Page 24 of Under His Skin

“Uh, hi. Sorry.” Alex sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Is Tracht back?”

Vasilis sat down in one of the other chairs, where Johan had been sitting earlier. “No, he’s still at the courtroom with Anna.”

Oh, so that was where they were. Alex had been wondering. “Do you know when they’ll be back? Tracht wouldn’t tell me.”

“Unfortunately, it depends entirely on how long witness testimony runs and how the judge feels. They’re supposed to wrap up for the day before evening, but who knows.” Vasilis sighed loudly, and for the first time Alex noticed that Vasilis looked like crap. He’d suspected that Vasilis usually used makeup—not a lot, just enough to cover blemishes—but clearly Vasilis hadn’t bothered today.

Not for the first time, Alex thought it was a waste that Vasilis was married to Anna. Not that the dude was super hot or anything; he had a full beard, and his hair was a bit curly. It probably used to be dirty blond, like Johan’s, but it was pretty gray at this point.

He hadn’t even bothered to get dressed properly, wearing just a sweater and track pants.

“How come you aren’t with them?” When Vasilis gave him a confused look, Alex shrugged. “Shouldn’t you be with Anna? Moral support and all that?”

“Oh. I think my presence would hinder things more than help them. I’m also not in the mood to deal with all the reporters, and I have to clean up the mess that this PR disaster is causing for my company.” Then Vasilis huffed a small laugh. “And, admittedly, I’m a bit mad at Anna.”

Alex remembered that the two of them had been fighting the previous night. He didn’t know how to react to that though, and he ended up fumbling with his tablet. He saw a new mail from Nadia, but he didn’t feel like reading her usual porny notes. Nothing from Tracht either.

“Stop me if I’m overstepping, but…” Vasilis said suddenly, “but what are your plans from here on out?”

“My… plans?” Alex felt his chest tighten. “What do you mean, my plans?”

Vasilis pointed at Alex’s collar. “I can’t help but notice that you’re still wearing the bondcollar, which should have been removed already, if I understood things correctly. Obviously a few more days here and there won’t make much of a difference. I only wondered if that was your decision or Johannes’s.”

The collar felt stupidly cold on his neck now. “Uh… we were at the center and then that whole thing with Anna dropped, and I guess there hasn’t been time.” He looked away from Vasilis and told himself not to say anything stupid. He didn’t want to piss Vasilis off, because that would just piss Tracht off more, and Alex was already really hungry.

“Alex… you know you have money, right?” Vasilis asked. “I could arrange for a cab to take you to the debtleasing center right now.”

Alex shrugged again. “Yeah. I saw. The debtleasing center wanted me to use it to pay the debt off early. But it’s not like I’m gonna leave the ship, so who cares whether I’m wearing a collar or not?”

He made the mistake of looking up, and he saw Vasilis’s eyebrows drawn back and the slight frown on his face. He looked so much like Parsons had, with his pity for Alex, that Alex couldn’t stay. He got up and stormed out of the room, back to the stupidly uncomfortable guest room.

Why did every single person want to speed all this shit along? It didn’t matter! He and Tracht had an agreement. Nothing would change. Everything would stay exactly like it was, because everything was fine, and Alex didn’t need strangers sticking their fucking noses in and ruining things.

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Two hours later, and Alex was bored of watching porn. He wasn’t even getting horny, which on the one hand: good, because it would have been uncomfortable with the cock cage; but on the other: how sad was it that porn wasn’t even turning him on. He’d even found vids with huge-titted chicks, which used to be a surefire way of getting himself hot and ready.

Maybe he was just too hungry. Johan had come by to tell him that food was ready, and Alex had wanted desperately to join. It had hurt to decline the invitation.

He nearly jumped when the door to the guest room slid open, right as the chick in the video faked a very loud orgasm.

“This is how you spend your free time?” Tracht asked as he came in, his expression showing clear distaste. He was carrying a box of some sort, and set it down on the desk.

“What? No! I was just bored. This isn’t even turning me on.” Alex fumbled with the controls to turn the screen off, then scrambled off the bed to greet Tracht. He angled his face closer, hoping for a kiss—

Tracht stopped him with a hand to his chest. “Here I was, hoping to relax after a rather trying day, and instead I find you watching naked women.”

“No, that was nothing! I didn’t even think she was hot,” Alex protested. He got down on his knees instead and reached for Tracht’s boots, shuddering when Tracht put a hand on his scalp. This was what he’d been missing all day.

If he thought about it, he couldn’t remember a single day in the past few years where he hadn’t woken up in Tracht’s presence.

Whatever Tracht wanted to do now was fine. Just as long as it wasn’t the bondage wrap again.

“I wonder why you watched it, then, if you weren’t enjoying it. Surely not for the story.” Tracht pulled on Alex’s hair and forced him to look up. “I think Anna would kill me if I did anything too extreme in her house. But I had a wonderful idea this morning.” He softened his grip and moved to thumbing over Alex’s mouth. “Are you hungry?”

“Yeah,” Alex answered suspiciously. “I turned Johan down earlier when he invited me to join them at dinner.”

“What a good boy you are.” Tracht let go and lifted his foot up, finally allowing Alex to remove the boot.

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