That was definitely unusual. Most people, even long-term clients, waited to strip down until after Brett was out of the room, and he always gave them their privacy. But maybe Alessandro wasn’t used to how this worked. Maybe he hadn’t been to a massage before, or maybe he just wasn’t particularly modest.
Regardless, Brett left the room, something unpleasant, barely acknowledged, crawling up his spine. But he was probably imagining things—a little put off by the client’s smug confidence. Be that as it may, Brett still had a job to do.
He gave Alessandro time to get settled and then knocked, opening the door when he was told it was okay. A little to his relief, the man was safely tucked in under the sheet, and once more, Brett did his best to dismiss his worries. Alessandro was handsome and charming, in his own dominant, alpha-personality type way, and there was no indication that he was even gay, nothing but a feeling to even make Brett think that he was interested.
So he got to work, and there was a lot of work to do. This man had not been lying when he said that his neck and shoulders were feeling tense and tight. They weren’t as taut as John’s had been, but …
Damn it. Why did his thoughts keep drifting back to John? It was like if he lowered his guard for a second, memories came creeping back, and they weren’t memories that he could stand right now. Maybe later, if the sting ever faded, but not now.
It was better to lose himself in the flow of Alessandro’s muscles together, the way they all linked up so beautifully, the connections between all of them. The sense of satisfaction he felt when a knot loosened and hard, tough muscle fibers finally lay smooth and calm.
Alessandro didn’t feel the need to chatter, that was one thing. Some people, especially their first time in, did. Like they were so desperate to fill up the silence, like they couldn’t handle it, as nervous as they were. Gradually, Brett’s feeling of unease softened a bit, and just when he was thinking that he had been completely wrong about the whole situation, Alessandro’s hand moved.
“You have strong hands,” Alessandro murmured, his voice drowsy and deep as his fingers dug deep into the unsuspecting curve of Brett’s ass. “Good hands. What else are those hands good at doing, I wonder, pretty boy? I bet they’d feel as amazing elsewhere on my body.”
It wasn’t like Brett hadn’t felt that something was going on. It wasn’t even like he hadn’t been hit on at work before. He had. It was just that it had never been quite so blatant, nor made him feel quite as dirty.
“Get your hand off of me,” Brett spoke quietly, his voice level and calm, but with an undertone of steel. It seemed that Alessandro didn’t hear it, though, or didn’t take it seriously, at the very least. He just rolled over, and the sheet slipped down, and while Brett didn’t actually see anything, it became very clear that Alessandro had stripped down completely naked.
“Why? I think you like it,” Alessandro told him, smug confidence in everything that he was doing. Like he just assumed that Brett would be all too happy to join him on the narrow massage table. Like he really thought that Brett was just playing coy, and all he had to do was press a bit, and Brett would be all his.
“Get your hand off of me, or I will hit you with a sexual harassment lawsuit so fast that your head will spin,” Brett gritted out, his voice still quiet, but less and less calm all the time. He wasn’t bluffing. He was considering doing it anyway. Show this man that he wasn’t God’s gift to the world, that he couldn’t just have whatever he wanted by crooking his finger.
Alessandro hesitated, and the grip on Brett’s rear end loosened, at least, which was more than good enough for him. It let him pull away, and he didn’t even bother to say anything else. What this man had done was beyond the bounds that anyone should have to tolerate.
He pushed open the door, shut it firmly behind him, and stormed down the short hallway to the desk. It took him mere seconds to grab his winter gear, and he didn’t even bother to stop to put it on. His skin was crawling, he felt like he might actually vomit, and really, he just needed to get out of there.
“That man is not coming back here,” he informed Sidney, who was staring at him with some shock on her pretty face. “And if he does, I’m not. Keep his file, though. I may need it if I decide to sue him.”
“Brett! What happened?” she asked, but he was already blundering toward the door and had no energy to spare, no attention, to answer her question. He needed to get out of there, and that was the beginning and end of his focus.
