Guys on the Bottom - Guys Book Three

by Darien Cox

  He chuckled. “Everyone’s been in love before, Zach. Sexual obsession can lead to ruin, sure. But don’t be too hard on yourself. In the interim, it can be exciting and intoxicating losing control like that.”

  “Yeah, true I guess. Learning experience for me. I’m very careful now.”

  Duncan shifted in his chair, and his foot brushed mine under the table. Though it was an accident, my pulse fluttered. “How are you careful?”

  “I think things through before I act now. Ask myself if what I’m feeling is healthy for me. I used to do stupid things because I only thought with my heart and my body, not my head.”

  “I see. Interesting. But with sex, sometimes you have to let logic go and just feel. It’s a difficult thing, trying to pair that reckless abandon with caution.”

  Wow. And here we were. We’d veered into talking about sex. This probably would have felt really awkward if I didn’t have a righteous buzz. I couldn’t quite figure out why Duncan seemed to enjoy sitting talking to little old me, why he even found me interesting in the first place. But he did seem to. I hadn’t been asked this many questions about myself in I didn’t know how long. I wasn’t used to anyone giving a shit how I felt. And maybe it was the alcohol, the soft night breeze, or the exotic garden atmosphere, but I didn’t want to stop. I wanted Duncan to keep talking to me. I wanted to see where the conversation would lead, how deep it might take us.

  I wanted to break rules.

  “Zach? You don’t agree?”

  “Huh?”

  “You don’t agree that sex itself can be hindered when paired with caution?”

  I chuckled. “Yeah, probably. I don’t have sex anymore.”

  Duncan’s eyes widened. “You don’t…what?”

  “I can’t believe I just said that.” I groaned and took a sip of my drink. “Too much info, right?”

  “You don’t have sex anymore?”

  “That’s right.”

  “At all?”

  “Not with anyone but myself.”

  “For how long?”

  I chuckled, shaking my head. “Quite some time now.”

  “I have to ask,” he said. “Why the hell not?”

  I forced myself to meet his eyes. “Because I make stupid decisions.”

  “Everybody does. You’re denying yourself sex completely because you made a few bad decisions in your past?”

  “I think I don’t want to talk about me anymore.”

  Laughing, Duncan picked up his drink. “Apologies if I was too forward. You can ask me questions about myself as payback if you wish. We’ll switch it up.”

  Well, that sounded too good to refuse. “And you’ll answer honestly if I ask you something?”

  Duncan seemed to hesitate, then nodded. “I will.”

  “Do you sleep with any of those people who were here today?”

  A chuckle escaped, and Duncan smirked, raising an eyebrow.

  “What? That too personal?”

  “No. It’s just not what I expected you to ask. But I’ll answer. You were open with me. I’ll be open with you.”

  “Okay. Good. So do you? Sleep with any of them?”

  “Sometimes. It’s more of a past tense thing, however.”

  I leaned forward, intrigued. “Which one? Or ones? Or all?”

  Something close to a snort escaped, and Duncan covered his mouth as he laughed. “Why do you want to know about this, Zach?”

  “You brought up sex.” I shrugged. “I was curious. Or nosy, I guess.”

  “You tell me,” Duncan said. “Who do you think I’ve slept with, out of the three who were here tonight?”

  “Shaylin.”

  Duncan nodded. “Once.”

  “Greg?”

  Tilting his head, he seemed to consider this. “Yes and no. Almost, but not quite. Greg sometimes can’t hold his liquor. Equipment malfunction.”

  “Oh, I see.” I chuckled. “Wow, you really do answer everything honestly. I like this game.”

  “I can tell.” He smirked. “Not used to such honesty?”

  “Not at all. Oh, what about Robert, then? I bet that’s a yes too.”

  “Not Robert,” he said. “We’re just friends, and I want him to work for me.” Duncan sipped his drink and his eyes shifted down. “Plus he’s a little young.”

