Paid to Pretend: Delphic Agency, #4

By Romilly King

Christian De Olio, natural-born Boy Scout, head of the Delphic Security Team, exemplary son of a wealthy family, pretends every day of his life.

He pretends he is sexless in a world where arousal rules.

He pretends that he works for Delphic because it was the obvious choice after his time in the army.

He pretends that whenever he listens to the far-off voice of Michael Bond, the long-absent Director of Delphic, it doesn't take him right back to one night 15 years ago.  To the one night, he didn't pretend.  To the one night, he was himself.

And then the Director comes home, and Christian isn't sure he can pretend anymore. Not when Michael looks at him the way he does, with such disappointment, because Christian can endure anything except being a disappointment to Michael.

Particularly when he thought he was doing so well.

Paid to Pretend is Book 5 in the Delphic Agency Series and features a second chance romance, a hero so clean-cut he glows in the dark, and plenty of steamy kink exploration along with a HEA.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balloon Ride Books
• Release date: Dec 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215266908

Romilly King

Romilly write's character driven gay romances that focus on the dynamics of intense relationships.  Romilly's plots tend to dive deep into the more fascinating aspects of human behaviour - basically there will be a lot of kinky stuff!

Book preview

Author’s Note

This is the last book in the Delphic Agency Series. You don’t have to have read the previous ones to enjoy it, but it would help.

However, in summary, all the books are set in the near future, where society is somewhat changed following a pandemic and a financial crash. Sex work has not only been made legal, but it is regulated, respectable, and managed by powerful agencies – Delphic is one such agency.

The Delphic Agency, founded by Michael Bond, is particularly known for its ability to match the sexual preferences of its clients and workers, leading to more successful connections and a stellar reputation. This is due to their use of a secret algorithm developed by a genius neurobiologist and his computer expert business partner. The algorithm maps the conscious and unconscious kinks of the individual – sort of like the Kinsey scale of kink! – and so helps people find their perfect sexual match.

While this is the last book in this series, we will be returning to these characters in The Outreach Series, containing even more stories of kink discovery and exploration.

Character List

Jeremy Addicot – Fraternity ‘brother’ to Michael Bond, rich local businessman, loathsome worm

Tay Albright – Former Head of Training (Special Contracts) at Delphic Agency, a leather-clad, old-school, former Venditor.

Birch Albany – The sweetest sub at Delphic, former Venditor, former ballet dancer, now a Psycho-sexual Counsellor.

Director Michael Bond – Founder and sole owner of Delphic, recently returned from a 15-year absence.

Angela Carter – Deputy Head of Security at Delphic Agency.

Christian De Olio – Head of Security at Delphic Agency. Former military. So clean-cut he glows in the dark.

Ash Gannon – Director and Co-Founder of 3M (ManMindMap), computer expert and data diver, developer of the Gannon-Hywel algorithm.

Richard Gannon – His husband, a former Venditor and total angel.

Adam Guest – Security team member at Delphic.

Cashel Gregory – Former Director of Organization Psychology at Delphic Agency.

Brio Hywel-Bennet – Genius, brat, and Co-Founder of 3M with Ash Gannon. Submissive partner of Painter Scott. Still thinks he’s funny.

Ms. Maisie – Venditor co-ordinator at Delphic Agency, southern belle and maneater when given the opportunity.

James Sonny Moon – Head of Logistics at Delphic Agency.

Eliza Pinkerton – Emeritus Professor of Ethics, former professor of Brio Hywel-Bennet. A good egg.

Ms. Sara – Deputy Director of Delphic, former Venditor, occasionally British. Cousin of Michael Bond.

Painter Scott – Dominant partner of Brio Hywel-Bennet, former Venditor, current Head Trainer at Delphic and Shibari Rigger.

Gideon Styles – Former school friend of Michael Bond, currently local Mayor, committed to a sex-positive community

Prologue

Back before that last pandemic changed everything, I felt we were close to a fairer society. Maybe I lived in some rose-tinted, liberal hot house, but it honestly felt like we were on the verge of a coming together. The tribes, the outliers, and the different were about to step into the light. We were the generation who would accept everybody and let love be love.

But then the world changed, and everything got set back because the overriding requirement for the vast majority was to put food on the table. It’s hard to fight for a cause when you’re hungry and cold, and you might not have a roof over your head this time next month. Oh yeah, and you might die.

I did my bit when things calmed down from the initial panic. I did what I could. I set up Delphic so those who wanted to could sell sex without being exploited or hurt. I helped them feel good for using what they had. I made them money to fund their education, business ideas, and families. I made the choices they were forced to make not just acceptable but reasonable.

