Curious

by R. G. Alexander

  Curious

  The Finn Factor, Book 1

  R.G. Alexander

  Curious

  Copyright 2015 R.G. Alexander

  Editing by D.S. Editing

  Formatted by IRONHORSE Formatting

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication

  Cookie-Love is the Reason

  AND

  Ode to Robin L Rotham

  You kick my ass and make me cry

  You answer each time I ask "Whyyy?"

  The red marks that you leave behind

  Flay my pride but fill my mind

  With ways to make you LOL

  Oh dearest friend, you edit well.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Thanks for Reading!

  Scandalous: The Finn Factor, Book 2

  Dangerous: The Finn Factor, Book 3

  The Smutketeers!

  Other Books by R.G. Alexander

  About R.G. Alexander

  Chapter One

  The lights at the edge of the dock flickered on as the last of the day disappeared. Jeremy stared at the still lake as it absorbed the vibrant shades of orange, gold and pink from the sunset until all those colors faded, leaving behind only blacks and blues. The darker colors suited his mood.

  He was so lost in his brooding and watching the transition of color through his kitchen window that he nearly dropped his beer in the sink when he heard the knock at his front door. “Damn it.”

  Owen was here.

  He lifted the bottle to his lips and drank until there was nothing left, then set it on the counter more forcefully than necessary while he debated whether or not to reach for his third of the hour.

  It wasn’t helping. The view, the color study, the buzz from the tequila and beer he’d downed on an empty stomach—nothing was relaxing him the way it usually did. He was tense about tonight. Jumpier than he should be.

  Owen’s thirty-fifth birthday. Any other year and he’d be at the Finn family pub by now, drinking and playing darts with the Owen’s brothers, teasing their baby sister about her upcoming wedding, and watching Owen revel in his favorite tradition—kissing every woman in the establishment he wasn’t related to. Because he was Irish, he’d tell them with a smile. “Every damn day.”

  But not this year.

  The second knock sounded impatient, and Jeremy ran his hands over his face, smoothing his full beard before he walked toward the door. This year Owen had called and asked if he could hang out at Jeremy’s instead. No party. No shamrock-shaped cake covered in lewd candles. No women for him to kiss and charm and take home for an all-night celebration.

  It wasn’t that big a deal, he told himself. Between construction jobs and girlfriends, Owen came over so much he might as well live here. It had been like that since Jeremy bought the four-bedroom home on the lake. It had more space than his own Spartan bachelor pad, and he could walk outside and go fishing or swimming whenever the mood struck him. Owen loved the place almost as much as he did, and Jeremy had to admit he enjoyed the company.

  What was messing with his head were the weeks of silence that preceded this last-minute visit. Weeks when Owen hadn’t done much more than answer texts with short, noncommittal replies. He hadn’t stopped by after work or called to harass him into leaving the house and coming out for a drink or going to see a movie the way he usually did. Hadn’t taken temporary ownership of Jeremy’s big-screen television to watch a football game. Close to three weeks when Jeremy hadn’t had the nerve to end the blackout himself, accepting the excuse of Owen’s busy work schedule, though he knew the real reason for his absence.

  Bracing himself, Jeremy opened the door, seeing the familiar logo on a large pizza box as Owen pushed it toward his chest and brushed past him. “What took you so long? Daydreaming again? I brought dinner.”

  His lips twitched and he shook his head. “I was going to order from the Indian restaurant.”

  He followed Owen down the hall and into the kitchen where his friend opened the refrigerator and pulled out two bottles of beer. “I figured. We’ll eat that spicy mystery stew you love so much for your birthday. Tonight, it’s my slumber party and I say we dine on mushrooms, pepperoni and cheese.” He sent him a hopeful grin. “And Xbox?”

  “Sure.” Jeremy snorted, his tense shoulders relaxing a little. Owen didn’t seem upset. It was almost as if nothing had happened. Nothing had changed. “I thought you turned thirty-five today, not sixteen.”

  “Says the man who draws comics for a living.”

  “That comeback never gets old. Grab the paper plates from the pantry and some napkins, please.”

  “Yes, Mother,” followed the dramatic sigh.

  Jeremy snuck a glance as Owen opened the pantry and dug around for the plates, displaying his oh so tight end. Still sexy after all these years.

  Owen Finn had been the hot high school quarterback with good grades, crystal-blue eyes and a thousand-watt smile. The guy every girl on campus had wanted to date, and time had only increased his appeal.

  The owner of Finn Construction had laugh lines that had deepened over the years and his work had given him a warm, healthy tan and bleached his dark blond hair with strands of gold. He was a few inches taller than Jeremy’s six-foot-one, with a leaner body and a sensual stride that gave both men and women whiplash when he walked by. They either wanted to be him or be with him, but no one could ignore him.

  Least of all Jeremy. His body reacted instantly to the scenery and he sighed, knowing it was going to be a long night.

