Page 56 of Under His Skin

Because Tracht wasn’t like Nick at all. Tracht was the best thing that had happened to Alex. Tracht had smiled at Alex and kissed him and made him feel terrible and amazing all at once.

Despite all that, Alex couldn’t stop the doubt from creeping in. “Hey. Tracht.”

“Hmm?” Tracht turned his head just enough that his mouth was in kissing range.

Alex was tempted to go for it, but he wanted answers more than he wanted kissing. “Did you really go to a kink club without me?”

Tracht made a disgruntled noise. “Who told you that?”

“Galanis. He said Kuroyama sent him the footage.” Alex tried to push the image of Tracht going into the club out of his mind, but his imagination him supplied with images of Tracht torturing some other man, making him cry, telling him how pretty he was and licking away his tears.

“Ah. Well. I thought to distract myself from your absence. But you can be gratified to know that the entire excursion was an extreme disappointment, and the one person I attempted to engage with couldn’t keep my attention for more than five minutes.” Tracht turned around, bringing them face to face. There was a crease in Tracht’s brow, sort of like disappointment. “He could not compare to you at all. Nobody can.”

Alex couldn’t stop himself from smiling. Emboldened by Tracht’s willingness to respond, he decided to ask another question. “What about the money? Why’d you withdraw from my account?”

Tracht’s mouth slipped into a slight smirk. “Oh. That. I suppose there’s no harm in telling you. I had no intention of making it easy for you to leave me, of course. If you intend to cut ties with me, you’ll have to get a real job and find honest work. I would probably laugh at all your attempts and failure to integrate into society.”

Warmth bloomed in Alex’s chest, his heart pounding even faster. Maybe Galanis or Franziska or fucking Parsons would tell him that good people wouldn’t do something like that, but Alex didn’t give a shit. If Tracht didn’t want Alex around, he wouldn’t have bothered with any of that. He could have had anyone at the club, and he wanted Alex. He could have let Alex take the money and run, but he wanted to force Alex to stay.

So fuck everyone else who kept trying to tell him that Tracht was bad for him. Nobody had ever cared for Alex the way Tracht did, and Alex was pretty sure nobody else ever would.

Chapter 15

It took another week for the trial to end, although they were gearing up for departure before that. The lawyers had apparently finally gotten through to the station about the illegal detainment. Alex got to scare a few sailors into coming back to work, and was then roped into helping with the preparations. Tracht was very upset about the state of the ship, and everybody had to pitch in to clean all the surfaces that had collected dust for all of two weeks.

Alex thought Tracht was being a hard-ass about it, but he didn’t stop scrubbing the surfaces in the lounge. Even though it was unfair that he was doing all this menial work while Bahjat sat on the couch, watching the vid screen.

“By the way, I watched your bit in the trial,” Bahjat said suddenly, grinning widely. “Wonderful performance.”

What performance? Alex just said what he’d wanted to say.

“I thought you weren’t watching that?” Alex groused. His arms felt sore from all the scrubbing. He was probably out of shape, too; he’d neglected his workouts while they were on Cadmus.

“I knew your part would be funny, and I was right.” She got up and walked over to sit on one of the chairs he’d just wiped clean. “Let me guess: Tracht was very pleased with you afterwards.”

Alex felt himself blush, but there was no point in hiding it from her. “Yeah. We went to a hotel. And after… stuff, we sat in this massive tub, and we had wine, and he ordered this huge dinner.”

The memory of the cake lingered on his tongue, all sweet and rich and better than anything Alex had ever had before. He hoped he’d get to try more of it.

“My date went well too, by the way. I know you weren’t wondering, but I figured I’d tell you anyway.” Bahjat’s fingers drummed on the table. “But I think it wouldn’t work out. I showed her that vid of you, and she was very horrified.”

Date? Then Alex remembered that she’d been dressed up fancy that one morning so she could go talk politics with some chick. “And since she didn’t like me, you didn’t want her?”

“Nah. You’re such an acquired taste, Alex. I think it’d be impossible to find anybody on this station who likes you. But she went on a rant about the bondservant system, and abuse, and I thought—wow, that’s tiring. I don’t have time to care about all that. Plus she’d pressure me to quit once she found out who my boss was, and I like my job.” Bahjat laughed quietly. “I guess what I’m saying is, she was too good for me.”

Alex wasn’t sure how he was supposed to answer that. It sounded more like this chick was an asshole who didn’t know how to mind her own business, but Bahjat probably knew that already. Thankfully, the news suddenly switched over to an update on the trial, distracting both of them.

“Anna Tracht has been found guilty of corruption, and will be removed from her position immediately. This puts into question many of the cases she presided over—”

What the hell? Alex couldn’t believe that she’d actually been convicted. “This is bad, right?” he asked Bahjat.

Bahjat shrugged, although she wasn’t smiling anymore. “Maybe? It depends on how much that affects the Sigrun, I guess. If her husband stops giving us contracts after this…”

On screen, the camera showed Anna and her lawyers. One of the lawyers said, “We are very disappointed in this grave injustice, and we intend to appeal. It’s been clear from the start that this trial has been a witch hunt, with my client unfairly targeted due to her status.”

Surprisingly, Vasilis was there too, with his arm around Anna, like he wanted the world to know he stood by her. Which was funny since he hadn’t attended the trial at all while Alex was there.

Alex dropped the washcloth and got up. “I gotta go.”

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