Rodrigo 8:51am: Again? How can you say no to that face?
Severin 8:52am: Are you insinuating that I’m cruel?
Rodrigo 8:52am: Wow, he caught on.
Give the dominant a cookie.
Severin arched a brow at his phone, waiting for what he knew was coming.
Rodrigo 8:52am: I apologize, Severin. I shouldn’t have said that.
He chuckled, then walked for a few minutes, letting Rodrigo sweat it out after saying something that disrespectful.
Severin 9:06am: We’ll be discussing that text when you get home.
Rodrigo 9:06am: Fuck. Now I’m going to have a hard-on through this whole meeting.
Loïc sighed. Severin had almost forgotten he wasn’t alone with the dogs.
“You just saw them earlier, and now they’re texting you?” he asked derisively. “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to talk to me so much.”
“Apparently relationships are like this. Especially new ones.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Severin slid his gaze to the younger, more socially aware version of himself. “You’ve never...”
“Been in a relationship? Well, I guess that would depend on your definition.” He had a stick in his hand, and he smacked it against almost every tree they passed on the path. There was a subtle violence about it that wasn’t lost on Severin. Reading Loïc’s non-verbals was so easy when they were so similar to his own. “I had regulars who knew a few things about me, but it was my job to know them, not the other way around. Most men didn’t care who I was beyond getting their egos stroked and dicks sucked. People prefer talking about themselves than learning about you, especially when you’re just the help.”
“Martine didn’t see you as a business partner?”
“Behind the scenes, yes. In public I was a customer loyalty perk.”
Severin grunted, not sure what to say. The conversation with Rodrigo had been a fun diversion, but Loïc was the reminder that life was usually much less pleasant. Like he could ever forget.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said, not sure what else to say. He sucked at stuff like this.
Loïc shrugged. “It’s not like I fought them or got beaten.”
“Did you ever try to refuse?”
He breathed a humorless laugh. “I was better trained than that.”
Severin called the pups back as they frisked after a bird.
All of the years he’d spent with his surrogate family, feeling sorry for himself, and he’d had no idea how good he’d fucking had it. Loïc had lost so many more years of his life compared to what had been done to him.
“Was anyone kind to you?”
“Sometimes after the Johns hurt me Martine would kiss it better,” his brother replied, his voice cool and mocking.
Loïc’s jaw tightened, and the words and their implications sunk in.
“She didn’t.”
“Who do you think trained me, Severin? You think Martine hired some sexy call girl to teach me? She was my first – my only woman. She was almost the mother of my child. She was also the last person I slept with.”
The contents of Severin’s stomach tried to come up, but he swallowed the bile. The poor bastard.