Page 69 of A Mistake of Worth
“Do you like them?” Marc asked again, tone almost idle. “The lace suits him, don’t you think? I had them specially made.”
Henri said nothing. Couldn’t.
Marc’s hand moved again, slow and proprietary. Not cruel. Not yet. Just enough to make Henri feel it, secondhand. Enough to remind him who held the power in this car.
“Henri used to freeze just like this,” Marc murmured, as if David weren’t even there. “The first time I had him strip, he cried. Silently, of course. Always so well-trained. So polite.”
David didn’t move. His face was blank—no fight, no resistance. Just quiet acceptance.
Henri gritted his teeth. “Please stop.”
Marc only smiled, still stroking the edge of the lace. “Why? He’s not complaining.”
Henri forced himself to look at David’s stillness, the way his hands dug into his own thighs, white-knuckled.
He wasn’t complaining.
Because he didn’t think he was allowed to.
“You’ve made your point,” Henri said. His voice was hoarse. “You don’t need to—”
“But I do.” Marc’s hand stilled. “See, Henri, if I wanted to punish you, I’d make you suffer. But that’s not what you fear anymore, is it?”
Henri closed his eyes.
“No. What scares you now is that I could ruin something innocent. That I could break someone who doesn’t even understand they’re being broken. That I could make you watch.”
Henri turned away, chest burning.
He hated him.
He hated how calm Marc was. How he spoke with the ease of someone explaining a recipe. As if none of this mattered. As if David weren’t shaking in his lap.
As if Henri hadn’t once believed that Marc’s version of love was the only one that counted.
Marc leaned in close, his lips near Henri’s ear. “You still belong to me, Henri. And so does he. Everything you touch, I can claim.”
Henri’s voice broke through the quiet, thin and shaking. “Why him?”
Marc didn’t answer right away.
He adjusted David’s shirt, then finally spoke—soft, almost bored. “Wasn’t it you who flirted with him first? You smiled. You touched him. You made him feel seen. Just enough to light the match.”
He turned his head, smiled, as if the whole thing amused him. “I’m just finishing what you started.”
Chapter twelve
Henri
Thecarmovedinsilence. Marc sat in the rear corner, legs spread, David straddling his lap, back to Marc’s chest. One of Marc’s arms banded low around David’s waist. The other worked slow, teasing strokes along David’s length through the lace.
Henri kept his eyes on the window. City lights slid over glass. He didn’t look at David.
Marc’s hand was unhurried. Down, up, a press of the thumb just under the head. David’s breath hitched and then steadied into small, caught sounds he tried to swallow. His shoulders eased back into Marc, spine softening. Marc’s mouth hovered near his ear, breath even. No words. Just control.
Henri’s fingers curled against the leather. He pulled in a slow breath and stared harder at the blur of light and brick and rain-slick streets.
David sat very still, except where Marc made him move. Hands folded over Marc’s forearm as if that would anchor him. A single tear tracked and dried. Obedience settled into him by degrees.
