Chapter Nine
INTERLUDE
Somehow, he’d fucked that up.
He’d gotten everything he’d wanted and he’d still fucked it up.
Well, not everything he’d wanted. He’d made the deal for everything, and then without properly anticipating it, he’d settled for just the sex, just the ascension and the climax and then—nothing.
Probably because he’d fucked it up. Not that he was entirely sure what he’d done to manage that.
He’d tried to be, well, not gentlemanly, but at least ungentlemanly in the way Isaiah seemed to enjoy.
He’d stopped when told and when he’d felt Isaiah tense after orgasm, he’d pulled out.
With the way Isaiah had looked at him though, even he could tell he had no right to hold out a hand and ask if the distraught lab rat he’d just degraded and fucked from behind wanted to, perchance, be held after.
That was…
It was…
Not hurtful. That would be silly. Logic said that being distressed over the lack of post-coital intimacy was inappropriate of him.
He’d never hired a prostitute before—a Starlight Club escort didn’t really count, he figured—but he wondered whether they could be paid purely for cuddling, then decided that even if that was a valid use of their time, even he wasn’t shameless enough to ask for it.
As he paused in front of Varsity’s dark office, he turned his mind for a moment from the woes of the past to the opportunities of the future.
“You know what will happen to me next, right?” Isaiah had asked.
And Anthony did know. He knew better than Isaiah—he’d heard the plans himself.
So, he knew, too, how to stop them. If he wished.