Page 3 of Accidentally Matched

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Okay, they may looka little green around the edges at my declaration, but I’m a full glass kind of girl, all the time. They’ll come around. Eventually.

I glance at the three ridiculously tall men standing in front of me in an office that used to be a barn, the reception cordoned off with a thick sheet of glass from their office.

Colter James. Nolan Spears. Jace Hamilton. They’re thirty years old. Colter has green eyes, never smiles, and can make plants die with one arctic glance. Nolan’s eyes are blue, and I never know if he’s a friend or foe. Jace’s gray eyes are the kind that make me want to swear lifelong allegiance, no questions asked, but it can’t ever be for a good thing.

All three of them have an Ivy League education and now run a ranch instead of wearing suits and sitting in a skyscraper office. They come from old money, but looking at them now, no one would guess that.

They’resonot my type. Too rugged. Too big. Too many muscles. Too little manners. Did I mention too tall already? And too many muscles. I sigh inwardly. Unfortunately, they’ll have to do.

“One of us needs to ask her whatexactlyshe means,” Jace says to Colter and Nolan as if I weren’t in the room with them.

Nolan sighs, then asks, “You want us to do what, exactly?”

“Embark on a corporeal expedition with me.”

“Yeah, we heard that. We just want to know what you actually mean by that.”

“I have to spell it out for you? Okay,” I neaten the hem of my skirt against my thigh and look up at them, acutely aware that my panties feel uncomfortably wet and my nipples throb and my heart thuds. Well, being capsized upside down and carried around like a sack of potatoes can do that, but I’m here to play nice, so I let that slide.

“I want to engage in amorous congress with you,” I say, but clearly, they need something more lucid and lurid. I try harder. “I want you to butter my buns. I want to jump your bones, your bones being your penises. I want to boink, shag, and bang you. I want you to poke me, shaft me, and hump me. I want you to ice my cake. I want to hook up and throw down with our private parts.

“I want you to quench your thirst on me. I want you to French kiss my vagina and put a ring on my clit. I want you to put your cucumbers in my peach and your bananas in my taco. I want coitus transcendence. I want to get lucky over and over again with you. I want you to sex me up. I want you to bend me over, turn me upside down, spread me like a gymnast, and fuck me like a porn star. And I want to take notes while you do it. There. Clear?”

“You kiss your dog with that mouth?” Colter asks, his tone strained and husky. My words seem to have frightened them away, too. All three of them now standbehindthe huge desk.

“I do,” I say proudly. I wouldn’t stop kissing my Sweetpea for the world. She normally comes with me everywhere I go, but for today, I purposefully left her in the office with Clem and Haley, my best friends.

“I’ve been going through what my friends say is an existential crisis,” I say. “I disagree, but allow me to set the scene for you, and for that I have to start at the beginning. You probably know nothing about me or the company I run with my best friends. Buckle up; it’s a great story.” I don’t give them a moment to interject.

“So about a year ago, after getting our business degrees, Clementine and Haley, my two best friends in the whole wide world, and I faced a kind of conundrum. We knew we needed to work for our dads in their corporate offices, but it made us feel a little grim. Anyway, we decided now that we were home from university, we could finally get those puppies we always wanted.

“So we find this shelter online. It’s way out in the country, and there’s this old lady there who’s the sole person in charge. She looks like an angel, I swear, and she hands us these three little doggies and says she was waiting for us the whole time.

“Okay, so I believe in woo-woo; it doesn’t hurt, so why not? Clem used to be on the fence, but she’s coming around, and Haley is not quite there yet.

“Anyway. The old lady tells us the dogs' grandmothers belonged to her and her two friends, but they passed on, and now she has these three overly cute French poodles called Sweetpea, Honeypot, and Cupid’s Ass. Seriously, Cupid’s Ass—you’ll see why in a bit.

“We fall in love immediately: me with Sweetpea, Clementine with Honeypot, and Haley with Cupid’s Ass. The old lady says no matter what we do, we’re not allowed to change the dogs’ names.

“She then tells us these dogs are special. Each one of them has a unique gift. Sweetpea can sense forever-happy true love between people. Honeypot can sense unadulterated sexual attraction between people, and Cupid’s Ass, or Cass for short, can sense when people are just not compatible at all and never will be.”

“We’re still just indulging the old lady up to this point. Then she hands us this ready-made sales agreement; it just needs our names. She wants to sell us the company she ran with her friends for one dollar. It was a matchmaking company calledLeashed to Love. I mean, based on the name alone, we would have said yes. So, long story short, we take Sweetpea, Honeypot, and Cass and buy the company. Fast forward a year later, and we’re the most successful matchmaking company this side of the world.

“Dogs can sense all sorts of things, so why not love and attraction too? Yes, we have naysayers who call us hoaxes, but we ignore them. How can we be a hoax when we have proof, we bring people together?”

I wait for them to say something to the contrary, but they don’t. So I take out my phone, get up from my seat, and show them pictures of our couples on their honeymoons like a proud parent showing off pictures of their kids. Well, I wasn’t expecting them to coo and gush over the pictures, but even a well-placedthat’s nicewould have sufficed. They say nothing. Sad for them because romance is alive and well, people.

“Obviously, we’re the ones scouting for candidates based on common interests and compatible personalities,” I say, sitting back down again. “But our precious little fur babies do the final connections. Cupid’s Ass—Cass—helps us with the process of elimination. Honeypot matches them for sexual compatibility, and Sweetpea picks the lovers destined to spend the rest of their lives together, hopelessly in love.

“We have an extensive database. We’re going global soon, so we’ll be connecting people all over the world. We just celebrated a colossal twelve couples married in our first year alone. We’ve been on podcasts, and television shows, and even on the news. We’re a big deal in the romance department.”

I take a deep breath. "Now, let's talk about the real reason I'm here.” I sit back and link my fingers together on my lap.

“I was on a podcast when the presenter asked me to drop some tips on keeping the marriage alive once we’ve matched them up. Bedroom tips and things, and well, I didn’t know what to say because I’m embarrassingly still a virgin. Which got me thinking. A couple who plays together stays together, and I want our married couples to stay together forever. Unfortunately, I’m 100% inexperienced in that area, so I thought I would rectify it.

“I tried seeing a couple of guys who are registered on our site for just hookups, but that didn’t work for me. I couldn’t do it with a stranger. I looked at my male friends, and that gave me the ick. I couldn’t do it with someone I actually knew. So, I guess I want something in between, not complete strangers, but not friends either. Acquaintances. And you guys came to mind. So, do you want to have sex with me?”

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