Page 89 of Hiding From Laughter

Bingo.

A head nod.

It might’ve taken me a while but I caughtup eventually.

“From one of the munches?” God, I hopednot. “Was it someone who was mean to you?”

And I was back to square one.

His head shake was forceful and immediate.It wasn’t one of the drama queens from the munch? “Not even that pup who triedto bite you?”

For some reason that particular meetup hadgone spectacularly wrong on a variety of levels.

Another head shake.

Huh.

“You don’t go that many places, baby.”Where could he have seen someone else in the lifestyle that would shock him? Hisfavorite cashier at the grocery store? That barista who was always bending overand showing off her breasts? “You go from home to work and then—”

Oh.

He started nodding so fast I was prettysure he’d given himself whiplash.

“I’m going to look in the room and see whoit is.” Hopefully I’d remember them from the handful of office parties I’d beento. “You don’t have to look in the room and you don’t have to say anything.”

Fingers crossed they’d stand out.

“If it’s your boss, I’m just going tolaugh.” Ashton described him as well-meaning but truly strange, and it honestlywouldn’t have surprised me. “I’m sure I’ll see who it is.”

Yep…they stood out.

For fuck’s sake.

How had I not guessed them immediately?

Just peeking around the doorway, all it hadtaken was one look at the chaos of the pups running around to know who he’dseen. The frowning guy with the two partners. What the fuck was his name? Tom?No. It was something to do with historical fiction. Tom Sawyer.

Sawyer.

“Okay. I can see what the problem is.” Thatdidn’t seem to make Ashton feel any less stubborn about hiding, but he seemedless panicked and wasn’t trying to hide under me any longer. “I’m going topoint out something that’s going to frustrate you.”

He sighed and crashed into me as I stood upagain. Since it wasn’t a safeword, I kept going. “He’s here with his twopartners and one is a pup. Full gear and everything. He was chasing a ballacross the room, baby.”

So at least we could be confident heunderstood kinks and the lifestyle.

For some reason, most of the office seemedsure the guy was so vanilla they were confused about how he’d ended up with twopartners. One of the office admins actually went to HR because she was worriedhe might not know he was dating two guys.

Strange office dynamics aside, we could nowsafely say he understood he was dating two men.

Because one was nearly naked and the otherhad been grabbing his ass.

Ashton was still stuck on seeing someone heknew, though.

“Alright. We’ve got two options.” I hadevery intention of figuring them out on the fly, but before I could get oneout, a head popped around the corner.

I managed not to jump like we were in ahorror movie, but I hadn’t been expecting a masked head to just appear.

Especially one that wasn’t human.

---