Page 6 of Under Control

His legs were shaky as he pulled out, and he got onto the bed next to Alex to lie down. Alex sprawled forward, facing him, which gave Tracht a very, very nice view of his red, teary-eyed face and wide-open mouth, drool still slipping out of the corners. Tracht smiled and reached inside that mouth with the dirty gloves. Alex shuddered and visibly swallowed, but even without the gag Tracht doubted he would have closed his mouth.

“All right. You can undo the gag and the spreader bar,” Tracht said reluctantly.

Alex immediately undid the spider gag and tossed it to the foot of the bed. He wiped his chin with the back of his arm. He was surprisingly quiet while he undid the spreader bar too. Tracht had expected Alex to launch into pleading or arguments, either to defend himself against Tracht’s overblown accusations or to beg for orgasm.

But Alex simply rolled in close to Tracht and rested his head on Tracht’s chest. That was Alex’s way of begging for petting, although Alex probably didn’t realize he was doing it. Tracht obliged anyway, because while he didn’t quite believe in aftercare, he knew that skimping on it entirely would backfire in the long run.

“If you get a cloth to clean us both up, I’ll allow you to take a nap with me,” Tracht said after a few minutes. He was gratified that Alex jumped to obey.

He’d wanted a nap with Alex anyway.

Chapter 3

“I have a few calls to make while we’re still in comm space. Go do the rounds and report anything unusual.”

Alex had wanted to protest. Yesterday he’d gotten in trouble for being on his own; now Tracht was telling him to piss off? His jaw was still sore from the fucking spider gag.

He definitely didn’t chat with any of the sailors this time. He got their status updates, made the notes on his tablet, and then moved on. Couldn’t risk Tracht coming to look for him just because Alex wasn’t around to suck his cock.

Man, things had seemed to be going kind of well lately. Sometimes Alex actually forgot that Tracht was a dick who lived only to make him miserable. Except when he was being nice to Alex. They’d gone out to eat, just the two of them, the night before they set off, and then spent the night at a hotel with a really elaborate jacuzzi tub.

Alex was still daydreaming about their outing when he got to the cargo hold. There wasn’t much to do here—just a quick check to make sure that all the fastenings were still sticking and nothing was going to move around—so he was surprised to find Espinosa pacing in front of one of the containers.

He watched her for a while; she looked between her tablet and the container, then knocked on it several times.

“What are you doing?” Alex asked finally.

Espinosa stiffened and looked over at him. “Checking something. Don’t worry about it.”

It was tempting to do just that, but Alex was pretty sure Espinosa wouldn’t be doing all this for nothing. He held up his own tablet. “I’m doing the rounds. If there’s a problem, I need to make notes.”

She scowled at him. Or maybe that was her resting bitch face, it was hard to tell. “I thought I noticed a discrepancy. I’m trying to verify before I raise the issue with the captain.”

“It looks like all the other containers to me,” Alex said. It was medium sized, blue, and had the same electronic locks as all the others. The locks had random keys generated for each trip, with the code extended only to the authorities on each port. It tracked how many times it had been opened too, so there was no risk of somebody figuring out the code and stealing something.

“You haven’t been doing this job as long as I have.” She looked at the container again. “Are you sure you don’t know anything about this?”

“Huh?”

“This container. It’s the one we had to add last minute. Did you really forget?”

Oh, now that she mentioned it… but it wasn’t the only blue container. Anybody would have forgotten. Alex shrugged. “Whatever. So, what’s the issue?”

Espinosa huffed in annoyance. “Fine. The weight. The paperwork lists it as carrying refined silicon, but given the supposed amount inside, it’s lighter than it should be.”

“How do you even know how much it’s supposed to weigh?” Alex gave in and looked up the container’s stats on his own tablet. The weight their scales had measured matched the weight the client had given them. “It looks fine to me.”

“No, but for silicon, if you consider the volume…” She sighed. “I don’t even know why I’m arguing with you about this. There’s no way somebody like you would know.”

Right, because Alex didn’t have a fancy education. Screw her. “Whatever. I think it’s fine. Tracht clearly thought it was fine too, since he accepted the contract.”

“I think his judgment was clouded by his frustration with Stieglitz. A last-minute container is suspicious. Especially a last-minute container of silicon; that’s something you’d have accounted for every step of the way, from when it’s mined and refined on Ino, to when it gets transferred from there to Cadmus, to Atalanta, to Pylos. Nobody who ships silicon would be this sloppy.”

“If you say so.” Alex thought Espinosa was making a bunch of assumptions, starting with the idea that everybody was as organized as Tracht. Maybe somebody had canceled somewhere. But he didn’t want to say anything to Espinosa and have her shoot down his ideas or call him dumb again, so he shrugged. “I have to keep going around. I think you should just leave the container alone. It’s not our problem.”

“Of course it’s our problem!” Espinosa glared at him. “If the container isn’t all above board, it could fall back on us.”

“No, look, it’s locked. If the client says it’s got all that silicon, then we just have to believe them. The weight matches, we have no way of seeing inside. End of story. I’m pretty sure that’s what Tracht would say too.”

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