Insider (Exodus End 1)

Logan covered his eyes with one hand. “Your respect? She obviously doesn’t respect you. You don’t owe her a goddamned thing.”

“But she’s right.” Toni wrung her hands together in her lap. Her hair slid forward to hide her troubled expression. “I wouldn’t have this job if my mom didn’t own the company. I don’t have any experience. I do suck at this.”

He sat beside her and rubbed her back. “What are you talking about? You’re doing a great job.”

She shook her head. “I’m having too much fun to be doing a great job.”

“Just because work is fun doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. Unless you think my entire band is a failure.”

Her head snapped up. “Of course I don’t think that!”

“And I don’t think you’re going to fail. I hate to brag, but I’m an excellent judge of talent, and you, Ms. Nichols, are talented. Just look at how fast you learned how to give a fantastic hummer.”

“I’ll add it to my resume,” she said glumly.

He wasn’t going to let this drop until she was happy and smiling again, so she might as well stop resisting his attempts at a pep talk.

“Do you know how hard it is to get my bandmates to talk about their personal lives?”

She opened her eyes wide and nodded.

“And yet you got each of them to talk to you about things they never discuss with members of the press.”

“That’s because they don’t see me as a real journalist, so I’m obviously doing it wrong.”

“Or you’re doing it right and just don’t realize it. Like when we have sex. You worry that you aren’t doing it like everyone else does it, but when you forget to be anxious, you’re amazing.”

“I am?”

“Amazing.”

She smiled, and he swore the roof of the bus opened up, letting in rays of sunshine to brighten his day.

“Not that you’re an expert yet,” he said. “I do still have a lot to teach you in the bedroom.”

“You haven’t taught me a thing in the bedroom yet.”

He gaped at her. “What? I’ve taught you plenty. I mean, you went for that sixty-nine all on your own—very nice, by the way—but the other stuff—”

“Didn’t happen in a bedroom. It happened in this lounge and a limo and your bunk . . .”

He chuckled. “I guess it is time to introduce you to a real bed.”

“Tonight,” she promised, giving him a chaste kiss on the lips. “But first I need to interview Reagan.”

“Because you don’t suck at this?” He wanted her to believe it. Wanted to hear her say it. Still wanted to text her bitch of an editor and put her in her place.

“Because if I don’t keep trying, I’ll never gain the experience I need to be successful.”

Logan nodded and patted her knee. Her confidence was still shaky, but it would strengthen with time. He turned his head to yell down the corridor, “You’re up, Reagan! Do you think you can unlock your lips from Trey’s long enough to answer Toni’s expert interview questions?”

“Not really,” Reagan’s voice carried into the room.

“Then Toni’s going to make up a bunch of shit about you!” Logan yelled. “And I’m going to put ideas in her head.”

“I’ll be right there!”

Logan rose from the sofa and bent to press a kiss to Toni's forehead. “You’ve got this, lamb.”

She smiled and nodded. She lifted her chin a notch, and his chest swelled with pride, which was the weirdest-fucking emotion he’d ever experienced in all his thirty-two years.

Reagan bounded into the room and tackle-hugged Toni on the sectional. “Are you really going to include me in the book?”

“Of course I am,” Toni said. She patted Reagan’s shoulder as she tried to sit upright. “You’re part of Exodus End, aren’t you?”

“Not really, but I do appreciate the gesture.”

Logan rolled his eyes and shook his head. Did Reagan still feel excluded? He supposed he would have to fuck with her more so she felt like one of the guys. Or perhaps they should forbid her from riding on Sinners’ tour bus. She spent more time with Trey’s band than her own.

“If you two start making out, holler for me,” Logan said as he stepped into the corridor to give the women privacy. “I wouldn’t want to miss that.”

Toni’s eyes widened when Reagan shifted to straddle Toni’s lap and gave his justfriend’s boobs a squeeze.

“I always wanted a pair like these,” Reagan said. “If I can’t have my own, I might as well play with someone else’s.”

Logan reentered the lounge and made a beeline for the sectional. “Yes, I’d love to watch. Thanks for asking.”

“I promise not to molest your girlfriend,” Reagan said, scrambling from Toni’s lap and shoving Logan out of the room. Smiling brightly, she made a peace sign. Then she turned her symbol of good will against her face to flick her tongue between her index and middle finger and slid the door shut an inch from his nose.