  My smile slid away. Okay, so there was a line in the sand after all. An unexpected boundary amidst all Duncan’s openness. At least now I knew. Duncan wasn’t into me. He was just a flirty, sexual person. I suspected Robert was a couple years older than me. If Duncan thought Robert was too young for him, then I certainly was. And he’d mentioned the work thing. I’d been misinterpreting this whole conversation. And shamefully, getting myself kind of worked up and horny at the idea that Duncan might want me. But he didn’t. He’d all but just told me so.

  “Zach?”

  “Yeah?”

  He grinned. “You drifted off again. Thinking about Robert? I’m afraid he’s seeing someone already, as far as I know.”

  “No! I…I’m not interested in him. Just confused. I thought you said you didn’t like rules.”

  “Unless I make them, I said. I feel no need to adhere to other people’s rules. But I have rules of my own.”

  “Right. Okay.” I considered my cocktail, and decided I definitely didn’t need any more of it. It was giving me loose lips and a ridiculous boner for my new boss. “I should probably leave.”

  “Sure. I’ll call you a car. Shall we go back inside?”

  “Yeah. Thank you.”

  “Well I’d say the evening was a success!” Duncan said as we headed for the house. “You’ve agreed to the new job, and we had a good conversation.”

  “Yeah. I apologize if I…made it weird at all.”

  “Nonsense. Nothing weird about it. I’ll be right back.”

  Duncan left me alone in one of his colorful sitting rooms. I wasn’t sure I believed him that there was no weirdness. He was behaving almost too oblivious. But maybe this was normal for him, having deeply personal and sexual conversations with people in his employ. It was certainly a good way to lower the shields and get to know someone, but it was a bit disarming. I kind of felt tricked. Lured in. I’d been responding to his honesty, having all sorts of thoughts and feelings about it. I felt exposed, and for the first time in ages, out of control.

  I sat on a colorful striped accent chair and checked my phone. Sarah had texted, asking me how it went.

  ‘Good. I’ve been offered a new job with more money based on the tapas.’

  She must have been waiting for my response, because she wrote back immediately. ‘That’s amazing! You deserve it. You accepted, right?’

  ‘Yes but with reservations. I think I’m doing it again, Sarah. Not thinking right. I had myself convinced Duncan was into me tonight until he shut it down. Maybe I shouldn’t accept the job, because I find myself getting kind of fixated on the guy, at least when I drink. I don’t want to relapse into stupidity again.’

  ‘Call me tomorrow, but you’re probably overreacting. It’s okay to be attracted to someone, Zach. Doesn’t mean you have to act on it.’

  She was right of course, but the problem was, I probably would have acted on it. Had Duncan made a move. But I agreed to forgive myself. Duncan was the first man to get my blood up after an extended, desert-level dry spell. It made sense that I was thirsty. Duncan just happened to be the first guy to come along that I thought about quenching my thirst with in a very long time.

  But I still needed to keep an eye on myself. A guy almost twice my age, my ex-boyfriend’s uncle, and my boss? My negative self-image told me I was only attracted to him because he was the worst fucking idea to come along since I’d split with Corey, and that old dysfunctional penchant I had for flirting with disaster was still inside me. I’d smothered it, strangled it, and buried it in a box in the back yard, but the bones were still there under the surface.

  “There’s a car outside waiting for you,” Duncan said as he
entered the room.

  “Oh great, thanks.” I stood. “Here’s your credit card back.” I handed it to him and he slid it into his pocket. “Thanks, Duncan. For everything.”

  “My pleasure.” Duncan stepped in and caught me in a hug, which I wasn’t ready for.

  Wrapping my arms around him was an automatic response, but I tried to keep it casual by giving him a little double-slap on the back.

  He released me…but just before he did, I could have sworn he sniffed my neck. Just a taken a little whiff, a light brush of his nose, making me shiver. “I’ll let you know when we’ll start training for the outdoor bar. In the meantime, just work your regular shifts. And here.” He handed me a check. “For tonight. Didn’t want you to have to wait until I added it to your regular paycheck.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” I stared down at the check, which was, in my opinion, way too much money for what I’d done tonight. “This is kind of a lot, Duncan, just for cooking some aps.”

