Just Business

by Anna Zabo

  Don’t do this. He had to. Too late to stop. Too late to explain. “Get the fuck out of my way.”

  The fury in his voice pushed Eli back as if he’d been slapped.

  Wide eyes, and such sadness.

  Justin rushed past and ran down the stairs. Eli couldn’t follow with his leg, not fast at any rate. Justin scooped up his backpack and helmet and threw the lock on the door.

  “What did I do wrong?” That cracked voice followed him down the stairs. “Justin, please! I’m sorry. Just tell me—”

  He opened the door and hurried out, slamming it behind him. He had only a bit of time before Eli made it down. It took a second to unlock his bike and another to get it off the porch. He had another bike lock at home, so he left this one tangled around the railing. When tires met concrete, he was on the bike and pedaling as fast as he could down Wightman.

  Gone.

  Free. He’d made it.

  He’d had to sneak out in the middle of the night with Francis. Eli had let him go.

  The ramming of his heart wasn’t due to the bike ride. This is what he’d wanted. He couldn’t date another rich Dom who took over his life.

  Eli had let Justin go. Stopped. Heeded the safeword.

  The screech of tires and the long honk of a horn focused Justin. Shit. He’d run a light. Holy fuck. He was never that careless. After swinging down a side street, he slowed. Paid attention to his surroundings.

  Had he really just walked out on Eli?

  Yeah, he had. Oh God. No undoing that. Not that he wanted to.

  He peddled back up to speed on his bike, mostly to ignore the wrenching shakes that were threatening. He didn’t have time for self-pity or for rich bastards. A few more blocks found him at his apartment. He dragged his bike down the steps and inside his hovel and collapsed on his bed.

  He didn’t know whether to cry, scream, or throw up. What, exactly, had happened? Justin pulled the rumpled throw from the corner of the bed and hugged it close. Eli had happened, another rich man expecting Justin to bend over and take whatever was offered. Dinner, fucking, beating. He’d been a fool to think this time would be any different. Justin unbuckled the collar around his neck and threw it across the room. Should have walked away when Eli first ordered him to suck his dick.

  Justin scrubbed his face. Sam would fire him once he got wind of this. There was always the coffee shop, or maybe finding a job on campus until he graduated. Something. Anything.

  Anything but Eli.

  Tears pricked at the corner of his eyes. A tiny voice, his own, whispered about mistakes and trust. Eli wasn’t Francis. He almost—almost—believed that voice.

  He’d seen the bill. Knew his price.

  Across the room, his backpack buzzed—a text on his phone. Justin pushed himself off the bed and dug it out.

  Just tell me you’re safe, please!

  He deleted the message and turned the phone off completely, then grabbed his laptop and sat down at the kitchen table.

  Time to write a resignation letter.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As soon as Sam entered on Monday morning, Justin closed the outer door and followed him into the inner office. Now or never, the same way he’d gotten into this mess. His resignation letter shook in his hands.

  Sam’s expression went from wary to a mask. Poker-faced, except for a tiny twitch of the eye. Justin had seen him like this before, but with customers. Never with any of them.

  No, Sam, you’re not going to like this. He wanted to be packed and gone before Eli came to work. Once Sam sat, Justin handed him the letter. Sam studied it, set it down on his desk, and turned his gaze on Justin.

  This man was so not a submissive. Not here, anyway. Justin resisted the urge to fidget under the weight of Sam’s stare. Sam didn’t even look at the paper as he pushed the page back across the desk.

  “No.”

  No anger, not a demand, but such finality in that single word, more so than any order Justin had ever received from any Dom—or anyone else, for that matter.

  “No?” He should be furious, but Sam had spoken so factually. That broke Justin’s anger into tiny pieces of confusion.

  “This is the result of something between you and Eli, yes?”

  He nodded.

  “Then no.”

  A spark of fury ignited finally. “It’s a resignation letter, Sam. You can’t say no to it.”

  “Yes, I can.” Sam sat back in his chair. “I didn’t make a mistake when I hired you and I’m not about to let you walk away from a job you’re brilliant at because you’ve had a falling-out with your lover.”