  Getting hard at the sight of Owen was nothing new. Jeremy had known ever since they met that being friends with him would mean a lot of cold showers.

  He was a damn handsome man, though too much of an alpha male and too much like Jeremy to be his usual type, even if he had been open to it. Still, he’d always been a temptation. The unattainable usually was.

  Owen snapped his fingers in Jeremy’s face. “Earth to Porter. Thinking of ways to get our favorite vigilante demon out of his current dilemma, or were you staring at my ass?”

  “Fuck off,” Jeremy blustered, turning toward the living room, pizza box still in hand. “Just for that you’ll have to wait for this edition to hit the stands
.”

  “Bullshit. You never make me wait for it. It’s one of the things I like best about you.”

  Damn, the way he’d said that sounded sexy.

  “That, and your big screen.”

  And that sounded like Owen.

  He had been staring, and Owen knew it. Jeremy had never seen the need to hide his bisexuality from his best friend, though he didn’t throw it in his face either. Finn was a man’s man from a traditional Irish family. He loved sports, worked with his hands and hadn’t lacked for female companionship since he hit puberty. In other words, he was arrow straight.

  Maybe straight wasn’t the right word for him, Jeremy thought as he set the box on the coffee table. Owen had more than a few kinks from, what he’d been told, and he was a bit of a player with the ladies, but sex with other men had never been on his agenda.

  They didn’t talk much about their individual predilections with each other. Owen knew Jeremy liked men as well as women, and Jeremy knew Owen frequented the same BDSM club that their friend Tasha was a member of. It didn’t have anything to do with their friendship.

  Or it hadn’t until Tasha’s party.

  He walked over to the fifty-inch flat screen framed by shelves of movies and games. “Sports or swords?”

  “Swords,” Owen responded as he threw himself onto the wide leather couch and opened his beer. “I had a long day, and I’m in the mood for a bloody birthday massacre.”

  “Should I ask?”

  “God, no.”

  Jeremy slipped the game into the console and tossed the two controllers on the couch beside his friend. “It’s your birthday. And there will be blood.”

  “Blood and pizza. It doesn’t get better.”

  They spent the next hour swapping smack talk and grabbing bites of pizza between battles. Jeremy leaned back on the couch, his fingers automatically controlling his character’s movements as his mind drifted.

  This was it then—business as usual. Fine. It was better this way. Their friendship was intact. He wouldn’t have to think about his own reactions to the incident at Tasha’s party, or how he’d wished it had been Owen he was with that night instead of the man whose name he hadn’t bothered to remember.

  Natasha Rivera had introduced him to the stranger. She was the only friend from high school besides Owen that he was still close to. The three of them had been through a lot together, though their individual relationships with Jeremy couldn’t be more different. Both a voyeur and an exhibitionist, Tasha was also Jeremy’s occasional lover, and that evening she’d had her heart set on watching him fuck another man. One of her favorite requests.

  Tasha’s choice for their third, a pretty and unabashedly gay coworker, had shown a flattering fascination with the fit of Jeremy’s jeans and Tasha’s hints about what they were hiding. Against his better judgment, Jeremy had let the two of them drag him into the bedroom and strip off his clothes during the party instead of making them wait until it was over. He’d let them caress his body and measure the length of his erection with their hands, though he could hear the beat of the bass and the murmur of the crowd from the other room.

  They’d both knelt at his feet and taken turns sucking on his cock, until eventually he’d stopped trying to remember if they’d locked the door and let his desire take over. He’d been so aroused and distracted by their joint effort he ended up bending that hot twenty-something blond over the bed, sliding on a condom and giving him the fucking he’d been vocally begging for.

  That was how Owen found them when he walked in. He’d frozen—a tall, still shadow framed in light and loud music.

  Jeremy had been startled too, but when he realized who was in the doorway and what Owen was seeing—him with his pants around his ankles and his dick disappearing into another man’s ass, the voluptuous, caramel-skinned Tasha naked and touching herself beside them as she watched—some inner devil loosed by drink and lust had taken over his body.

  He hadn’t stopped. In fact, he’d taken hold of his partner’s shoulder and started slamming into him so hard he was worried the bed or the lean body beneath him would break. And he hadn’t taken his eyes off Owen.

  “Fuck,” the man had gasped. “Fuck, yeah. Oh God, give it to me. Pound my ass with that big fat cock!”

  Owen had flinched at the graphic demand, his gaze clashing with Jeremy’s for a few devastating heartbeats before he backed out of the room and closed the door.

  Turned on as hell, Jeremy had ridden Tasha’s screaming morsel of a coworker without mercy, imagining it was Owen he was fucking instead. Then he’d buried his face between Tasha’s thighs and made her come so violently she swore she saw stars. By the time he finished and came out to look for his friend, Owen had already left the party and Jeremy’s satisfaction had swiftly turned into regret.

