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  “Your lips around my cock is always a pretty picture,” Phillip said.

  “Dude, inappropriate.” I was teasing, and pushing his buttons on purpose. We threw the phrase around at the office all the time. There, it basically meant back off before HR gets involved.

  Phillip chuckled dryly, and gripped my cock harder. “Fuck you.”

  “Here? Now? With no lube?”

  He pushed me to my knees in response.

  I gripped the waistband of his shorts in my teeth and tugged them down, putting me at eye-level with his cock. When I dragged my tongue along the head, he groaned and gripped my hair. I took his length in my mouth, and he bucked against my face.

  How was this as incredible now as the first time? It never got old.

  Voices drifted closer, and my pulse cranked to implausible. I sucked Phillip’s cock, bobbing my head up and down as he fucked my face.

  My own dick still hung out, aching with need from the attention it just had.

  As Phillip gripped my hair harder, I did the same to his shaft, gliding my tongue along the skin, tasting him with enthusiasm.

  His familiar grunts, the way they grew shorter, farther apart, told me he was close. When he paused, then jerked inside me with a shudder, I expected the salty spurt that hit the back of my throat.

  I swallowed as he came, still licking and sucking, slowing as he did. When he stopped, I pulled away, and he slid from my mouth.

  “Fuck.” Phillip’s voice was raw. He sank to his knees next to me, and grabbed my cock again.

  I almost bit back my groan as anticipation surged inside. The whole evening had me so turned on that orgasm built quickly. He knew what he was doing, and I was ready to burst, so it didn’t take much to make me come. The sticky mess spurted across his hand, my sweats, and the floor.

  “Oops,” I said with a dry chuckle.

  We both sat there in silence for a moment, catching our breath, listening to the world pass by.

  We cleaned up the mess with paper towels from the paint supply room—no reason to leave my DNA over some poor teacher’s classroom—and gathered our things.

  As we went to leave, I saw Phillip’s sketch of Addie still sitting on the desk. I grabbed it to give it back, but for some reason, I tucked it into my own things instead.

  The silence between us was familiar and comfortable as we walked to the parking lot. The wet spot on my sweats was a little awkward, but I didn’t care. It was worth it.

  My phone chirped with a new email, and I grabbed it instinctively.

  The email was from our boss, and the contents, the name Nolan, made me scowl.

  “What is it?” Phillip asked.

  I sighed. “Remember I told you about that guy I used to work with, Nolan?”

  “The one who claimed you’d stolen his art, and pushed you out of your job over it?”

  “Bingo. Apparently, he’s claiming AcesPlayed stole his design for their new game.” Repeating Judith’s message aloud made me even more irritated with the whole thing.

  Phillip scowled. “Publicly?”

  That would suck worse. We’d come from a company that thrived on public scandal, but here, the game would do that on its own. We didn’t need an extra media drama. “Not yet. He’s sent a Cease and Desist, and said things will stay between him and Aces if the matter can be resolved quickly.”

  Phillip dragged out a long breath. “Lovely.”

  “We’ve got this.” I was annoyed, but the problem was easily resolved. “Everything is in source control. We’ll kick proof over to Legal tomorrow and it’ll be fine.”

  “New person starts tomorrow,” Phillip said.

  “Perfect chance for them to learn how we make backups and keep histories of all our files, then.” I was confident that we’d prove our artwork was our own, and this would go away quickly. I came to work for AcesPlayed because I believed in what they were doing. Not because it was naked people fucking, but it was new, groundbreaking, and a game we were all passionate about.

  And I was going move into the Director of Art position Judith hadn’t filled because there were only two of us. I was going to be a part of putting our name in gaming history books, in the most incredible way possible.

  But I didn’t like that Nolan was back in my life, trying to ride my coattails to glory. Or something. What was his endgame, anyway?

  Three

  Phillip

  I’d reconciled coming home to, waking up in, and overall living in an empty house a long time ago. It wasn’t that I didn’t own anything, every room was appropriately decorated with things. All of them new within the last decade since I didn’t want any reminders of my wife. My daughter. The accident that took them from me twelve years ago but left me alive.

  The pain had dulled with time, and usually I did a good job of ignoring the memories, but the woman in the classroom last night flipped a switch. It wasn’t that she looked like my deceased wife, but their mannerisms were similar. Seeing her so engrossed in her drawing, the way she caught her tongue between her teeth when she was focused, the fact that she was about the same age as Jodie… So much about the woman in class dragged painful memories closer to the surface.

  I shook thoughts of the past aside, and rushed my way through a shower, trying and failing to scrub away the gray cloud that lingered over my head. Last night with Dustin was a mistake. I was happy to help Scarlet with her advanced drawing course—I loved knowledge and sharing that with other people—and I rarely regretted the sex when it came to Dustin.

  But I needed to be dialing back our friendship, not pretending things were status quo. He was already going to be pissed when he found out what I was up to. When he learned I had an exit strategy to walk away from AcesPlayed.

  I dressed and headed down to make breakfast. Coffee. But the dark kitchen was another cloud to the growing storm in my thoughts. There was a place across the street from the office, a gaming cafe that had fantastic coffee and croissants, and a bright, cheery vibe. A stop there meant not staying here any longer this morning.

