Chapter 3

Now there was the type of man that Dex would love to take home. He was tired of the effeminate boys who often tried to interest him in a little bedroom adventure; if he’d wanted a girl, he would have frequented a brothel. He wanted a man, a real man, with muscles and calluses, the knowledge of sweat and hard work.

Despite being of the gentry, the pampered and privileged, Maitland’s figure screamed violence, just barely contained. There was tension in his shoulders and he possessed the tightly coiled spine one seldom saw in the elite. Maitland knew pain, loss, and the inevitable wounds of regret. Maitland looked as if he knew what it was to have no choices.