In any case, this party was a different animal. Most of his dad’s people saved their cocaine for the bathroom, for example. Here they just did it on the coffee table.
River twitched his thumb over the skin on Jem’s hip. “You good?” he murmured.
“Long as no one asks me to do a line.” Jem was pretty sure you couldn’t fail a drug test just because you’d been around people who were snorting coke. “What exactly do you do at these things?”
“Usually?” River gave a quarter turn, just enough to catch Jem’s eye. “Schmooze for half an hour—longer if there are actually people I like here—then look around for a pretty distraction, flirt with him for a while, take him home, and fuck him.”
Right. Duh. Jem knew that; it was the reason he’d landed this gig. “What about when you’re already here with someone you like?”
“Hmm.” Jem stumbled a little as River pulled him closer by the hand around his waist and bent his head to answer in his ear. “Show him off a little, find a dark corner and get him all worked up until he begs me to take him home, and then take him home and….”
Jem snorted. “So this whole thing is just foreplay?”
“Depends.” River glanced over again. “Is it turning you on?”
“What, in these pants you can’t tell?”
“I told you my night vision is for shit.”
“So you have an exhibitionist kink and you can’t even tell if people are looking at you?”
“How dare you.” River steered them toward a conversation set on the far side of the pool. “I always know when people are looking at me. I don’t need to see for that.”
God, he was ridiculous. Jem let River tug him down onto the loveseat, far closer than necessary, and tuck Jem under his shoulder. “So are we being looked at?”
“Youare,” River said in a low voice.
Jem scanned the yard, wondering why anyone would pay attention to him when the property was so full of people like River—glamorous, famous, glittering—or the producer, who desperately needed to fire his stylist but who obviously had the connections to make pet projects happen.
Then he felt River’s warm gaze on the side of his face and thought,Oh. He ducked his head. “Flirt.”
River laughed. “Guilty.” He bent his head close to Jem’s. “This is okay, though? I’m not making you uncomfortable?”
Not unless byuncomfortableyou meanhorny.Clearly Jem should’ve added one more item to his pre-date to-do list.
“I like it,” he said unthinkingly, and then had a sudden flash of mortification that came with the need to explain. “I mean—I’m kind of a touchy person, even with friends.” Something occurred to him, and he snorted at the memory. “My best friend and her wife had a party last summer and invited me as well as her wife’s brother. And you know, it was fun, we had a few drinks, we were goofing around. And Ivy and I got really competitive at one of those stupid lawn games, and I was pretending she was cheating, so I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder. And Mike was just—if looks could kill, man. Like I’d make a move on my best friend’s wife period, never mind right in front of her and all their friends.”
“Maybe he just hates you,” River suggested.
Jem cackled. When he threw his head back, it landed nestled against the meat of River’s shoulder. He smelled good, like some kind of bergamot bodywash. “Oh fuck, he definitely does. This just felt like, extra.”
“Hmm,” River mused. “I’m going to guess you didn’t play NCAA lawn games.”
“I did not,” Jem agreed, smiling. “That would be amazing, though. Definitely would’ve been easier on my shoulders.” And his hips.
“And it also wasn’t basketball or football.”
Jem didn’t realize his head was still resting against River’s shoulder until he tilted his face up to meet his eyes. “How do you figure?”
“You’re not tall enough for basketball,” River said. “And you’ve got too many brain cells left for it to have been football, unless you were a kicker or something. But I’m sticking to my guns, content in the knowledge that if I’m wrong about football, you probably still have the uniform pants.”
“Unfortunately, you’re correct. No football pants. Sorry.”
River waved this off with the hand not around Jem’s shoulders. “It’s fine. That still leaves swimming and soccer—ooh, and rugby, they have those tiny little shorts.”
He was going to be so disappointed when he got around to guessing golf. “Do you need a minute alone with your fantasy?”
“I’m already alone with you.”
