Jay took the phone from my hand and brought it to his ear. “Asher? Yeah. It’s Jay … No, he’s fine. My husband frightens him … Well, Dean can be a little overbearing when you don’t know him.”

“Overbearing?” I hissed. “He has eyes that do this thing when he looks at me.”

“He’s fine.” Jay grabbed my hand and stroked the top. “Don’t worry, no one is pressuring him.”

“All the pressure. Don’t believe him. SOS. Asher! I will tell everyone you touched your brother's dick and gave him a hard-on if you don’t rescue me.”

Jay looked at my phone and chuckled before offering it back. “He hung up.”

“It was the part about my dick, wasn’t it?”

“Probably.”

“He’s very sensitive about that.”

We stood staring at one another. Jay didn’t advance again. “Do you need to go home?”

“I think so. This isn’t what I expected.”

“He’s not going to hurt you. He gets off on watching me fuck other guys. It’s our thing. I like you, Atti. You’re cute and gorgeous. Watching you today was … incredibly arousing.”

“Thanks. I think. But I’m still gonna go.”

“All right. We’ll be seeing each other again. The offer is still on the table.”

“I thought Dean wasn’t coming back next time.”

Jay shrugged. “Depends on his work schedule.”

“What’s he do?”

“He’s a cop.”

“I knew it!”

Jay shook his head, laughing. “Shocking, right. Just … think about it. If you change your mind, I’d still like to play.”

With those words, Jay brushed a kiss on my cheek and left.

I escaped a few minutes later, slinking out the front doors of the restaurant and racing to where I’d parked Aaron’s car. It took fifteen minutes to get home, and when I pulled into the driveway, my phone buzzed.

It was a message from Asher.

Asher: Are you okay?

Atticus: Yeah. I ditched them. I should have listened to you.

Asher: So long as you’re okay. Don’t worry me like that again. I almost went into combat mode.

Atticus: My knight in shining armor.

Asher: You have serious issues.

Atticus: Don’t I know it. I’m home now.

Asher: K. TTYL.

Chapter Eight

THURSDAY AFTERNOON, I left my programming class with a throbbing headache. I’d spent three hours working on a huge project that ended up being nothing but a pile of garbage. I needed to go back to square one and figure out where in all that computer coding I’d gone wrong, and I didn’t have an ounce of capacity left to care.