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Bottle on the table, he grabbed the glass and downed half of it.

The liquor swirled through him, the lunch he’d eaten hours ago doing little to stop the effects.

He sat forward and put the glass back down before he gave in and finished it.

Drinking himself into oblivion was really not the answer, was it?

He took a deep breath, leaning back into the thick cushions, staring unseeingly at the room.

What were his options?

Could he carry on the way things were?

His gut clenched at that. No, he most definitely didn’t want to carry on with this weird tension between them when it affected their working relationship, which had not been tense since the first conversation about what they wanted.

I warned you this was a mistake.

You don’t need to keep reminding me. We don’t know what caused this issue, so stop harping on.

Not knowing what had made Silas act like a dick towards him was driving him nuts.

So what was the answer?

Confronting the issue was what he should do. Yet to do that, he needed to have five minutes alone with the man in question. One who was most definitely avoiding that at all costs. So where did that leave him?

His phone alerted him to a message and he hated how his heart skipped a beat before he saw it was from Frey.

He refused to acknowledge the disappointment it wasn’t from Silas.

They didn’t message often, but when they did, it was often flirty with Silas wanting to know what he wanted him to order for them for their office trysts.

He opened the message, sighing dejectedly.

The stuff you suggested I buy has arrived. Are you sure I’ll need a dildo this size? The picture that accompanied the message was of Frey holding a dildo in front of him, wearing a wide-eyed look of speculation at the tape measure next to the ten-inch dildo.

He chuckled, his good humor returning.

You’ll want that and bigger. He hit send and waited, seeing the dots appear.

Frey was nothing like the flirty fox he pretended to be. He hadn’t actually had sex with anyone, even though he intimated a lot that he had. He’d fooled Ziggy, and that didn’t happen often. He was good at reading people.

Then why wasn’t I able to read this change in Silas? See it coming?

Questions he’d found no answer to, no matter how many times he asked himself.

Thinking about Frey and the dilemma he’d offered to help out with was easier.

Something awful had happened in Frey’s past that caused him to act the way he did.

It was why Ziggy offered to help Frey through his heat.

It had nothing to do with sex and just a genuine need to help a friend after learning their story.

Ziggy had a big heart and had no issue offering his support to others.

His past left him with the desire to never let others feel alone, like he had.

Frey didn’t trust any alpha to help him now he wasn’t taking heat blockers, and with very few other options available, Ziggy easily made the offer.

They’d talked about expectations and Frey wasn’t interested in him sexually, which was fine with Ziggy because he had no interest in Frey in that way.

He liked the fox, he really did, but as a friend .

What they were planning on doing was all about a friend helping another. Yes, it came with the use of sex toys, but that wasn’t what it was about. A heat was a hormonal reaction that omegas had little to no control over. Add in a big dose of fear and it wasn’t a good place to be.

Ziggy hadn’t considered mentioning any of this to Silas—although that was a moot point now with him distancing himself from Ziggy—it wasn’t his place to share Frey’s secrets.

Ziggy would never betray Frey’s confidence in him.

What was between them wasn’t about sex, it never would be.

To Ziggy, he wasn’t fucking Frey in any actual sense, so he saw this was no one’s business but his and Frey’s.

He considered for a moment if Silas had somehow discovered what he and Frey were up to but discarded the idea.

As far as Ziggy knew, Frey hadn’t shared what they were doing and if he did, then that was his choice.

Ziggy would have no issue with that. He’d have explained it to Silas, only it was all irrelevant with how he was behaving.

Today he’d made it abundantly clear he was no longer interested in Ziggy, or why else would he have flirted so openly with Jacob? And that was fine, he was free to do whatever he wanted. They owed each other nothing when all they had together was sex .

Why are you lying?

At his snake’s question, he sat forward to grab the wine glass and emptied it as his phone pinged.

He clutched it like a lifeline and read the message, his brows drawing together as he considered how best to allay Frey’s fears about future sex with an alpha. It was so much easier to give that his attention. Why that was, he shoved to the back of his mind and ignored his hissy fitting snake.

Placing the glass back on the table, he opened up a search tab on his phone, chewed his bottom lip, then typed ‘ sex clubs in Hazardville’, Hidden Desires never appeared but several others did.

His lips spread into a wide grin as he worked his way through the list and read what Sinful offered. Perfect.

This is a bad idea.

Don’t be ridiculous.

He won’t like it. Ziggy didn’t need his snake to elaborate on who the ‘he’ was.

Not his business!

We’ll see!

Ziggy once more shut out his animal half and typed a message to Frey.

I’ve got an idea…