The Fallback (Sample Chapters)

6. You Are What You Eat

    After Jeremy there was Matthew. Then Parker. Emilio. Then back to Matthew. Then Matthew's identical twin Marcus.

    And now Freya was on to Devon. Devon Hoffman. He worked in banking or some such business. As Freya rarely graced the chatroom these days—what with having decent d**k for a change—many of her friends commented on the progression of things between her and Devon.

    And Asher had added a video option for the chat. Finally. It only took him a little over two f*****g years to get to it.

    "I think he's a douche," Kaylie said as she looked down at her nails. She was painting them while chatting, happy to be able to not have to type so she could manicure and primp herself.

    "I second that," Grey agreed from his place in the video chat.

    "You're only saying that because you're still in love with Freya," Jon pointed out with a dismissive jerk of his head.

    "He's a douche whether he's f*****g her or not," Grey protested with a smirk.

    "Yeah, but he's a douche with a big d**k," Tati added. Grey narrowed his eyes in her direction.

    "How the hell would you know?" he asked her with a growl.

    "We chicas talk," Tati uttered with a shrug.

    Groaning, Grey muttered something under his breath.

    "What?" Tati asked. She hadn't caught what he had said.

    "I didn't catch it either, but if my Spidey senses are correct, he was saying something along the lines of, it's not as big as mine, or, yeah, but he can't use it like I can," said Asher, who was currently busy working on another project, this one an app for phones.

    "f**k off, Ash," Grey spat out at him.

    "Later, when my woman comes over," Asher said with a quick grin in Kay's direction on the computer screen. The two were inseparable most times.

    Relationship goals.

    "I hate you all," Grey mumbled under his breath.

    "Don't look at me," Kay told him, holding her freshly manicured hands up in surrender. "I didn't say anything. Tati started it."

    Tati objected. "I was just repeating what I heard. I don't know for certain. It's not like she sent a video of them f*****g or whatever."

    Asher cleared his throat, and Kay picked up the hint.

    "So, Ana," she said. "When are you coming to visit your sisters from another mister? Your bros from some other hoes?"

    "Who?" Tati asked as her forehead crinkled in confusion.

    "Us, stupid!" Kay told her as she put away the nail varnish. It was a shocking “f**k-me” red, and she had placed some fake gemstones at the tips of her ring fingers. "You've been promising for ages you would come and visit us one of these days."

    Grey's interest was piqued, and he forgot all about Devon's demon d**k and how it was probably getting into Freya's p***y on the regular.

    "I have some time off this coming August," Tati told her in slow, methodical tone.

    "When?" Grey asked, his brow creasing.

    "Mid-August," she told him. He groaned. "What?"

    "I'll be in Boulder by that time," he told her. "I have the new gym opening up there and will be gone from the 10th to the 25th."

    "It's just as well," Tati told him with a smirk.

    "Huh?"

    "You couldn't handle all of this," she said with a laugh, gesturing to her body.

    In tandem, the others in the chat all rolled their eyes. They were used to Grey's flirting and Tati's rebuffs of him. Well, for the most part.

    "Oh, would you two just f**k already?" Jon asked them. "Hell, even phone s*x would be welcome after Grey's shameful displays of randiness in chat."

    "Hard to f**k when my d**k doesn't reach that far," Grey sniped out at his friend. It wasn't for lack of trying to convince her to let him f**k her if—or when—they ever met. She was still adamant about not being interested in one-night stands, but to be honest, Grey didn't think he could have just one night with the woman. He thought of Tati almost as much as he thought of Freya—maybe more nowadays. Devon was a cockblocker even to his fantasies of Freya.

    "Hard to f**k when the chick won't bite," Tati threw back at him, her lips quirking up.

    "Ouch," Asher muttered, his fingers moving double time on some coding he was working on.

    "Would you put the f*****g laptop down and chat already?" Grey bit out at him. "It's like having a f*****g conversation with Steve Jobs over here."

    "You're just pissy 'cause your booty call got herself a boyfriend," Jonathan remarked.

    Tati looked over at Grey in shock. "You didn't tell me that."

    "Slipped my mind," Grey grumbled petulantly.

    "Bullshit, Grey," she said with a frown. He should have told her. He told her everything—didn't he?

    "Not now, Tati," he said mulishly.

    "Fine. Whatever," Tati muttered, looking pissed as hell.

    "Now, now, lovebirds," Kaylie chirped with an impish grin.    

    Tati scoffed at her friend and looked away. Kay just rolled her eyes.

    "Look, it's no secret that Grey would bang you if he had half the chance—" Kay started to say.

    "True," Grey confirmed quickly.

    "So why don't you just fly on over, hop on his d**k for a week, and see where it takes ya?"

    Kay. She had such a way with words.

    "I don't fly halfway across the country just for d**k," Tati said, her eyes narrowing.

    "It'll only be partially for d**k," Kay rebutted with a shrug.

    "I approve of this idea," Grey commented, slapping his hand on the top of his desk loudly. Tati's gaze flickered to him, a mischievous grin plastered on his face.

    "You would," she told him. "Anything to get your d**k wet. So, when did Jenna get a boyfriend?" Tati changed the topic back to Grey's old booty call.

    "Ironically enough, when we were going out clubbing," Grey told her. "Went to get us some drinks and when I got back she was practically f*****g some cowboy with a brown Stetson on and a tiny little bulge in his pants. It was pretty gross."

    "You're just jelly because it wasn't your d**k she was grinding on," Tati threw back. She raised a brow at him, and he didn't flinch when he gave it back to her.

    "Not true," he told her. "There are very few people in this world that would make me jealous. Freya being the biggest cause of my possessive nature."

