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“She’s here,” Adam called out.

Paul hurried to the library door when the music died. “No, put it back on.”
Anything
to help create a positive first impression.

Adam reacted swiftly and hit the remote. Once more, the music wafted through the house. Paul took a deep breath and crossed the hallway to open the front door as Caroline approached, a briefcase clutched in her hand. “Good afternoon,” he said politely.

She smiled. “Hello, Paul.”

He stepped aside to let her enter and closed the door behind her. “Adam is in the library.”

She strode briskly past him, and Paul caught the words, “where else?” He followed her to the library door where she stopped so abruptly, he almost ran into her. He could only imagine what was going through her mind. Not that he could blame her reaction: it was certainly a different picture from her last visit.

“Good afternoon, Caroline.” Adam’s tone was polite, but there was a warmth to it Paul hadn’t yet heard. “We’re about to have lunch. Paul’s made some soup. Would you like to join us or have you only got time to get your paperwork sorted out?”

There was a delay of several seconds before Caroline responded. “Paperwork?” To Paul’s mind, she didn’t sound with it at all.

“Yes, Paul’s bank details. The reason for your visit?” Adam sounded distinctly amused. Paul’s head was buzzing from Adam’s use of pronouns. We’re
about to have lunch? Join
us
?

“Oh, yes. Well. I don’t want to disturb you. I can always come back another time when it’s more convenient.” There was no escaping it: Caroline was flustered.

“The soup will keep,” Paul interjected. The last thing Adam would want would be to give his sister an excuse to visit again. “And besides, the bread’s fresh out of the oven. It needs to cool down before I can slice it.”

“Oh, well, if you’re sure.”

“Why don’t you go into the office with Paul, and do what you need to do? That way, we can relax and have lunch afterward.” Adam was smiling.

“Very well.” Caroline went toward the office door, Paul behind her. One glance at Adam confirmed his suspicions: Adam was enjoying this.

Filling out his details took less than five minutes, and when it was completed, Caroline tucked the papers away into her briefcase and placed it on the floor next to her chair.

“I realize one thing we didn’t discuss last week was your time off.”

“Time off?” Paul mimicked her words, floored by the realization it had only been a week since his interview.

“You can’t be expected to work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” Caroline said, her dry tone so reminiscent of Adam’s. “You will need some time off, if only to… chill out. I imagine looking after Adam can be quite fatiguing.” She smiled, her gaze trained on him as though awaiting a response.

“Funnily enough, we were discussing this only yesterday.” Adam stood in the doorway, his hands on the doorjamb. “But you don’t need to worry your head about this, Caro. I’m sure Paul and I can come to an arrangement that suits us both. For example, he’s going to a party tomorrow night.” He sniffed the air. “That soup smells good.”

“It certainly does,” Caroline agreed, “but I’m afraid I can’t stop to try it. I’m meeting Dean in Newport.”

“Oh, that’s a pity. Another time, perhaps.”

Paul was trying hard to stifle his chuckles. Adam was really laying on the politeness with a trowel.

“I’d like to use the bathroom before I go, if I may.” Caroline rose to her feet.

Adam extended his arm in a wide sweep to encompass the hallway. “Please, feel free.”

Caroline gave Paul a polite nod and exited the room, slipping past Adam in the doorway. Paul listened to the soft fall of her feet as she went up the staircase.

Adam stepped into the office and inclined his head upward. “What do you think the likelihood is that right now, my dear sister is upstairs, snooping?” he said in a whisper.

Paul thought it extremely likely, especially when the ceiling above him creaked. That was his room. “Do you think she buys it?” he said in an equally hushed tone. After all, it was quite the transformation from the Adam he’d met. If Caroline knew her brother well, she might smell a rat.

“I don’t care if she does, as long as it keeps her from coming out here whenever she feels like it.” Gone was any semblance of warmth: Adam’s voice was ice, sending a shiver through Paul.

The sound of Caroline descending the staircase brought a halt to their conversation. She came to the door and glanced at Paul. “Well, I think I’ll be going. If I could have my briefcase?”

Paul nodded. He went around to the other side of the desk to retrieve it. Adam didn’t move.

“So glad you could visit, Caro.” He gave a thin smile.

