By the next morning, I wasn’t feeling as panicked to gain all the intel as I had been last night when I’d ordered a pizza and stress-played video games until the wee hours of the night.

The board was shockingly good at collecting the details.

I was hoping our good luck would continue and we’d be ready to present everything to Hudson by Thursday morning.

We’d rolled in a standing dry erase board so that everyone could see the main points instead of them being housed on pieces of paper that would have to be copied and passed around.

I was on my lunch break, taking a much needed breather behind the closed door of my office, when my phone chimed on the corner of my desk.

Chewing through the Caesar salad I’d selected from the order Maxim had gone out and gotten for everyone, I picked up my phone and felt my pulse quake when I saw the recipient.

Wrex.

I almost choked on my forkful of salad, willing it to go down so that I could avert my full attention to my phone.

Granted, it’d only been a few days since we’d had sex, and I had decided what I was comfortable with going forward, I hadn’t reached out to Wrex myself because I was giving him any additional time he might need after I’d made up my mind.

Seeing that he was ready to talk though? My dick was delighted to see as such.

Picking up my phone, I read over Wrex’s text.

Is it safe to assume you’ve had time to think about us?

My half-hard cock stirred in my slacks. For the first time since deciding on what ORBIT’s first case was going to be, I could think about something that was fun.

Easy. Simple. Being with Wrex felt like being stuck underwater for an extended period of time and finally coming up for air.

And any chance I could get in on something like that, I was going to take it from now on.

Making the best of the moment, I wrote out a response and quickly hit send before I had time to second guess anything.

I have. You ready to meet up to discuss?

When are you available?

Hell yeah , I mentally cheered. I was in. Though my work schedule was going to keep me booked and busy, at least until Thursday morning when we met with the detective, that didn’t mean my nights had to be tied up. Unless Wrex is into that , I thought wickedly.

Tonight too soon?

Definitely not. When do you get off work?

Should be no later than five. Wanna say seven to be sure?

Sounds great. I’ll see you soon then ??

God damn that petrylle and his use of the winky face. I looked down in my lap and saw the confirmation that was my dick was like laid steel, straining against my pants in an attempt to breathe out in the open.

Thoughts of Wrex on his hands and knees on my bed came into view behind my eyelids.

God, it would be so hot to have him like that in my bedsheets.

If we did have sex again, I wanted to take my time, now that’d we’d broken the ice and already successfully gotten off together.

I wanted to savor his inhuman body, to inhale the scent that poured off him, a beautiful mix of clean laundry and rain. Fuck, that wasn’t helping my hard-on.

I just hoped the winky face meant that he was fully into a casual hookup relationship.

Five o’clock hadn’t come soon enough. The board was still working on evidence gathering, and even though we were all running around with our heads cut off, we were at least making a lot of progress.

If we got out of the office tomorrow to gather the rest of the information, or were able to make contact on the phone with the people we needed, we might just get lucky and have all the information we needed a day early before Hudson’s arrival.

Which meant I was clear to run home and hope I’d get lucky in a different way.

Doing my best to clear my mind as I cleaned my body in the shower, thinking about engaging in a mutually beneficial, purely sexual relationship with Wrex just felt more and more right.

I wouldn’t mind learning more about him, of course.

In fact, I found my mind wandering to what past experiences he could be made up of.

I wanted to learn those things, preferred it.

But at the end of the day, knowing that both of us were purely in this for the fun took the edge off of it.

It took away that usual messiness that both of us seemed keen to avoid.

Once I deemed my body appropriately scrubbed and ready for wh at I hoped would be a sexual outcome after talking to Wrex, I got dressed into something casual.

I decided on grey sweatpants and a red tank top.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt free enough to wear a tank top, other than the morning we’d shared breakfast. I’d always been so strait-laced and stayed in my button down after work.

Even on the weekends, I usually opted for a graphic tee and a pair of basketball shorts.

Perhaps Wrex was bringing out my more “fun” side.

Being casual was going to be fun.

I had just finished straightening up around the place when I heard three polite knocks on the front door of my condo. Running a hand through my beard as I let out a nervous breath, I nodded to my audience of none and went to open the door.

“Wrex,” I beamed with unusual charisma. At least unusual in the sense that I hadn’t successfully flirted with someone in a multitude of years. “Glad you could made it.”

“You knew I was coming over, dork.” Wrex scoffed with a smile, walking forward into the condo as I stepped aside for him to do so.