  On the drive, I cranked an 80’s hair metal playlist and tried to drown out my thoughts.

  They kept trying to drift to the accident anyway. That day twelve years ago when I lost the center of my universe.

  Nope. I wasn’t getting sucked into grief. Every time I tried to push the thoughts aside, Dustin rushed in to take their place.

  He was better than drowning in sorrow. He and I met when he started working at Rinslet a few years back. They were one of the largest gaming companies in the world and one of their directives was to help shape new talent.

  I loved being part of that. Dustin had more experience than most of our artists when he came on, and he was about a decade older. We clicked, we became fast friends, and when this new opportunity came up, we were sucked into the pitch.

  AcesPlayed was new. Unique. Zooming toward controversial. Dustin was drawn to the vision of breathing life into this beast he helped create. In fact, despite saying he’d wait until today to work in a rebuttal to last night’s C&D email, he was probably up most of the night diving into his strategy.

  Seeing Aces succeed drove him in a way I envied. I wished the same things pushed me, but my motivations for signing on were different.

  I had hoped that since it was a new company, there would be even more chance for me to help new people grow into their potential. However, given the nature of the game, our hiring requirements were stringent.

  Judith—the owner—needed experienced people who could show from their career that they could openly and freely discuss sex without the conversation turning into a harassment nightmare.

  I didn’t blame her, but it meant I didn’t have the same chance to help people learn. She and I had talked about my leaving, and I’d promised to make sure my replacement was trained, if she kept my giving notice quiet until I was ready to make the big announcement.

  Even Dustin—especially Dustin—didn’t know I had an exit plan.

  The ne
w person was starting today. I hadn’t met her. This wasn’t about friendship. I saw her portfolio, her raw talent, and I knew she had to be the one.

  Maybe her starting was what had my mind in this unpleasant place. Not that it was her fault, but her arrival made my decision to leave more real.

  Time to accept it.

  I parked behind the building where our offices were, and crossed the street to Loading Java. A lot of us made regular stops here. The anime decor was fun, and the staff put up with our intense level of geekiness. We weren’t a big enough company to have things like a cafeteria, but in a lot of ways this was better.

  Brandon, our Director of Music and Sound, was at a table in front of the shop, scrolling through his phone. Dustin had been a little miffed when Brandon landed a Director position despite being the only person in his department, but like me, Brandon had been around for a while. We’d both been part of Rinslet before it was known as that, and worked with Judith just as long. He had a proven track record, and Dustin was still struggling his way through a reputation he didn’t fully deserve.

  Brandon looked up when I called his name and waved. “You got a minute?” He asked.

  “Yeah. Let me grab something and I’ll be right back.” I headed inside for a coffee and muffin, then joined him.

  He pulled an earbud case from his pocket and handed it to me. “Check this out.”

  People thought this was odd the first few times he did it to them, but he made a habit of sharing whatever was on his phone, laptop, whatever, so he always carried a second, clean and paired set of buds.

  I fitted the pieces in my ears. “Is it a surprise?”

  Brandon always shared the most interesting things, from pieces he was composing to random videos of indie bands from all over the world, to the perfect foley effect.

  “Yes and no. Danny and Reese being amazing are never a surprise, but this... Just watch.” He handed me his phone.

  Reese and Danny—Brandon’s boyfriend—were Plaid Peanut Butter, a rock band with way more talent than local band implied. They dominated a room with their voices and presence.

  I hit Play. This wasn’t one of their stage shows though. The two of them were in the AcesPlayed recording studio, squished closely in the small room. The music started and I recognized it immediately; it was the theme for our game.

  They started singing, sounds rather than words, since the song didn’t have lyrics. Mentally, my jaw dropped. Their usual sound was hard and loud. This was a different level of powerful, with her singing stunning soprano, and him coming in with a haunting and complimentary baritone.

  I was so captivated, the song ending jarred me. I handed phone and earbuds back to Brandon. “That’s amazing. Are we making a soundtrack change? You have to float this by Dustin, make sure he gets it out there for promo.”

  “I wish.” Brandon shook his head. “This completely breaks their contract, but we were fooling around last night and I had to capture it. I couldn’t completely sit on it.”

  “Don’t blame you. Fuck, that’s incredible.”

  Brandon’s smile when he said, “Isn’t it?” was one-hundred percent smitten.

  We continued chatting as we headed back to the office, and went our separate ways when we reached our floor.

  The layout was what we called semi-open. In other words, desks went where they fit without having to do additional construction. We were trying to spend smart as a new company, and since several of us had been with other start-ups, we defined that differently than a lot of young companies.

  Our spot used to be a satellite campus for the community college, before their business school went largely online. The space was broken into a series of classrooms, complete with the kind of wiring a tech company needed, and each team had claimed one or two of the spots.

  There was a tangible tension laced with excitement in the air. We were going into closed beta tomorrow. The game had been announced in professional circles, the public was talking about it, and we’d done closed testing with smaller groups.

