Page 21 of Pucked Up

His mouth opened, then shut. Bowing his head, he took several steps toward me and curled his fingers around the back of my neck. “Tequila.”

“Ford,” I warned.

“Tequila,” he said again. “I know you have a very expensive bottle somewhere in here.” Then he let me go and dove for the bed. I tried to catch him, but my legs twisted in on themselves, and I hit the ground, catching myself with practiced ease.

I was too late. He already had my secret stash in his lap. It was a small box that looked like a pirate’s chest that Tucker had given me for my twenty-fifth birthday. He’d filled it with chocolate coins and tiny bottles of airplane booze, which we used for a grown-up Easter egg hunt the next year.

I meant to throw the box out, but it had its uses.

Like tequila.

And dildos.

“Holy. Fucking. Shit.” Ford lifted his hand, and he was holding one that had little…villi, the only word I could come up with for the tiny tentacle-like protrusions on the end. They were very soft and very malleable. And they felt very, very good. “You into that alien shit? Oh Jesus,” he said loudly, “Micah and Jonah got to you, didn’t they?”

Oh hell, my secret was out. Micah had sent me an email to my work email of all fucking places, with a link to aStar Warsanimated porn full of alien dick. Micah had cackled on the phone. “It’s not like Jonah and I will get any use out of this one, but maybe this’ll help you unclench every now and again.”

It had.

Oh God, it had. But no one was ever supposed to know.

“Put that back,” I snapped at him, trying to convince my legs to stop spasming so I could get them back under me.

He grinned and dropped it back down, only to pull out the one that was very obviously meant to be a dragon dick. “Oh, baby. I am taking you to Comic-Con next year. You’re gonna get so much weird dick there, it’s going to be amazing.”

I finally got my body to cooperate enough to lunge forward and snatch the box from Ford’s hands, but not before he pulled out my very expensive bottle of tequila my grandfather had sent me two years ago after his trip to Cozumel. He gave me alook, and yeah, I didn’t exactly have an answer for why I had expensive tequila alongside my equally expensive custom dildos.

“Are you hiding this from Tucker?”

No. I wasn’t. The one thing I wasn’t afraid of was Tucker overindulging the way he had when he’d gotten in his accident. He wasn’t that same man anymore. He had therapy to deal with his family issues. And he had us.

“I just don’t like sharing my good shit.” Not to mention that I rarely drank. I’d only indulged a few times a year, and I wanted it to be for a good reason.

Though…this seemed like a good reason.

Ford rolled his eyes, then picked at the wax seal with the edge of his thumbnail. “Boden?”

With a sigh, I used my arms to slide myself against the dresser and let the sturdy piece of furniture hold my body weight. “What, Ford? What do you want? Why are you here?”

His gaze met mine, and he looked hurt. “Because I love you, and watching you self-destruct sucks.”

“That’s not what I’m doing, and you know it. The fact that you all are okay with this man—this fucking…this smart-ass know-it-all who pretends like he has any idea what we go through?—”

“Is that really what he’s like?” Ford asked me, cutting me off.

I swallowed heavily. I didn’t want to lie, but I wasn’t sure about the truth. Not yet. With a soft grunt, I rocked my body forward, tucking my kneesunder me. I had just enough length in my arms to snag the bottle from his hands.

“Okay. I guess this is how we’re dealing tonight,” Ford said.

I sat back again and dug my nails into the wax seal until it came apart. Tequila was not my drink of choice. A beer every now and again for a tiny spot of liquid courage when I was going in for a hookup. But I wasn’t going to be at peak performance if I showed up to the rink wasted every morning, and I couldn’t afford to be less perfect than I already was.

Tonight, though, it was drink or start talking, and I did not want to start talking.

The first sip burned as I swallowed it down. I ignored Ford’s laugh as I swiped my hand over my lips, then took another drink. “Why does it taste like cologne?”

Ford laughed again and got up on hands and knees to crawl next to me. The dick box was abandoned beside the bed, and I could only hope to God I remembered to put it away before anyone else came over.

“Drink,” I said, shoving the bottle at him.

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