“Why can’t you ever have a normal question?” Holden gripes.
“There’s no such thing as a stupid question, Holden. What did you learn in middle school?” Reese shoots back.
“A why choose romance is when there’s one woman and multiple men,” Kai says. All eyes shoot to him and his face flushes a little as he looks up from the plate he’s drying. “Jules, Lavinia, and I read one recently.”
“Do the guys know each other?” Reese asks, frowning.
“Yeah, most of the time, they do. It’s like a group of friends,” I say with a shrug. I can’t let Kai take the heat of their curiosity all by himself.
Reese’s eyes move over all of us, and I can already guess what’s going on in his head.
“Don’t look at me,” Holden says. “I’m not sharing my girl.”
“Who the hell will want to date you, anyway?” Reese snaps back.
“Can we not have this conversation?” Drew grumbles.
“Why? Is it turning you on?” I smirk.
“Shut up, Maddox.” Drew shuts the fridge door and leans against it.
“How does it work?” Reese asks. He’s wiping down the dining table, his head turned in curiosity.
“A lot of stamina. Trust. Loyalty,” Ford says. “It’s not really different from a poly or open relationship.”
“Schedules?” Holden asks. His eyes are interested, but his face says he can’t wrap his mind around it.
Kai and I exchange a look. “Not always,” Kai says quietly.
Reese straightens up. “You’re telling me, there’s one woman and multiple men and they’re all going at her at the same time? The poor woman.”
Kai turns to face the room, throwing the dish towel over his shoulder. “It’s not like that. At the end of the day, it’s a romance novel, so the whole…event is romantic while being extremely filthy. These guys take care of her. They don’t shove it in, and the heroine always wants it. Plus, most of the time, it’s one on one.”
Reese opens his mouth, and Kai holds up his hand. “If you have more questions, read a why choose romance.”
“You know what I’m thinking?” Reese asks. “We should bring back the book club.”
“No!” The guys all say at the same time.
“The last few times we held a book club, you tried to kill us,” Ford says to Reese.
“They were all accidents,” Reese says, his cheeks coloring a faint pink.
“What happened?” I ask out of curiosity.
Holden looks at me. “There was a time when he left cookies in the oven and almost started a fire.”
“There was alcohol poisoning,” Ford adds.
Reese protests as the accusations fly. They continue to argue over whether or not to start the book club again while Kai and I turn back to the sink to finish the dishes. It’s been anunexpectedly fun night, and I find myself looking forward to more of them.
FIFTY-ONE
LAVINIA
“Maybe I need to start teaching Burlesque,” Elena says, sipping on her Pomegranate Passion. The drink is the same color as the dark red of her lipstick.
Her eyes are focused on the Burlesque dancer on stage.
