,” Marc said, sharp enough that Henri flinched. “Kiss him like you own him. I want his mouth swollen when I’m finished watching.”
Henri’s hands slid from David’s jaw down the boy’s throat, thumbs pressing into the hollow, feeling the frantic beat there. David’s fingers clutched at his sleeves, then his shoulders, pulling him closer with an urgency that wasn’t feigned. Henri felt the tremor of his body arching up against him, and forced his own chest to match it, reminding himself to mirror him, make it look real, lean the way he does, breathe like he does.