I financed research that showed just how nuanced we were in the way we connected with others. I let two horny but brilliant MIT graduates map the kinks in people’s brains to prove that the way we connect is a wide-open playing field, and we are built to play.

For years I groomed, manipulated, and stroked my master plan – the crazy idea that we are human first and foremost. Everything else is just beautiful decoration, and if we found someone whose decoration matched ours, we could make a whole new pattern.

Of course, along the road I have fucked up. Because honestly, it’s hard to be a crusader without being an utter dick, and I’ve been a dick. I’ve been running from my dick moves for fifteen years.

Now it’s time to move things along. Now it’s time to go back, to what I always called home, back to Delphic. If I have to face the boy whose heart I broke, and who broke mine in return, then so be it.

No two ways about it, it’s going to hurt. But I deserve it.

Chapter One – The long and icy road

Christian

Beneath his feet, the ground was icy and slick. Christian kept a close eye on the path ahead in the wavering light from his head torch.

Pathfinder, watch your step.

The wind from the lake was cold tonight, and the icy rain found ways under his compression shirt and chilled the back of his neck.

He glanced at his wristwatch and picked up the pace; he was behind his schedule.

In the distance, the lights of the agency were a bright white beacon on the rise above the lake. The boathouse windows were pinpricks of more welcoming gold. Sara must be home because Tay and Cash’s cottages would be dark for a long time to come.

For a moment, he felt a flash of jealousy. They got their happy ending. They found each other. Christian gritted his teeth and fiercely pushed down the feeling.

Feel nothing, fear nothing, desire nothing.

He pushed the unwelcome emotion to his muscles and took the bend in the track faster, digging his mud-caked feet into the curve and pumping his arms to keep his balance. Icy water splashed up his bare calves. He was on the home straight now. Half a mile ahead, the bur oaks that surrounded the boathouse were a bare-branched silhouette against the sky. Christian put his head down and went for it.

The burn in his muscles was a fierce joy. One of the few he allowed himself. If he made it to the boathouse by his scheduled time, he might allow himself a warm shower. It would probably be wise given the run around the lake's perimeter in November would have dropped his core temperature despite the exertion.

Can’t get ill. Not allowed to be ill. Not allowed to be weak.

Suck it up, boy.

The runner’s euphoria powered him the last half mile in a blur of hot endorphins and needle pricks of cold against his skin.

He sprinted the last hundred yards and pulled up under the bur oaks, panting. Bent over, hands on his knees, he glanced at his watch. On schedule. Good. Not early, not late. On track. Perfectly acceptable.

He breathed in and out deeply, then straightened slowly.

The lights of the end cottage of the boathouse shone in front of him. Those lights had never been lit in the five years he had worked at Delphic. Through the rain beating down, they glowed and burst in prisms of light. Christian gasped, and his heart leaped. His mouth went dry.

No.

The lights were golden spills of welcoming warm color, the little square in the front door, the portholes on both sides, and the floor-to-ceiling multi-pane arched window above the entrance.

Not now. Christian didn’t know if he spoke aloud or if the words were in his head. I can’t. I’m not ready.

He felt his legs give way. The next thing he knew, he was kneeling in the shallow mud beside his long-time home, his hands curled into fists on his thighs.

He raised his head, and through the long wet strands of his hair, he saw the tall man who leaned against the side of the window, arms folded, one ankle crossed over the other. Michael.

Christian stared up at him, just like always, and Michael looked down on him. Christian swallowed the surging emotions, rage, guilt, sorrow. Blinked the water and mud out of his eyes, he tried to see Michael’s expression.

When Michael turned away from the window, Christian felt his heart break all over again.

Michael

The boy he remembered was beautiful. The man he saw below him was all that beauty amplified and ripened. When Christian looked up at the window, Michael saw how he had matured. The cheekbones were sharper, the jaw more cut. His hair was soaking wet, turned dark by the rain, and plastered against his forehead. Michael remembered how it felt under his hand, the silky blond strands that he once ran through his fingers.

The icy rain fell, and Christian was on his knees, looking up at him. Michael was hard in his jeans. The desire was a drumbeat in his blood, getting louder as the years washed away. He swallowed and fought the urge to run to Christian, to sweep him up in his arms and hold him again, warm him, pamper him, feel that pliant body with the long, firm muscles and the soft velvet skin. But he couldn’t. While this Christian was beautiful and so incredibly desirable, he wasn’t the man Michael had known. He was a soldier now, he’d gone places and done things Michael had never expected, had never wanted for him. He didn’t know Christian anymore; perhaps he never really had.

