Page 10 of Puppy on a Leash

“Yep. Indian.” Jaime showed the yellow flyer as if there wasn’t only one Indian restaurant I ordered from. “They said it would take about an hour. Maybe longer.”

I frowned. He didn’t look disturbed at all by it. “They usually take forty minutes, max.”

“Yeah, well…” Jaime alternated between looking at me and the book I’d given him. “See, I was going to order a normal amount of food, but then you had to taunt me with my concern about paying the bills. So, I took advantage.”

Back to being a brat, then?

I made a show of looking unperturbed while reclining against the back of the couch. It really wasn’t something that bothered me. Perhaps I didn’t feel as indifferent to money after things blew up with my family and I lost that safety net, but I still earned more than I knew what to do with. One extravagant takeout order to an Indian restaurant wasn’t going to affect my net balance much.

“Let me guess, you forgot to order my food, too?”

Jen did nine out of ten times. It used to drive Marga insane. There had been literal fights over ordering takeout.

I scrubbed a hand down my face. It had been a year now, and our arrangement had been born out of convenience more than anything else, but…

Fuck, I missed having a sub or two to tame.

“No?” Jaime frowned. “But I didn’t know you were vegan.”

Huh.

“What makes you so sure I am?”

I was. I just might be developing an addiction to learning everything about how his brain worked.

Jaime snorted. “One of the flyers is for a vegan restaurant. All the others, I know they have vegan options because they’re the ones we order from when we hang out with María. She’s vegan, too. Oh, and all the food you’ve circled is explicitly vegan.”

I waited to see if he would say anything else, but he clammed up almost as fast as he started talking.

I narrowed my eyes. There was something about him. He seemed to be feeling off-kilter, but he didn’t behave like most people I knew when they felt that way. He was biting, but he wasn’t reckless. His eyes didn’t dart around looking for a way out, and he didn’t hold his breath expectantly while waiting for me to say something.

“María is vegan?”

I only knew she was a switch with one killer body. She loved lace and group play nights at Plumas, and she’d been harboring an unrequited crush on Erika that blew up a few months ago. No one had told me shit, but I had eyes.

“If you’re about to say something about her body, I swear?—”

I raised a hand, one finger pointing up. Jaime shut up right away.

He really was always ready to attack, wasn’t he? “María is the hottest woman in the club. Wanna continue that threat?”

Jaime glowered. Of course, I knew what he’d been thinking about. Some people associated the image of vegan bodies with malnourished ones. Curvier, bigger people like María didn’t fit that image. Neither did I, to be fair. It wasn’t the same, obviously, but no one looked at my muscles and thought I could maintain them without animal protein.

I wasn’t a bodybuilder, but anything other than scrawny blew people’s minds. It just wasn’t the first thing that came to mind. I’d long ago given up on engaging with those discourses.

“Who’s the hottest man, then?”

I gulped.

Fuck.

I’d really walked into that one, hadn’t I?

I should’ve just said person.

It had been a year, but I wasn’t used to people knowing yet. Probably because them knowing hadn’t been my choice in the first place. I wasn’t used to anyone thinking of me as anything other than a straight man. Even when Erika dropped by with one excuse or another about the club that always ended up with discussing the bigit, my brain still needed a few seconds to get back on track.

“Make a guess.”

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