involved. Bishop’s eyes widen, amusement dancing over his face.
“Guess he was right,” Bishop muses, stepping aside to let me in. “He made turtle brownies.”
I whimper, and Bishop chuckles. “Wow, so baked goods cause you to make sex noises, I’ll make a mental note of that.”
“Who’s making sex noises?” Leo asks, popping his head out of the kitchen. “Hey, Riot.”
“Someone said brownies?” I ask, and Leo smiles.
“I’ll bring them out in a second.”
He disappears back into the kitchen, and I turn to Bishop with renewed focus. I hook my fingers in his belt loops and tug him against me, claiming his lips in a slow kiss as I walk him backward toward the couch. He stumbles when his legs hit it, laughing against my mouth as he grabs onto the front of my shirt to keep from falling over.
“I ran into Hudson in the stairway,” I say when we break the kiss.
“You did? Was he a dick?” he asks, biting his lip.
“No,” I assure him. I plop down on the couch and pull him onto my lap, nerves fluttering in my stomach as I organize the words in my head. I’m not sure how this conversation is going to go, but I know relationships don’t work without honesty and communication, so I’m not about to hide anything. “There’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about.”
“About Hudson?” he asks, his forehead wrinkling. “Did he do something?”
“It might be kind of a touchy subject,” I hedge.
His expression quickly morphs from amused and playful to worried. He wiggles off my lap and angles his body on the couch so he’s looking at me.
“Tell me.”
“Hudson came into the bar again the other night.”
“Oh god, was he wasted and stupid again?” Bishop cringes.
“No, he stopped by to talk to me, I think,” I explain, leaving out the part where he told me he’d come in to tell me off. I smile a little bit at the thought.
“What did he want to talk about?”
I tug my lip ring between his teeth, running my tongue along it absently. “It was a friendly conversation. He was flirting a little bit, and I guess I was flirting back.” My stomach clenches at the lie. “That’s not true: I flirted first.”
Bishop blinks, his lips parting as surprise colors his features. “You’re interested in him?” he guesses, his voice sounding raspy.
“I wouldn’t have pegged him as my type, but the more we talked, I realized we had a lot in common; there was a definite connection there,” I admit. The way he looked me up and down in the stairway, it was all I could do not to pin him against the wall and taste the smile on his lips. He was so down the other night about Bishop, it was nice seeing him happy this time.
“Did you have sex with him?” he asks, his voice tight with what I’m guessing is jealousy. Is he jealous over me or Hudson? Or is it both of us? Does he even know?
“No,” I answer firmly, and he lets out a relieved breath.
“But you want to?”
“I’d like to get to know him better and see where things go. But if it’s too weird for you, I’ll respect that and keep things strictly friendly.”
He stares at me, an array of emotions flickering through his eyes one after another, none of them settling for more than a few seconds.
“Want to talk to me about what you’re thinking?” I ask carefully after a few silent moments.
“I’m thinking that the two of you together would be hot as fuck,” he admits, a smile appearing for a few seconds before he grows serious again. “And I’m also thinking I’m confused. I wanted to take space from Hudson initially to think about things, and some of what I needed to think about was my jealousy about him being with other people, so this is kind of fucking me up a little. I didn’t like watching him take guys home from the bar, but is it fair of me to tell him that I want to be with him again but that he has to be okay with me also being with you and Leo?”
“I understand. Do you want to know what I know about jealousy?” I offer. One of the most common misconceptions I get from people when I tell them I’m polyamorous is the idea that I’m somehow immune to jealousy. Polyamorous people are human too: we can get jealous and insecure and selfish with our partners like