Burning Up Read Free

the table, I hope you don’t mind if I have a crack at her.”
    Rob’s statement almost caused Steve to drop his beer. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
    “Pam.” Rob frowned at Steve’s snappish reaction. “I want to ask her out.”
    “You? You’re going to ask Pam out?”
    Rob shrugged. “I like her.”
    “A bit old for you, isn’t she?” Steve knew Pam was at least thirty, his own age, because they’d shared thirtieth birthday stories one night at the pub when she was a little tipsy and consequently less resistant to chatting with him. A woman in her thirties wouldn’t be into someone as young as Rob.
    Would she?
    “I don’t care that she’s twenty-eight.”
    Twenty-eight? What the fuck? Steve hid his smile behind his beer bottle when realization hit. Pam had lied to Rob about her age. That was too funny.
    As quickly as it had appeared, Steve’s smile slid away. It wasn’t so funny if she’d lied to Rob because she liked him. Did Pam want Rob that bad?
    “She’s still older by five years. That kind of thing is important to some women.” At least Steve hoped so. Otherwise it meant he was competing for women with twenty-three-year-old puppies like Rob. He knew how far Rob could run on the treadmill, how much he could bench press. He also knew women went ga-ga over his soft brown eyes and curly golden locks.
    He didn’t need that kind of competition.
    If Steve wasn’t mistaken, he detected a blush on Rob’s cheeks when he confessed, “She thinks I’m twenty-five.”
    “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Steve muttered. Then he started laughing at the ridiculousness of it—Rob and Pam subtracting and adding birthdays to make themselves look better. He’d love to be around when they started talking number of sexual partners.
    “Don’t tell her, please, Waller,” Rob beseeched. “She already thinks twenty-five is too young.”
    Because she’s actually thirty plus, you numbskull. Steve could probably blow any chance Rob and Pam had of getting together by telling them each the truth, but something held him back from letting Rob know Pam was older than she’d said. He couldn’t bring himself to out her. Steve thought her little lie was silly—he, for one, found women his own age hotter than girls in their twenties—but it was her lie to confess to if she chose.
    Steve let out a sigh. He couldn’t out Rob to Pam either. He didn’t play dirty. If he was going to win Pam, he was going to do it fair and square. “Fine, I won’t tell her,” he said. He held up a finger to silence Rob before the other man could thank him. “On one condition.”
    “What condition?”
    “We do this together.”
    Rob’s eyes widened. “You mean…”
    Steve smiled and lifted his nearly empty beer bottle to his lips. “I never said a three-way was off the table, did I?”
    Actually, the more Steve thought about it, the more upside he saw to the idea. It would be wickedly sexy, if his body’s reaction was anything to go by. And it would ensure Pam didn’t read more into the situation than what was there. Steve was hot for her, had been for months, but he wasn’t ready to settle down. Pam was looking for true love. He only had to remember that expression of longing on her face when she’d watched Corey with Erica inside. She wanted adoration, commitment, the whole shebang.
    There was nothing romantic about a threesome. It was all sex—raw, base lust. There was no way Pam would get the wrong idea.
    In any case, it seemed Rob was the one she wanted. Steve figured this might be his only opportunity to slake his desire for the woman who’d kept him hard more nights than he wanted to count.
    “Are you serious?” Rob asked him.
    “Deadly serious,” Steve replied. “And I think it’s time we started talking strategy.”

“Okay, everyone, it’s time to hide.” Erica’s urgent announcement made each assembled party guest spring into action. Or should that be inaction, as the object was to stay as still