Rhymes With Orange

by Tymber Dalton

I frequent the Suncoast Society munches and Venture. I’m single and open to play, in some situations. Not looking for a new relationship right now, just friendship and possibly play. I have a slave, and my time and relationship with him comes first and is non-negotiable.

  The feed didn’t tell what about the description had changed in his latest update.

  I guess I can ask him that Tuesday night.

  She sent him a private message to let him know it was her before clicking the friend request button. She had a few friends from New York she’d need to send friend requests to, but only after confirming they wouldn’t reveal that info to Clayton.

  Life was far simpler without him whining to her that he wished she’d give him another chance.

  Funny how the “domly guy is domly” dude could whine like a little bitch when he realized I was coming into money.

  Yes, she knew Mikayla was right. She had friends up in New York. Kinky and vanilla, although in the theatre circles she moved through, sometimes there was a lot of overlap between the two, directly or indirectly.

  What she hadn’t had in New York were many very close, trusted friends like Mikayla. While some people wore their anxiety or whatever they dealt with on their arms like a badge of honor, she’d always been very careful to try to conceal that part of her as much as possible. It was a weakness. It was a drawback.

  She’d been very successful at doing that…until the accident had thrown her for a loop.

  She was starting over again in Florida for a lot of reasons. Not just the weather, either. She needed to rebuild herself from the ground up, and the person who knew her adult self the best, who could help her do that, who Dani knew she could lean on for support, was Mikayla.

  Having Miky’s support worked once. There was no reason it couldn’t work again.

  I hope.

  Chapter Seven

  “Well, is that the best you can do?”

  It was only ten thirty Monday morning, and Hunter was already working on a migraine.

  That always happened whenever he had to fill in on the sales floor, instead of being hidden away in the business office, where he preferred to be.

  He hated working sales.

  Hated it.

  Haaated it.

  He had an accounting degree. He ran the office, did the paperwork, the taxes, the bookkeeping, the payroll.

  He wasn’t a gemologist. He knew the basics from being around it all his life, but he didn’t care about jewelry other than as line items on an expense spreadsheet or purchase invoice.

  This morning’s events were stressful enough that not even revisiting memories of his weekend play with Coop could help shift his mood or stave off the throbbing behind his eyes.

  “Ma’am, that’s our sale price. That piece is already discounted fifty percent. I can’t go any lower than that.”

  She stared at the ring. He could tell she really wanted it.

  “My husband said that jewelry stores mark stuff up a lot and I shouldn’t take the first price without negotiating first.”

  Fine. Ask Publix if they’ll negotiate the price of a loaf of bread with you.

  That’s not what he said, though.

  Even though he reeeally wanted to.

  “We’re currently running a sale. Retail on this ring is usually five hundred. That is the sales price.” They were still making close to a hundred dollars on it. He’d be damned if he’d go down any more on it.

  She tried it on again and held her right hand out in front of her, looking at the ring. Gold setting, six small diamonds around a blue topaz center stone. Yes, they made a little profit on the markup, but they’d had to start cutting their margins over the past couple of years due to the economy. Hell, it’d been all Hunter could do to talk his father into start buying scrap gold from people to help boost their bottom line.

  The chain of five jewelry stores that their grandfather had started over fifty years earlier had been in serious straits before Hunter finally convinced his father of that. They’d also added an eBay store to help with things. One of their part-timers had moved from sales into running that full time there in the main office.

  It’d helped keep them afloat.

  I cannot wait to get the hell out of here.

  “I can throw in a free jewelry cleaning kit, if you’d like,” he offered, more to try to move her one way or another so he could get her out of there.

  She smiled. “I’ll take it.”

  “Wonderful. Will that be cash or charge?”

  “Charge.”

  As he rang up the sale, he made sure to have the other clerk on duty, one of their part-timers who’d been with them for years, enter her employee code into the terminal before he started the transaction. He was paid salary, since he was family and management. Their sales clerks received a small commission in addition to their hourly wages.

  It would irritate his father if he saw Hunter doing that, but Hunter didn’t care. He wouldn’t screw one of their sales staff out of a commission.

  Finally, Margie arrived. His sister-in-law and the wife of his eldest brother, Terry, she was technically the store manager.

  “Thanks, Hunter!” She gave him a quick peck on the cheek as she hurried by. He’d known it was coming and managed not to recoil from her. “I’m really sorry about this. The closing took longer than we thought.”

  “So the house is yours?”

  “Yeah. Well, will be, once everything goes through. We can’t actually get the keys until the end of next month, when the sellers will be out of it. Which is fine, because we haven’t closed the sale on ours yet. Then we’ll still have to paint it and stuff before we move in. And it even has a pool.”

  “Great. I’m going to get back to my office.”

  “Okay. Thanks again.”

  After punching in his security code to open the door, he managed to keep himself from running through the door to the back.

  Barely.

  Their corporate headquarters was located at this store. Which was a way of saying they had the biggest building. It was also where their repair shop was located, jewelers who repaired, resized, and otherwise modified pieces or made custom jewelry. Fortunately, it was only ten minutes from the duplex he and Todd shared with one of his mother’s cousins.

