“Excuse me.” Three people in matching black vests and slacks approached us. “We’ve had a complaint and need to ask you to leave.”

  Seriously?

  “Please,” Sonya said softly and tugged my sleeve.

  I wished she would figure out for herself what her thoughts and time and opinion were worth. “All right.”

  We all climbed back into the SUV. “Where to?” Jeremy asked.

  “The Saturday night before Valentine’s Day probably isn’t the best time to be trawling a new city, looking for a place that might have seats.” Sonya had recovered her voice now that we’d left the lines and confrontation behind. “We should celebrate by picking up food and eating back at the hotel.”

  I glanced back at her. “How is that special, compared to ordering takeout at home?”

  “Because we’re calling it a celebration. Also, because someone else has to make the beds and do the laundry in the morning.”

  Her optimism made me smile. “I’m in.”

  “Where to?” Jeremy asked again.

  We found a place online that was supposed to have the best burgers in the city that also had a drive thru, and a short while later, we were back at the hotel.

  “Your phone’s in my back pocket.” I angled toward Sonya on the elevator ride up. “I can’t stop you from taking it back if you’d like.”

  “No. I want to enjoy the night. But you’re lucky I trust you with my most precious prosthetic device,” she teased.

  “You’re right; I am.” I meant it far more than the light exchange implied. It would be nice to be capable of that level of trust, and if I were, I’d give it to her.

  Inside the room, I started to pull out chairs for each of us to sit in, but Jeremy and Sonya arranged the food on one of the beds.

  I saw a flaw with their plan. “One of us has to sleep in that bed.”

  “Easier to share this way,” Sonya said.

  Jeremy snatched one of her zucchini fries. “We promise to shake any crumbs off when we’re done.”

  Where Sonya was ninety-nine percent kindness and positivity, Jeremy was more like easy going chaos.

  We settled on the bed to eat and share food and stories. We each had at least one about some famous person we’d met, who wasn’t at all like we expected.

  Jeremy told his stories with a lot of flair, though. We were clearing away empty boxes, when he slid into, “So Zach met him at CES in—like—2002, and they hit it off.”

  “No shit.” I was impressed. “Is he as nice as everyone says?”

  Jeremy nodded. “Nicer. But back then, no one knew him as anything more than the guy from the runaway-bus movie. He wanted to try voice acting, and we needed a villain for the game.”

  “No.” Sonya’s jaw dropped. “You’ve never told me this. He was the leader of The Hoarde?”

  “Was being the operative word. He hung out with us for a week in the Cord offices while he recorded his lines, and he was literally the nicest guy ever. Almost as nice as you.” Jeremy looked at Sonya. “But when the buy-out happened, he had good enough lawyers that his rights didn’t transfer to Digital Media, and they had to remove his voice from everything.”

  Cool but also bummer. “I would’ve loved to hear those originals.”

  Jeremy shrugged. “Pretty sure someone still has a copy of the masters, but I couldn’t guarantee who.”

  “The composer?” I asked.

  Sonya grinned. “Checks out. Oh, speaking of Mr. Actor—Rule 34, the Jack Torch movies, but everyone is a sex worker and an assassin.”

  “I don’t know if that’s too easy or too gory for me.” Jeremy seemed to be giving this serious consideration.

  And I had no idea what they were doing. “Rule 34? Isn’t that the porn thing?”

  Sonya straightened up and interlocked her fingers in front of her, looking like she was about to give a lecture. “Precisely. Rule 34 states that if something exists, there’s porn of it on the internet.”

  “And the game is to pick a movie or TV show and figure out what kind of porn either exists about it or should,” Jeremy said. “They’re pretty loose rules. But I’m nixing Jack Torch. If I’m watching gore porn, I want it to be because of a horror movie, and not because there’s actual sex involved.”

  That seemed reasonable. “Everyone has their limits.”

  “But”—Jeremy leaned into the word—“age the characters up to college, and I’ll vote for Harry Potter. Lots of potential for magic wands.”

