Boys and Toys. Cara Lockwood

long, but she also had drastically underestimated how bad the job market was at the moment. Her phone dinged with another message from Porter.

      Come to my place. 2622 N. Orchard. Come hungry. I’m serving dinner.

      Dinner? That threw her. This was sounding like more of a date than a sex party. Was Porter interested in more than a casual hookup? Liv shook her head.

      She thought about texting right then and there and calling the whole thing off. Why was she even seriously considering going? Jordan was wrong. Porter wouldn’t tell her dad, not if he valued his place at the firm. But what if that wasn’t true? Even worse, what if she went through with the party, but then Porter found out just how little she knew about the sex that went along with her toys?

      She’d have to stall. Put him off. But could she do it? She thought about how little her willpower had mattered in the elevator.

      As her fingers hovered near her phone, she remembered what Jordan had said, about Porter getting mad and telling her dad everything.

      She couldn’t risk even a remote chance that Porter would do that.

      She still remembered the look of pure anger on her father’s face when he’d found that Cosmo magazine she’d hidden under her mattress in her room when she was in eighth grade, the one that blatantly offered tips on blow jobs right on the cover. It wasn’t her fault, exactly. They’d never even dreamed of sitting her down and explaining the birds and the bees. She had to get what she could from fifth-grade sex ed and magazines.

      No, she had to do it. She couldn’t risk calling Porter’s bluff. She’d have to go through with the party, but she certainly didn’t have to sleep with him. Unless she wanted to, a little annoying voice whispered in her head. She texted back before she lost her nerve:

      I’ll be there.