“I bet. Get up and take your clothes off.”
Alex did as he was told. He’d never been good at erotic stripteases, but this wasn’t really him. This was another Alex, who was the perfect courtesan and fantastic at all kinds of sex. He undid his shirt slowly, one button at a time. Harper sat back in his chair and took a sip of his coffee, watching avidly.
Freed from any pretence of being himself, Alex felt an odd kind of confidence. Was this what it was like being an actor? Now, he shimmied a little, slipped his thumbs in his boxers and slid them down his legs, glancing back over his shoulder as he wriggled his naked arse in Harper’s direction. He was a slut, a whore, which was just what Harper wanted. He was every handsome intern Harper had wanted to fuck but couldn’t. Every beautiful boy who’d teased him just by existing, every stunning young man who’d said no to him.
Alex felt as if heknewHarper on some level. He knew how angry he was at the men he wanted to possess, who had the power to reject him. The pretty boys who’d tried to manipulate him. The gorgeous young men who’d used him for his money and hadn’t bent over or sucked him off on demand. He wanted power and control overthosemen. The ones who turned him on, then turned him down. Alex was their living embodiment – and Alex couldn’t turn him down.
He removed the last of his clothes and turned, his eyes smouldering. Harper stood up, his cock rock hard, jutting out almost comically from his open fly. “Come here, you teasing little bitch,” he ordered.
Alex knew what he had to do. He quirked his lips, glanced at Harper’s cock in derision, and laughed.
“No,” he said, knowing precisely what he’d unleash.
He wasn’t wrong. Harper ran across the room and grabbed his neck. He threw Alex over the dining table and grabbed his buttocks. There was something comfortingly familiar about this.It was rough sex. Hate sex. Like he’d had so many times with Neil after they’d driven each other mad. It was no rougher than he’d had, drunkenly, and with crocodile tears flowing down his face, in the toilets of various gay bars in Oxford. Once, he’d seduced one of his professors, and the man had taken him passionately, despairing of his attraction for Alex even while he fucked him over the lectern in an empty lecture hall. Alex had always enjoyed that kind of sex – raw, dirty, and passionate. If he tried very hard, he could imagine that was the sex he was having right now as Harper rammed his cock into him.
It was over soon enough. Harper was too turned on to last. When he was done, he bit the back of Alex’s neck, then drew back.
“Little slut. Got what you deserved.”
“Yes, Master. I’m such a whore. You showed me.” Alex sank to his knees and looked up at Harper in abject submission.
“I should take my belt to you.” Harper regarded him moodily.
“You should,” Alex agreed, hoping he wouldn’t.
Luckily, Harper was sated and the necessary passion wasn’t there. He just grunted. “Next time I will.”
“I’ll deserve it.” That, at least, was the truth. He deserved all of it and more. So many dead people littered in his wake. So many ruined lives – Ted, Joe, Charles, and his father. Of course he deserved it.
Harper could find no deceit in him. There was no trace of the manipulative boys who’d toyed with him in the past. Alex was deadly serious, and that, he suspected, was what saved him from much more of Harper’s attention that night.
He had one last humiliation in store for Alex before he left, though. He stood over him and suddenly started pissing on him in long streams of yellow urine. Alex bowed his head, humming his song in his head desperately as he accepted every lasthumiliating drop. Then it was over. Harper tucked himself away, zipped up, and left without another word.
Alex knelt there, trying to compose himself for a few seconds more. He stank, but he felt oddly elated. He’d navigated this most horrific of encounters in a way that even George Tyler couldn’t fault. Surely –surely– this would earn him an audience with his houder?
It wasn’t, technically, his job to tidy up, but he did so anyway, humming his song softly to himself as he went. It might be ridiculous, but he felt almost reluctant to leave the scene of his victory. It hadn’t been pleasant, but he’d survived.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the fireplace. He felt dirty, used, and disgusted, but none of that showed on his face. He checked for some sign of Alexander Lytton, some glimmer of himself in his reflection, but could find nothing. He was exactly what he wanted to be: blank, faceless, and unknowable.
He stacked the plates and tidied up as best he could, and then he left to return to his room. The guard fell into step beside him, doing a double take at the state he was in. Alex hadn’t bothered to dress again. It seemed a shame to soil that beautiful suit, so he returned to his room naked, a little bruised, and stinking. He caught the expression of pity and disgust in the guard’s eyes and ignored it. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except convincing Tyler that he’d changed.
Once he was alone in his room he took a shower, but this time he didn’t cry. He soaped himself gently, washing away all trace of Harper, and then stepped out and dried himself. He didn’t look at the smartwall. He didn’t show any emotion at all. He slipped into bed and went to sleep as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
The next morning, he woke early and used the time to go through a list in his head of all the people Tyler might unleashon him next. He couldn’t think of anyone who could possibly be worse than Harper, who could challenge him like Harper had, test his resolve, and reveal any chinks in his armour. He thought about it for a long time, but eventually concluded there was nobody worse, except Tyler himself.
He was completely sure of that… and he was completely wrong.
Chapter Nineteen
NOVEMBER 2095
Josiah
Josiah lay awake for half the night thinking about Neil Grant. This was the best lead he’d had since this frustrating case had begun; nothing else had panned out. Neil had tried to steal Alex from the show on that Saturday night, and by the following Tuesday morning, Elliot Dacre was dead. Was that a coincidence? Surely not.
He gave up on sleep in the early hours and slipped out of bed to shower and dress. Then he dropped a kiss on Alex’s sleeping face and headed to work.
He didn’t want to take Reed off the search for Tyler’s blackmail files, so he launched his own investigation. He was no data tech, but he was a good detective, and within a few hours, he’d pieced together a timeline of Neil’s life after he’d left Lytton AV. Nobody had wanted to employ him, which was hardly surprising given how high profile the trial had been and the somewhat murky part he’d played in it. He’d had money to start with – presumably from Tyler – and he’d used it to set himself up in his own accountancy business. Still, decent clients were hardly going to be attracted by his notoriety, and he seemed to have struggled – as evidenced by how progressively downmarket his addresses had become.
