“That came out wrong! I meanprofessionally! You’re the expert.I know nothing. I never even held a dildo until my first interview with Clara. I’m out of my depth and clearly this is too important for me to be so unlearned. So I was thinking…what if you taught me?”
“What, like sex ed? Sex Toy Ed?”
“I’m a blank slate. Everything I know about sex toys is through cultural osmosis, and if we want to make The Fantasy the greatest one that’s ever been built, I need more information.”
A half-dozen horny vignettes crossed my mind. Oh, the things I could teach Hudson Bailey about sex toys…about making a woman scream…
Dammit. If I kept this up, I’d be joining the Mile High Club—party of one—in the Airbus bathroom.
He was right, of course, that he needed instruction, and I was probably the best one to give it to him. It would be simple enough. We could go through the BuzzCorp catalog of products, I could explain their uses to him, and show him the focus group reporting on how and why those toys were invaluable to our users.
Easy as (cream) pie.
But teaching Hudson aboutanythingwould necessitate us spending more time together. Teaching him aboutsex toyswould necessitatemespending more time trying not to think about the sexy man at my side burying himself between my legs.
And given how important The Fantasy was to my future and my career, I just couldn’t risk the distraction. Couldn’t riskhim.
“Why don’t you just watch porn?” I asked.
“Ah, porn. Depicting healthy and equitable sexual relationships since the beginning of time.”
Good point, but I had to hold my ground.
When we arrived at our gate, preflight boarding was in effect. The two of us settled into remote seats at the edge of the carpeted space. I purposefully put my backpack between us—to avoid anyaccidental touches that might lead to more horny fuel for sessions like last night’s—and settled in to get some work done on my tablet.
But I should have known it wouldn’t be that simple.
“What did he mean back there?” Hudson asked, after a pause. “Ichiro, when he mentioned your old job blowing up or whatever. What did that mean?”
Cool. Straight to the heavy stuff.
I guess I should have been grateful he wasn’t asking for more sex toy training.
I’d done a lot of work on myself to be able to talk about my pre-BuzzCorp existence. I had to. Anyone who googled me would see everything and ask me about it no matter how I felt.
“Remember the GalacticSolutions disaster?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“That was my project.”
“Oh.”
Such a small sound for a major humiliation. In my first job, I’d worked on propulsion for a rocket company, and well…it hadn’t gone according to plan.
At least he didn’t sound judgmental. That was more than people usually gave me.
“Yeah,oh. A multibillion-dollar rocketliterallyblew up in my face.”
“That couldn’t have been your fault.”
Not entirely, no. But still.
“It happened on my watch and under my command, which is all that matters. And it happened because I wasn’t focused on my work. There were other…” My throat tightened the way it did every time I got to this part. When I had to skirt the details and lie by omission. “…thingsgoing on behind the scenes at GalacticSolutions that took my attention away from the project. If Ihadn’t been so stupid, if I hadn’t let myself get distracted, then the Ilium might not have been a disaster and I might be sipping cocktails on Mars right now.”
“Yeah, but then we wouldn’t be sharing this beautiful moment together. And how tragic that would be.”
He was the all-time Make Scout Porter Laugh scoreboard leader without even trying.