  “You were here for hours, you should be compensated.”

  “But we were just talking.”

  “It was all work related. Now go on, head home. You look tired.” He smiled, and I let him walk me to the door, slipping the check into my pocket.

  “Good night, Duncan.”

  “Sleep well, Zach.”

  The car idling in front of the house was a sleek black thing that looked like it should be transporting Michael Corleone, so I doubted it was an Uber. I’d been joking to myself about Duncan having a butler, but the man behind the wheel was old, elegant, and gray-haired, and I wanted to call him Jeeves. I wasn’t sure if he worked for Duncan or what. “Hi,” I said as I got in the car. “I’m going to—”

  “I have the address. You just relax.”

  “Oh. Okay, thanks. I’m Zach.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Earl.”

  “Are you…um, Duncan’s personal driver?”

  “No, I have other clients, but I do drive for Mr. Stengel often.”

  As he drove me home, I took the check out of my pocket and studied it again. Sure, I’d done some work tonight, had a business meeting of sorts. But I’d also had cocktails, talked about sex, and enjoyed myself. I’d popped wood twice just due to certain things Duncan said, the way he looked at me, especially when he mentioned liking me in my nymph costume.

  And now I had a job offer, a pay raise. And this big honkin check in my hand.

  For all Duncan’s insistence that he didn’t want to fuck me, tonight I felt like a very lucky prostitute.

  Chapter Six

  Over the next few weeks, the universe continued its ‘this is your fucked-up life’ assault on me, my regretful past turning up to haunt me again and again. I kept running into Doug Crandall at the pond. That part I didn’t mind. I actually really liked the guy, and he seemed, much to his surprise, to like me. In fact, he’d inadvertently blurted out during one of our talks, “I never got why Corey liked you so much but now I do.” He’d immediately looked shocked by his own admission and apologized, but I laughed it off. A lot of people didn’t get why Corey liked me so much. A lot of people didn’t realize I was shy, and only truly revealed my personality once I was comfortable with someone.

  As our chats kept getting longer, we finally decided to just start meeting and running together. That way we could talk and get the exercise in at the same time.

  But then one day in the market I ran into Doug’s boyfriend, Stewart, the man Corey had been living with when I started fucking him. A man I suspected did not like me one bit. I spotted his broad shoulders and messy dark hair as he examined a pile of zucchini.

  I started to make a hasty retreat, but his blue eyes flicked my way, then widened.

  I froze like a startled deer, clutching my bag of spinach.

  “Hey Zach.”

  I gave a quick, grumbled greeting, then left the market without my groceries. Doug claimed Stewart was past things and bore me no ill will, but his expression said he still wanted to smash a zucchini in my face.

  Then a few days later, Corey showed up at Club Mythic. It was midmorning and I was out back in the as-yet-unopened ‘Elfy Choices’ garden area doing training, working with two cooks Duncan had assigned me. They were both young guys, one of which I recognized from the main kitchen. Both skinny with interesting facial hair and big, stretched-out hoop earrings, they were a bit surly and moody, especially the one Duncan had pulled from inside. I suspected he resented having to take orders from me, the guy he usually saw in makeup and a slinky leotard costume.

  But both cooks followed instruction well enough, and were able to recreate a reasonably decent adaptation of my vegetarian tapas. We still had some work to do, but they were getting there. I wasn’t sure I was cut out for this management role, though. The cooks moved too slow for my taste, took a lot of smoke breaks, and I suspected they were usually stoned. I had to bite my tongue to keep from screaming when the one called Chauncy spilled an entire box of nutritional yeast on the floor, then did a half-assed job cleaning it up.

  Robert was there too, he’d accepted the healthy cocktail job, and we’d started our training together. Duncan was back to treating me like anyone else, friendly but distant. I liked watching him, though. He was truly excited about opening this garden bar, a butterfly of enthusiasm as he flitted around the space. His Eden was almost complete, a mini outdoor version of the main club, trees and lights and fountains and elegant little cocktail tables, murals of dancing elves painted along the fence. Robert and I had a little hut at the rear of the fenced-in utopia, kitchen in the back. Duncan had green neon lights strung up atop the hut that spelled out ‘Elfy Choices’ with a glowing leaf on either side.

