6. Alex

CHAPTER 6

ALEX

I made it a week before I caved in and sent Dylan another message.

A week of staring at the spot on my floor that he’d scrubbed so diligently that it almost shined under the light. I hadn’t even realized my floor was dirty in the first place until he’d cleaned that single spot so well. And all I could think about was having him naked with a plug up his ass, making the rest of the surface match. Getting through work had been a fucking struggle, the only saving grace was that my friends were used to my reclusive tendencies so, for the most part, they left me alone.

I didn’t have to pretend I wasn’t preoccupied. That I wasn’t thinking about how a too-skinny bartender from a little dive bar in the city had flipped my life upside down. I didn’t have his phone number, didn’t know a thing about him besides where he worked and how his asshole grabbed my dick for dear life when he came. I messaged him on the app and he didn’t even bother to read it, which wounded my ego more than I wanted to admit. But he was probably embarrassed, I told myself. It had been obvious he was new to sex work and maybe he’d spent the whole week regretting what we’d done.

I should have left it alone, but I was a man obsessed. It wasn’t healthy to replace Carter with Dylan…I knew that. But my cock didn’t care. Ignoring a dinner invitation from one of my closest friends, Ford, I made the decision to go to Tryst and see if Dylan was working. I spent ten minutes debating if I wanted to take the motorcycle, deciding against it and opting for a walk instead. The fresh air would do me good, I hoped. Clear my head enough that I didn’t make a fool of myself when I got to the bar.

What was I supposed to say even if he was working? Was I supposed to pretend that the sex had never happened? Buy a drink or two and then head home for the night? I didn’t think the last scenario was possible, but if that was what the situation called for, I would manage it.

It took just under half an hour to reach Tryst, and Dylan was behind the bar when I got there. He saw me almost immediately, eyebrows racing toward his hairline and his cheeks turning pink. He swallowed and turned away from me, busying himself with a mixed cocktail for someone at the far end of the bar. Tryst was busier than normal, but I found a single seat at the bar near the hallway that led to the bathrooms, and I waited for Dylan to make his way over to me.

“Dirty martini?” he asked, body swaying behind the bar.

“To start with.”

His lips parted on a breath, and then Dylan made me the best martini of my life. I sipped it slowly, studying him while he worked, making note of the way his body leaned back toward me even when he was helping someone at another part of the bar. Even though he wasn’t close, and hardly paid me any attention, his body was screaming for me…betraying him.

I finished my drink and slipped a fifty under the bottom of my martini glass. I’d gotten the answers I’d come looking for, and that felt like enough. But as I moved to climb off the bar, Dylan turned toward me, his whole face falling at the sight of my pending departure. He was quick to try and school it, but he was so easy to read. Making another rash decision, I pulled one of my business cards out of my money clip and beckoned him closer.

“Are you working until four?” I asked.

“Off at two tonight.”

“Pen,” I told him.

He pulled one out of his back pocket and I scrawled the address for The Black Door on the back of the card, setting it down on top of the fifty. I set the pen down on the bar and looked up at him, studying the way his brow furrowed so softly in the center while he stared at the bar top.

“What’s your last name, Dylan?”

“Rivers,” he croaked.

“Meet me there.” I tapped the back of my business card.

“Alright.”

I didn’t think there was anything else to say, so I gave him a jerky nod and walked out of the bar. The fresh night air was sharp against my burning hot cheeks, and I prayed none of my friends had ventured out to The Black Door because running into any of them was the absolute last thing I wanted to do. Even though I rarely said yes, they’d kept inviting me places, and tonight’s message had been about dinner, not about play.

Once I reached The Black Door, I told the man at the door I was expecting a guest and gave them Dylan’s name and where I planned to be. I ordered another martini at the bar, even though it was lackluster compared to the dirty drinks Dylan had made me, and headed to a small table for one in the back of the main room that everyone seemed to overlook. It had never not been available when I wanted it and, in my opinion, it gave the best view of the club…and it was a straight shot to the private rooms down the back hallway.

I’d never considered myself to be a voyeur, but I was always curious about the ways people fucked. Maybe that came from the transparency all my friends shared when it came to the bedroom and the playroom. The guests at The Black Door rarely escaped my attention, and I considered it to be the most entertaining form of people-watching. You could learn so much about a person by what their kinks were, by the way they liked to fuck or be fucked.

Dylan, for example, was obviously desperate for some semblance of control in his life. Barely hanging on by a thread, the way he’d cried on my spanking bench had sounded like a release I’d be jealous of for the rest of my days. I hadn’t cried after Carter left for California, but the pressure of that loss had lived in my chest just the same. Rubbing my sternum, I tried to turn the same sort of speculation onto myself. What must Dylan—or anyone, for that matter—think of me based off the way I wanted to fuck?