Caroline regarded him in silence, her forehead furrowed. “Take care, Adam. It’s good to see you’ve decided to join the human race again.” She turned to Paul. “You are to be congratulated, Paul. You appear to have wrought a miracle.” With that, she crossed the hallway and left the house.

Paul stared after her, a fluttering deep in his stomach. There was something really odd going on here.

“What is it?” Adam demanded. “There’s that weird silence again.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, it’s…. ” Paul struggled to make sense of what he’d seen and heard.

“Don’t do that,” Adam growled. “Either tell me what’s bothering you or say nothing.”

Paul sighed in silence. It seemed the truce was over. He thought hard about how to frame his thoughts. “Her mouth said one thing, but her expression said something else altogether,” he said at last.

Adam jerked his head in Paul’s direction. “Explain.”

“You heard her, right?” Adam nodded. “Well, if I only had her facial expression to go on, I’d have said she wasn’t happy. Not happy at all.” But that didn’t make sense. Paul was doing the job she’d hired him to do, wasn’t he? Why would she be unhappy about that?

How silent Adam had become.

Paul looked over to where Adam leaned against the office door, an air of fatigue surrounding him. There was no trace of the man who’d greeted Caroline.

“I’m going up to my room.” His voice was flat. “I’ll have my lunch there.” He turned on his heel and entered the library next door. Seconds later he emerged, cane in hand, and crossed the hallway to the staircase.

Paul went into the kitchen and dropped into one of the chairs. Some chilling out time sounded very appealing. He’d really thought they’d had a breakthrough, but Adam seemed to have regressed. Certainly, the man who’d just gone upstairs was nothing like the Adam who’d teased him the previous day, who’d shown emotion for the first time since they’d met.

That Adam was gone, and Paul felt very insecure about his job prospects.

* * * * * *

Dinner was over. Adam had taken it in his room, unwilling to spend more time in Paul’s presence than absolutely necessary. He needed a clear head to contemplate what to do next, and Paul messed up his radar.

It had seemed a simple enough idea to convince Caroline he was coping. But in the process of setting the scene for her, Adam had regained something vital, his own sense of self. Paul had shown him that he
could
cope. Better than that: Adam had realized he
didn’t need Paul.
He didn’t need
anyone
. All he wanted was to be left alone with his thoughts.

Except that was easier said than done. Getting rid of the previous companions had been ridiculously easy. Adam had blown up at them, roared, growled—in short, he’d done everything he could to make them so damned unhappy, they’d been desperate to quit. But Paul? The plan had run aground when
he’d
arrived. Adam had railed and ranted, but Paul had stood firm. Paul had given as good as he’d got. And although in the beginning that had piqued Adam’s interest, he’d had enough. He didn’t want people around him. He wanted to shut himself away in his house to lick his wounds in private. That left only one course of action.

Paul had to go.

Only, once again it wasn’t that easy. Paul wasn’t like the others, and the idea of pushing him until he felt he had to resign, made Adam dislike himself intensely. The young man didn’t deserve this. But there was
no way
Adam would allow himself to become dependent on someone. He’d reflected on the events of the last two days, and he could see it coming, could see the way he’d begun to rely on Paul.

Adam would
not
allow that to happen. There had to be something he could do. He couldn’t fire Paul: the young man could take him to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal on the basis that Adam had no grounds to fire him. No, the only way was to make Paul
want
to leave.

Adam lay on the bed, letting his thoughts flit to and fro, searching for any clue, any way forward. He replayed every conversation over and over again, looking for a weakness, something he could use to his advantage.

He found it.

It wasn’t much, but it was a start. The bathroom. That initial silence when Paul had entered. The way Paul’s voice had cracked. The silence that had fallen afterward. The awkward feel to the conversation.

Adam would have to be careful. He couldn’t lay so much as one finger on Paul. The success of his plan would all hinge on one thing—the fact that mind-fucking was second nature to him. Because if he played this right, straight boy Paul would be left feeling so uncomfortable, he wouldn’t want to spend another night under Adam’s roof.

And there was no time like the present.

