He Made Me His Servant, Then Begged Me to Say No novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Down
Laurence spills water on the marble in front of his friends and Eli is already on his knees, until Laurence's father gives Eli a way out and he signs clause nine anyway, and at three in the morning Laurence is standing at the foot of his bed.
The glass hit the marble and the ice water ran toward Eli's shoes.
"Down, Sorrell," Laurence Fairbanks said. "Clean it."
Eli was already on his knees.
He had not decided to kneel.
His body had decided it the moment the glass fell, and now he was dragging the cuff of his hoodie across the floor.
Behind him somebody laughed, and a phone chimed to say it had started recording.
"Not with the sleeve," Laurence said. "That's a good sweatshirt. Use the cloth."
The cloth lay on the table by Laurence's plate, folded in a neat square.
Eli reached for it.
Laurence moved his shoe an inch and set it on the corner of the cloth.
"Say please."
The dining room at Greywater was long enough for forty guests, and tonight it held five.
Eli had been in the house for three hours.
He had been shown a bedroom, a bathroom with a heated floor and a folder with his name on it.
Then he had been called down to dinner and told to stand by the wall until he was needed.
Laurence sat at the head of the table with one arm along the back of his chair.
He was twenty-two, long and lean, with black hair, grey eyes and a silver watch he kept turning on his wrist.
He looked at Eli as if Eli were a stain on the floor.
"Please," Eli said.
"Please what?"
"Please, sir."
Brant Lathrop, the blond one holding the phone, whooped.
Laurence lifted his shoe, and the cloth came free.
Eli wiped the marble in slow, careful lines until every drop was gone.
Then he stayed where he was, because nobody had told him to get up.
A hand came under his chin.
Laurence had crouched without a sound, and two fingers tipped Eli's face up to the light.
His grey eyes went over Eli's mouth, the scar through his eyebrow and the pulse going in his neck.
His fingers were warm.
They did not squeeze, and Eli's whole body waited for the squeeze.
"Good boy," Laurence said, very quietly, and let go. "Stand up."
Eli stood.
"Brant, you can stop filming. He's boring."
"He's a gift," Brant said, grinning, and left with the phone still up.
When the door shut, Laurence went back to his chair and picked up his fork.
"Eat," he said.
"Sir?"
"You haven't touched your plate. Sit down and eat it."
Eli sat at the far end of the table and looked at the food.
Chicken, rice, green beans.
He had eaten standing up for eleven years, in case someone took the plate, and his hand did not know how to start.
The doors at the end of the room opened.
The man who came in was tall and silver at the temples, with Laurence's jaw and a much warmer smile.
Carlton Fairbanks owned half the buildings in Newbury, and he had put Eli through a year of interviews to give him this scholarship.
"Eli," he said, taking the chair beside him. "I wanted to say this before you sign anything else."
"Sir."
"Carlton. Please." He slid a page across the cloth. "Page four, clause nine. You've read it?"
Eli had read it in the car.
Household service to the Fairbanks heir, as directed.
He had read it three times before the car turned in at the gates.
"My son asked for it," Carlton said, and his smile did not change. "He's never asked me for anything else in his life, so I gave it to him."
He tapped the page.
"But I won't hold you to it. Say the word and a car takes you to the state dorm tonight."
"And the scholarship?"
"Tuition is covered for the semester either way," Carlton said. "No stipend, no house."
Eli looked down the table.
Laurence had stopped eating, and his thumb had stopped on the face of his watch.
The state dorm had a shared bathroom and a lock that did not hold.
It also had no one in it who would ever make him say please, sir to a camera.
"Where do I sign?" Eli asked.
Carlton's eyebrows rose and then fell.
He gave a small nod and held out a pen.
Eli signed under clause nine.
At the head of the table Laurence pushed back his chair so hard it scraped the marble, and he walked out without a word.
Eli did not expect to sleep.
The dressing room off Laurence's bedroom had a narrow bed and a connecting door that locked from Laurence's side.
He lay on his back in the dark, listening to the house tick.
Somewhere near three he went under, with his hands up over his head the way they always went.
Then the mattress dipped.
Eli's eyes flew open.
A shape stood at the foot of the bed against the pale window.
Laurence.
He wore no shirt and no watch, and he did not move.
"You sleep with your hands over your head," he said, low. "Who taught you that?"
Eli's mouth was dry.
"Nobody, sir."
"Liar."
The word came without any heat in it.
For a long moment neither of them breathed.
Then Laurence's voice changed, quieter still.
"Go back to sleep, Sorrell. That's an order."
Eli lay in the dark with his heart pounding, waiting for the rest of it.
The rest never came.
His eyes closed, and for the first time in eleven years, he slept.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend