The Hook-Up Experiment

by Emma Hart

  Dom muttered something I couldn’t understand.

  “You lost them both?” Chloe was near hysteria now. “How? How are you allowed to live unsupervised? That’s four keys in a year, Dominic!”

  He opened and closed his mouth. Nothing came out.

  You know when you were a kid, and your sibling got blamed for something you did? That sheer, smug delight that reached from the top of your head to the tip of your toes?

  I felt like that watching this. Only this was better because Chloe was soft but fierce, and if you pissed her off, you knew about it.

  The fact she was sans caffeine only made this more interesting.

  “You know what? I’m not getting you another.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Until you can prove you’re not going to lose it, I’m not doing it.”

  “It’s a business expense,” came his response.

  Idiot. He should have apologized and told her she looks pretty today.

  “I don’t care.” She jabbed her finger at him. “You’re dumb. You’re almost thirty. Now, I have to call to get the locks changed because God only knows how many people have the key to our office where we keep confidential information on a good portion of this city’s residents.”

  I needed popcorn.

  “Good, then the locksmith can give me a key.” Dom shrugged his shoulder.

  “No. The only key you’re getting is the WiFi password so you can learn how to be a responsible adult!” she snapped, right before she turned and stormed into her office across the hall.

  Neither I or Dom said anything for a minute. Then, he turned to me. “At least she didn’t throw anything at me this time.”

  There was that.

  I met his eyes. “Seriously. Just sleep together already. I can’t take it anymore.”

  He scoffed and wandered to the door. “Sure. You can’t take it.”

  That was the closest admission I’d ever had that he wanted her. Maybe they needed a nudge.

  Hmm…

  “Don’t.” He stopped and pointed at me. “Don’t, Peyton.”

  I held up my hands. “I’m not doing anything.”

  He stared at me for a good minute before he left, closing my door behind him.

  I hoped he was going to Starbucks before he went into his own office. Otherwise, it was his funeral.

  ***

  “Perfect,” I said into the phone, writing down what the client on the other end of the line had just told me.

  “When can I expect to hear from you?” the sweetly-spoken lady said.

  “It will take me a couple of days to match you,” I said. “So, expect the end of the weekend.”

  “That’s perfect. How many options will I have?”

  “Between three and five men depending on your compatibility.”

  There was a knock at my office door, so I got up to answer it, holding the phone to my ear still.

  “Awesome, thank you. Do you need anything else from me?”

  I opened the door and almost choked on my own saliva.

  “Ms. Austin?” the woman on the phone said.

  Dark hair. Dark eyes. Jaw that could cut glass. Complete with a dirty white t-shirt and ripped, paint-covered jeans, plus work boots.

  I waved Elliott into the office. “Sorry—a bird flew into my window.”

  Elliott held his hand over his mouth to stifle his laugh.

  “It would be helpful if you could send me some form of a schedule,” I said, putting my head back in the game. “Availability is one of the things I have on the application form for the men, so knowing any times you’re not free to meet or if you have any preferences will really help me narrow down the field from the get-go.”

  “I can send that over to you today. I’ll have my assistant pull up my schedule for the next month. Thanks so much.”

  “You’re welcome, Sandie. I’ll look for your email.”

  “Perfect. Have a great day!”

  And just like that, she hung up.

  Elliott raised his eyebrows. “Client?”

  I nodded. “Some high-flying businesswoman who wants to get laid without having to worry about whether or not her toilet seat is down how it should be. I feel that on so many levels.”

  He chuckled, taking the seat Dom had been in this morning. “That’s why there are two toilets in my house. One is pink and has a fluffy rug, and a hand-drawn sign on the door that depicts me with a big red cross.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “I’m not much of a kid person, but I think I like yours already.”

  He smiled. His eyes lit up a little with pure love, and it was weird seeing that on him. “Briony’s a spitfire, that’s for sure. Which is why I plan to keep her away from you at all costs since she doesn’t need help in the attitude department.”