  A duplex his father owned and had inherited from Hunter’s grandfather. He and Todd lived there rent-free since Hunter worked for the family business, one concession his father had volunteered instead of the disbursement when Hunter turned twenty-five. They split expenses, but it allowed both of them to put money into savings every month.

  Unfortunately, it also meant having to be very discreet when home, since the nosey cousin on his mom’s side living in the other side of the duplex liked to keep her eye on them, and she wouldn’t hesitate to report things back to Hunter’s parents.

  Ever since Coop and Hunter had been involved, several times Coop had fixed Hunter up with women, to have them come over and be seen there with Hunter when Todd wasn’t around, or to attend family functions with Hunter, to help put on an act.

  The charade exhausted Hunter.

  He settled in at his desk in his office, the door shut against further intrusions. He’d planned to work on quarterly taxes this morning for their smallest store down in Venice before Margie had called him in a panic and asked him to help fill in until her arrival.

  Three. More. Months.

  He tried not to get his hopes up. If he did, surely that would jinx things, insuring his father withheld the disbursement for another five years, locking him into his employment there.

  He wanted that money. It would be more than enough for him and Todd to buy a house of their own, for Hunter to go back to school, and to escape the weight of this job.

  Which he hated.

  After Hunter had said he didn’t want to be a jeweler, his father had only agreed to paying his college tuition when Hunter agreed to obtain a degree in accounting. Something Hunter could still use for the business.

&nb
sp; The way Hunter’s grandfather had set up the trusts, the grandkids had to work for the family business to be eligible. In return, they received health care benefits—as did their spouses and children. He’d wanted to make sure that the business stayed with the family once he wasn’t around to oversee it any longer.

  By his way of thinking, if the kids had to make the jewelry business their life, they’d be reluctant to walk away from it after several years invested in it.

  He’d wanted to make sure it wouldn’t be sold off to some other company and split apart upon his death. One of the other benefits was if the kids worked for the family business for at least ten years, it would keep paying their health benefits, and that of their spouse and kids.

  Even if they didn’t work there any longer.

  Those stipulations were fine for Terry or Kent or any of the others who actually enjoyed this business.

  Hunter never had, and never would.

  He’d wanted to be a writer. Get a degree in literature, maybe become a teacher so he could still earn a living.

  Even in high school, his father had pushed and pushed him. Of the six kids born to Dolores and Barry Morgan, Hunter had been different even as a baby. Fussy, colicky, “sensitive,” “emotional.”

  If he had a penny for every time he’d heard the words, “Gee, lighten up,” from his five siblings, he wouldn’t need to work for his family.

  He’d realized during his teen years that he was gay, but also knew in his family that would likely go over as well as a rat in the potato salad at a church social. He’d tried dating girls in high school and college, even attempting to lose his virginity to one, but he’d accepted that part of him would have to stay hidden. At least once he’d hit eighteen his parents quit forcing him to go to church every Sunday. In that way, he was treated equally to his siblings, and pretty much all of them had stopped going to church.

  One less heaping of guilt to deal with every week.

  They’d all taken a cue from Terry, who’d claimed it was cutting into his valuable study time for college, about the only argument their father—and grandfather—would accept as valid. Frank Morgan had been a strict churchgoer. He’d died when Hunter was eleven, but with Hunter’s father being the only child, the weight of carrying on the family business had passed to him.

  Their father had literally been raised in the back of the original store, learning the trade from when he was old enough to stand on his own two feet and not shove semi-precious stones up his nose. It was in Barry Morgan’s blood.

  Hunter was the odd one out, in more ways than one.

  I’m ungrateful.

  Their parents had been strict growing up, but as kids none of them ever lacked for anything. They’d learned a strong work ethic that had pretty much been the only thing—along with a heaping portion of secret guilt—to get Hunter through his degree in college. Once his father was convinced Hunter could still be an important part of the business without being able to tell a princess cut from a princess sleeve, he’d eased up considerably on Hunter.

  Meaning instead of it feeling like a tank crushing his shoulders, Hunter felt like an SUV had been parked there.

  Hunter didn’t even care that when he left the family business it probably meant his parents wouldn’t want to speak to him ever again. Especially after he married Todd and added him to his health insurance plan, which was better than the one Todd had at his job.

  But there wouldn’t be a damn thing they could do to stop him then.

  That thought finally brought a smile to his face and helped him beat back the headache threatening to knock him on his ass.

  * * * *

  Todd stared at his monitor, unable to focus. Even their Monday morning meeting hadn’t been able to hold his attention.

  His mind wandered back to the events of the weekend. It pleasantly shocked him that Coop had taken the step he had with them. No, he knew it didn’t necessarily mean it’d lead to anything else happening, but the fact that Coop was comfortable enough with them to do what he had meant the door might be opening.

  He’d be fine with that.

  There were selfish reasons aplenty for that. He was attracted to Coop, he knew Hunter would only benefit from a closer relationship with the man, and if Coop could get his needs met with them, maybe there was less of a chance of the man one day meeting a woman who might make him re-evaluate his relationship with Hunter.