  Sonya sighed and rolled her eyes. “Also overdone. It’s like you’re not even trying.”

  I still wasn’t sure I understood the rules, but the subject was the perfect segue, especially since Jeremy had brought up the gaming company he got his start with. This was an opportunity to ask something I’d been wondering about for a long time. “Is it true you guys used to have honest-to-God orgies back in the day?”

  “No subtlety or lead-in there.” Surprise tinged Sonya’s amusement. “Just bam. Orgies.”

  “I don’t assume they just happen.” I shoved the rest of our trash in a bag and set it aside. “I figure they take a lot of planning.”

  Jeremy stretched his legs out into the now empty space in front of him on the bed. “Yes, but also no?”

  “To the planning or that they actually happened?” Sonya asked.

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  I couldn’t even fathom. Rather, I could imagine an orgy just fine—thanks, porn—but it didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would work in real life. “How’s that work, then?”

  “First time, it was totally spontaneous,” Jeremy said. “A handful of us were celebrating after a long push to meet a deadline. We’d spent weeks in a room together, and the tension wasn’t fading as fast as we’d like. A couple of us were to the point of fuck or fight.”

  Sonya grinned. “I bet Brandon initiated it.”

  “Thin guy with glasses? The singer?” I couldn’t picture it.

  “Composer,” Jeremy corrected me. “And yes, Brandon frequently started it.”

  I felt like I was at a disadvantage. “So Sonya knows this story.”

  “Not this bit, I don’t. No one talks about the past in detail; they all just say it happened. If you weren’t there, you don’t know.”

  That movie, I’d seen. “Like Fight Club?”

  “Yes, but also no.” Jeremy seemed to be enjoying drawing this out. I bet he was a hell of a tease in the bedroom. “It’s not that anyone is hiding the past, but most of them have moved on, and no one wants to hear stories about other people having sex.” He knew better.

  “I do.” Sonya grinned.

  “That’s literally what the two of you do for a living. Tell stories about other people having sex.” Not that I needed to remind them.

  Jeremy’s self-satisfied smirk grew. “Like I said, we’d just finished a huge deadline, and of course back then, the files had to be pressed to CD and planning on Day One updates wasn’t realistic, so the game was perfect when we sent it out the door.”

  “Let’s be honest. It wasn’t perfect.” Sonya dragged the word out.

  “Do you want to hear the story or not?”

  She pouted. “Yes please.”

  “Picture this—we’d been geeks and outcasts most of our lives, and we’d finally found our tribe, who we’d spent every waking hour with for months, shoulder to shoulder, because that was all the space we had. We’d been living off pizza, Dew, and stress, and then tension plummeted.”

  I didn’t know if all of the backstory was necessary, but it did help build a mood and its own kind of tension.

  “Link—one of the developers—made a comment about needing to get a punching bag or something installed in the break room,” Jeremy said. “Nigel wanted a dart board. Phillip said we just needed to get laid.”

  I couldn’t put faces to most of the names he was spitting out, and I’d be lucky to keep their personalities straight for the length of the story, but I appreciated the detail more the longer Jeremy talked.

  “And Brandon said”—Jeremy looked at each of us, and time ticked by—“last one is easiest. No purchase required. Elliot argued maybe that was true for the pretty creatives, and Brandon kissed him.”

  Sonya clapped. “I knew it.”

  Her glee was almost better than the story itself, which… How much of what Jeremy said was real? If I found myself in a situation like that, would I act? Take a kiss from the adorably sweet Sonya? No. I’d want to, but the situation wouldn’t change my resolution to keep her at a distance.

  Jeremy, on the other hand… He might be a lot of fun to back into a corner and steal a kiss—or more—from.

  3

  Jeremy

  I was an incredible storyteller, but I preferred them to be other people’s stories. Diving into my past—my divorce and what came before it—was messy for me. It had been years, and I still regretted the way my marriage ended.

  And I hated that regret.

  Besides, these were stories about people I still worked with and all the meaningless sex we had years ago. That was weird, wasn’t it?