  “If I even remotely cared what you thought of me, I’d probably be offended by that.”

  “You get offended?”

  “Only when people tell me powered donuts are better than ones with sprinkles.” I leaned back in my chair. “To what do I owe the displeasure of this visit?”

  He clutched his chest over his heart. “You wound me, Peyton.”

  “Get on with it, or I really will wound you. I have emails coming out of my ass.” Right on cue, my phone rang. “Hold on.” I held up a finger and answered. “Good afternoon! You’ve reached Pick-A-Dick, Peyton speaking. How can I help you?”

  Elliott buried his face in his hand, silently laughing.

  I had to look away before I laughed, too.

  My business name was ridiculous. I loved it.

  “Hi. I was hoping I could make an appointment with you?” a shy voice said.

  “Absolutely. When were you thinking?”

  “Next week?”

  “Give me a second.” I flicked over the page of my planner. “I can do Tuesday at two-thirty. Does that work?”

  “Yes. Thanks. My name is Rhianna.”

  I scribbled down her name—probably spelled wrong—and clicked my pen. “Perfect. I’ll see you then.”

  “Great. Thanks. Bye.” She hung up quickly.

  I dropped the phone unceremoniously onto my desk.

  “Who knew so many people needed to get laid?” Elliott quipped.

  “You have no idea,” I said, clicking off my email screen so that number wasn’t terrorizing me anymore. “Or, maybe you do, since you signed up.”

  “It was a date or get laid. I only have time for one of them.”

  “Yet, here you are, in my office. Why aren’t you working? Wait, where’s your daughter?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “I happen to be on a thing called a lunch break. Do you take those? And Briony is at daycare, talking their ears off instead of mine.”

  “Unless Chloe brings me food? No. Have you seen my emails today?” I waved a half-hearted hand at my computer. “I don’t have time to eat.”

  “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “Sure, but that just means I get extra ice-cream after dinner.” I shrugged. “I’m self-employed. I don’t work, I don’t make money.”

  “How do you make money at this?”

  I twirled a lock of hair around my finger. “You didn’t read the website very well, did you?”

  “Desperate times,” he said solemnly.

  “You get two weeks free, then you have to pay me for the pleasure of being pleasured.”

  “Just the guys pay?”

  “No, but given the trauma I sometimes experience thanks to dick pics, I probably don’t charge enough.”

  “How much is it?”

  “Twenty bucks a month.”

  “Twenty bucks a month?” Elliott’s eyebrows shot up, but his lips curved into a small smile. “People seriously pay that?”

  I held out my hands. “You say that like I’m charging people a mortgage! I have to look at dick pics. Matching them is a lot of work. I’m not matching on personality—I’m matching whether or not two people are going to walk into the bedroom and get their minds blown.”
r />   “Surely there’s some level of a personality match.”

  “Obviously. I’m not going to match a BDSM-loving Dom with someone who doesn’t know where the nearest sex shop is.”

  He stared at me for a second. “Where is the nearest sex shop?”

  “Two blocks that way.” I nodded to the left.

  “Do you go there regularly?”

  I pulled a card from the holder in front of me and tossed it across the desk to him. “Regular enough that I have my own discount count. Here. They do those vibrating vaginas for men. Now you don’t need to date or get laid.”

  Chapter Eight – Elliott

  People will always surprise you. Like how a toddler can have a rotting banana skin in their room for a week and not care. Or how your high school fantasy hands out personal discount codes for vibrators.

  “You have a discount code?” I picked up the card she’d thrown at me and flipped it over. Yep. There it was, big and bold on the back with the name and address of the adult store.

  “Why wouldn’t I? I send people their way all the time.” She swung her heeled feet onto the desk, crossing them at the ankle, showing off her long, bare legs.

  “Doesn’t sending people to an adult store defy the object of you helping them to get laid?” I raised an eyebrow and put the card back in the holder.

