Page 13 of Clean Finish

“Hopefully he won’t throw up this time,” I added, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Let’s hope.” Seb tapped the end of his pencil against his lower lip as he frowned down at his crossword. He was in his human form—so were Holt and I—seeing as we were upstairs. I tried not to stare.

Was he going to suck my dick too? Oh god. I hoped I didn’t nut too quickly.

Just as he started glancing over, no doubt to see what I was staring at, I jerked my gaze down to the crossword he was working on.

“Need any help?” I blurted, even though, I mean, what the fuck did I know about crosswords?

After a pause, Seb tilted the book slightly so I could see the page better.

“Number eight, down,” he told me. I had no idea what he meant, until I realised the clues were numbered.

I peered at number eight. The wait can often leave you breathless (12 Letters)

Twelve letters? How many words had twelve freaking letters? That seemed like too many letters for one word. A little unnecessary, if you asked me. Whoever had come up with it had just been showing off.

I started to sweat a little, because now I was going to look really stupid. I had no hope of deciphering that clue. Why was it so vague? Did they not want people to solve them?

“Uh…” I tried to think of a twelve-letter word. Any twelve-letter word. How many letters did ‘breathless’ have? No, wait, it was in the clue, so I didn’t think that would be the answer. “Um…”

“I think I got it.” Seb lowered the pencil and wrote the word in his neat, blocky handwriting.

Anticipation.

“Oh. Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “I was about to say that.”

He glanced over at me, and once again I found myself unable to look away. Had his eyes always been that dark honey shade, or had they, like, changed colour recently? Was that possible? People’s eyes changing colour?

My throat bobbed. Seb’s eyes flickered down to track its movement. Or maybe… No, I was pretty sure he was looking at my mouth. Just for a second. For some reason, it made me really freaking nervous.

“Seb, come move this desk for me!” Holt’s slurred voice made him look away. Straightening from the wall, he tucked his pencil and crossword book into his back pocket as he walked over to Taylor and Holt, which drew my gaze down to his backside.

It was… nice. Pert and firm-looking in his slacks. Rounded from the squats he probably did every morning at the gym.

I was definitely interested in learning butt stuff, so maybe he’d… Hopefully he’d let me…

“Lark, come and help.” Holt was snickering as he watched Seb calmly pick up an entire desk like it weighed nothing. “Okay, go and hide it somewhere, Seb.”

“Sure thing,” Seb said patiently. As he made his way through the office with the desk, I forced myself to look away and walk over to join Holt and Taylor.

“What’re we doing, boss?” I asked enthusiastically. I was suddenly overflowing with nervous energy that I needed to expend. All this waiting around for Seb and me to finally get a chance to start our sex lessons was making me breathless with something. I didn’t know the word for it.

“Just grab stuff to hide,” Holt told me, a keyboard and a desk phone already gathered to his chest.

I sighed. Yet another weak-ass prank. Did he really think people would be annoyed about having their workday delayed by missing office supplies?

But like the fantastic assistant I was, I started grabbing stuff with Taylor and Holt. Then, deciding to spice things up a bit—while Seb was firmly out of the room—I found an empty jar in the breakroom and farted in it, quickly screwing on the lid to trap the smell and leaving it on a random desk for some poor, unsuspecting human to find in the morning. Taylor found it hilarious.

Once they decided they’d done enough to mess with the HutSec employees, we made our way back down to the basement and bumped into some of the wrestlers. I’d been feeling even more nervous around them over the last week, so I hadn’t been hanging out in the backstage area as much. When they found out Taylor had accepted the job with Goliaths, Vince suggested we all go out to celebrate. Then Biff added that Gabe and Corey were performing at a drag bar in town, and Heidi pointed out that it was karaoke night.

Taylor and Holt very enthusiastically agreed.

Which was how I found myself following Seb in my car as we made our way to Taylor’s apartment building. Seb was driving Holt and Taylor in Taylor’s car so that it’d be there in the morning, and then I was going to drive us to the bar while the wrestlers got cabs and met us there.

As I resigned myself to a long night, Seb got into the passenger seat beside me without a word while Taylor and Holt clambered into the back seat, giggling together about something.

“No canoodling back there,” I told them sternly as I pulled away from the kerb.