“I’m not going to tell Xingyu about this, if that’s what you’re so worried about.” He stood to put on his jacket, and then went to find wherever he’d kicked off his shoes. “If things ever work out with Xingyu, you can just tell me and we’ll stop. He never has to know.” Not that he would care. And not that Weiran would ever have the courage to come on to Xingyu. And not that Xingyu would even notice when someone was coming onto him. Actually, Xiaokai was not entirely convinced that Xingyu wasn’t a total virgin.

“What do you mean ‘we’ll stop’? You mean you want to do this again?”

“Of course I do.” He’d apparently toed off his shoes at the door. Xiaokai bent to pull them on. “I figured it could be my little cleansing ritual or something. And you don’t have to hide in the bathroom and masturbate to the memory of Xingyu taking off his shirt or whatever, so it’s a win-win.”

“This isn’t weird for you at all?”

“No. It’s actually preferable to what I did before I came here. And one time a client had me tied up in a bathtub and was pis—”

“I don’t want to hear whatever it is you’re about to say.”

“For the millionth time, it isn’t weird for me.” Xiaokai did one last glance in the mirror. He adjusted his hair, his collar, his tie. “So? Can I come back?”

“For business or for pleasure?”

Xiaokai grinned at him. “Both, hopefully.”

A little blush spread across Weiran’s cheeks and he very pointedly avoided meeting Xiaokai’s gaze. “Do whatever you want.”

THERE WERE OTHER benefits to sleeping with Zhang Weiran.

Of course, he hadn’t been lying when he listed the first two reasons to Weiran—he wanted to be able to sleep with someone who wasn’t an assignment, and he wanted to get the feeling of his appointments off his skin before he had to either go home and sleep in it or go to the office and work in it. These were both true.

It was also true, though, that it hurt in just the right way. Weiran was in love with Xingyu, and Xiaokai was taking advantage of that—tainting that love. He talked up how terrible all those appointments with his clients were, but pretty much everything they did to him only lasted as long as the appointment. Xiaokai was a prostitute and a businessman and nothing else. But with Weiran—with this relationship he began? It was deplorable while they were having sex and it was deplorable afterward. It was just deplorable enough to distract Xiaokai, and, he knew, just deplorable enough to get him to sleep.

Having sex with his clients was just part of him. Having sex with Weiran was new and painful and strange and it knocked him out like a light.