Melting - Sean Ashcroft Page 0,19

a miracle worker,” Seth announced, bouncing back to look at me.

Three pairs of eyes stared down at me in the chair, and I’d never felt so naked in my life.

“You had a good base to start with. Let’s not pretend Hayden’s not hot,” Andre said.

I liked him.

“We need more light.” Wes announced. “Help me move this chair to the window before the sun goes down.”

The three of them spent the next ten minutes rearranging furniture, setting up props, and drinking, occasionally making me sit in the chair this way or that way, discussing what did and didn’t work, and then rearranging again.

Everything they had to say was flattering, and by the time Wes finally decided on a position for the chair, I was blushing to the tips of my ears.

They were so nice. Strange, sure, and a little too outgoing for my taste, but nice. They were people I could’ve called friends. People I would have been honored to call friends.

“Gimme your phone,” Wes said, and I unlocked it for him and handed it over without a second thought.

I trusted him. For whatever reason, he was easy to trust.

“Drape a leg over the arm of the chair,” Andre directed. “Spread out. Master of your domain.”

I felt awkward doing it, but I let the three of them direct me to pose, first with one knee hooked over the arm of the chair, legs spread wide, and then sitting low in it, arms over the sides so it looked like I’d collapsed there.

“Can we just…” Seth reached out, tugging on my t-shirt and exposing a strip of skin above the waistband of my jeans.

“Too much,” Wes said without looking up from the phone screen. “Less skin.”

Seth snorted, fingertips tickling and making me laugh as he pulled my hem down a little further to suit Wes’s apparently brand new sense of modesty.

“We want his profile to say great in bed, not thot.”

“Isn’t that the full text of yours?” Andre asked, already laughing.

“Funny,” Wes responded. “He looks uncomfortable. You need to relax,” he said, pointing at me.

“Oh yeah, ordering him to relax is definitely the way to make that happen,” Seth said. “Either suck his dick or put a playlist on.”

“Playlist,” I said before anyone could get any other ideas.

“Oh, that has to be the fastest rejection you’ve ever gotten,” Andre said, grinning at Wes. “You want me to get you some ice for that burn?”

“I didn’t mean it as an insult,” I said, trying not to look at Wes’s mouth.

Thankfully, the playlist coming on saved me.

“Is this Katy Perry?” I asked, recognizing the opening notes of one of Marissa’s favorite songs.

I secretly liked this one, too. She’d caught me humming it while I worked more than once.

“You do not get to say shit about my taste in music,” Seth said, pointing a finger at me. “I made you beautiful.”

“He was already like that,” Wes murmured, eyes still focused on the phone screen. “Sip your whiskey, I want a shot with your hands in it.”

9

Wes

“That one where he’s biting his thumb is so hot,” Seth sighed dreamily. “I’m getting hard just looking at it.”

“Did not need to know that,” I said, shifting in my own seat.

Okay, maybe I didn’t want to talk about it because it was kind of having the same effect on me.

Once Hayden relaxed, he’d been…

Hot.

There was no other word for it.

Last night had been hot, too. I knew we weren’t talking about it, I got the feeling he regretted it and would rather have forgotten it, but I couldn’t get it out of my head.

“I’d fuck him,” Andre announced. “Just sayin’.”

“Weren’t you convinced he was a top?” I asked.

“Yeah, so he’d fight me for it,” Andre explained. “Imagine him flushed and panting, tangled up in the bed sheets, pinned down, finally giving in—”

“Stop,” I said, squirming to adjust myself again. Dammit. “You shouldn’t, uh. Talk about him like that?”

Andre raised an eyebrow.

“He’s our friend.”

“Our hot friend,” Seth pointed out. “Don’t think I missed you calling him beautiful.”

“I didn’t say that,” I said, scratching the back of my neck. “Where the hell is he, anyway? How long does it take to pee?”

“He’s nervous,” Andre explained. “He’s had three full glasses of water since we got here.”

“You did say that,” Seth said, like a dog with a rope toy refusing to let the subject go. “Not in so many words, but it was what the words you used meant. You like our hot new friend.”

I bit my lip, taking Hayden’s phone back