  “He’s a big boy, honey,” Tasha had assured him later, when everyone else had gone and they were sharing the last of a bottle of Scotch. “He knows you and I like variety. He does too. He’s plowed through so many women in the last year you’d think he was going for a record. Even his brothers have pulled him aside and told him to turn it down a notch.”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “It is exactly the same thing. We are consenting adults having a little harmless fun. You should see what Master Finn does to his partners at the club.” She lifted the finely arched eyebrows over her sparkling green eyes. “You’d blush, but none of those little submissives can resist him. Hell, most of the Doms have a difficult time.”

  “Yet you do.”

  She’d looked away from him, the way she always did when the subject came up. “I resist all Finns. Especially the ones who seem to be working out their personal demons on every warm body that isn’t nailed down.”

  Owen’s demons and laundry list of conquests aside, Jeremy couldn’t help but feel the sting of his own shame. Not because Owen had seen them, but because of how he’d felt knowing his oldest, closest and most profoundly heterosexual friend had watched him in action.

  It had turned him on. Hell, it was turning him on right now. What the hell kind of a person did that make him?

  Owen’s laugh interrupted his morose thoughts. “You are really off your game tonight, aren’t you? Your undefeated champion just got his head lopped off by a tree-dwelling ogre and you didn’t even notice.”

  “Sorry.” Jeremy shifted, his controller doing little to hide his erection. He pressed the pause button on the game. “Another beer?”

  Though Owen was looking at him with a curious expression, he nodded. “Yeah, thanks.”

  Jeremy got up and walked swiftly to the kitchen. He needed to get this reaction reined in. This man’s friendship was the most important thing in his life. He could be a stubborn jackass, but he was loyal and dedicated to the people he cared about. And his family—the Finns had always been there for him. Even when no one else was. A fact he tried to remember to help control his desire to jump their son.

  He was holding the neck of a cold bottle when he turned to find Owen leaning against the counter across from him, arms folded. “Did you want something else instead? Coffee? I have tequila.”

  “Tequila sounds good.” His subdued smile made Jeremy wary.

  “I feel guilty as hell that I didn’t have time to get you a cake.” Jeremy grabbed two shot glasses and filled them, handing one to Owen before tapping their glasses together. “But maybe this will do instead. Happy Birthday, man.”

  “I don’t want cake.” Owen threw back his shot and slowly lowered his glass, licking the remnants from his lips. “This works just fine.”

  Jeremy followed suit, feeling the heat hit his stomach and spread through his limbs. He lifted the bottle and studied the contents, hoping it would be enough to get his mind off of Owen’s lips. “Another?”

  He shook his head. “That might not be a good idea. The guys at work made me down a few shots already. Probably to prepare me for my present.”

  “What did they get you?”


  “A stripper. They actually brought her to my office.”

  “To that shitty-ass trailer?” Jeremy tried to smile back. “Sounds like somebody wants a raise.”

  “My money is on Scott, but he’s not getting one. It wasn’t exactly a professional thing to do.”

  “Says the man who almost convinced a chorus line of topless dancers to attend our college graduation ceremony,” Jeremy said dryly. “If it was him, he has to at least get points for showing initiative. That would be more work than he’s done all year.”

  When Owen didn’t respond, he raised his brows in question. “Well don’t keep me in suspense. How was she?”

  “I was bored.” He heard the thread of disbelief in Owen’s voice. “She was hot and naked and her breasts were…” He made a gesture with his hands to indicate their size. “She was really working for it too, grinding on my lap with an impressive amount of skill. But I was bored and it showed. I had to think about something else and give her a big tip just so she wouldn’t be insulted.”

  Jeremy whistled, reaching for his beer bottle and stepping back to lean against the refrigerator. “I didn’t realize thirty-five was the cutoff date for the sex drive. Sounds like I only have three months left to enjoy myself. I’ll stock up on energy drinks right away and clear my schedule.”

  “Fuck off, Porter.” Owen glared. “I have no problems with my sex drive. My mind was on other things.”

  “Your drive is well known, buddy, which is why I’m surprised. What could occupy sexual legend Owen Finn’s mind so much that a naked woman on your lap couldn’t tempt you?”

  “It happens.” Owen tilted his head, as if considering his words, but Jeremy saw his eyes drop to the bulge in his jeans. Damn it, he was hoping he wouldn’t notice. “But obviously not to you. If Natasha’s hype is to be believed, you’re the legend.”

  Jeremy snorted in denial, but Owen wasn’t deterred. “She’s been telling me stories about your sexual adventures for a while but I never paid much attention. To be honest, when it started I thought she was making it up so I would stop asking her out. Maybe she thought I’d have a problem sleeping with my best friend’s fuck buddy. Maybe she thought I’d be intimidated by the sheer number of times you’ve convinced two people to sleep with you at once.”