  Everyone making decisions for him. Even Sam. “You can find another assistant.”

  “Yes, but I can’t find another you.” Sam steepled his fingers and touched them to his lips. “I haven’t been grooming you to be my assistant, Justin.”

  That stopped Justin dead. He sank down into the guest chair. “Grooming?”

  Sam lowered his hands. Tired and harried lines replaced the smooth expressionless demeanor. “Business is growing pretty fast. I’m going to need someone to . . . well . . . be me. Do what I do.” He paused. “I’m going to eventually need a partner in the company.”

  “What are you . . . I don’t even have my MBA yet!”

  He waved that away. “You will, in a few months. What I’m offering is this—mentor with me. Learn what I do, how I do it. See what we can do together and we’ll decide on the next steps. It won’t happen right away. You’re still ramping up on the office and the business, and yes, finishing your MBA. But if you walk away . . .”

  The unspoken words hung in the air. If he left, there would be no chance. None at all.

  God, his heart. Pain, hope, anguish. He wasn’t sure which twisted his soul into knots and made it hard to breathe. “Are you serious? I mean . . .” He gestured to himself. “Not exactly corporate.”

  “Have you seen yourself in a suit?”

  That made his face burn. Even Brian’s head had whipped around.

  “You might have to lose the nail polish from time to time.”

  He could handle that. But . . . “I thought Eli was your right-hand man.” It came out as a whisper.

  “He’s my CFO and my friend, but he’d be the first to tell you he can’t do what I do.” Sam drew invisible circles on the surface of his desk with a finger. “Nor does he want to. My job is to be the friendly side of the company. Eli revels a little too much in making clients uncomfortable.”

  The sadist at work. Justin tried to hide the shiver—tried to convince himself it wasn’t partly out of pleasure.

  “Justin, what happened with Eli?” Worry there. Concern. It softened Sam’s tone and drew different lines on his face.

  “I . . . don’t want to talk about it.” Hell, he didn’t want to think about it. The more he did, the worse he felt. Eli had trapped Justin—only he hadn’t because he’d let Justin go. Eli had tried to buy Justin with dinners and clothes, hadn’t he? Another poor guy for the wealthy Dom to play with, except if Sam had his way, that wouldn’t be a concern.

  Too much to think about right now. Sam’s offer. Eli. The hammering in his chest, the hollow feeling in his brain, the tingling in his fingertips. Justin shook his head.

  “Can you work with him?”

  Could he? “I did before.” But now he knew the taste of Eli’s skin, the timber of his moans, the soft touches that came after the sharp and sensuous sting of Eli’s whip. How his smile lit a room. “I’ll make it work.” He picked at a piece of lint on his black jeans. “If he doesn’t ask you to fire me.”

  Sam exhaled. “If you believe Eli would ever ask me to do that, you don’t know him at all.”

  Justin snapped his head up and looked at Sam. Sadness there, but a hint of understanding as well.

  Maybe Sam was right. Maybe he didn’t know Eli. Probably for the best that they were done. He couldn’t imagine being Sam’s business partner while being Eli’s submissive. “I can be civil.”

&
nbsp; “That’s all I ask.” Sam gave the forgotten letter a nudge.

  Justin picked it up and stood. “I guess I have some shredding to do.”

  Sam coughed a laugh.

  After he slipped the letter into the shredder, he opened the door again and studied the office across the hall. Still no Eli.

  Justin didn’t know whether the tumble in his heart was relief or sorrow.

  * * *

  Despite the drastic dip in temperature, Eli walked to work on Monday. His lungs hurt by the time he entered the office, but that had nothing to do with the cold weather and everything to do with still not being able to breathe.

  The image of Justin’s back as he ran out the front door replayed itself in Eli’s mind. The echo of that one word sounded in his ears.

  Saturn.

  What had he done? Every time he ran through the scene in his head, there was nothing. No unsafe practices, no warnings. Nothing. Justin had been begging to be bound and whipped, moaning while Eli tightened ropes around his wrists, his cock hard, hips thrusting.

