Chapter 30
NOAH
Xavier glared daggers hard enough that I actually took a step backward before remembering looks couldn’t kill. And fuck him, I was standing my ground on this one.
“I’m not putting that on,” he growled, shifting his disgusted gaze to the costume on the hanger in my left hand. “It won’t even fit me. Just give me the other one.”
I jerked the second costume away, thrusting the first toward him. “Not a fucking chance. We rock-paper-scissored, and you lost. Be a big boy and accept defeat, Godzilla. Look, it’s got Velcro adjustments at the back, you’ll be just fine. Make sure you wear some boxers just in case, though.”
“Xavi, just put it on. You’ll look cute and fans will go wild.” Z grinned as he said it, doing a little twirl in his own costume. “I look good, right, Rocky?”
“Adorable,” I agreed with a smile, pushing the costume toward Xavier again. “Sulk all you like, but this is what you’re wearing. If you have a problem with it, talk to Ace.”
He glowered and snatched the hanger from my hand.
Good enough, I supposed. I didn’t wait for him to argue further, taking my own costume into the bathroom to get changed.
Admittedly, it was loose on me and probably would have fit Xavier better, but fuck if I was going to take that option.
The way I’d sweated during rock-paper-scissors was insane.
“Cute,” Minho commented when I returned to the main room where the other guys were dressing.
“Those suspenders suit you, Chicken.” He prowled closer, and my breath caught as he ran a finger under one of the brown leather straps of my lederhosen.
The shorts were short on Ace but thankfully reached below my knees thanks to my height.
Paired with the high socks, no one would notice my girly legs…
hopefully. Laser hair removal meant I couldn’t just let my leg hair grow wild to blend in, too.
“This is fucked,” Xavier grumbled, snapping me out of the dizzy little bubble I’d slipped into with Minho so close. “I look ridiculous.”
I ripped my gaze away from Minnie and poorly stifled a laugh when I took in Xavier’s appearance.
In fairness, he wore the same costume as Z, Minho, and Skye, but somehow on Xavier it looked extra comical.
Maybe because the short skirt barely covered his tight boxers or because of the way the bodice almost turned his muscular chest into cleavage.
“Aw, come on, Xavi, it’s all in good fun,” Skye laughed, somehow managing to look casually masculine even in his own milk-maid costume. “Besides, think of how breezy this dress is. Better than those leather shorts, that’s for sure.”
“Okay, enough bitching,” Ace barked, clapping his hands with authority. “Let’s get this started.”
Everyone obediently followed him out of the little clubhouse where we’d been changing, making our way to the sports field where the production team had been setting up for today’s episode filming.
One of the AV technicians approached and quickly rigged everyone up with subtle microphones and battery packs, then ushered us over to the starting line where Ace would explain the game.
It was—in theory—a basic kind of obstacle course.
Tunnel crawl, balance beam, over-under hurdles, hula-hoops, egg-and-spoon race…
Fun, easy, kid stuff. Except we’d be in teams of two and would be joined together.
One ankle and one hand would be tethered, turning each pair into a single unit of awkwardness.
A couple of the staff provided the tethers—wide, decorated leather handcuffs which matched our lederhosen—while Ace talked through the obstacle course, and I stifled a sigh when our turn came.
“Smile, Little Dude,” Xavier muttered under his breath after carefully covering his microphone. “We’re meant to be squashing rumors, not fueling them.”
I swiveled my head to look up at him with my brightest, most sarcastic smile imaginable and drew a breath to tell him where to shove his rumors.
“Ah-ah, cameras are rolling,” he reminded me with a click of his tongue.
Motherfucker was begging to be tripped up…except now that our ankles were cuffed together, that’d take me down too. Goddamn Ace knew what he was doing.
One of the staff gave a dramatic “Ready-Set-GO!” and Xavier all but jerked me off my feet as he rushed forward like a bull in a goddamn china shop. I fell, my knee striking the ground and dragging him down with me until we were both sprawled across the grass, red-faced and angry.
We weren’t the only ones. Torin and Minho had been paired up and also tumbled into a mess of arms and legs. Z and August took it slowly, carefully shuffling toward the first obstacle while laughing and joking, but Ace and Skye were in the lead.
“What the fuck, Little Dude?” Xavier growled, pushing himself up to his knees then physically hauling me up off the grass. “Are you trying to—”
“Trying to work nicely together as a team? Sure am. Are you?” I winced as I got my feet back under me, then flicked his clipped-on microphone as a reminder that we were meant to be playing nice.
He glowered, then pasted on the most painful-looking smile I’d ever seen. “Of course. Shall we try again then?”
I rolled my eyes, unable to help myself, but I did disguise the gesture by pretending I was scratching my forehead.
As calmly as I possibly could, I suggested we walk in sync with our middle—joined—legs first, then outside legs in a one-two-one-two format.
Xavier then proceeded to argue the point that caution would sacrifice speed, and I very politely told him to shut the fuck up and do what he was told.
His face was utterly priceless until he glanced at my back pocket to discover I’d just pulled the cord out of my microphone battery pack.
