1
Start Off with a Bang
Hudson Bailey was as useless as my vibrator.
I’m sure that was just the sexual frustration talking. However, as I lay back against the headrest of my Cleveland Airport Ramada bed, that was all I could think.
Take the new guy to the sex toy convention, they said.
It’ll be fun, they said.
“They” were Clara Mason. As my boss at BuzzCorp, a rising star in the sex toy industry, Clara was thoughtful, ambitious, open-minded, hardworking, understanding, insightful, and sharp-elbowed.
On the Hudson Bailey issue, she was also very, very wrong.
It hadn’t been fun at all. Hudson was new to BuzzCorp. A contractor, he was brought in on a short-term deal to create the software for our latest, greatest, and completely top-secret sex toy—The Fantasy. According to Clara, he was at the top of his field when it came to, I don’t know, numbers or The Matrix or binary or whatever it was he did on his laptop all day.
The problem was that he didn’t know anything about the industry. When I explained to Clara that he was unsuitable for the job on every level but the most basic, she treated me to a ten-minutelecture on his résumé, which apparently included rescuing a failing music streaming app and keeping a multinational stock trading platform from collapsing. In her estimation, we wereluckyto have him and his technical expertise. Not only that, but his inexperience was a benefit. His fresh eyes were just the thing we needed to take this potentially industry-shaking toy to the next level.
I should have called bullshit then. I should have pressed Clara to find someone,anyoneelse. But I had confidence in Clara. When she hired me two years ago, I was only BuzzCorp’s second employee. We’d built this company, and dozens of sex toy designs, together. Maybe Hudson Bailey wouldn’t bethatbad.
But oh…it was bad. It really was.
During his first two weeks at BuzzCorp, he and I hadn’t had much reason to talk. Until now, our work had been fairly siloed. I led the engineering team on the design and functionality of the toy itself, while he designed the app and software that would control that toy. Eventually, our work would marry up, but this trip was the first time I’d really hung out with him.
The proximity was torture. I was my job, and I liked to keep things as uncomplicated and unmessy as possible, which meant keeping everyone at a polite and professional arm’s length.
But Hudson?
If I was the negative end of a magnet, he was the positive. If I was a drive gear, he was an idler gear. If I was peanut butter, you better believe that man was sweet and sloppy jelly.
Inseparable.
This convention turned into the tag-along show, starring me, the engineer who got shit done, and Hudson, the handsome sideshow who clearly didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. He did a good dance of pretending to belong, but the signs were there. Like, for example, when we walked up to a booth and he asked one of the most famous porn actresses in the world aboutthe technical specs of the product she was promoting because he didn’t recognize her. Or when he very loudly whispered, “That couldn’t possibly fit,” during a demonstration of a fairly midrange butt plug.
I’m sure that my mask of professionalism had slipped this weekend. That he’d seen my frustration. As hard as I tried to hide it behind bland pleasantries and focus on the task at hand, I couldn’t keep my annoyance totally at bay. And now, my time dragging his admittedly appealing dead weight around was interfering with my nightly solo session.
It wasn’t even that there was anything wrong with Hudson. He wasn’t rude or creepy or anything like that. On the contrary, he was…thoughtful. Eager to learn. Curious. Attentive, even. And despite his frustrating inexperience, he had his moments. Like when we’d gotten on our flight to come here and he’d lifted my carry-on into the overhead bin for me. Or when he’d slyly managed to shift the attention of various old creeps trying to chat me up during the convention mixers. Or when he’d bring me complimentary cookies any time they put out a fresh batch in the event hall.
Or this evening, when I’d been giving my final speech to a crowd of fellow engineers, and during the review of our client feedback—pretty explicit feedback, lots of orgasm talk—I looked down to see him staring up at me like I was a Playboy Bunny pinned up on his wall…and he was sporting the semi beneath his jeans to match.
Fuck, there it was. The thought I’d tried not to bring up again. The real reason I couldn’t make myself cum tonight. The sight of him, semi-erect, as he watched me lecture about sex.
I shifted uncomfortably in bed. The sheets, which had felt so luxurious when we’d checked in, scratched at my hardened nipples and my exposed thighs, reminding me of the orgasm that had evaded me.
“Hmph.”
Trying to push him out of my mind, I crossed my arms and refocused. I was not going to waste another second thinking of him.
Besides, I wasn’t going to be able to go to sleep this horny. Something had to be done.
Taking long, slow breaths, I fell back upon one of my calming thought patterns.
Problem.
Proposed Solution.
Test.
