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As the days passed, I enjoyed sleeping with Cade and Jamie, together and sometimes separately, but I did my best to stay realistic and keep my heart guarded. At the same time, I kept looking for a third guy. When the grocery store was a bust, I signed up for a single’s mixer, then freaked out about being in a crowded room of strangers, each assessing each other as potential spouses. I just wanted a fourth in a foursome, not babies.
“Please come with me,” I begged Ellis, riffling through the bag of dresses he’d brought over from the set. Didn’t the soap opera costume people ever wonder where their sexy designer evening wear kept disappearing to? I held up a teeny-tiny red dress with barely-there spaghetti straps that looked like it would barely go from my nipples to my hoo-ha. I tossed that one over my shoulder.
“Sorry, can’t. I have a date.” He quickly checked his phone. “Make that dates. Plural.”
“Come on,” I whined. “It starts early. You can just come for a bit and then bounce. I don’t want to go alone.”
“Why not go with Man Bun Dude or Mr. McDrums?” Ellis asked, jerking his thumb at the wall separating my apartment from Jamie’s—a wall that was shaking with the beat of Jamie’s bass drum.
Jamie’s drumming hadn’t become any less loud since he agreed to participate in the sex study with me, but it had become perhaps a little less angry. In fact, sometimes I heard him play the song Sex Study Neighbor, and as much as it embarrassed me to know he’d written a song about my deepest, darkest secret, the song was sweet—melodious and emotional.
My eyes moved from the shaking wall back to Ellis. “I’d be more comfortable with you. Besides, they wouldn’t blend. I need someone who can blend.”
Ellis’s eyes did this rare narrowing thing, which I knew meant he was pissed off. He rarely got angry, but there was something brewing under his usual cheerful surface. “You’re really going to hunt for a complete stranger to fuck?”
I stared at him blankly. “I thought we already had the talk about your double standard? Besides, look at Jamie and Cade.” Even as I said the words, tingles shot through me at the memory of Ellis standing in the doorway of my bedroom, stroking himself as he watched Cade and Jamie fuck me. “They were strangers to me.”
He shifted his gaze away from me and stared at the wall. “That was different. You’d been checking out Cade for months, and Jamie has been living next door to you.”
Those were true, and I got why Ellis was feeling protective, but I couldn’t believe there was anything more to it than that. And I couldn’t let him stop me either. Participating in the sex study wasn’t just about the money, it never had been. It was about proving that I could be a bolder, more adventurous, more passionate Tessa. And look where it had led me already? Cade and Jamie were in my life now. Maybe just temporarily, but I’d take them for as long as I could have them.
But I shouldn't keep dragging Ellis into my schemes. Shouldn’t keep hoping that at some point, me asking him for help would lead to something more than friendship.
Oh God. That’s what I was doing, wasn’t it? Did I really think by including Ellis in my sex study plans, he’d end up being my third lover? Granted, it had come pretty close to that, what with the way he’d jerked off to watching me with Cade and Jamie, but he’d blown that off. He’d blownusoff. I needed to get a clue and realize that sooner or later, I was going to have to stop depending on Ellis so much. “No worries. I’ll go by myself.”
“No.” Ellis stood and held up his hands. “I’ll go to the mixer with you.”
“Okay,” I said immediately. Ugh. So much for no longer depending on him.
“I need to go home first to shave and shower, so I’ll call you an Uber and will meet you there.” Ellis marched to the door, calling over his shoulder, “And I get to pick the dress. Wear the red one.”
I stared at the teeny-tiny puddle of red fabric flopped on my floor. With a sigh, I slicked on the strappy red dress, did some magic with a daring red lipstick and heavy mascara, and waited for the text from my Uber driver.
* * *
Ellis and I walked into the bustling conference hall of the Holiday Inn in Burbank and not even the presence of a small buffet of cheese and crackers next to the wine bar could ease the churning in my stomach. Too many people to talk to,waytoo many.
Okay,” I whispered to Ellis out of the corner of my mouth as I scanned the crowd for a “sex study on super late notice” type. “What’s the plan of attack here?” I noticed a thirty-something guy in a business suit checking out a woman’s ass. I didn’t feel a buzz looking at him, but maybe if I talked to him, or got close enough to smell his cologne (he looked like the type to bathe in cologne), I might feel a tingle or two.
“What about him?” I asked, surreptitiously pointing. “Might be smart to run a criminal record, but… Ellis?”
I turned to realize with mild horror that Ellis was gone and I had been talking to absolutely no one right in front of people, at least one of whom I was hoping to convince to get naked with me and two other guys. Off to a great start, per usual…
Clearing my throat, I moved further into the room and searched for where Ellis might have disappeared to. That wasn’t like him. That wasn’t like him at all.
I found him surrounded by three beautiful young women, all giggling and touching his toned biceps with manicured hands. Jealousy flooded through me. Fingers curling into frustrated fists, I marched straight up to the giddy little group and forced a smile even though Ellis kept his attention on the blonde girl in the bubblegum pink dress to his right.
“Ellis, there you are,” I said rather sweetly. “Your mom wanted me to tell you that if you take any girls home tonight, she washed fresh underwear for you and put them in your top drawer.”
Bubble Gum Pink’s smile faltered. “We, um, we have to go to the ladies’ room.” She pulled her hand quickly from Ellis’s arm and gave him a fake smile. “Have a nice night.”
“Bye,” I said politely, watching with a slight smile as the other two hurried after their bestie in their towering black heels.
When I turned back, Ellis was already moving away from me, heading to the line at the bar.
Ellis,” I hissed, hurrying after him in my own pair of uncomfortable heels. “Where are you going?” I grabbed onto his arm and turned him around to face me.
“You want a beer or something?” he asked as casually as if I were just a bro, not a woman he’d seen getting banged by two other men and one who knew he’ddefinitelygotten hard while doing so. “My treat.”