If they pinned me as a dominating control freak who held on far too tight because he was terrified of losing his grip, they’d be right. If they called me a man with unattainable standards, who set everyone in his life up to fail, they’d also be right. That wasn’t by design, though. I didn’t want people to fail—I just wanted them to try. I wanted to be worth the work. That was probably something to talk to a therapist about, but my parents had sent me to one after they caught me kissing our private chef’s son in the pool house my freshman year of high school and that hadn’t ended well for any of us.

He told me he loved me, and I believed him. But all I got out of that whole thing was a prescription I refused to swallow and a one-way ticket for a boarding school in Connecticut. I had no idea what happened to Brandon, but I knew better than to ask. When I came home for holiday visits, there was a new chef in the kitchen, and the pool house was padlocked closed. It had been a cutting lesson in chasing after my own pleasure, the pain of the judgement and isolation so acute that I never even thought about kissing another boy again until I was in college.

I kissed plenty of boys in college, plenty of men. Plenty of women too, but my preferences quickly became clear. It was easier to be rough with men, and I don’t think I wanted to hurt them the way I’d been hurt. The emotional betrayal of my teenage years could never be matched with physical bruises. Brandon had said he loved me, but after I was sent away to school, he never answered my emails, lost to history. It had been so easy for him to let me be taken away from him. I wanted someone to fight for me.

Maybe I was selfish or unfair, but…

I wasn’t going to stop.

I tossed back the rest of my martini, no idea what time it was, but when I pushed up from my seat to go get a new drink, there was an already familiar pair of dirty sneakers situated between my feet.

“Did you want another?” Dylan asked, reaching out for my glass.

“Is it two already?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “It’s two-thirty.”

“Put it on my tab, then. Get yourself one.”

“What’s your last name, Alex?” he asked, head cocked to the side. “For the bar tab.”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t already commit my business card to memory, Dylan. I don’t like men who play coy with me.”

Dylan hummed, not even bothering to look ashamed. “Alex Burke. Financial Advisor.”

“You didn’t memorize my phone number too?”

The quick flush on his throat confirmed for me that even if he didn’t memorize the number, it had already been saved into his phone.

“Drinks,” I said, clearing my throat and letting us both off the hook.

I watched Dylan the whole time he was at the bar, and I wondered if he was still bruised beneath his clothes. It had only been a week. There still had to be some proof of our time together on his skin. I let myself think about stripping him naked somewhere, a private room here, the alley, the back seat of a town car, and pressing my fingers one by one into every bruise of mine he’d worn for the past week. Blood rushed to my cock, and I palmed the base of my shaft, pushing it back down into submission.

When Dylan turned away from the bar and headed back toward my table, I forced my attention up his face, ignoring the fact there was the slightest tease of a shadow between his legs where his cock had thickened and started to tent the material. How was it possible he was hard after ordering me a drink? I didn’t have time to think about it because he was back and handing me one of the drinks, keeping the other held tight between his white-knuckled fingers.

“Table for one?” he asked, hint of amusement in his voice.

“There’s room for two,” I said, tipping my chin toward the floor.

His nostrils flared, but he didn’t look annoyed. He looked like I’d offered him a gift.

Taking a sip off the top of my drink, I eyed him over the rim of my glass. “On your knees, Dylan.”

His drink sloshed over his fingers as he moved to his knees, clearly not familiar with the positioning and far from graceful about it, but there was something obscenely sexy about that. He’d never done this for anyone besides me, and that made it feel special enough to tamp down some of that other emotion that took up so much space in my chest.

He dragged his tongue over the spilled alcohol on his hand, and I shifted my weight.

“This is a shitty martini,” he grumbled.

“Maybe you should work here.”

“Get me a job then,” he said.

I arched a brow and gave him a quick onceover. “Didn’t I?”

“Are you paying me now ?”

The counter question was well deserved, but still felt like a slap in the face. I understood the basis of our relationship—or whatever it was—had been built as a transaction, but maybe there was part of me that foolishly hoped this second interlude could be more personal. Always quick to recover, I made sure to wipe my face of any indication that I’d hoped for a different outcome in the night.

“Most men generally get on their knees for free if I ask,” I said.

He blinked at me slowly, throat working as he swallowed down a mouthful of his shitty martini. “I’m not most men.”

“No,” I said quietly, “you most certainly aren’t.”

“Is that a yes?”

“I’ll pay,” I promised. And I would, but I was going to get my money’s worth.

“Good.”

“Finish your drink, Dylan. It’s getting late.”