Page 2 of Under His Skin

Alex came out of the bathroom with a sour look on his face, and Tracht watched with mild amusement when Alex sat down at his feet despite that. Moments later, Alex started running a thumb over the skin of Tracht’s foot.

Maybe there could be fun games with feet in Alex’s future. Tracht had noticed that Alex fixated on his feet a lot lately, to the point where he wondered if it was becoming a fetish. He already knew that Alex would get strangely unsettled when he wasn’t allowed to help Tracht put his shoes on, so much so that Tracht sometimes did it on purpose.

But that would all wait until later. Tracht was must have been getting old, realizing that he had less interest in sex than in simply having Alex sitting near him. He turned his attention back to the news.

“—the system is corrupt at its core,” an annoyingly familiar face was saying. “Cadmus lives off the backs of miners and programmers, sailors and dock workers. Yet they live under extreme conditions while the few at the top keep all the wealth.”

The caption at the bottom of the screen helpfully labeled the man as Dr. Sokratis Galanis. Tracht had seen this man pop up more and more in the news feeds lately. The man ran a popular opinion column, alongside teaching at one of the two universities on Cadmus.

Alex’s thumb pushed down on one side of Tracht’s foot, near the arch. “Issat you then? The top keeping all the wealth?”

Others might have said the question was insolent, but it only amused Tracht. “In a certain light, yes. But I pay my sailors a fair wage.”

“Otherwise they wouldn’t put up with you.” The instant he said it, Alex cringed.

The reaction alone made Tracht laugh. He’d noticed that despite everything, Alex truly had been getting better at controlling what he said, and it was nice when these little moments of stupidity broke through.

“That’s exactly the reason, Alex. I am a difficult person to get along with, and very few people would bother without getting paid for the trouble.” Then he sighed loudly. “I’m sure Mr.—excuse me, Dr.—Galanis counts me among the wealthy who oppress the lower classes. Although I notice he’s wearing a very nice suit himself.”

The nice suit, which was one of the many goods imported by Lysander Corp. The watch on his wrist wasn’t exactly cheap either.

The man blathered on about how the system needed reform, and that rampant capitalism had brought them here. He even segued into suggesting that the bond-debt system was detrimental to society as a whole. If Galanis truly believed that, he should have taken the first ship out of the solar system. There were plenty of places he could go where he didn’t have to be confronted with it.

Tracht suspected that Galanis enjoyed the media attention more than anything else.

Alex’s broad hand circled Tracht’s ankle in a strangely intimate gesture. Tracht wasn’t sure if Alex realized what he was doing, if he noticed the intimacy of a gesture like this. It would have been unthinkable—and unbearable for Tracht—at the start of their arrangement.

“He’s got a punchable face,” Alex said.

It was such an Alex thing to say that Tracht snorted in amusement, and he rewarded Alex with a pat to his head. “I’m sure he does. Thankfully, we’re unlikely to run across him in person.”

“Yeah, I can’t see Anna inviting him to parties.” Alex twisted around so he was kneeling and rested his arms across Tracht’s lap. “Can we watch porn instead?”

Tracht’s eyebrows raised at the suggestion. After how he’d broken off the sex games earlier, he would have thought Alex would take the hint. “I told you, I’m not in the mood.”

“I dunno. This is boring, and you’re getting that pissed off look.”

That pissed off look? Tracht thought he’d been maintaining a neutral expression. But it was Alex, and even somebody as dense as Alex had probably learned to read microexpressions when it made such a difference to his well-being.

The worst part of it all was that Tracht still didn’t care all that much. It didn’t actually bother him that Alex understood him.

But that didn’t mean he had to give in to Alex’s whims.

“No. But you can warm my cock while I keep watching the news,” Tracht said, spreading his legs wider. He toyed with the idea of pissing in Alex’s mouth just to see the disgust and the real hatred, but that would inevitably cause a mess he didn’t feel like dealing with right then.

In the end, he didn’t do anything unpleasant to Alex at all. He simply forced Alex to warm his cock while the news ran its course, concluding it all with a brutal face-fuck.

It was fine. Almost satisfying, since Alex choked nicely and his eyes teared up, but the result was even tamer than if he’d gone through with his original plans. Alex didn’t even try to beg for an orgasm for himself.

Tracht really was getting too soft.

===

Docking procedures ran smoothly, because the dock staff at Cadmus were twenty times more competent than those at Atalanta. It probably didn’t hurt that Lysander Corporation held more sway on Cadmus than on Atalanta, so Tracht received preferential treatment.

With docking all taken care of, Tracht had a bit of downtime. He really wanted a nice, warm bath, followed by a nap. He was already imagining how he’d fuck Alex when Bahjat approached him.

“Captain—Sorry to bother you, but…” Bahjat stopped in front of him, a deep grimace on her face. “I just received a call from a reporter. Somebody who wants to interview me, specifically, about working with the Tracht family. I turned her down, of course, but I thought you should know.”

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