Logan groaned and rested his forehead against the cool surface of the door. Surely Reagan had her hands full with two men. She couldn’t possibly need to add a woman to her stable of full-time lovers, could she?

with Reagan Elliot

“I just can’t resist fucking with that guy,” Reagan said, breezing past Toni and flopping onto the sofa. She propped her bare feet on the coffee table and patted the cushion next to her.

The same cushion that Logan had been lying on when he’d come in Toni’s mouth moments before. Toni reached for the cola Logan had so thoughtfully brought her and took another swig.

She was going to have to start staging her interviews in a different location. She couldn’t stop the X-rated images from filtering through her thoughts.

“He is fun.” Toni scooted closer to Reagan, her nearly empty beverage clasped between her hands. Maybe she’d have more luck keeping on track while interviewing a woman. She hadn’t planned on doing any additional interviews, having decided Dare’s advice to just talk to them was her best move, but now that she felt she needed to prove herself to Logan as well as her mother and Susan, Toni decided she should at least attempt all the preplanned formal interviews, even if they didn’t amount to much.

“We can finally have that girl talk,” Reagan said, grabbing the bottle out of Toni’s hands and taking a drink.

Toni cringed, thinking that if Reagan knew where her mouth had just been, she would not want to share.

“What’s that face?” Reagan said, lowering the bottle and eyeing her with suspicious gray-blue eyes.

Toni shook her head. “N-nothing.”

“Did you just suck Logan’s dick or something?”

Heat flooded Toni’s face. “Maybe.”

Reagan crinkled her nose and shoved the nearly empty bottle into Toni’s chest. “And you let me drink after you?”

“I’m sorry.”

Reagan shook her head and went still when her gaze landed on something on the floor. “And you just leave your sex toys lying around on the carpet?”

So much for her interview with Reagan staying on track. “I found that under the sofa when I was hunting for my pen.”

“Sure you did.”

Toni was so embarrassed that she didn’t know whether to hide under the cushions or cry, so she laughed uneasily. “Honest. I didn’t even know what that thing was until Logan explained it to me.”

Reagan cocked her head at her, her dirty-blond bangs sliding over her face to cover one eye. “So are you two serious or just having a good time?”

Toni wasn’t sure how to answer that. She wanted them to be serious, and he made her feel like he was serious about her, but she was pretty sure she was just clueless about these things and reading more into his actions and words than was really there.

Reagan touched the back of Toni’s hand, and Toni looked up into a pair of concerned eyes. “Don’t let him play you unless you’re playing him right back.”

“I don’t know i

f he’s playing me. And I wouldn’t know how to play him if I had an instruction manual and a tutor. Not that I want to play him.” She just wanted to love him. She shook her head and planted her face in her palms. It was much too soon for that. Even she realized that.

“Oh, honey, you didn’t do something as stupid as fall in love with him, did you?”

Toni nodded miserably.

“Because falling for someone too quickly . . .”

Toni steeled her heart for the advice she knew would follow. She knew the coming words were true. She just didn’t want the truth voiced aloud, because that would make it real and then she’d have to face it.

“. . . is the most amazing experience ever!” Reagan said.

Thinking she needed to clean out her ears, Toni lifted her face from her hands and arched a brow at Reagan. “Huh?”

“Are you recording this?” Reagan nodded to the recorder on the table.

Toni shook her head.

“This is just between you and me, okay? Don’t go selling it to the tabloids or printing it in your book.”

Toni nodded mutely.

“I fell in love with Trey so fast—like soooo fast it was ridiculous and I convinced myself it was hormones—because the guy is sex on a stick.”

Toni nodded.

“But it’s so much deeper than that. It was from the first moment we met. Sometimes you just click with someone”—Reagan snapped her fingers—“and you know on a biological and psychological level that this is the one. Or the two . . .” Reagan’s gaze shifted to the wall and she cleared her throat. “So if you feel that instantaneous connection with Logan, don’t immediately discredit it. Just because it’s a fast-burning love doesn’t mean it can’t be a long-lasting love. You just have to keep fueling the fire. Right?”

Toni had no idea. “I guess.”

“Right.” Reagan slapped her on the arm.

“How do I go about fueling the fire, exactly?” Toni asked. Sex? The answer had to be sex. Maybe anal sex. She still wasn’t keen on the idea, but if that was what it took to keep Logan’s interest, she’d allow it.

“You have to make him feel like he’s important to you.”

Well, that would be easy enough. She could see herself overdoing it, though. “But then won’t he think I’m being clingy? Or obsessed?”

“You don’t have to be all up in his face about it.”

Reagan’s nose was suddenly an inch from Toni’s as she peered into her eyes. Toni laughed at the irony. She’d never met anyone as in your face—both literally and figuratively—as Reagan Elliot.

