Page 105 of Look, Don't Touch

“It is.” I get up and refill our short goblets. “How many visits have you had?”

“One.”

“And?” I sit back on her olive-green couch and wait.

“It was just a meet and greet for me and my three potential guides.”

“And?”

“I couldn’t drink at the meet and greet.” Her brows are pulled high and her jaw low at the audacity.

“Safe. Sane. Consensual. It’s hard to be all three when you’re trashed.” I grin. “If you ever decide to become a member, you can have two drinks a night, but even that’s subject to change depending on the seriousness of your scene.”

She gulps air. “Shit. I’m out of my depths.”

“Not for long.” I waggle my brows. “Not with your very own guide.”

“We’ll see.” She checks a message on her phone. Her blush is immediate. Astor shoves her phone between the chair cushions so fast and hard that she might never find it.

“Who was that?”

“One of my potential guides.” She huffs. “He’s testing me before the selection and questionnaire process begins.”

“How so?”

“It’s a sext, all right!” She goes purple with embarrassment. “He’s so pushy, this one.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.” She slams her glass down, and the table shudders. She doesn’t notice. “The whole time we were there, he looked at me like I was a human Rubik’s cube.”

Not far off.

My friend is a puzzle.

“The others were nice. One offered to show me around. He kept his hands in his pockets at all times, which I appreciated. The other one asked a few well-placed questions about me, non-kink related.”

“And the other one?” My heart is in my throat.

“He just stared.” She tosses her hands in the air. “He just reclined in this big chair, taking up the whole thing, and watched me like if he studied me long enough, he would figure me out.” Her fingers toy with the buttons on her blouse. “It was unnerving.”

“Was he hot?”

“Yes.” Her amber eyes roll, and she huffs like that’s a bad thing.

“And the others?”

“They were all beautiful. Muscular but lean. Ethnically ambiguous. My height or taller. That’s a guess for Mr. Stalker Eyes since he didn’t stand, not even to greet me, but when the others sat, he looked longer than them, meaner too.”

I can’t fight my smile.

“What?”

“Tell me what his text said.”

“No,” she whines.

“Astor.” I wiggle my brows and my glass.

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