  How he’d tossed Bethany out on her ear aside, Coop was a guy. It spoke volumes to how he felt about Hunter, but it also wasn’t reasonable to expect the guy to want to stay single.

  Maybe we can start sleeping over more.

  Being a submissive wasn’t exactly encoded in Todd’s DNA, but he’d gladly roll over and let Coop do the driving and bottom to him in bed if it meant a long-term permanency Hunter could count on. No hardship there.

  Guy wasn’t badly hung, either. He’d long suspected Coop’s cock wasn’t anything to laugh at, based on the size of the bulge he’d spotted on more than a few occasions. Seeing it in the flesh—literally—had Todd licking his lips and wanting a chance to taste him firsthand.

  If I could just figure out a way to engineer Hunter giving him a blowjob…

  It wasn’t that Hunter could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, although he could. It was the skillful, sexy way he did it, including deep-throating the recipient all the way to the balls.

  Todd hadn’t been Hunter’s first male lover. The first boyfriend Hunter had was while Hunter was in college, and had been fifteen years older than Hunter. The man had taught Hunter some mad skills, too. Skills Todd was now the happy beneficiary of.

  Hunter and Todd had met and become friends while in college. At the time, Todd hadn’t been interested in anything more than friendship and being occasional fuck buddies with Hunter, because he knew Hunter was deep in the closet and would firmly stay there.

  Then there was the night six years ago when Hunter had shown up at his doorstep, drunk off his ass, literally during a tropical storm, sobbing that he thought maybe he wanted to die. Todd had brought him in, stripped his sopping wet clothes off him, got him into the shower where he held him…

  And never stopped holding on to him.

  He’d always been attracted to Hunter as more than just a friend. But Todd never thought Hunter would ever be ready to take that step toward a relationship with him, so he’d pursued other relationships, never really satisfied. Fortunately, the night Hunter had shown up at his front door, Todd had been single.

  Pretend to be nothing more than roommates around Hunter’s family? Sure. That he could do, if it meant the rest of the time was theirs, and that once Hunter had his inheritance they could drop the act and get married.

  Todd had given up trying to talk Hunter into walking away from the money. Todd didn’t give a shit about the money. He understood why it was important to Hunter, but if he had to choose between being broke and happy with Hunter, and Hunter being miserably tied to his family, he’d choose being broke. They could make it work somehow. He’d already told Hunter he’d sign a pre-nup.

  So Todd moved in—conveniently after his apartment building sustained damage from the storm, giving them the perfect excuse—and from that point on, Todd knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Hunter.

  He’d known about the man’s struggle with anxiety. No shit, if he’d been raised in that family, and forced to work for and with them, he’d likely be anxious most of the time, too.

  Adding Coop into the equation wasn’t a bad thing, no matter how Todd looked at it.

  Todd sent Hunter a text message at noon to check on him.

  How’s my buddy?

  Even though Hunter kept his phone locked and never left it where someone could see it, Todd always kept his text messages on the neutral side when Hunter was working. It didn’t raise Hunter’s stress levels that way.

  It surprised him when Hunter actually called him a moment later.

  “Hey, everything okay?” Todd asked.<
br />
  “Just a long morning.” As Hunter talked, Todd leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and recalled the scene from Saturday evening as he had his cock buried in Hunter’s ass and watched Coop jerking off.

  When Hunter finished describing his morning, which Todd recognized as a way for his guy to deal with the stress and anchor himself, Todd wasn’t expecting the next comment.

  “Are you okay?” Hunter asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

  “I…I wanted to make sure. After…” Hunter trailed off and didn’t finish.

  Todd wanted to walk a line between reassuring him and not triggering him while at work. “Buddy, I’m great. We had a fantastic weekend, and I’m looking forward to doing it again. Soon. And hopefully frequently.”

  No mistaking the relief in Hunter’s voice. “Me, too,” he softly said. “Thank you.”

  When Todd finally got off the phone with him a few minutes later, Hunter had sounded more relaxed. He was glad to hear it, because he didn’t want his guy stressed out at work. Especially about personal stuff. Hunter had made so much progress that anything Todd could do to keep that progress from backsliding, he would. No matter what.

  And if that meant pretending they weren’t anything more than roommates until Hunter’s dad quit being an asshole and handed over the money, that’s what he’d do.

  He just wanted his guy to be happy and to enjoy life. If he could make that happen, he’d be happy to do it.

  Chapter Eight

  Monday, Coop’s mind wandered any time he had free time. Which wasn’t much, since it was a Monday. He’d exchanged his usual morning texts with Hunter, checked in with Todd to make sure Hunter—and Todd—were really okay, and kept thinking about Dani.

  I need to tell them about her.

  Dinner with someone wasn’t anything to worry about. But on the off-chance dinner tomorrow night eventually developed into something else somewhere down the road, he didn’t want to just spring Dani on Hunter. That was the fastest way to trigger him.

  Coop knew the chances were Dani would eventually become nothing more than a friend. If that was the case, hearing her name come up from time to time wouldn’t send Hunter’s mind recklessly spiraling out into the what-if wilderness.