  It didn’t matter, because Sonya’s happiness when I dove into the story was worth every second and made it easy for me to focus on the words and set regret aside.

  My sister, Megan, had made me swear on multiple occasions to never hit on Sonya, and I agreed with her reasons—I didn’t want to infect Sonya with my cynicism—but that didn’t stop me from enjoying her company and the scenery.

  “Keep in mind,” I continued, “that like any tech company at the time, we didn’t have an equal ratio of men to women.” And one of those women now owned the company we worked for. Definitely something weird about including her in stories about sex. “And most of us were the kinds of geeks who had limited experience with the opposite sex. We definitely didn’t realize we were interested in the same sex as well.”

  Talk about eye-opening revelations. “But Brandon’s initiating that first kiss, that first grope—not that Elliot was complaining; he was totally feeling back—broke down a lot of walls. Suddenly, the bolder guys were kissing the shyer ones. The women were kissing each other. Us. It was a flurry of limbs and lips and nakedness.”

  And remembering another guy’s hand wrapped around my cock for the first time. It wasn’t my first kiss with a girl, but I’d never had one shove my fingers inside her before. The memories raced with heat through my veins and tugged at my desire.

  “Limbs and lips and nakedness?” Quentin’s disbelief interrupted my thoughts but didn’t make me go limp. “You know more descriptive language than that.”

  “Fingering and fucking?” Sonya offered.

  More direct, but not necessarily more descriptive.

  Quentin’s snort said he agreed. “And I know you know better. I’ve read your books.”

  “But I wasn’t there.” Sonya was one of the newer additions to the group of people I’d worked with through three companies now. She was brought in to Rinslet to pick up the slack when the previous head writer was promoted so far up the chain, she couldn’t do the writing anymore.

  Quentin looked at me. “Then you’re going to have to step up your game. If you’re going to talk about orgies, I want details.”

  “I charge extra for dirty-talk.” I didn’t really—I was more of a slut than a whore—but I was already turning myself on, and getting explicit would only amplify that. Unless this was going to turn into a three-person recreation, I wasn’t interested in dragging out this hard-on.

  Quentin leaned back and stretched out his legs. “I’ll let you watch me jerk off while you talk. How’s that for payment?”

  That escalated quickly. “You’re not going to feel awkward, being the only one beating your meat?”

  “I spent two years sharing living quarters with men who had no concept of personal space. I don’t care who does or doesn’t join in, as long as no one minds that I’m doing it.” Quentin’s retort was the embodiment of casual challenge.

  I’d like to say I didn’t rise to the occasion, but the exchange was as much of a turn-on as dipping my toes into my past was. There was still the matter of the third person in the room, though.

  I looked at Sonya. We weren’t talking about sex, just masturbation. That wasn’t the same as hooking up at all, and the number of times I’d fantasized about watching her, touching her, watching her touch herself… “What say you?”

  “If you’re both doing it, I’m in. So much easier than sneaking into the bathroom later, hoping everyone is asleep and trying to keep quiet.”

  That was hot too. Especially the idea of catching her, and her not stopping.

  “Just to get the obligatory stuff out of the way,” Quentin said. “We do this, and no one feels guilty or awkward in the morning.”

  “I never feel bad about a good wank.” I adjusted myself so I had easier access.

  Bottom lip caught between her teeth, Sonya studied us and stripped off her shirt. Fucking hell, she was wearing a cotton comic-book bra in red and black, and that made the entire situation even hotter.

  “But you have to keep telling the story,” Sonya said.

  How was I supposed to turn down a request like that? Especially when she licked her lips, leaving a kissable shine behind?

  “I had limited experience with women at the time.” I didn’t have a problem admitting that—everyone started somewhere. “And I hadn’t yet admitted to myself in any way that I was bisexual.”

  “Who was your first?” Sonya asked.

