Page 9 of Edged
“What’s the point of it?”
I, myself, liked coffee too much to bother with one-cup disasters or boiling it a little bit at a time and whisking it into submission the way Grayson did. I wanted ready access as soon as I’d drank the last drops. So, basically, strike two for Rob’s house. But I imagined our nights here were numbered anyway with Rob getting wifed-up by Grayson and all that.
“Are you finished?”
I was, and Flynn took one of the coffees from the counter and shuffled past me and right into the back yard. If I didn’t know him better, I’d worry he was going to take a half-asleep header into the jacuzzi, but he managed the steps with relative ease until the entire bottom half of his body disappeared beneath the bubbles.
“You look positively adrift,” Grayson said softly from beside me, startling me again. “Unmoored, as it were.”
“I would love if you could stop sneaking up on me, you know.”
“You were the one who scared yourself the first time,” he mused, setting to work making another cup of coffee on the stove.
“I’m not used to people who aren’t me spending the night.”
Grayson turned the burner on, then rested his ass against the counter, folding his arms over his chest. He had on sleep pants this time, which felt courteous, even though the night before I was fairly certain I’d heard what he sounded like when he came.
“You favor the guest room more than the rest of the trophy doms?”
I snorted, never-endingly amused at the ridiculous nickname he’d come up with for our tight-knit friend group.
“Flynn is here.” I pointed toward the hot tub.
“Do you two sleep together?”
“Not in the way you and Rob do.”
Grayson smirked and the pot on the stove started to boil, so he poured some into a mug and whisked it quickly with some sugar, then returned it to the flame. “That seems wasteful.”
“Are you looking for a little fun on the side, Grayson?” I turned toward him and arched a brow. “We don’t all have the same tastes as Rob if you’re after something a little more adventurous.”
“Rob is plenty for me.” He leaned in close and shielded his mouth with the back of his hand, like he was telling me a secret. “Did I pass your test?”
“Not a test.”
The coffee cookerfinallyfinished brewing Grayson’s current dose, which he poured into the mug before setting to work on a second.
“I didn’t mean it was wasteful in that I assumed you all wanted to sleep with me, which I wouldn’t blame you if you did, but I meant it was wasteful in that I’m sure the lot of you could get up to plenty of trouble if you set your minds to it.”
“Taking names and breaking hearts?”
I only had two of those for myself.
“Dalton and Barclay seem to play well together.”
“Everyone plays well with Barclay,” I murmured. “It’s deliberate.”
Of all our friends, he was the one who played things the fastest and loosest, sharing and spreading himself around for anyone who wanted a taste. If it had been another time, he would have been a rake. Even more recently, he would have been a slut, but that wasn’t a word we were supposed to use anymore.
Not that I thought that about him, because I didn’t.
I’d taken my own fair share of people to bed over the course of my life, whether for fucking or for playing. There was no harm in chasing after the high that came with the intimacy from a new partner.
Except I didn’t think that was what I was chasing at all.
“I think I like you the most,” Grayson said, giving me a fleeting, but honest smile.
“You don’t have to make me coffee,” I said, a call back to our first encounter that morning.
