The Roommate Situation by Zoe X. Rider Read Free Book Online

back with my parents’ blessing. Everybody’s happy.
    Eventually.
    I’d closed the job board, but eBay is still up, the guitars taunting me. I move the cursor to close it, then change my mind and sweep the cursor to the search box. It takes a few minutes to remember the eBay seller name Chuck had shown me. CustomLeatherBondage. I pull up the listings page. The three pairs of cuffs Derek showed me, including the ones with the iron crosses, are listed at forty, fifty, and sixty dollars a pair. They’d been photographed on a white background—a piece of poster board, it looked like. Remembering the weight of them in my hands, the soft jingle of the buckles, the smell of leather… The photos don’t do them justice.
    I look at a collar with hearts stamped on it. It comes with a leather leash that hooks to a D-ring on the collar. I wonder how well something like that sells. Couldn’t you just buy pretty much the same thing at PetSmart? If Derek had included a photo of a woman on all fours, wearing nothing but the collar, smiling seductively at the camera—now that might get sales. You don’t see that at PetSmart.
    I suppose she couldn’t be naked in an eBay listing, though.
    The chest harness is just stretched out on a white background, its straps like so much linguini. How it might look on someone is left to the imagination. I crease my brow. My imagination’s not up to it. Is it for a man? A woman? Either? Which is the front? The back?
    Curious, I search for other chest harnesses to see what the competition’s doing. Most model theirs on mannequins, which don’t do much to up the sexiness factor, but at least I can see how they’re supposed to be worn.
    Most of the mannequins are male. They look like college guys: shiny, dead, fake-looking college guys, some with their wigs sliding toward their noses.
    Does nobody fucking care when they put these listings together?
    As I study one, my brain brings up an image of Derek stripping out of his motorcycle jacket, nothing but a leather harness underneath.
    That would sell.
    I shift under the heat bleeding from the bottom of my laptop.
    Derek’s head wouldn’t need to be in the photo, just from the neck down to, say, his crotch. And the motorcycle jacket, in the process of being shed. Yeah. That would sell. I flip back over to his listings and find myself better able to see how the harness goes on.
    The lock on our door snicks.
    The handle starts to move.
    I click the browser window closed and bring up my e-mail, my heart thudding. The laptop hides what looking at that stuff had started to do to me.
    And there’s Derek in the flesh, walking through the door in the very same motorcycle jacket.

Chapter Five
    I hunch down a little more behind the laptop and say, “Hey.”
    “Hey.”
    I stare at my e-mail. No new messages, but there are a few I busy myself with getting rid of.
    Derek sweeps back the curtain, leaving it open while he swings his jacket onto the chair.
    The fact that I’m now picturing Derek stripping his T-shirt off, revealing his trim body, is not helping the situation going on below my laptop. I concentrate hard on the screen in front of me.
    A thud comes, the sound of one of Derek’s boots dropping. “How’d the visit go?” he asks, followed by a second thump.
    I clear my throat. “About as expected.”
    “Are you getting your guitar?”
    “As if.”
    “Sorry.” He appears at the periphery of my vision, dragging his chair back to sit down at his workbench.
    I lean against the wall, letting out a quiet exhale of relief. I wonder if my face looks as hot as it feels. “Going out tonight?” I ask.
    “Nah.”
    I can almost hear the toothpick shift to the other side of his mouth.
    He says, “I’ve got a project due Monday. Probably should be working on it.”
    A minute or so goes by, and an acrid smell drifts over. I lean forward. “That doesn’t look like schoolwork.”
    “Yeah, I’ve got a belt I’d rather be burning a design into.” A