  He hadn’t even picked up a flogger yet, had just been looking at the beauty that was Justin wrapped in desire, and then Justin safeworded.

  Dressed. Left.

  No explanation. Not when he’d thrown apology after apology and begged to understand what he’d done wrong. No answer to the texts he’d sent to make sure Justin had made it safely home.

  Now work loomed and he couldn’t think, hadn’t slept, and dreaded climbing the stairs to the office. He did anyway, leg throbbing the entire way, keycarded himself in, and headed to his office. He didn’t look into the other room, but he’d caught enough out of his peripheral vision to see that Justin was at his desk.

  Well, at least he was alive.

  Eli swallowed and tried to move his heart back into the proper place. The weight of Justin’s gaze on his back bore down, pressing between his shoulders. He stripped off his gloves and nearly dropped them onto the desk, next to the ruler.

  No.

  If Justin was going to safeword, walk away, and then not talk to him, there would be no games, no flirting, no anything. No more. He’d been a fool from day one.

  Eli stuffed the gloves into the pocket of his overcoat and yanked open the drawer beneath the ruler. The contents—pens, the stapler, paperclips, scissors—rattled in protest of the violent movement. He pushed the ruler in and slammed the drawer shut.

  The sound echoed in his office. Probably outside of it, too. Then silence descended, but for the catch of his own breath. Blinking back the sting in his eyes, he shrugged off his coat and hung it on the back of his door. Scarf, too.

  He’d been in worse shape than this, through worse confusion and pain, and survived. Thrived. He took a breath, steeled himself, and finally looked across the hall.

  Justin stared back, more goth than he’d been in months. His stunning blue eyes peeked out from behind a thick mask of eyeliner and a hacked black fringe of hair. He’d dyed his hair red on the ends, cut it, and spiked it into a chaotic mess. Black clothes. No jewelry. Pale lips drawn into a thin line. Unreadable.

  What did I do? The words almost slipped from Eli’s lips. They tumbled in his head, the way they’d fallen from his mouth all the way down the stairs and onto the porch. The panic, the worry. Justin, wait! What happened? I’m sorry! What did I do?

  Love. Yes, that was there. The reason he couldn’t think or breathe or . . . Eli turned and paced back to his desk. Obviously Justin felt differently.

  Somewhere, Eli had fucked up so horribly that Justin didn’t even trust him enough to let him know why. A voice, one that sounded too much like his father, whispered in the back of his brain. You’re a monster. Lawless. Deviant.

  That hurt. More than it had in some time. It wasn’t true, but the little voice still lurked back there, despite all the conversations with Dr. Brohmer. Even though he knew better. Always that voice.

  Rote movements forced him to sit down, wake the laptop up, and wait for the monitors to catch up.

  They say what I do is abuse.

  They? Who, Eli?

  He’d never had an answer to that.

  What do you think?

  The screens flicked to life with a log-in prompt, but he studied his own hands rather than touch the keyboard. They want what I give. Get as much pleasure from the pain as I do. More maybe. I . . . No. I don’t think so. Not from me.

  The dominance and sadism could become abuse. He’d seen instances of that, Doms who went too far, the trauma they left behind. He was not—would not be—that man. Ever.

  Only now, it seemed he was.

  No. Everything had been consensual. You stopped and let him go, as you’re supposed to, as you said you would. He’d done exactly the right thing.

  Justin had walked away, which he had every right to do. That he didn’t want to tell Eli why burned and turned his guts inside out. Yet that was Justin’s right, too.

  He didn’t own Justin. Didn’t want to—just wanted—

  The screens turned black again.

  Eli cursed and nudged the mouse. This time, when the log-in box appeared, he typed his password.

  The pain in his throat matched the ever-present sting in his eyes and the ache in his heart. He wanted to love Justin—did love him. But he also wanted Justin to return that love, and that was a dream. If Justin didn’t trust Eli enough to tell him what had gone wrong . . . that didn’t just kill the D/s relationship, it tore apart every other connection they had.

  Which might be an issue in the office. Like it or not, they still needed to work together, at least until Eli figured out other options. He clicked open his e-mail and scrolled through the list. Nothing from Justin, but one mail from Sam.

