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“Stop manipulating me and just let me meet my fucking date. He’s a little and I have to be nice. This isn’t that complicated.” I was not the one at the club he needed to be giving the lecture to.

I was, however, the only one standing in his backyard not-so-patiently waiting for my date to arrive so we could have a poolside picnic.

“He’s worried you’re going to be upset if he likes what you think of as an issue.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he struck a dramatic pose. “Can you see why I’m a tad bit worked up?”

Possibly.

“No.” I wasn’t going to admit he might have a point. It would go to his head. “I will not be mean. I will not tell him he’s doing it wrong because I don’t know how to do it to begin with. I will get to know him and we’ll talk. That’s what people do on dates.”

Even weird ones where they were going to eat dinner in a mutual friend’s backyard.

“This is an audition to see if you want to date and you know it. He knows it. I know it.” Gesturing wildly around the beautifully decorated yard, he was wide-eyed and looked a bit nuts. “I just don’t want you to fuck this up by getting defensive.”

I wasn’t going to admit he had a point about that either. “You’re just making up worries to keep obsessing.”

I wasn’t going to sabotage myself, though, no matter what he was afraid of…especially now that I realized I might’ve done that out of self-defense.

Dessie hadn’t been the only one to have a few bad apples in his past.

I just had to remember not to be an ass and it would be fine.

“You’re an idiot if you think any of that was believable.” Huffing, he squared his shoulders and gestured more rationally to the table that had been set out. “You’re going to have a nice dinner. You’re not going to assume he’s thinking something bad. You’re not going to get weird just because he wants to do stuff to you that no one else has ever done. You’re going to ask questions about what toys he likes to play with when he’s little and you might even get to ask him about grown-up stuff if you think the chemistry is moving in that direction.”

So far, it wasn’t an irrational list.

But then he started losing his marbles again and his hands started swinging. “You’re also going to keep your clothes on in my backyard and you’re going to make good fucking decisions. If you need privacy, make sure you know his safeword and then lead him to the pool house. Make good fucking decisions.”

I shouldn’t have.

I really shouldn’t have.

But I did.

“What’s a safeword?”

Hmm, I hadn’t realized his face could go that color purple.

Before I could decide if I’d killed him or not, because he was standing there the color of an eggplant and gaping at me, Silas saved him by charging out of the house.

Or maybe he’d saved me?

It was hard to tell.

“For fuck’s sake, I’m not leaving you two alone again.” Sweeping Austin up in his arms, Silas threw a frustrated glare in my direction as he headed back into the house. “Don’t hurt Dessie.”

Oh, Dessie.

He’d been hidden behind Silas and was standing there with his mouth open and just blinking like Austin had.

Oops.

“Um, how much of that did you hear?” I thought it was a reasonable place to start but he jumped ahead.

“Did you really say that just to fuck with him?” Dessie didn’t seem like he was going to get past that point anytime soon, so I nodded.

“Yes, but in my defense, he was driving me crazy. I’ve been here twenty minutes because he lied to me about the time we were supposed to have dinner and he’s been lecturing me since I arrived. I was really nice for the first fifteen minutes.”

Hmm… more blinks.

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