  But tomorrow, the world would access our game. This thing we’d set off on our own to build, and spent the last few years laboring on in secret.

  There was still plenty of work to do. As the art department, our job wouldn’t ease up. We’d be designing bonus content, new characters, outfits, levels, gear, position emotes… Absolutely exciting.

  Despite the stop, I was early, leaving me enough time to enjoy the coffee and make sure I was caught up on emails and any outstanding issues before the new person arrived.

  I wasn’t surprised to find Dustin already in the office and working. It didn’t matter how many people in the industry painted him as a party boy, he tended toward responsible. He had his shit together and he was good at his job.

  The latter bit was partly responsible for the rumors. With such a small company, a lot of us wore different hats, and he’d stepped easily into the secondary role of wining and dining business partners.

  Watching Dustin flow seamlessly through our digital history of our artwork, clicking into each place without hesitation, was an experience in skill and beauty. Like most things he did.

  I shook the thought aside. I was already too weighed down by people I’d lost, as my wandering thoughts proved this morning, there was no reason to add his name to the list. “You save any of that work for me and the new person?”

  He didn’t glance up from what he was doing. “There’s still plenty to, don’t worry. I want this response to be airtight.”

  “It will be.” I was as certain of that as I was that he was going to be furious when he found out I was leaving the company.

  I wasn’t looking forward to breaking that news, but I had a couple of weeks while I trained the new person to ween myself from Dustin. That was the best I could do.

  Four

  Adrienne

  Was it wrong that I didn’t think I’d been this nervous even on my wedding day?

  True, my perception of that day was colored differently now than it had been then, given the way things ended. But as I stood in the main floor lobby of the building where I’d be working, hopefully for a long time, my stomach felt like a rock tumbler.

  I didn’t have any moral or ethical issues with the fact that I’d be working on an MMO that contained adult themes. I was a lot concerned that I was so inexperienced with the real life version, and that this was my dream job. I couldn’t screw this up.

  “Hey, sis.” Luna’s cheerful greeting startled me. She landed next to me and hooked her arm through mine. Her presence tended to chase away doubt, and I needed that today. She was Graham’s girlfriend and the reason I even got an interview for this job. “Wave across the street at Violet, and then I’ll show you the offices.”

  So goofy. So fun. I did as prompted, waving across the street at the coffee shop her best friend managed. “Lead the way.”

  We took the elevator up, and stepped onto the floor where the AcesPlayed offices lived. I’d been here once before for my interview with the owner, Judith, and had the quick tour at that time. Enough to know where the different teams sat.

  “Good morning.” Luna waved at the man working the reception desk. “Ivan, this is Adrienne, she’s our new artist. Adrienne, Ivan.”

  “Hey.” His tone was cheerful. “Luna will show you, but break room is down that hall. I’m in charge of stocking the coffee, creamer, and stationary supply closet so if you need anything, let me know.”

  I liked him. “I will. Thanks.”

  “Tell Daphne we’re on our way back,” Luna said. “We’re taking the scenic route.” She led me through the hallways, pointing out the doors for QA, Development, Music, Writing... We didn’t interrupt because there people were working already. Also, there was no way I’d remember everyone’s names if I had to absorb them at once.

  As we neared the Art room, I swore I heard a familiar voice, but I couldn’t place it. For all I knew, I’d overheard someone on campus one day who sounded similar.

&n
bsp; “And this is lonely little me.” Luna stopped in front of an office at the end of the hall. “I’m told I can have minions in a few months, but for now, it’s just me. Which means you can come visit whenever you want and we won’t be disturbing anyone else.”

  “Noted,” I said with a grin.

  She knocked on the open door next to hers, and introduced me to the head of HR, Daphne.

  This part of a new job was the same no matter where I went. I spent the next hour filling out paperwork and reading through company policy. When I was done, Daphne took me to meet my new co-workers.

  As we strolled toward the Art room, the door was open this time.

  “Top five things you leave behind in a zombie apocalypse. And go.” The voice that drifted into the hallway was deep, teasing, and super sexy. Probably not the safest thing to be thinking as I met the men who I’d be drawing sexy cartoons with.

  “Oh. Um... My stash of solid gold bars.”

  My step faltered. I knew that voice for certain. I’d heard it last night.

  Daphne glanced at me. “Are you all right? I can ask them not to do that.”

  “No, it’s fine.” I didn’t have a problem with the conversation. “First day nerves.” That couldn’t be Dustin.

  We stepped into the room as the other voice said, “Gold can be melted down. Used.”

  “But there are far more valuable materials, that weigh far less.” Oh, God, it really was him, and he hadn’t looked up yet.

  And his equally gorgeous, currently clothed friend. “Okay, let’s say you own such a thing. That’s one.”

  Sitting casually in my new workspace, looking and sounding like this was their domain and everyone knew it, were the nude models from last night. The two men I’d fantasized about screwing each other, and at least one of them knew what I’d been drawing.

  “Addie.” Dustin grinned when they finally saw me. “You’re the new talent? No shit. That’s awesome.”

  “It’s Adrienne,” Daphne corrected him with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “You all know each other?”