Page 38 of Burning Up

“How spicy can you take it?” Bryce asked.

“After last night you still need to ask?”

Heat rose to Bryce’s face at the memory of Toby with his hands tied, begging to be fucked.

Matt rescued Bryce from further commentary. “Ignore him. On a Thai-restaurant scale, he’s two peppers, and I’m three.”

“Told you he really likes kinky once he gets into it,” Toby responded.

Bryce heard something which might have been Matt throwing a pillow at Toby.

“I’ll go with medium spicy.”

“I can take whatever you give,” Toby called.

Bryce’s cock reacted to the sultry words. At this rate, he wasn’t sure they’d make it through a movie. But as much as he wanted to fuck them again he also really wanted to spend time hanging out with them. He needed to prove to himself that he wasn’t crazy, that there was more here than just incredible sex. Did they have enough in common to enjoy each other outside the bedroom? What if they did? What if they had a terrific day together? What then?

The only way they could make a go of a relationship was to make some major changes at work. Why would anybody take such a risk unless… No way was he even going to think the L word. They’d fucked twice. This was hardly love.

Pushing those thoughts aside, Bryce coated the popcorn with a mixture of olive oil, Sriracha, and honey and carried the huge bowl into the living room. “So what are we watching?”

“Fast and Furious 8,” Matt and Toby answered together.

“You can’t go wrong with all that hotness,” Matt added.

Bryce heartily agreed. “No, you really can’t.” He wouldn’t have pegged Matt and Toby as Fast and Furious franchise fans. Maybe they had more in common than he thought.

He turned on the movie, and they settled on the couch with him in the middle. From the get-go, they were quoting lines and arguing over who was the hottest man in the movie. Matt was in the Jason Stratham camp while Toby championed The Rock, and Bryce had serious fantasies about Vin Diesel. When the movie finished, they argued over what to watch next—Fast and Furious 9, Hobbs and Shaw or something from another franchise.

“How about a game to see who gets their choice?” Toby asked.

Matt raised his brows. “A game?”

Bryce had the impression Matt had been privy to Toby’s “games” before and had reason to be skeptical.

“We’ll all jerk off while watching each other and the last one to come gets his movie choice.”

Bryce choked, nearly blowing soda across the coffee table. Apparently, he was going to have to get used to Toby making him blush as if he wasn’t a grown-ass thirty-two-year-old man who’d had plenty of dirty sex. “Is he serious?” he asked, looking at Matt.

Matt nodded. “Sadly, yes.”

“Come on, you know you want to.”

“Isn’t that one of those lines guaranteed to precede disaster?” Matt asked.

“What, like the chief walking in on us?”

Toby surely meant the comment to be funny, but his words sobered all of them.

“Well, that killed the fucking mood,” Matt grumbled.

“How about I let Rollo out and make sure the door’s locked.” Bryce hadn’t been ready for the real world to intrude on them, even figuratively, so he was happy for a chance to step away for a few minutes.

When he returned with Rollo trotting at his side, Matt was tapping the side of the couch, bouncing his leg and glaring at Toby. He looked like a bundle of nervous energy that might explode at any moment. Bryce had the sense he and Toby had managed to have an argument while he was out of the room without actually saying a word to each other.

“Sorry,” Toby muttered, not looking at Bryce.

“’S okay. We’ve been ignoring it, but we all know it’s there.”

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