Page 22 of Mastered By Desire

“Okay. Goodnight.”

“Night.”

He walks away, and I stare at the ceiling.

Holy shit.

Dmitri

I do believe that little girl was playing with herself in my bed.

I lie awake on the couch for a long fucking time, hoping to hear more. Either she’s in there having stealth orgasms, or she gave up.

I hope it’s the orgasms.

I wish she’d let me watch.

8

Gage

I’m driving home from the club when Claudia calls.

If it were anyone else, literally anyone, I wouldn’t answer.

“Gagey,” she says in her breathless Jacqueline Kennedy voice. “How are you?”

If she were anyone else, literally anyone, I would hang up as soon as I heardGagey.

“Claudia, why are you calling me at”—I check the clock—“ten past three in the morning?”

“Is it…? Oh shit, Gagey.” She sounds like she’s going to cry. “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

“No, not at all. No need to apologize.”

“Okay, good.” Now she sounds thrilled. Either she’s high, or her meds need adjusting.

It’s probably both and she’s self-medicating.

I pull into my building’s parking garage and find my spot, but I leave the car running so Claudia’s voice continues to sound through the car speakers.

“I was thinking,” she says, “that we should get together.”

“Sure. The usual place, dinner tomorrow?”

“No, I’m still in LA. And I didn’t mean just us.”

A heavy sensation fills my gut. “Claudia…”

“Not the entire crew,” she rushes to say, “just Javi and Todd and Jessie and Nic.”

I don’t know what to say, so I let my silence speak for itself.

“It’ll be like old times,” she says. “We used to have so much fun, right, Gage? The six of us, the underdogs, the Shinies.”

That had been our nickname among all our other coworkers. The Shinies. We were the fresh meat and we shone the brightest…but only because we had so much more to prove.

“Pleeeeeease,” Claudia says.

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