  I didn’t need her discount code. For now, I had her.

  “No. In fact, it works in my favor.”

  “How?”

  She sighed as if she had better things to do, and she probably did. God only knew she’d mentioned her emails enough, but after spending half my night dreaming about fucking her senseless again, I wanted to see her.

  “It doesn’t matter how good the person you’re sleeping with is if you don’t know what you want. If you don’t know how to make yourself come, you can’t expect anyone else to.” She said it so matter-of-fact, like it was obvious. “Sometimes, some of the women who come to me don’t know their own bodies. I had a thirty-something-year-old woman come in after her divorce last year. She married her high-school sweetheart and had only ever slept with him. The sex was fine, but she wanted more, and she admitted that she didn’t know how to pleasure herself. I gave her tips and sent her to the store. Two weeks later, she came back for her match, and now she comes in every few months for a new guy and raves about her mind-blowing sex life.”

  I stared at her. “All that from a couple of dildos?”

  “There’s more to female sex toys than dildos and vibrators. Bullets, eggs, balls—”

  “Balls?” That sounded…peculiar.

  “Balls,” she confirmed. “They’re metal weights on a string you put in your vagina and have to hold in place with Kegels. They rub against the g-spot.”

  “You sound familiar with them.”

  Unashamed and without batting an eyelid, she said, “You’re not a plumber, so you wouldn’t tell someone how to fix their leaky sink. You’d tell them how to build a wall. I can’t tell my clients how they should look into learning about their bodies if I don’t know about mine.”

  Hell, this woman was something else. She wasn’t even blushing. She wasn’t shy at all about what she was saying. It was black and white to her.

  It didn’t affect her, but it was sure as fuck affecting me. Now, all I could think about was how she’d look with those damn balls. How did she put them in? Did she play with herself to make herself wet first?

  Did she blush when she walked with them in place?

  I leaned forward to hide the fact my cock was rapidly hardening in my pants.

  Not that it mattered. She didn’t miss a damn thing.

  Her lips twitched up the tiniest amount, but it was the knowing spark in her eye that told me she knew.

  The biggest problem was that Peyton Austin was hot as fuck, and she knew it. She played on it. Her looks and her not-quite arrogant confidence made for a heady, sexy combination. She was self-assured. She knew what she had, and she used every little bit to her benefit.

  “You are the most unashamedly honest woman I’ve ever met,” I admitted. “And if I hadn’t already fucked you blind, that might intimidate me a little bit.”

  “How is that even remotely intimidating?” She fought a laugh. “I’m a woman. I like sex. My life literally revolves around people having sex. I’m not afraid of my sexuality. I embrace it. Men are celebrated all the time for having lots of sex. Nobody will celebrate me liking a lot of sex, so I celebrate myself. Fuck that. I’m not ashamed of that.”

  I rubbed my hand down my face. “You said sex a lot, and I’m not gonna lie, I’m turned the fuck on right now.”

  Peyton grinned. It reached her eyes, lighting them right up, and she tapped her fingers against her bare knee. “I know. I can see it.”

  Apparently, leaning forward didn’t actually work.

  I sat back instead. I stared at her. At the dark hair that tumbled over her shoulders in loose waves. At the full, pink lips she bit the inside of as she looked right back at me. At the bright eyes that flitted across my body, taking me in much the same was I was her.

  Desire swirled through my body.

  I wanted to kiss her.

  I wanted to walk around the desk. Drag her up. Curl my fingers around the back of her neck. Place my lips on hers until she was dizzy.

  I wanted to taste her, to have the sensation of her mouth against mine tingle for the rest of the day.

  I got up and walked around the desk. Her gaze followed me, but she didn’t try to stop me. She watched, silent, as I knocked her feet from the desk and grabbed her hands.

  I pulled her up in one easy sweep. The only reaction she gave was a whimper-gasp when I tugged her body flush against mine.

