Friction(16)

"I'm not a germaphobe," I hiss as we walk side by side up the staircase leading to the front door.

"When you stare at my hand like I've cocks for fingers, I automatically assume you're afraid of what filthy things they've touched."

I whip my head toward him, my nostrils flaring. "That's such an unprofessional thing to say. Which is what touching my boss is."

"Believe me, Williams, I have every intention of being professional with you." Continuing to stare at me like I've offended him by refusing his help, he rings the doorbell. "I was trying to help you out of a snug place, not asking you to choose between flavors of lube."

"Marketing 101," I say before he can murmur something lewder that will send my pulse and brain into overdrive. "It's best not to let clients hear you discussing politics, religion, sex, or—"

But I lose the ability to speak when the door swings open. Oh … shit. I've completely got this situation wrong. Because instead of the elderly gentleman I'm expecting—the collector who likes to impress his friends with his extensive hoard of metal clocks and whatever else Jace designs for him—I come face to face with a pair of breasts.

Large, naked breasts that make my C-cups feel underwhelming.

Those breasts are attached to a statuesque, extremely bare redhead whose only accessories are diamond earrings, a metal collar and cuffs on either of her wrists. "Thank god you're here," she whispers to Jace, batting long eyelashes over cornflower blue irises. "We can't get the cuffs to hook, and we needed you here like an hour ago."

She can't get the cuffs to hook.

Oh. God.

She can't get the cuffs to hook.

And something tells me they're not hooking to a clock unless she's the living, breathing minute hand.

Where the hell has Jace brought me?





Five





Lucy





Blown away.

Those are the only words to describe how I feel for the next hour of my life.

I am blown away to the point of complete and utter silence, my fingers clasped tightly in front of my waist, and the edges of my hazel eyes burning because they spend most of those fifty-three minutes wide. Unblinking.

Stunned.

I've read stories about sex parties. After I indulged in a particularly kinky TV show on HBO and Googled a few of the terms that were mentioned, I saw a plethora of sponsored ads for local clubs specializing in the erotic arts on Facebook. Still, I've never witnessed anything like this first hand. Until tonight.

Up until this moment, I believed swingers, real ones and not the people on glamorous TV shows or immortalized within the pages of naughty books, were fifty and sixty-year-old deviants that gathered in grimy clubs to screw away their problems—a sexual solution to an epic mid-life crisis. The venue of this party and the thirty or so people present, however, are the opposite of everything I've led myself to expect.

For starters, the upstairs of the gated home looks like it fell directly out of the pages of HGTV Magazine: New England Edition. It’s decorated in stark white, with a splash of gray and powder blue thrown in here and there. An abstract painting that must have cost a small fortune hangs above the mantle and fresh winter white lilies adorn the gray console table directly behind the white leather sofa. I'm almost hoping Jace will tell me to just wait here, on the couch, because that’s where it’s safe.

It’s a command I’ll gladly accept without so much as a whimper.

He shits all over that wish when he holds out a large hand and demands that I give him my phone. I clutch it to my chest, looking up at him in a daze. “It’s a privacy thing, love,” he murmurs silkily. “So just give it to me and don’t argue.”

His eyes penetrate mine for a tense pause before I shove the phone toward his outstretched hand. He stuffs it into the back pocket of his jeans then motions for me to trail behind the redheaded woman.

“We’re going to the play area,” she tells me with a wickedly suggestive smile, and I release a choked sound.

And once we reach that part of the house, which is the entire bottom level, I realize that the people darting in and out of the rooms on either side of the hallway are just as stunning as she is.

Most of them are my age—Jace's age. While some are just as naked as Boobs McCuffs, who gives my new boss one final, longing look before she disappears with a wiggle of her bare ass into one of the rooms, several are fully clothed or in various stages of undress. When a woman sidles between Jace and me, and her latex jumpsuit squeaks against my skin, I stumble out of her way, clamping my eyes shut.

How did I not see the signs?

The lack of information I found on EXtreme when I applied for the job.

Daisy's blank expression after I asked her if the company made clocks.

That secretive smile Jace himself had given me during the interview.

The intensity behind his gaze when he filled me in on his no camera policy.

The signs were all there, but dammit, why didn’t he come right out and tell me about this? Why hadn't I asked more questions? And even more importantly—most importantly—why the hell haven't I walked out of here and called myself an Uber? So many questions filter through my head that, when Jace pushes me against the wall to make way for a group of people who are passing by, I barely hear what he's saying to me.