Read Little Tease for Free Online

people around us. Why was it that whenever we were together, all eyes were on us? “How’ve you been?”
    “ Good. Still busy at work?”
    “ Not so much now,” he said. “You want a drink?”
    I accompanied him over to the bar to get the round in, and while we waited for the bartender to fill our order, I told him, “It was weird being here without you last time.”
    Josh grinned. “Trying to tell me you missed me?”
    “ Where were you both two weeks ago?” Ben wanted to know, butting in between us. “Having a little private scene somewhere?”
    Josh’s eyes narrowed a little; he and Ben obviously didn’t get on, for some reason I wasn’t privy to. I decided not to ask.
    “ No. Not that it’s any of your business, but I was working the night shift.” Josh’s words came out more biting than I’d expected.
    Ben frowned and backed off. “Okay… Didn’t mean anything by it.”
    We both watched him go back to his table, and then exchanged glances. “He’s the weirdest guy, sometimes,” I said.
    “ Uh-huh,” Josh agreed, handing money to the bartender.
    After a while, he took Smurfette into the dungeon for a scene, and I sat with Ben and Mel for a while. Something about the way Ben had been fishing made me suspicious.
    “ So where were you last week, if Josh was working?”
    The question came just a couple of minutes into our conversation, and when I saw Mel trying to discreetly nudge him into silence… that just slotted the puzzle piece into place. I’d seen this from them before, in more vanilla terms. “You’re getting people to bet on us?!”
    “ Damn it, Ben,” Mel complained. “Now they’ll never do it.”
    Rage and nausea warred within me, and I fought the urge to throw my drink at one of them. The only reason I didn’t do it was that I didn’t know which of them I should choose.
    “ You two are unbelievable.” I bailed on them without another word and marched across the club and into the ladies’ room, figuring that at least I could get some space from one of them that way.
    Mel gave me a couple of minutes to fume before joining me, and by the time she got there, my brain had already jumped to the next big question. The one that made my heart constrict.
    “ Is Josh in on this?” I demanded, without giving her chance to speak. If he was… I couldn’t go any further with him. Not if he was laying bets on when I’d play with him. That was just one step away from betting on when he could get me into bed.
    Mel’s eyes widened, and she shook her head emphatically, taking a step forward. “Oh, honey, no. Don’t even think that.”
    The thought got to me more than it should have. He was just a guy. I could do without him. But after everything that had happened over the past couple of months, my giving in to him had started to become a matter of ‘when’ in my mind, rather than ‘if’. “Would you tell me if he was in on it? How much have you bet?”
    Sensing my distress, she pulled me into a hug. I blinked back angry tears against her shoulder as she told me, “Ben has a problem. You know that. We’re seeing the therapist, but every now and then he can’t help himself. And I’d never hear the end of it if I didn’t play, so I put ten dollars on the end of next month, to shut him up.”
    Ben could be a real asshole when he wanted to be. I’d never understood Mel’s fascination with him, but that was between them. I didn’t have the energy to get into that argument again. “I’ll give you twenty dollars myself, if you play straight with me. What does Josh know about this? Has he bet on me?”
    Mel tugged one of my braids incredulously. “Oh, come on, Lee. I can see you’re upset. You don’t need to bribe the truth out of me…” Sighing, she leaned against the wall. “Josh knows what’s going on, but he wouldn’t touch it. He seemed more worried that if you found out what we were doing, you’d run from him just to avoid giving us the satisfaction.”
    I wasn’t