‘Mmm. Green Apple?’ I asked.
Ty wiped away a smear of Jell-O from my bottom lip and licked it from his finger.
MacKenzie nodded. ‘Yep. And here’s your birthday drink.’
It was pink and bubbly. I took a sip and found it surprisingly refreshing. You could hardly taste the vodka shots I’d seen her dump in. It was grapefruity and delish. ‘Thanks.’
Once we all had drinks, courtesy of MacKenzie, Ty grabbed the pan of Jell-O shots and we made our way into the living room to sit in the center of my cream-colored shaggy rug.
‘We need music.’ MacKenzie opened my laptop and my heart nearly stopped. I leapt from my seat in an effort to stop her from seeing what she was about to see, but I was too late.
‘Holy shit!’
My cheeks flamed as I remembered what I’d last used the computer for—I’d typed in the address for the porn website from the business card when I got home and searched until I found Cade’s pictures.
‘What is it?’ Ty asked, peeking around MacKenzie’s His face scrunched in disgust. ‘Gah!’ He jumped back from the computer like he’d just been stung.
‘You look at porn, Alexa?’ The surprise in MacKenzie’s voice was unmistakable. ‘I’m not judging, not at all, proud is more like it—I’m just surprised. You’ve always seemed sort of innocent.’
I swallowed and grabbed the laptop from her lap, pulling it onto my own. ‘It’s not what you think.’ I opened my music library and started my playlist of indie-rock, then set the computer aside.
MacKenzie laughed, throwing her head back. ‘Sorry, sweetheart, but that’s gonna require an explanation. I mean, you’ve never taken a Jell-O shot, you were raised by the Waltons, your freaking panty-drawer is organized by color and day of the week. Spill it, babe.’
Tyson glanced up from his drink. ‘You’ve got day-of-the-week underwear? Oh, I’ve gotta see this.’ He stood and wandered down the hall into my bedroom. MacKenzie and I jumped to our feet to follow.
‘Ty!’ I called. ‘Get out of there!’
He chuckled and pulled open the top drawer of my hand-carved, pale-pink dresser. ‘Holy shit, you weren’t kidding, Kenz.’ He lifted a pair of white cotton briefs from the top of the pile and held them up to inspect. ‘Sunday,’ he read the backside, chuckling.
I snatched them from his grasp, tossed them back in the drawer and slammed it shut with my hip. ‘Enough. Out.’ I shooed them from my bedroom. Yes, I bought the packaged cotton undies. They were comfy. Sue me.
MacKenzie stood her ground, blocking the door to my bedroom. ‘Only if you tell us the story of you looking at porn. I bet you don’t even own a sex toy do you?’
‘I’ll tell you.’ I navigated my way around her out into the hallway. But I was so not answering the sex-toy question. Even if Ty was like a brother to us, he was still male, and I wasn’t about to admit that I had a vibrator tucked in the back of my underwear drawer. God, I would have been mortified if they’d found that.
Once we were seated on the living room rug again I downed a few more Jell-O shots to ease my nerves and pulled a throw pillow into my lap. MacKenzie sat across from me, looking smug, leaning back against the sofa.
‘Okay. So last night in the ER…’ I grabbed another shot and slurped down the gelatinous mouthful, needing to fortify myself at the memory of Cade’s erection.
‘How big would you say it was?’ MacKenzie asked once I was through my story, leaning forward with eager curiosity.
‘Ah hell, I’m getting another drink,’ Ty announced, standing to head into the kitchen.
After considering—and rejecting a nearby candlestick and finding nothing else adequate in my living room to showcase the full length of Cade’s manhood, Kenzie and I made our way into the kitchen, giggling at my idea to retrieve a cucumber from the refrigerator.
I reached into the crisper drawer and modeled the large vegetable in front of my crotch. ‘This looks about right.’
MacKenzie took my shoulders, turning me from side to side so I could model it at various angles. ‘Damn. That boy is hung.’
Tyson retreated to the bathroom while MacKenzie and I made our way back into the living room. She hoisted the cucumber proudly over her head, waving it in time with the music, and led the way back to my computer.
MacKenzie settled onto the sofa, the laptop balanced on her knees and I scooted in beside her to…supervise.
‘Click here,’ I told her, pointing to the tab labeled Models. The title had seemed a little strange to me, but I supposed that sounded classier than saying porn stars. The pictures were mostly topless girls posing seductively. MacKenzie scrolled past the photos of the girls. Last night I’d thoroughly inspected each image, wondering if Cade had slept with them, and which he preferred best. All of the girls were thin and tanned with large, fake breasts. I didn’t want to, but my mind had inevitably made comparisons to my own body.
I was of average height, average weight. My breasts were decidedly real, they fell several inches when I removed my bra, and I had far too many freckles to be considered sexy. Pretty, maybe, but certainly not on par with the type of women he usually slept with. But all thoughts of insecurity vanished when I’d spotted Cade’s photo.
‘That’s him.’ I pointed at the photo.
It said his name was Sebastian, but it was definitely Cade. He was standing near a weight bench, gym shorts loose on his narrow hips to show his cut abs and he was smirking like he knew a secret the rest of us didn’t.
‘Damn. He’s fucking hot.’
I giggled. ‘I know.’
MacKenzie clicked on his photo. Though I had spent time last night poring over each one, I couldn’t help but lean forward to join in her inspection. He had a full page of photos. In many of them he was wearing only a pair of black boxer briefs, and then a few where the boxers had been removed and all of him was proudly on display. The tattoo I’d wondered about was a tribal design that covered his left shoulder and crawled up his chest, ending at his neck.
I blushed at the sight of his fully erect cock and heat crept up my chest until I was rosy and warm. I couldn’t help but reminisce about being near Cade in the semi-private hospital room, where I’d been close enough to feel the heat of his skin and smell of the scent of his musky arousal.
MacKenzie scrolled down to the bio beneath the photos. I’d read it last night, but couldn’t resist reading it again over her shoulder. It said he was their newest model, and worked exclusively for their site. The bio claimed he was extremely professional to work with and always focused on making sure the girls felt comfortable. Outside of work he enjoyed working out and listening to rock music. It sounded like a clichéd line of bull, but that didn’t keep me from grasping at every bit of information I could get.
Tyson appeared from the kitchen, this time with a bottle of beer, and sank down on the chair across the room.
‘Ty, you want to see what a real man looks like?’ MacKenzie teased.
I elbowed her side. Tyson was only a few inches taller than me, and had a slight build, but he was cute and I didn’t like her tearing him down. Especially since he regularly caught flack for being one of only a few male nursing students.
‘I get to see that every day, babe. I’m good.’ He polished off the rest of his beer.
MacKenzie closed the laptop. ‘Let’s go out. If I look at any more of these, I’ll bang the first guy I see at the club.’
By the time we arrived,