“Cheater. I should expect nothing less,” he scoffed after doing the same to his mic-pack.
Gritting my teeth, I refused to take the bait. “Are we going to do this or stand here arguing all day?”
Grudgingly, Xavier followed my plan, and we made it through the tire steps in last place but only by a small margin. The next stage was a net crawl, and we clashed on ideas again. Shocker. At some stage Xavier caught his pinky finger in the net and gave a pained yelp that actually made me pause.
“Fucking hell,” I hissed, “give me your hand. This is stupid.” When he ignored me, I forced the issue and turned his tethered hand over to link our fingers together and held on tight. “Now can we just pretend to get along for the sake of not dying in this dumb game?”
He gave an irritated growl, but his grip on my hand tightened. “Hurry up. One…two…”
Somehow, with minimal bickering, we made it through the next few obstacles while our other teammates carried the entertainment value, laughing and joking around the whole way.
Xavier and I just barely managed to keep brittle smiles on our faces and our scathing insults muttered under our breath so other microphones wouldn’t catch them.
Despite that, we actually managed to overtake Minho and Torin somewhere on the wall climb, thanks to Xavier’s willingness to physically lift me over the wall. Not that I couldn’t have done it myself, but he had a considerable advantage in both arm span and leg reach, which made it challenging.
“How the fuck is this one meant to work?” he muttered when we arrived at a big orange hula-hoop.
I snorted a laugh—a real one this time—and tugged him over to stand inside the hoop, face to face.
“This is going to be awkward. We need to move our hips as one so…just shut your eyes and suffer through it.” Then before I could lose my nerve, I planted my hands on his hips and physically demonstrated what I meant.
He immediately stiffened up but then followed my lead to get his hips moving.
“Okay, you got it? Now I add the hoop in.” I leaned down and scooped up the hula-hoop in my free hand and lifted it up as high as possible beneath my armpits.
It was an awkward thing, trying to hula-hoop one-handed while also trying to get a guy who’d clearly never hula-hooped in his life to move his hips in wide circles.
Understandably it took a few failed attempts before we achieved the five complete circles needed to move on.
Frustratingly, Minho and Torin nailed that challenge fast and had overtaken us, but at least it was nice to see Z and August failing miserably as they tried to do it side-by-side rather than face to face.
The balance beam went easily thanks to both of us having fantastic balance and the fact the beam was barely a foot off the ground, and then the final stage was a big plastic cow with rubber udders full of milk that one of us needed to milk into a jug, then the other needed to drink.
“I’m not milking the cow,” Xavier announced when we reached our plastic animal. “It’s not fucking happening. I already wore the dress; you need to milk the cow.”
I shrugged, not really bothered by that task. “Fine by me. I’d probably gag drinking room-temperature milk anyway.”
Xavier scoffed. “Sure you would.”
I swiveled a sharp glare up at him. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” he leaned down to bring his lips to my ear, “that I’d bet you don’t gag on much of anything, Little Dude.”
My cheeks flamed and I spluttered in outrage, my mind reminding me how he’d seen all of the Peaches content my stupid, vindictive ex had uploaded.
One small mercy being that my face was never in any of the clips.
The few blow-job scenes that’d been uploaded, I was wearing a blindfold that Rich had claimed was a kink thing.
Turns out it was a “I’m secretly filming you” thing.
“I find it alarming how much you think about my gag reflex, Xavier. Maybe that’s something you should discuss with your therapist.”
“Everything okay over there, Twin?” Skye called out from his milking stool, looking utterly priceless in his milkmaid dress.
Actually, he could really pull that off as a muscular woman, which reassured me I’d dodged a bullet in escaping that costume.
If Skye looked like a passable woman, then my secret surely would have been out.
I jerked Xavier over to our cow and sat down, forcing him to kneel so I could use both my hands on the rubber cow teats. “Just fine,” I replied with forced levity. “We’ve got this.”
Frustratingly, the teats only had the tiniest of holes, and there was nearly forty ounces of milk to squeeze out, one squirt at a time.
I blocked out Xavier as best I could, which was easier said than done while our wrists were cuffed together, and focused on milking the fake cow faster than the other duos.
“Done!” I announced finally, my hands cramping from all the squeezing, and Xavier grabbed the jug of milk from beneath the rubber udders.
Not hesitating even a moment, Xavier tipped the jug up to his lips and chugged the whole damn thing, spilling rivulets of white liquid down his chin and neck like some kind of dairy-kink porn clip.
I stared, somewhat dumbfounded and uncomfortably kind of aroused as his throat moved, then he slammed the empty jug down and slapped the buzzer on the plastic cow’s nose to signal we were done.
And we’d won.
“What the fuck?” Z exclaimed from our other side, having only just arrived at his and August’s cow. “How? You guys were dead last!”
“Turns out, Xavier doesn’t have much gag reflex,” I replied with a smirk.
In response, he wiped his mouth on the towel a staff member tossed over, then scratched his nose with his middle finger. He didn’t try hiding his grin, though, so maybe Ace’s plan had sort of worked out?
Nah. Unlikely. I still wanted to drown him in a shallow sink.