“Even little things can make a big difference,” Reagan said.

“But what if he doesn’t feel as strongly about me as I do about him?”

“Just keep being marvelous, sweetie. He’ll come around.”

She sure hoped so.

“So are we going to do this interview or what?”

“Can I ask you something first? Completely off the record.” Toni’s curiosity had gotten the better of her. She couldn’t keep this question to herself for another second.

“Sure.”

“Are you cheating on Trey with your bodyguard?”

Reagan gaped at her. Toni couldn’t tell if she was shocked because her secret had been discovered or because someone thought she was capable of being unfaithful.

“No,” she said flatly.

Either Reagan was lying or Toni’s power of observation was less honed than she realized.

“I’m sorry if I offended you.”

“I dated Ethan before I met Trey.”

“So I guess Ethan still has feelings for you. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.” She’d also seen the way he looked at Trey, but she was obviously reading that incorrectly. Though she had been around enough gay guys to recognize attraction between two men and there was definitely attraction between those two men. Unless . . . “Wait,” Toni said as something overtly sneaky occurred to her. “Are you a cover for a relationship between Trey and Ethan?” But that didn’t explain all she’d seen either. The intimacy she’d witnessed between Trey and Reagan was obviously not fabricated.

“Wrong again.” Reagan grinned. “Can you keep a secret?”

Toni’s heart thudded, and she nodded eagerly.

“What am I saying? Of course, you can’t keep a secret,” Reagan said. “You’re a fucking journalist.”

“Except I’m not,” Toni said. “At all.”

“And that’s why you’re doing interviews and recording footage and sticking your nose in everyone’s business.”

Toni shouldn’t have felt hurt that Reagan didn’t trust her—she completely understood why Reagan would have reservations about sharing personal information—but she wanted Reagan to feel that she could confide in her and believe that Toni would keep her promises. Her integrity was worth more to her than a few lines in a tabloid or a few dollars for an incriminating picture.

“I don’t mean to be intrusive,” Toni said. “I’m just trying to get an inside look at the lives of the members of Exodus End and share that look with the world. I absolutely do not want anything in the book that could hurt any of you. I haven’t known you all long, but I consider you my friends, and I would never betray a friend’s trust.”

Reagan eyed her warily and then sighed. “Normally if a member of the media spouted that kind of nonsense in my direction, I wouldn’t hesitate to call them a liar—”

Toni cringed.

“—but for some reason, I don’t think you’re capable of being a vindictive bitch, so I’ll tell you, and you can either affirm my faith in humanity or get the shit beat out of you for betraying my trust.”

Toni swallowed hard. She wouldn’t betray Reagan’s trust, not because of Reagan’s violent threats—fabricated as they seemed—but because to be counted among the back-stabbing bitches of the world would eat Toni alive from the inside out.

“Trey is my boyfriend,” Reagan said.

Oddly, Toni was relieved that the truth wasn’t any more scandalous than that.

“And he knows that Ethan is my lover,” Reagan continued.

Okay, so maybe it was more scandalous.

“Because Ethan and Trey are lovers too.”

Jaw meet floor.

Reagan let out a deep sigh.

“I don’t know why, but it feels kind of good to tell you that,” Reagan admitted while Toni tried to remember how to blink. “I wish the world was open to polyamorous relationships. It’s becoming more open to homosexual ones, so maybe, given time . . .” Reagan tilted her head at Toni. “Are you going to pass out?”

Toni shook her head and took her first breath in over a minute. Questions began to race through her thoughts.

“So you have sex with Trey. And with Ethan. And they’re both okay with that?” Toni asked. Why was her voice so squeaky? She sounded like a mouse huffing helium.

Reagan laughed and crossed her legs, looking surprisingly at ease. “Well, yeah, since most of the time they’re both there.”

More questions bombarded Toni’s psyche. “And they do each other in front of you?”

Reagan laughed. “If I’m lucky.”

The logistics were completely out of Toni’s grasp. She had a hard enough time figuring out what to do with one cock; she’d have no idea how to keep two satisfied. But even more than the mind-bending sexual positions, Toni was struggling to grasp the emotional connection. If Logan had sex with some other woman—or man—she’d be heartbroken. She didn’t know if she’d ever be able to move past infidelity, no matter how much she loved him. But not everyone had the same ideas of sex and love as she did, and she was okay with that. She didn’t have to participate in a certain lifestyle to accept it. “So you’re in love with Trey and Ethan’s just there as a sex partner?”