  Are you okay?

  No. He wasn’t. But that had never stopped him from functioning before. He deleted Sam’s e-mail.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, the tension rising up his spine. Sam needed him—that’s why he’d taken the job as CFO. But Sam required Justin—the man was bright and worked in lock-step with Sam. In a few years, they would be a formidable team, even with Justin’s penchant to wear eyeliner.

  If Sam had to choose between Eli and Justin, he knew the decision Sam would make—and he didn’t agree. The better option would be to eliminate the need for Sam to choose.

  He picked through the rest of the e-mails from the weekend, marking the ones he needed to handle first, and looked through his to-do list. He had a plate of work to empty before he could talk to Sam about finding another CFO.

  * * *

  At one o’clock, Sam walked into Eli’s office and closed the door, right on schedule. Eli rotated in his desk chair.

  As he’d done so often, Sam leaned against Eli’s door, back pressed against the hard, wooden surface. “You didn’t answer my e-mail.”

  It took effort to hold his temper in check and not lash out. He’d been like this all day, teetering wildly from wanting to punch the shit out of everything to wanting to walk home, curl up on the couch with Lavi, bury his face in that soft bundle of fur, and never see this office again.

  Eli blinked a few times to clear the haze that marred his vision. “I thought the answer was blindly obvious.”

  Sam pushed off the door. “E, please.”

  Another breath, this one to clear the growing tightness in his throat. “I’m well enough, Sam. Leave me be.”

  Sam took two steps forward and stopped, brows furrowed, tension written in his body.

  Eli gripped the armrests of his chair. Please don’t ask. A silent plea.

  Unheeded. “What happened between you and Justin?”

  “Have you asked Justin?” Quiet words, because if Eli didn’t whisper them, he’d use them like a whip, and Sam was the last person he should be yelling at.

  Sam straightened. “I did.”

  “And?”

  “He didn’t want to talk about it.”

  Of course not. “Well, at least he’s consistent.”

  “E, what the he
ll happened? On Friday, I thought you were going to set fire to the office. Now you two can’t even look at each other.”

  Eli rubbed at his forehead. “I don’t know.”

  “E—”

  “I don’t know!” Eli’s voice cracked and it took all his effort to draw in a breath without releasing the sob that wanted to trail along. He would not fall apart in front of Sam and certainly not with Justin on the other side of that thin door.

  Worry and something deeper passed over Sam’s face. “Can you— I mean, is this—” He shook his head. “You two work so well.”

  There was the stake, the one that kept being driven through his heart. “Apparently, we don’t. And no, I don’t think it’s fixable, whatever the fuck it is.” His voice wavered because he was having trouble breathing.

  Sam wilted. “Shit.”

  Every wall in Eli crumpled in a sudden flood of pain. “You should find another CFO.” He hadn’t meant to say that, not yet, not until he had a plan in place, but he was done. Just . . . done. There weren’t any other options left. Time to crawl back home and lick his wounds.

  “No,” Sam said. “You are not leaving.”

  “Neither is Justin,” Eli said. “You’ll need him far more than me in the long run.” Brilliant, lovely, messy Justin. Should have left temptation alone all those months ago. Saved them all this trouble. His own pain he could handle—but Sam’s? Justin’s? He folded his arms and leveled a long look at Sam.

  Sam didn’t flinch, didn’t turn away at all, turning into the stone-faced CEO he was so well known for being. “If he’s hurt you this much, I don’t need him at all.”

  “Other way around. I . . . hurt him. I don’t know how, only that I did.” He tried to shrug, but ended up wincing. “You don’t need me.”

  The CEO look cracked and Sam threw up his hands. “Look, Michael and I sometimes fight and—”

  “He safeworded out of a scene we’d hardly begun—one he asked for—then walked out of my house. That’s what happened.”

  Sam stepped sideways, grabbed one of the chairs from the table in the center of the room, and sank down on it. “Oh.”

  Of all people, Sam would understand the ramifications. He uncurled himself a bit and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what I did. He hasn’t said a word to me since I cut him off the cross.”