  Now, she blushed. Her deep inhale was obvious and audible. It sent a shiver across my skin. Something so simple, nothing more than touching her, and she reacted as if I was preparing to set her on fire.

  Maybe I was. God only knew my skin burned every time she touched me.

  “What are you doing?” she breathed. “I’m working.”

  “You’re taking a lunch break.”

  “I don’t have lunch.”

  “You don’t need it.” I hooked my finger under her chin and tilted her head up, forcing her eyes to meet mine. “You don’t have time to eat, but you have a minute to kiss me.”

  She shook her head. “Off-limits. I told you that. No kissing. It’s too intimate.”

  “Peyton, I’m going to kiss you. You’re going to let me, and you’re going to like it.” I wasn’t leaving any room for discussion—it was fucking well happening. “If I have to go to work with a raging hard-on because all I want to do is flip you over this desk and fuck you ‘til you scream, then I’m going to go to work knowing that you’re squirming and wet in your thong.”

  “What if I’m not wearing one?”

  “Baby, I don’t care if you’re fucking commando under that skirt. You’re gonna be wet and thinking of me all afternoon no matter what.”

  She swallowed, her cheeks flushing redder. She might have owned her sexuality, but that didn’t mean she was made of stone.

  “No kissing,” she whispered.

  I kissed her anyway. Just one light, fleeting sweep across her soft lips. It was barely there. An accident, almost. Something easily brushed off as leaning forward an inch too far.

  She took another deep breath in. Her eyes dropped to my chest. Her breathing was a little quick. A little too loud. A little too forced, as if she were trying to control it but couldn’t.

  Her body belied her words.

  She could talk the talk, but when it came down to it, she couldn’t talk herself out of how I affected her. She couldn’t even pretend she was a stone-hearted, unaffected woman who had complete control of her body.

  And she did. Her body, her fucking beautiful body, was all hers, but she allowed me this. She allowed herself to react to me the way she did. And I would take advantage of it—as long as she let me.

  Now wa
s that moment.

  As I dipped my face toward hers to test the waters, she tilted hers up. Peyton kissed me, wrapping her arms around my neck. Her body was hard against mine as she briefly took control, establishing herself as the one in charge.

  I let her.

  I let her kiss me until she let her on her grip.

  Until I dug my fingers into her ass cheek and flicked my tongue against her lips, asking her to let me kiss her harder and deeper.

  She let me.

  My tongue toyed with hers. My cock was hard, pressing against her, and I wished I could roll up her skirt and feel if she was as bothered by this as I was. I wished I could run my fingers over her clit and through her wetness to know how bad she wanted me.

  She hated me, but she wanted me.

  And I wanted her more than she knew.

  “Tonight,” I said against her lips. “Come to my place.”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  “The only reason we’re even here is because you’re doing this stupid dare. The sooner you fuck me, the sooner you never have to speak to me again.”

  A tiny laugh left her, and when I released her, she touched her fingers to her swollen lips. “Do you use that line on all the women?”

  I smirked. “Nah, you’re special. So, tonight?”

  She hesitated.

  “Come at seven-thirty. Briony will be asleep. You’ll just have to not refer to me as a Biblical entity at the top of your voice this time,” I teased her.

  Peyton pursed her lips. “You’re right. The sooner we fuck, the sooner I never have to listen to that kind of egotistical shit again.”

  I laughed. “So, seven-thirty?”

  “On the dot,” she replied.

  I smiled at her, and just when I thought she was about to say something, her phone rang. The shrill noise cut through the moment, and she self-consciously ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing it down, and reached for it.

  I knew that was the cue to leave, so I gently tapped her ass and, when she threw me a dark look, stifled a laugh on my way out.

  ***

  I stared at the almost-bald Barbie.

  I had questions. How had she found the scissors, and why had she cut her hair? Not to mention how she’d got it so even. It wasn’t a hack job.