But Christian was still so damn beautiful, and Michael had to turn away if only to press his hand to his cock and try to control the rising tide of memories that made him ache.

In his head, he called it ‘The Last Summer at Delphic.’ When that phrase rolled through his mind, sensory recollections surrounded him; green trees and cool water, the scent of sawdust and cut wood. The sound of the contractors working on the boathouse, the hammer strokes pounding in rhythm to the music they played. And Christian, running through the sunlight and the shade on the lake trail, rising from the lake waters and gasping at the chill, looking at him sleepy-eyed and content.

Michael closed his eyes and gave in, like he always did, and let the Technicolor reel of memory unroll and draw him in.

Chapter Two - The Last Summer of Delphic

Fifteen Years Ago

Christian

You’re a pathfinder, kid. Christian looked up and skidded to a halt, his feet kicking little puffs of dust from the dried-out trail.

A tall man sat halfway down the steps from the terrace, looking down at him. You run like a pathfinder, he said again, his smile wide, his teeth neat, even, and white. Head down, looking for the way.

Christian looked stupidly up at him.

Some people are stargazers, they run with their heads up. Some are pathfinders, they run with their heads down. I’m a pathfinder, I run like you. He stood up, elegantly unrolling his lithe frame, and made his way down the steps. Casually dressed in pressed chinos rolled at the ankles and a loose linen shirt that fluttered in the breeze off the lake, he made Christian feel dusty and grubby and ten years old, rather than a man of eighteen.

Above him, on the terrace, Christian heard the muted hum of the regular Sunday afternoon gathering of the great and the good that his parents’ hosted. He’d hoped to avoid it by sneaking in through the basement entrance, but now he would have to make conversation with this imposing man.

It’s a good trail, the one around the lake, I do it myself regularly, but I start from the other side. The man indicated the buildings across the lake, the Delphic Agency, shiny and new in its white cladding, the sun reflecting off the myriad windows. I’m Michael, by the way.

I know, sir, Christian said quietly. Everyone knows who you are.

Michael laughed. I’m a legend in my own lunchtime, he said and rolled his eyes. Christian felt something relax in him, something normally coiled tight when he was with friends of his parents.

He managed a half-smile at Michael and ducked his head, letting his long bangs fall over his eyes.

Don’t duck your head, kid, not unless you’re running, Michael said quietly but firmly. You’re as good as anyone else. He leaned back against one of the terrace pillars. You’re Christian, aren’t you?

Yes, sir.

"You don’t need to call me sir. Michael is fine. I can even work with ‘Hey you.’ His thick hair, almost entirely steel gray apart from a few darker streaks at the temples, made him look dramatic, but his smile was engaging, enhanced by the faintest of lines at the corners of his pale blue-gray eyes. Sorry about ambushing you, but I was about to be cornered by the mayor and needed to make a quick getaway. He raised his head and peered up at the terrace. I’m not in the mood for him, it’s too nice a day, and I’d rather be out on the lake."

I was just about to grab a towel and go for a swim, Christian said, not knowing why he offered the information. You can come if you want.

Wow, why did I say that? What the fuck?

I’d love to join you, kid, Michael’s voice held genuine regret. But I need to get back to the agency, and I should say goodbye to your Mama and Papa first if I can avoid the hangers-on and brown nosers.

I can take you up the backstairs, Christian offered. And I’ll pass on your goodbyes to my parents. Something about Michael made him want to be helpful. He wasn’t like most of his parents’ friends, he seemed funnier, less worthy, and Christian was drawn to him. It didn’t harm that he was handsome too in an older, worldlier way.

One of Christian’s earliest memories was when the big house across the lake had burned. It had stood derelict for most of his childhood, all jagged teeth of roofless walls and gaping windows. A few years ago, Michael Bond had come home to his family estate, bulldozed the ruins, and rebuilt it as the Delphic Agency.

Christian couldn’t help associating the rise of the big white building with the rebirth of his own family’s fortunes. They weren’t super wealthy, not like they had been before the crash, but they were good and solid now and could do good works again. It made his mother, if not happy, then certainly less anguished.

Michael pulled a cell out of his pocket and glanced at it, If you don’t mind, I’ll take you up on the sneaky exit. I really need to get back, and if the mayor catches me it’ll be another hour. Pressing his flesh is not my idea of fun. He grimaced and Christian grinned.

The Mayor was a well-known heavy sweater. Every summer saw him dripping through social engagements like a quickly melting ice cream.

Christian led Michael under the terrace and keyed in the