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Honey?
Slowly, Eric turned around, aware of Adrian watching him with an oddly shrewd expression. What—did he worry that Eric would throw a tantrum at the prospect of Adrian being in a relationship? That was ridiculous. In fact, unless it had been all for show, Adrian had been dating some other guy from ErosElite back then, and Eric had watched their scenes more than once.
Also, the exact same guy Adrian had been dating stood on the threshold to the dining room.
Sean… Seansomething—Eric couldn’t remember. And maybe his daily capacity for embarrassment was used up because his heart hardly even skipped a beat. Two guys Eric had wanked to for the price of one, no big deal.
“Could have bloody warned me,” he told Adrian.
Adrian laughed, an abrupt departure from the seriousness he’d displayed while showing Eric the ropes. “Sure. But where’d be the fun in that?”
“I’m glad you’re entertained,” Eric said dryly, and oh, look, his ability to form complete sentences in Adrian’s vicinity might be here to stay. Small blessings.
“What am I missing?” Sean asked, drawing closer. He radiated energy, his English tinged with a faint Eastern European accent—and of course his name wasn’t Sean, now was it?
“Eric,” Adrian said, “meet Martin, our bartender extraordinaire. Martin, meet Eric—he came over from London with the new chef and will cover dinners with me. Also…” The small pause Adrian inserted was deliberate, as was the smirk he slid Eric’s way. “His teenage self did somethoroughonline research into personal preferences.”
“That so?” Martin crinkled up his nose, everything about him bright—his laugh and his hair, clear blue eyes, lightly tanned skin. He gave Eric a blatant once-over. “Should have applied for a job with us. With a body and face like that, the boss would have loved you.”
“Down, boy,” Adrian said, smiling, and Martin grinned at him.
“Eh, you know I’m a one-man man now. Still got eyes, though.”
So they really were an item. Eric wasn’t disappointed or anything—after all, he wasn’tlooking. Even a casual hookup would be a bad idea given he’d be seeing Adrian every day.
“I doubt my parents would have reacted like Adrian’s if I’d gone into, uh … adult entertainment,” Eric put in. “Might have given them a heart attack and all. I think their definition of spicy is to keep the light on.”
“Well, mine kicked me out.” Martin’s voice was light even if the bitter twist to his mouth wasn’t.
Fuck.
Eric sifted through several responses, and none of them seemed to cut it. There was nothing he could offer that would make Martin feel even a tiny bit better, was there? In the end, he settled on, “I’msosorry.” Jesus, he hoped it didn’t sound as hollow to Martin as it felt to him. “That really sucks.”
“It does, yeah. But I can’t change it, so what’s the point in crying?” Martin moved on before Eric had a chance to react. “Anyway, man, welcome to the team. You need a bloody amazing drink, you come to me. You need an illustration of how well the old equipment still works, you go to Adrian.”
Hangon a sec.
“Martin.” Adrian shook his head, but he seemed more amused than upset. “I just trained him—don’t scare him away.”
“I’m not scared!” Eric protested. He wasn’t, just … knocked off-balance a bit. “But I thought the two of you—what does that mean, go to Adrian? I thought you guys were dating.”
“Just mates,” Adrian said.
“Bestmates,” Martin corrected, giving Adrian’s shoulder an easy, familiar squeeze. The look Adrian sent him was fond.
“Best mates, yeah.”
“Seems like a rather unconventional take on friendship,” Eric said. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t. A faulty brain-to-mouth filter was rare for him. But between getting up at an ungodly hour, braving Heathrow, being bloody mooed at by a Swiss tourism ad after landingat Zurich airport, followed by the winding bus ride up here—andthenAdrian? Yeah, he’d had a day.
“Are we talking history right now?” Martin cackled. “Because if so, how closely were you watching?”
“Be nice,” Adrian told him even though there was a hint of laughter tucked into the corners of his eyes. To Eric, he said, “Yeah, we fooled around a little in the beginning. Turned out customers liked us together, so we were told to play up the romance for the cameras.”
“So it wasn’t real.” Eric shouldn’t have been surprised—for Christ’s sake, they’d been literallypaidto act, from cheesy introduction scenes to hardcore sex.
“Nah.” Martin’s grin, at least, was no different from his stage persona. “It wasn’t a hardship, though. Great lover, Adrian. Ten out of ten, would recommend.”
“Can you stop trying to set me up?” Adrian bumped his hip against Martin’s before he addressed Eric. “He thinks that because he’s in a happy, committed relationship, it’s his duty to make it happen for everyone around him.”
