Page 9 of As The Shifter World Turns

Except I did the entire way home, and by the time I parked the car, the zipper of my jeans was cutting into my cock. Where Archer was thick, I was long, and it just didn’t fit curled up in my underwear when I was hard enough to pound nails, which I was thanks to the images my imagination decided to conjure up.

I was charging those people extra because—fuck it, I could, and that was gross… even if it led to some far less gross daydreams—day wet dreams, except I hadn’t come yet… because I was hitting the shower when I got upstairs.

I climbed out of the car and raced to the door, nearly knocking over Archer, of all people.

“Sorry.” Great. Just what I needed was to knock over the new guy as I was sporting a woody I got thinking of him.

“No. It’s my fault. I was in a hurry to get this out of my place.” He held a garbage bag out at hand’s length. “The guy who had my place before me was gross.”

“How so?” He’d been quiet and worked a lot, but I never got gross vibes from him.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

Only now I really did. “Let me.” I took the bag from him and brought it the rest of the way to the dumpster, turning around to see him staring at me, mouth wide open. “What?

“Ummm, you may want some bleach now.” He pulled in his bottom lip with his teeth. ”I… I meant it when I said you didn’t want to know, but trust me, bleach and boiling water.”

He looked more down than at me, his cheeks a nice shade of pink nearing red.

“Not going to tell me?” I clarified, and when he shook his head, I turned back to the dumpster. It wasn’t like I couldn’t look.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. I’d spent very little time with him since he arrived, but the time I did spend with him included an awful lot of stupid messages.

“Stop. It’s a two-sided vibrator, okay? And it still had lube on it.” He said it as if it were one giant word.

A belly laugh rolled through me. Of all the things for us to have in common, finding used sex toys was apparently one of them.

“What’s so funny?” Neil came out the back door, his own garbage in hand.

“Oh, you know.” I had to catch my breath. “At work today I found a used dildo, and cleaning his new place, Archer found one. Guessing you have one in there?”

Ryder, on his phone, pushed past both of them as if they weren’t even there.

“I’m on my way to work, but after that, let me take you to dinner,” Ryder said. It hurt hearing him beg like that. He deserved better and I almost said so, but what good would that do? Ryder would be pissy at me, and he’d double down his attempts to win back the shithole that was his ex. “I know we broke up, but I’ve been thinking… I don’t need to have such a short leash on you, it wasn’t fair of me.” He clicked his fob, unlocking the car doors, and climbed inside.

“I hate that he feels that Kellan is worthy of his time.” I sighed, closing the distance between Archer, Neil, and I to avoid being hit.

“He’ll come around.” Daire stepped out. “Have you guys seen Ivor?”

“Yeah,” Archer said. “He said something like, if you see Daire, tell him I’ll get with him later. I’m late for class.”

Crap. Ivor was avoiding Daire again, which meant he was low on cash and was going to be late with rent.

Daire didn’t care. He’d be fine if we all just lived here and hung out and sang kumbaya, grilled all the meats, and watched shitty movies together. And if this was his place, he’d probably do just that. He didn’t care about money. He had gobs of it.

What he didn’t have was the deed to this building. His parents owned that and were doing some kind of tough love thing by making him manage it.

Not that it was too tough love, given he still had access to his money, but in a way, for Daire it was. He had to do things like collect rent, something that always made him sweat.

“If you wait here, I can get you my check real quick,” I offered. That was the other thing. There was no automation allowed. Nope. They made him collect checks. He said they were old-fashioned, but I had a feeling it was more to keep him from helping out people like Ivor, who were struggling.

I kinda hated them.

“I can follow you, and thanks. Dinner with the parents tonight.” He followed me upstairs and I waited until we were out of earshot to ask him. “Ivor is behind, right? That’s why he avoided you?”

His job sucked. It should make a ton of money. He poured drinks for a living and drunks over tipped more often than not. But he didn’t, his boss doing the whole communal pot thing with every person who served or didn’t, and they didn’t divide it out evenly. Nope. They made sure that everyone achieved minimum wage so they didn’t need to supplement their shit wages.

“It’s not for me to say.” Which was a yes.

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