  I left the jaded stoner cooks for a while and helped Robert up front, and we decided it would be a good idea to make juice a day ahead of each shift when the place went live and store it in the fridge. It would still be fresh, and the practice would prevent him having to man his juicer and make a mess every time he served a cocktail. I was showing him how to work the new cash register when I spotted Corey, his unmistakable tall sculpted body and head of blond hair visible through the sprinkling fountain. Duncan was showing him around the space, and Corey was listening to him with interest, but his eyes glanced over at me a few times. I focused on teaching Robert to use the cash register and tried to pretend the former love of my life wasn’t roaming around with Duncan fifteen feet away.

  But eventually, when Robert and the two cooks went on break, Corey strolled over, taking a stool at the bar before me. “Hey ugly.”

  “Hey. Thought that was you.”

  I found, surprisingly, that I was glad to see him. He was dressed in jeans and a Soundgarden tee shirt I’d given him when we were dating, which made me nostalgic. He still made my heart flutter, probably always would to a degree. Being a bit stressed out with all the newness I was dealing with, Corey represented familiarity, and his smile relaxed me.

  “Duncan asked me to come down and check it out,” Corey said. “He’s all excited. He was really impressed with your cooking. How come you never cooked for me when we were together? You were the king of pizza delivery.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, the cooking is new. I’m a vegan now.”

  “Full vegan? Wow.”

  “Yeah. I still have Indian curry once in a while and that has yogurt in it, so I guess I cheat sometimes. But pretty much full vegan.”

  “Ah, okay. Sarah and Yvonne finally lured you into their cult, huh?”

  “They did. But I have to admit I feel great. Figured out how to cook so I wouldn’t get bored. Did Duncan really say that? That he was impressed with my cooking?”

  “Yeah. Something about orgasmic stuffed mushrooms.”

  I shrugged, but a smile crept up my face. I liked hearing that Duncan said nice things about me. I was a sucker for these Stengel boys, no question, because even as I preened at Duncan’s praise, I felt a little tug at my heart looking at Corey. It had been a long time since the two of us had just talked alone in a f
riendly manner like this. I had a boatload of memories that entailed touching him in the most intimate way, and they were trying to surface now. In my mind, I could still clearly hear his voice telling me he loved me, as if he’d said it just yesterday.

  But I also found myself examining him anew, noting how his eyes were shaped like Duncan’s, same smirking lips. But their overall look was different. Corey didn’t have the little suntan wrinkles around his eyes the way Duncan did, and his gaze was less intense. I decided suddenly that I liked Duncan’s face better, and that shocked me. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d ever be thinking about another man while gazing at Corey.

  “When’s this place opening for real?”

  “Soon,” I said. “Man, your uncle is a maniac when he sets his mind to something.”

  “Yeah, he is.” Corey chuckled.

  “He wants to have a grand opening party like yesterday. I convinced him to let us make sure we could run everything with no fuck-ups first, so he backed down a little.”

  Nodding, Corey said, “When Duncan wants something, he goes all in. He was kind of an unstoppable force in his younger days. He’s more chill now, believe it or not.”

  “Unstoppable force, huh? In what way?”

  “In the making money way. The partying way. And in the luring people into his bed way, but you didn’t hear that from me. Left a lot of broken hearts behind.”

  “Kind of like you?” I grinned so he’d know I was only teasing.

  “Yeah.” Corey swatted me playfully with a napkin. “Exactly like me.”

  I knew Corey felt comfortable giving me these facts about his uncle because not in his wildest dreams did he suspect I might be attracted to Duncan. Corey thought he knew everything about me, my likes, my dislikes, but it was based on the past. I didn’t even know what I liked these days. But I was starting to figure out it was more complicated than I’d ever imagined.

  “Do you want to try one of Robert’s healthy cocktails?” I asked. “There’s juice made up.”