Chapter 7

Aiden

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not a sadist.

At least, not in the way people think.

Everything I did that morning—the drills, the timing, the commands—wasn’t about control for its own sake. It was about him.

Noah Blake.

The rookie with too much fire and nowhere to put it.

He followed every order like it pissed him off to obey, yet he still did it—jaw tight, muscles trembling, eyes flashing whenever I got too close.

Exactly the kind of resistance that begged to be broken.

I told myself this was coaching. Training. Structure.

But watching him move—watching him submit in small, unwilling pieces—felt nothing like work.

“Hold it,” I said, circling behind him as he strained in a plank. “Thirty seconds.”

He grunted, sweat dripping onto the mat.

I crouched beside him, close enough to feel his breath hitch.

“You give up, you start over.”

His voice was sharp. “Then count faster, Coach.”

Cocky little shit.

But I didn’t miss the faint tremor in his arms, the flicker of heat when I said, “You can do better, Blake. Breathe through it.”

He did.

He always did.

When the timer beeped, he collapsed on the floor, chest heaving. His shirt clung to his back, sweat running down the line of his spine. My throat went dry before I forced myself to look away.

“Good,” I said, voice lower than I meant. “Show up at the conference room in twenty. You’ve got a summary to prepare.”

He glanced up. “Still your assistant, huh?”

“Until I say otherwise.”

His smirk was quick and infuriating. “Yes, Sir.”

The word landed like a punch.

Not mocking this time—half instinct, half something else.

I turned away before my reaction showed.

The rest of the day was easier to fake.

I gave him tasks, tested his focus, made him recite the rehab notes until he stopped stuttering. Every time he got something right, I wanted to tell him—good boy—but didn’t.

He’d earned it. But I couldn’t afford to give it.

Praise is a leash, and I wasn’t ready to pull it tight yet.

By evening, he’d gone quiet.

Obedient. Efficient.

And it shouldn’t have made me proud, but it did.

When he left my office, he hesitated in the doorway like he wanted to say something. Then he didn’t.

“Headphones,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Left them in the gym.”

I just nodded. “Then go get them.”

He did.

And that should’ve been the end of it.

I stayed behind after dinner, training alone under the low hum of fluorescent lights.

The gym was empty, the air sharp with rubber and sweat.

Every rep burned. Every set reminded me of what I’d lost—the knee, the speed, the career that died too soon.

But the image that kept intruding wasn’t the past.

It was him.

Noah, with his sleeves rolled up, lips parted, body tense under command.

The way he’d looked at me that morning when I said Sir.

Defiant. Curious. Wanting.

I tried to shake it off, focused on the pull of the cable, the grind of muscle and metal. But by the fifth set, my thoughts had already slipped somewhere darker.

I told myself it was release.

Relief.

But when I hit the shower, the lie fell apart.

Hot water ran down my shoulders, and all I could see was his mouth—his flushed throat—the tremble in his arms when I ordered him to hold.

My hand tightened.

Slow, deliberate strokes.

Control, even here.

Especially here.

“Breathe,” I muttered under the spray. “Just breathe.”

I didn’t hear the door at first.

Then—soft footsteps. Hesitant.

A faint shift of air.

Someone was there.

I turned slightly, the water masking everything but the sound of my own heartbeat—and that quiet intake of breath I knew too well.

Noah.

He hadn’t left after all.

And when our eyes met through the steam, the world went still.