    "Please," Jon told him on a scoff. "If you were all so fired up about getting with her, you'd have said something to her long ago, you ass."

    "True story," Kay interjected.

    "If nothing's happened so far and you haven't said anything yet to her, you don't want it badly enough," Asher chimed in, putting his two cents into the conversation.

    "That's not true," Grey objected.

    "Besides, everyone here knows you're really just waiting for Tati's tight little ass to come visiting so you can lay some serious pipe," Kay added.

    "It's no secret that I would d**k her down good," Grey said proudly. He had heap-big confidence in his d**k game.

    "Jesus," Tati muttered, hoping her face wasn't as bright red as it felt at the moment. It was one thing for Grey and her to flirt—well, at least Grey—but when the rest of the crew all got on their cases, it was mortifying.

    "Can we talk about anything besides Grey's d**k for once? Please?" Tati asked.

    "Then whose d**k would you like to talk about, sweetheart?" Grey asked with a smirk.

    "Oi vey," Tati groaned out.

    "Hey—my d**k is very memorable."

    "Pfffft.”

    "Can't you change the dates of your vacation?" Kay interrupted. "That way you can meet all of us. Together."

    "No can do," Tati told them with a frown. "Vacation calendar is full for the rest of the summer, and I'm not going to Denver in the winter time no matter how much you beg and plead."

    "Ugh, fine," Kay declared with a roll of her pretty blue eyes.

    "Well, maybe I'll just have to come and visit you one of these days," Grey said to Tati and winked.

    "Right.” Her tone was slow and skeptical. "You've only been saying that since the first time you f*******:-stalked me. All talk."

    "Bullshit," he refuted. "I'm all action, baby. Let me prove it while I'm balls deep in you."

    "Well, s**t. It's getting too hot in here for me," Kay pronounced, pretending to fan herself for the camera.

    "Don't leave me in here with this perv!" Tati called out, her eyes wide.

    "Ana dear, this whole chatroom is full of pervs," Kay's dry voice stated. "Grey's just less subtle than the rest of us."

    "Amen," the three men said simultaneously.

***

    "They're on again and off again," Grey told Tati over Skype about two months later. "It's dizzying. Like trying to gain your balance after going on the Tilt-A-Whirl, or on one of those teacup things at Disneyland."

    "You've never been to Disneyland so how would you know?"

    Tati was snacking on a bowl of ice cream while Grey watched her tongue dart out of her mouth every once in a while to lick the white substance from her lips when it spilled over. His d**k twitched as he watched her tongue flick out at the corner of her mouth.

    "Not the point," he told her hurriedly. "Do you realize how hard I am right now?"

    Tati choked on some ice cream and pounded her chest as Grey's slow grin spread across his face.

    "I can't seem to help it," he admitted to her as she reached for the bottle of water she kept near her bed. "Your tongue licking your lips. The color of that ice cream. Hell, baby—I could give you something white and sticky for your lips to—"

    "Don't finish that sentence," Tati choked out after taking a couple of bracing gulps of water. "You know better than to speak to me like that when I'm eating."

    Grey muttered something about giving Tati something to eat. A protein shake. She made a face at him.

    “So, tell me more about this Devon guy," Tati coaxed.

    "What can I say? The dude's a Grade A douchebag," Grey told her. "Pretty enough I guess—from a female perspective, of course, but...there's just something about him I don't f*****g trust."

    "How so?" Tati didn't know if it was Grey's jealousy talking, or if he would have felt the same way had he not had the feelings he did for Freya.

    "I see him staring a lot at other women," he told her.

    "Oh, and like you never do?" she countered with a raised brow.

    "No—at least, not to this extent," he explained.

    "Grey, you press like on every picture of me on f*******: almost as soon as it’s posted," she reminded him. He also added a drooling emoji as well more often than not.

    "Yes, but I'm your favorite f*******: stalker."

    "I have more than one?" she asked suddenly, her eyebrows raising.

    "Yeah—that overgrown meathead with the blond hair. Carl or something?"

    "Oh! You mean Cole," Tati said, her face evening out. "He's just a friend and definitely not a stalker. He's a f*****g cop, for Christ's sake."

    "Cops can stalk," Grey pointed out. "They just know how to get away with it better since they know the law."

    She shook her head at him and tried to wean him from the topic of Cole. The man had been trying to get her on a date for a couple of months now, and she wasn't biting. He had gotten her out of a jam a few months back and they had exchanged phone numbers. Now it seemed like he was expecting some sort of date as restitution for his good deeds. s**t, he was a cop, for God's sake. He was paid to play the hero, the knight in shining…handcuffs.

    Still, he was hot. And buff. And a man in uniform.

    Yum.

    "So, what else is it about Devon you don't trust—besides his roaming eyeballs?" Tati questioned.

    "Well there's the appreciative glances, but he looks like a man who would eat p***y morning, noon, and night—with any chick with a pulse."

    "Has he ever given you a reason to believe he's cheated on her?" Tati asked.

    "Well, no—" Grey started to say.

    "Grey, if you think he's an ass, tell Freya," she told him. "Then tell her you love her, can't live without her, get married, and go make babies."

    "It's that simple, eh?" he questioned, arching an amused brow.

    "For a man who's not a goddamned p***y," she retorted.

    "You are what you eat," he said with a wicked grin.

    "You need a new Jenna," she informed him. He had yet to find another  “friend with benefits” that wasn't set on taming the man.

    "Why do I need Jenna when I have you?" he asked with a wink.

    "Grey, we aren't even close to f*****g," Tati reminded him.

    "I do in my dreams every night," he claimed. "And when I'm awake I just pretend my hand is your nice, tight—"

    "Why do I continue to speak to you?" She gave a sigh as she questioned him.

    "You love me. That's why, sweetheart."