“Right,” I said with a nervous laugh, trying to shake the instant effect he was having on me in whatever way I could.

I breathed out easily, shutting the door behind me as I watched him take a spot next to the breakfast nook we’d eaten together at just a few days ago.

He was wearing another crop top, stirring my dick to life in my sweats.

Wrex definitely knew what he was doing. Even if the pants he was wearing left more to be desired.

“So,” He said, smiling a sort of half-smile. I wasn’t sure exactly what he was trying to exert by doing it, but it was just about the cutest thing I’d ever seen. “You had time to think about…us? That sounds so serious but—”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Chuckling, I gestured between us with the flick of my wrist. “It’s all good.”

Before there was another wave of awkwardness over the lack o f communication about our situationship, I closed the space between us with a slowed but intentional glide.

Grabbing his hands, I stared into those striking blue eyes like they held the solution to all the world’s problems. They at least housed the solution to my short-term sexually frustrated problems.

“I just want to get it all out in the open, so excuse my abrasiveness but,” I cleared the lump of nerves in my throat and went on with my impromptu speech.

“I’m totally down to keep this casual. If you’re down for a friends with benefits sort of situation where we hookup and leave it at that, then I am too. ”

Wrex grinned, finally feeling the anxiety leave me as he squeezed my hands back in earnest. “I’m really relieved to hear you say that. I like you, and I really liked having sex with you, but I’m just not ready for a full-time committed relationship.”

“Look, you’ll hear no opposition from me, I get it.” I nodded, thinking back to Matty running in on us and seeing that we’d freshly fucked. Ugh, I needed to scrub that horrible detail from my brain as soon as possible. “So…casual?”

“Casual.” Wrex nodded. “And you don’t have any hangups about me not being human?”

“Are you kidding?” I guffawed. “Was it being the Director of Orb Affairs that gave me away?”

A boisterous laugh rippled through the air from Wrex, and it was the most joyous thing I’d ever heard. In a totally friends with benefits sort of way, of course.

“Fair point.” Wrex pulled his hands free by wrapping them around my neck, pulling me into him so that our chests were flush against each other. “Then…we can enjoy each other’s company all we want.”

“Absolutely.”

“And if either of us becomes uncomfortable or feels the need to withdraw from our situation, there’s no hard feelings?”

“Seriously, Wrex, I’m all for it. I just got out of a seven year marriage.

I’m not looking to tie myself down with another person right now.

I wanna enjoy being on my own.” The true words rang loudly back in my ears, the validity so strong within them that I thought they might pierce my eardrums. With a sly smile, I gave Wrex a wicked smirk, one his eyes dipped to take in fully.

“But I also wouldn’t mind enjoying being with you in various positions and in varying places. ”

And then he was crashing his lips against mine.

I shook off the shock and awe at the shift in dynamic, tangling my hands in the material of his navy crop top.

The warm silk of his fingers found their way into my hair and I growled into his mouth at the touch when our tongues started sliding together.

I couldn’t remember ever experiencing kissing another person being this hot before, and I never wanted it to stop.

But it did, Wrex pulling away from me as we both panted with dropping smiles of lust. “Bedroom this time?” He suggested, the flaring of his nostrils telling me he was completely wound up and needed to vet some of the energy we’d created together.

It only took one look down at his pants to see the clear evidence.

“Lead the way.”

Tossing me a laugh, Wrex grabbed my hand and dragged me into my own bedroom. I used my foot to knock the door closed as we tangled our bodies amidst each other again, falling back on the bed in unison with me on top and Wrex underneath the safety of my body.

Hands roamed over newly familiar skin, his hands igniting the already rising heat underneath mine. I made sure to steer clear of the slits for his wings as my hands laid claim over his back, just in case he was still self-conscious about it.

As we laid there making out fiercely, I felt how bad I needed this.

Not just sex in general, but him. I wanted Wrex so bad, there was a twisted knot in my stomach at the thought of never having him again.

With work staring to bloom with danger and deadlines, my greatest concern was that I was going to lose myself in it.

Just like Matty had always accused me of doing so when I was just a lowly House Representative.

His words, not mine. But Wrex was my something extra that I could enjoy aside from my proclivity for video games.

A way to expend my nerves from work by getting lost in the blue of his eyes, the warmth of his grey skin, the curve of his ass. God, what an ass he had.

And he was fully at my disposal.