  I didn’t need her to clarify that she meant first guy. It was easy to look back on this and view the physical without an emotional attachment, because there wasn’t one at the time. “Elliot.” No one ever expected the quiet ones—particularly the ones who looked nerdy. “He smashed his mouth to mine and shoved his hand down my pants to stroke my cock.”

  The way Sonya bit her bottom lip was the perfect visual to go with Quentin’s groan.

  And I was eating up this audience of two. “So he’s got his tongue down my throat, and I’m trying to return the favor while he jerks me off, and he stops. Bam. Leaves me hard and whimpering, with my dick hanging out. Then he unzips his pants and pushes me to my knees.” I learned a lot of things about myself back then. Like that I was happy taking charge or letting someone else do so. “The dick he shoves in my face is big enough to choke on.”

  Was this really what I wanted to be talking about? It was a scorching memory, but Quentin stroking his cock was now. Sonya unzipping her jeans to reveal anime panties that had nothing to do with her bra was so much better than diving into my past.

  She kneaded round breasts that were the perfect size to fit in my hand, and he slowly moved his hand up and down his shaft. He was at least as big as Elliot, and probably at least as demanding.

  No one suspected the quiet ones.

  “Is there more to the story?” Sonya asked.

  “There is, but that’s in the past.”

  Quentin raised his brows. “I was promised dirty-talk.”

  I wouldn’t mind wrapping my lips around his cock, and Sonya loved a good guy-kissing-guy story or visual. Her being turned on by our turning each other on? That sounded like a lot of fun. I rolled onto my knees and crawled toward Quentin, who watched me with a mixture of surprise and curiosity.

  If he wanted dirty-talk, I could deliver. “I want you to fuck my face.” Being versatile and knowing how to ask for what I wanted served me in a large number of situations. “I want you to use me as your own personal cum bucket and tell me when I can get off.”

  Sonya’s whimper made me harder.

  Quentin held my gaze, searching my face. He knotted his fingers in my hair and guided my mouth onto his cock. “Not sure how you’re going to talk with your mouth full, but I like what you’ve said already.”

  There would be more talking soon enough.

  I sucked and licked, tasting skin and sweat and precum. Quentin kept one fist tangled in my hair and the other wrapped around his shaft, stroking himself while he set the pace for me.

  Sonya’s sighs became moans, and Quentin’s grunts grew more punctuated.

  Just like in my story about the past, my dick was hanging out and begging for attention, but I was too focused on holding myself up while Quentin thrust against my face, to do anything about my own arousal. It was painfully delicious.

  Sonya gasped and let out a long mewl that was like fingertips gliding over my skin. I knew without looking that she’d climaxed, and—fuck—she sounded good, doing so.

  Quentin tightened his grip in my hair and pushed into my mouth so hard I nearly gagged. The first taste of his orgasm hit the back of my throat, and he didn’t let up. He emptied his load into my mouth, and I swallowed like the good boy I was.

  I licked him clean, causing him to shudder, and pulled away. I swore, the instant someone touched my dick, I was going to come.

  Quentin raised my head to look me in the eye. “Sonya’s all sticky.” His voice was gravel. “How do you handle that?”

  “Let me taste her too. Let me eat her pussy until she comes again.”

  His grin was power. “I like it, but it’s not up to me.”

  I looked at Sonya, who was sucking on her fingers. Her jeans had been kicked off, and she’d shoved her panties aside, leaving her glistening cunt on display.

  “Let me tongue fuck you,” I said.

  “Okay.” Her reply was breathy.

  Quentin’s mouth brushed my ear. “Do that, and then you can come.”

  “Bossy. I like it.” So much.

  “Damn right, you do.” Quentin nudged me toward Sonya.

  Not that I needed the push. I slid her panties down her legs, memorizing the feel of her silky-smooth legs against my fingertips, then kissed up the inside of her thigh.

  She squirmed and sighed with each new touch, and when I dove my tongue inside her, she arched her back, grinding against my face.

  I straddled one of her legs, and she bent her knee. The instant my cock brushed her skin, I had to feel more. I thrust my pelvis, writhing against her while I licked and fingered her.