Seduction - Chapter 15 #2
“He wrote to me.” Tanner coughed. “Texted me, I mean.” He pulled out his phone almost as if he needed to prove to me that he had one.
Okay. Tanner really was a nice guy. Hell, he’d just done James a huge awkward favor in his spare time. But Rob did maybe have a point…Tanner was a bit strange.
“Oh, I almost forgot my houseboy,” Tanner said. He walked to the bottom of the stairs. “We’re leaving!” he yelled.
Wait, was there someone else involved in this ridiculousness?
A short little man in a butler’s outfit ran down the stairs. “Sorry, Master Tanner,” he said. “I was just putting the finishing touches on the altar.”
No! I didn’t even know this man and he knew about the sex altar? I cleared my throat, hoping that would be the end of that. “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Penny.”
“Oh, don’t mind Nigel,” Tanner said. “He’s my houseboy. He likes it when you ignore him. Just pretend he’s a piece of furniture. Let him blend in.”
I looked at Nigel and then back at Tanner. “I don’t really understand anything that you just said.”
Tanner laughed. “I get that a lot. Well, we’re off. Enjoy yourself,” Tanner said. “I’ll see you again at the wedding.”
I waved goodbye to him and Nigel, but then caught Matt’s arm. “You invited him to the wedding?” I whispered. “Rob’s going to kill you. And who the hell is that weird little man?”
Matt laughed. “Tanner’s houseboy. He literally just told you that.” He lowered his voice. “Nigel is super creepy, right? He really likes to stare.”
We both glanced toward the door, where Tanner and Nigel were waiting for Matt. Tanner was looking at his phone but Nigel was staring directly at us. Or…rather…at Matt. He was definitely just staring at Matt.
“Anyway,” Matt said. “Every single guy needs a wingman at a wedding. It’s bro-code. Rob will understand.”
“Will he? Because he was pretty upset today that you were hanging out with Tanner instead of going to the tasting.”
“Rob will be so busy on his wedding day that he won’t notice. Trust me.”
I did not trust him. Rob had basically thrown a hissy fit in the car. “Matt…”
“Don’t say you don’t trust me,” he said. “You trusted me to set up a freaking sex altar in your apartment. Have fun, Penny.” He kissed my cheek and then left with Tanner.
My stomach was uneasy from the fact that Matt was inviting Tanner to Rob’s wedding.
And even more uneasy because there was a sex altar waiting for me upstairs that two of my friends plus Nigel had just built.
Was James trying to mortify me? Was that part of it?
A religious shaming thing? Because I’d had enough of that growing up in a Catholic church.
I didn’t know whether to run upstairs to look at it or stand by the door and freak out at James when he came in.
I didn’t have to decide, because right then, James walked in. He was smiling, not a care in the world.
“James Hunter, did you seriously ask our friends and Nigel to build a sex altar for us upstairs?”
“Who’s Nigel?” James asked.
I ignored the question. Nigel was the least of our concerns. “Do you have any idea how mortifying that is? I’ll never be able to look at Matt or Tanner or Nigel ever again without thinking about that.”
“Well, hopefully after tonight you’ll only be thinking about me when you think of sex altars.”
“It’s not funny,” I said and lightly slapped his arm. “This is so embarrassing.”
“I love when you blush.”
“Don’t flirt with me! You are in so much trouble.”
He flashed me his perfect smile.
“I will slap that smile off your face.”
“Well it’s a good thing that’s not what they were doing then.”
I just stared at him. “Wait…what?”
“I asked Tanner and Matt to just pretend they’d been setting up a sex altar. To distract you from the real surprise. And really…who is Nigel?”
“Tanner’s houseboy. Forget about Nigel. This is important. So…they weren’t setting up sex stuff?”
“Nope.” He didn’t offer any more information.
“So what were they doing?”
He smiled again. “I wanted to surprise you. They were really setting up the nursery.”
My mouth dropped. “Are you serious?” I hit his arm again. “I’m going to kill you. That was so not funny.”
“It was a little funny.”
Fine. Maybe a little. But I wasn’t going to tell him that. I’d been worried about who knew all day. And to find out no one did? Was he trying to send me into labor early?
“Come on. You’re going to love it.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the stairs.
I didn’t say a word. I was still coming down from that evil trick. “They thought that I thought it was a sex thing.”
James laughed.
I groaned.
James smiled outside the door to one of our spare bedrooms. We’d decided that this would be the nursery.
But that was as far as we’d gotten with our plans because we couldn’t decide on a color.
It had to be something neutral because we didn’t know if we were having a girl or a boy.
And James did not like that I kept insisting on shades of blue.
“You’re going to love it,” James said and put his hand on the doorknob.
I shook my head, trying to rid the tension from my body. It was a dirty trick. But the fact that the nursery was finished was actually really sweet.
James opened the door and I gasped. This was not a nursery. What was it that Tanner said he had in his house? This was a freaking sex dungeon!
But before I could say a word, James put a bag over my head.