Page 40 of Temptation at Randy's

For now.

The handholding I was talking about here was not the physical one, anyway.

“Uh, right, yeah.” I blinked when I realized Dylan had been standing there, waiting for an answer. Well, he hadn’t been waiting for long, or I would’ve heard something about it. It still made me shift on my feet. “I keep getting in my head.”

“Oh, really.” Dylan snorted. Thankfully, he stopped teasing and got to work on the corset laces. I’d tried to watch tutorials, but I really could not comprehend how some people did it on their own. “You’re fine, babe. I mean, you’re probably gonna crash so badly after all the sub-frenzy is done, but I’ve got you.”

“That’s…” I grimaced, his words leaving a sour aftertaste in my mouth. “Not as encouraging as you seem to think it is.”

“I think I’m plenty encouraging.”

In other words, he had to be fighting with his boyfriend again. He always got way more cynical and snappier when that happened.

It left me conflicted. On the one hand, I wanted to dig in there. On the other hand… There was no way I could focus on that drama today. It was selfish—I hated that it was—but it wouldn’t be fair to him if I tried to fake it, either.

“Text me if you need anything, yeah?”

“Sure I will.” He rolled his eyes.

Rolling his eyes in response to literally every little thing he was told was another sign that trouble was brewing. Maybe I could talk him into going out this weekend.

The tavern he liked had a promo going on. I’d gotten an ad for it yesterday, but I’d forgotten to mention it to him.

It was for the best. If I had, he’d probably be planning going there with the boyfriend, and that… never ended well.

“I mean it, though.” It was important that I said it—for my own sanity if anything else. “Claude will understand, too. They’re a good friend.”

“And you know that because?”

“Because…” I blanked. “Because.”

I fixated on those things. It was in the way Claude talked about Ben without a camera on their face, in the way they bantered with the staff at Randy’s, and how they always stopped to say hi when they recognized someone.

I noticed that stuff. Claude would groan out loud and force a change in subject if I shared the observations with them, but that was beside the point. They thought they gave off this aloof vibe or something, but they didn’t.

It was the opposite, really. They were a total mama bear. I saw how indignant they got when we were hanging out and Ben sent them a text to a new article about him and Julian that wasn’t entirely flattering. They cared a lot.

I might not know every single thing about them, and this was all so new that I hadn’t wrapped my head around it yet, but I knew some things.

I knew Claude was the kind of person people should want to have around. It was more than enough for me.

“So…” I sighed. “How do I look?”

I supposed I liked how I looked in the mirror, but… This would still be my first time in a kink club. What if I thought my outfit matched the vibe, but it actually didn’t?

“I didn’t even know you had biker boots.”

“Of course I do.” I pouted. “Just because I’m in my cottagecore era lately doesn’t mean I?—”

“Okay, okay, I got it.” Dylan raised his hands in the air.

We were definitely going to talk about his boyfriend after I survived tonight.

Dylan sighed, his face eventually falling before he ran a hand through his hair. I was pretty sure he’d just woken up when I asked if he could help me.

His schedules were something else.

“You do look good,” he admitted, “and your Claude is gonna love it. I’m just messed up.”

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