Page 26 of Love Language

Was it worse or better that this man, who wasn’t Richard, had given him something that his Sir never had?

He clicked the photo closed, eyes lingering on the text one more time. “You were beautiful,” Marco had said.

Richard had called him sexy. And hot. As well as a bunch of other names like dirty and slutty. Cockslut and cumdump.

But he’d never been beautiful before.

Did he want to be beautiful?

He didn’t think that he was actually that attractive, especially with his added weight and the crow’s feet starting to pull at his eyes.

But maybe in his submission, he was beautiful. At least to Marco

It shouldn’t have pleased him so much, to be called beautiful by that beautiful man.

Reluctantly, he put his phone away.

It had been two months, and he couldn’t exactly text him now.

No doubt, Marco had long since forgotten him. And he still wasn’t sure that he wanted to see him anyway. Did he?

Back in the office, he walked mindlessly down the hallway and almost bumped into someone. No, not someone. Brett. Dammit.

He had discovered, over the past couple months, that he and Brett had exactly two things in common: working at the same office, and going to the same club. Though they worked in different departments and Greg didn’t actually go to the club anymore. So basically, nothing in common.

He also found Brett too outgoing and snarky in a way that exhausted him quickly.

“Hey, Greg!”

“Hey, Brett.” He plastered on a smile and hastened his steps.

“Hang on, I just found out about an event you might want to know about.” He raised his eyebrows lasciviously.

Good lord. Were they going to do this here? The hallway was just a row of fabric-lined partitions alongside a cubicle farm. Everyone could hear them.

He debated telling Brett he was busy, but that would obviously be false since he didn’t know when the event was. And he wasn’t going to tell Brett anything even slightly more personal.

He’d vaguely seen Brett around the club back when he’d attended with his Sir and couldn’t remember ever having a conversation with him. Even when Brett started working at his publishing house—in legal, maybe? marketing? —he hadn’t recognized him.

Brett had recognized him, though, and somehow gotten it into his mind that they were friends.

“Maybe you could email me the details?” he finally suggested.

Brett dropped his voice to an obnoxiously loud whisper. “It’s a munch.”

Yes, well, Greg had figured it was either a munch or an event at the club.

“I went on Saturday and there were deaf people there. Because,” he waved his arms around vaguely, possibly in a sad mimicry of sign language, “you know.”

No, Greg didn’t know. But he wasn’t going to get into the politics of Deaf culture, or even explain to Brett that using ASL didn’t mean that he automatically knew every Deaf person in the city or wanted to hang out with them.

“Email me,” he said, tightly.

“No problem! See you around! Maybe we can go together!”

Greg mumbled something non-committal and then hurried back to his desk. The email came a few minutes later, directly from Brett’s work email to his work email. It wasn’t graphic or anything, but it certainly belonged on both of their personal accounts. Unbelievable.

Greg was about to delete it, when he thought of something.