Page 4 of Bargains with her Naga Boss

“It’s such an inappropriate thing to ask, and besides, I mean, I can just google it, so…” She squared her shoulders and fixed her gaze on the door, because surely a customer would come inside and save her from this mortifying conversation.

“Google it?” Then he stopped coming close to her and turned to face the counter also. “Oh.”

She cringed.

“Oh,” he said, laughing in embarrassment. “Hey, uh, I didn’t… it was a really bad joke. I would never do something like that anyway, like trade sex for, uh, upward career mobility. That’s, um…” He cleared this throat.

“Right?” she said, nodding. “I would never either.”

“No one would think that about you,” he said.

She turned to look at him, and she realized he was now doing the thing that she had done a minute ago, thinking about her as a sexual being, a thing he had also never done before. Well, she didn’t know, maybe he had, but it seemed as though his gaze was assessing.

He tugged on his scarf, like it was too tight on his neck, and jerked his gaze away from her.

“I mean, it wouldn’t work,” she said. “Because Will is gay, and he wouldn’t even want me.”

“No, absolutely, you would not experience that sort of harassment from him.” His voice had gone oddly dull. “We should talk about something else.”

“Definitely,” she said.

It was very, very quiet.

“Will probably wouldn’t be interested in me either.”

She turned to him. “Do you even have an asshole?” Then her face felt like it was on fire and she did a literal facepalm.

He started laughing, really hard.

She banged her palm into her forehead, groaning.

“Okay, so naga biology class is in session,” said Niles in a low and lilting voice.

She straightened and gave him a pleading look. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why—”

“Nagas have a cloaca,” he said, “which is a slit where all reproductive and endocrine functions are taken, uh, care of.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Yeah, if I ever get a chance to talk to whoever thought it was a good idea to have waste removal and sex centrally located on pretty much every species? Not a great design, in my opinion.”

She snorted.

“So, not exactly like an asshole, no. But I mean, do people figure out ways to fuck the cloaca? People are very, very creative.”

She snorted again.

“And yes,” he said, leaning closer, “that’s where both of my penises are.”

She slapped a hand over her mouth, letting out a guffaw.

He cleared his throat and slithered away from her into the kitchen. “I’m going to check the bread in the ovens!” he sang out.

THE KITCHEN INThe Daily Bread was huge. It was far, far bigger than the small area in the front where they had the counter and the cases of sandwiches.

This was because, apparently, back in the day when Will and Gordon first bought this place, Will had the kitchen custom made to Gordon’s specifications, and it was basically the biggest, hugest, nicest industrial kitchen you’d ever seen, with acres of stainless steel counters centrally located in the middle of the room and ovens lining the walls and a twelve-burner gas stove on the other wall, and three enormous, industrial-sized sinks along the front of the room.

She was basically never back there because she was never cooking. She was always working counter.

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