“Paul, could you come to my room?” he called out, sure that his words would be heard. His fingertips traced the face of his watch: it was nine o’clock and Paul would have finished cleaning up in the kitchen. Adam climbed off the bed and quickly found the armchair. He sat back against the seat cushions, listening to Paul’s footsteps on the stairs, followed by the quiet creak of his bedroom door as it opened.

“Come over here.” Adam kept his voice low. He waited until he could sense Paul standing closer. Adam took advantage of the silence. He pursed his lips and sniffed the air, waiting until he could hear Paul fidgeting.

“You wanted something?” Paul asked, a tremor in his voice.

Adam licked his lips and ran his fingers over his chin. “What do you look like, Paul?”

“Excuse me?” He heard the note of puzzlement in Paul’s voice.

“It occurs to me that you’ve been working here a week, and I don’t know what you look like.” He waved his hand. “I don’t want to do that whole, ‘let me feel your face’ routine. I’d prefer to hear you describe yourself.” He settled back into the chair, fingers knitted together, resting in his lap, his face turned in Paul’s general direction.

“Oh, okay.” There was a pause. “I’m five feet eight, lean. I have short brown hair and brown eyes.”

Adam lifted his eyebrows. “Not sure why, but I pictured you smaller, maybe even with mouse brown hair, the nerdy type.” He paused for a moment to let his words sink in. “Do you work out at all, Paul? Do you like to get sweaty lifting weights?”

The brief silence that followed Adam’s question revealed much. Paul hadn’t expected that, and Adam found himself wishing he could see Paul’s expression. He could almost visualize it, the flushed cheeks, the startled eyes, the perfect picture of a deer caught in the headlights of a car.

“Yes.” The syllable was drawn out, giving it an edge of reluctance. “I focus mainly on my upper body, my chest, back and arms.”

Adam liked that image. It was a pity he’d never have been likely to run into Paul in London. The young man sounded his type.

“Hmm.” Adam gave a hum of approval. Time to move things up a gear. “What’s your mouth like, Paul?”

“My-my mouth?”

“Uh-huh. Are you a good kisser? Do your lovers like to suck at your mouth?”

More silence, which was how Adam wanted it. He wanted Paul off-balance, not to mention freaked out.

“I have been told that, on occasion.” Paul’s voice was quieter.

“You like to kiss?”

“Yes.”

Adam moved in for the kill. “And how would those lips feel sucking a dick?”

That hitch in Paul’s breathing told him plenty. With every second of silence, Adam could almost feel the shock that had to be coursing through him.

“Well, that depends. Would it be your dick I’m sucking?”

What. The. Fuck?

“Of course, I’ve only seen you soft. I’m assuming here that you can still get it up. I mean, you
are
forty, right? That’s positively prehistoric.”

Oh my fucking God.
Of all the things Adam had anticipated, why wasn’t Paul being gay one of them? Disconcertingly, his cock reacted, pressing against the zipper of his jeans.

He growled. “And what if I decide to spank you for that remark?” Anger burned in him, that Paul had turned out to be exactly the one thing that would make his fucking plan crumble. “Show you what happens to cocky little shits?” He tried to ignore his stupid hardening shaft, but
oh my God,
that picture in his head: Paul stretched out over him, his arse a nice bright red, Adam’s handprints clearly visible. He couldn’t get rid of the image, his brain going into a loop.

“You think you could?” Oh, Paul was poking the bear, all right.

“I’ve spanked enough mouthy little subs in my time to know what I’m doing,” Adam ground out, his palm itching at the thought.

A slight noise told him Paul had moved closer. A second later there came the unmistakable sound of a belt being unbuckled. A zipper being lowered. The soft slide of fabric on skin. And
fuck
, he could
smell
Paul, the musk rolling off him in waves.

“So where do you want me? Over your knee? Although with that boner you’re sporting in your jeans, I don’t know which of us is going to be the more uncomfortable.” Paul’s voice was steady, seemingly unfazed.

Adam took a moment to breathe, desperate to regain his composure. He clenched his fists. “Get out. Get
out
!”

More fabric against skin, the harsh sound of a zipper and a belt being refastened. “Yes, sir.” Then Paul was gone.

Adam collapsed into the chair, his whole body shaking.
Why didn’t I envisage this scenario?
Somewhere, someone was having a giant laugh at his expense.