Page 49 of Cheap Heat

“Been here before?”

“No.”

Larkin chuckled. “Not a big talker, huh? It’s cool. Neither’s Seb.”

Reminding myself that it was polite to actually make conversation back, I gulped down some more champagne and turned my stool to face the room too. It spun a little. The room, not the stool. “Uh, so how long have you two been together?”

“Just a few months.” Larkin got a dopy smile on his face as he looked at his big werewolf boyfriend, who was talking casually to Holt. “Don’t know how it took me so long to realise how freaking amazing he is.”

“How long have you both worked at Goliaths?” I asked curiously.

“Almost two years for me, a little over four for Seb.” He sighed and shook his head, still gazing at his boyfriend. “Fuck, bro, just look at him. I mean, don’t look at him too hard, but still. Look at him. He is redonkulous.”

I obediently looked over at Seb. He was definitely handsome. And huge. Way bigger than Ewen. Larkin was pretty tall too, although he was lean and lanky.

“Def gonna take that wolfman home and make some bread,” Larkin muttered, then nudged my arm with a snicker, making me sway in my seat. “Right, broseph?”

“Don’t know what that means.” Was my voice a little slurred? I looked down and realised my flute was empty again. Oops.

“It means fucking, bro.” He nudged me again. “So, you got a girlfriend, boyfriend…?”

“Uh… um, neither. At the moment.” I felt a little frisson of exhilaration in my gut. It may have been stupid, but I hadn’t really explored my newly discovered queerness yet, so even that tiny admission felt like something to celebrate.

Spinning unsteadily in my seat, I grabbed the champagne bottle to pour some more, vaguely noticing that I’d managed to finish the bottle. Huh.

“Any of the wrestlers caught your eye?” Larkin asked with a sly grin.

For some unknown reason—seriously, I had no idea why—my gaze darted over to Ewen. He’d changed into a long-sleeved shirt and jeans before leaving the office, and his big biceps strained against the thin fabric as he lifted his drink to have a sip, then chuckled at something Vince leaned in to tell him.

“No,” I answered Larkin, a bit too defensively, then found myself blurting, “Do any of the wrestlers hook up? Like, with each other?”

Larkin blinked, looking a little stunned by the question. “Well, Gabe and Biff are together. I thought I told you that when you started.”

“No, I mean… any of the others.” My cheeks burned. Probably from the alcohol. I gulped down more champagne. To throw Larkin off the scent, just in case he’d noticed me staring at Ewen, I nodded at Crossbody and added, “Like Crossbody.”

He snorted. “Crossbody? No way. He wouldn’t bang any of the other wrestlers. He’s probably betrothed to some royal from another Otherworld court.”

I nodded, trying to seem like I was only mildly interested as my gaze darted back over to the table of wrestlers. “What about, uh, Vince? Or… I don’t know. Dan. Or someone.”

Larkin cocked his head as he thought about it, before his eyes flashed with excitement and he leaned in conspiratorially. “Ooh, I do remember hearing, just after I started at Goliaths, that one of the others had a threesome with Gabe and Biff.”

I tensed. “Which one?”

“I think it was Vince. No, wait, Dan. Or maybe it was both of them. Maybe it was a foursome.”

My hand clenched tighter around my glass. So Ewen had fucked Vince?

I didn’t know why I was fixating on his relationship with the ghoul and not any of the others. It barely even registered that he’d possibly had sex with Gabe and Biff.

But with Vince?

They seemed pretty close.

Were they still fucking now?

Larkin took my silence to mean something else and chuckled. “Hot, right?”

I drained my glass and set it down with a thud, then tensed when a big group of people tumbled into the bar, laughing and talking loudly. They headed over, one of them leaning across the bar to greet the bartender and yell something in his ear. With a grin, he nodded and went to fiddle with the sound system. My shoulders hunched when the music got twice as loud.