On the other end of the couch, Aidan was laughing again. “I don’t know. Hey, Dylan, are we gay?”
For a moment he was too distracted by that husky laughter to respond. Aidan had laughed more today in Claire’s presence than in the entire month Dylan had been living with him. Not that the guy was Grumpy McGrumps or anything, but the one thing Dylan had learned since moving in? Aidan Rhodes was intense. And haunted. Something was definitely haunting him, but Dylan had yet to decipher the shadows he often glimpsed in those chocolate-brown eyes.
He knew Aidan was hiding a lot of pain behind his seductive, laid-back exterior, but getting the man to talk about his emotions was like trying to train a goldfish—futile and exasperating.
“Are you making fun of me?” Claire sounded hurt as she looked from one man to the other.
Aidan grinned. “Naah, just teasing.”
“You still haven’t answered the question.” Now her big, russet-colored eyes were focused on Dylan. “Are you gay?”
He shook his head.
“Bisexual then?”
“Yeah, I guess,” he answered with a shrug.
She glanced at Aidan. “Are you bi, too?”
“Yup,” he confirmed.
“Huh.” Propping her elbow on the arm of the recliner, she rested her chin in her palm and continued to study them. “Okay, so you both like women.”
Dylan rolled his eyes. “Yes.”
“But you also like men.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “And you have sex with each other.”
All right, now he was starting to feel rattled. The way Claire was staring made him feel like a specimen under a microscope.
“Where are you going with this?” he said irritably.
“I don’t know. I just have so many questions and they keep popping out of my mouth.” She straightened up and clasped both hands in her lap. “Which one of you is the bottom?”
He choked on the breath he’d just drawn into his lungs, then burst into a fit of coughing. Next to him, Aidan barked out another laugh.
When the coughs subsided, Dylan cast a frazzled look at the curious redhead. “Neither of us is the bottom,” he sputtered.
“So you’re both the top?”
“We switch off,” Aidan said helpfully.
Dylan turned to glare at his buddy. “Don’t encourage her.”
“Why not? This is highly entertaining.”
Unfortunately, Claire hurled out another question before he could inform Aidan that his definition of entertainment was all sorts of fucked up.
“So if you had to choose, which would it be, men or women?”
“It’s not that simple,” Aidan said in a gruff voice.
“Sure it is. Just pick one, desert-island style. You can only bring one person with you, and that’s the only person you can sleep with for the rest of your life. ’Kay, you ready? On the count of three, pick a gender. One. Two. Th—”
“I think it’s time for you to go to bed,” Dylan interrupted, bolting to his feet.
“But it’s still early!” Claire’s gaze moved to the red numerals on the Blu-ray player. “It’s, um…” She squinted. “Well, it’s blurry, but I think that says eight o’clock.”
“Well, like you said, you’re very tired.”
As he reached for Claire’s hand and hauled her to her feet, he sensed Aidan’s dark eyes watching in disapproval. Fine, so maybe he was trying to get rid of her, but he refused to spend the rest of the night being interrogated about his sexual preferences. He’d performed his good-guy duty today by whisking her out of the country club, and that was as far as he was willing to go.
To his surprise, Claire didn’t launch any protests as he practically dragged her to the corridor on the other side of the apartment. She just kept chatting away—about the same topic he’d been trying to squash.
“Chris told me you’re kind of a slut. He said you sleep with a ton of women. So I’m guessing if you had to choose, you’d pick the va-jay-jay over the cock.”
Dylan burst out laughing again, and regretted it instantly.
Goddammit. He really needed to stop doing that.
“How is it you can say the word cock, but you use a euphemism for pussy?” he said with a sigh.
Her cheeks turned bright crimson. “I don’t know. I just don’t say that word.” Her tone grew haughty. “I grew up in a strict household where you weren’t allowed to talk about sex or be crude. So sue me. Anyway, what was I saying?”
“Nothing. You were saying nothing.”
“Oh, right, how I think you’d choose women.” She paused. “Actually, no, I changed my mind. Maybe you’d pick men. You live with a man, so…”
Ten more steps and they’d reach his bedroom. Just ten more steps.
Sadly, they were a measly three steps in when Claire decided to come to a full stop in the middle of the hall.
“What now?” he demanded.
She was staring at him, pensive again, except now there was an indecipherable gleam in her eyes that gave him a really bad feeling.
“Unless you were lying to Chris,” she said slowly.