SUMMER SWAP // CHAPTER 27

Before Sully even got Byron out of earshot of the others, out on the front deck on the third level, Byron had a horrible feeling he knew what it was about. Sully had something to say, and it clearly excited him. Since he couldn’t say it in public, it had to be salacious. And, of course, Byron’s guilty conscience could think of only one salacious thing that had happened since he’d last seen Sully in the movie theater before bed last night.

While they walked out to the railing and into the sunshine, Byron got into character and acted as an innocent guy lured into a quiet place to hear some juicy gossip. He pushed an eager smile onto his face and assumed a wolfish gaze. “What is it, what’s going on?” Even his tone was rushed and fervent.

Sully peered over the railing and down the side of the yacht to the water below—did he think someone clung there, eavesdropping?—then back to the yacht’s windows. Satisfied they were alone, Sully bounced his eyebrows and nudged his chin outward. “So what was it like?”

A mask of confusion and misunderstanding came easy to him, but now his heart was racing. How the fuck did Sully know what happened? Fucking Carla, probably. Or maybe Cody bragging about how he’d nailed Cheyenne last night. Guy couldn’t help himself.

“Don’t give me that look, Byron. Come on, you and me”—he touched Byron’s chest and then pointed at himself—“we get along, right? We both married Gamma girls, we’re friends, we hang out . . . I vouch for you all the time.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“I’m just saying, when people ask, I tell them, hey, that Byron’s a great fucking dude.”

“I don’t understand what this is all about.”

“Okay, okay,” Sully said, running a hand through his thick mop of hair. Reassessing, strategizing, establishing altered logistics. He regarded Byron again. “I had a great hiding place last night.”

Byron’s heart thudded like a rimshot. Sully hid in Carla and Cody’s room and watched him fuck Carla and then rub her feet and watch Friends. With slow caution, he said, “Where were you hiding?”

“You were coming out of your bedroom to pee. You remember that?”

He didn’t know how to respond, but his brow lowered and he said, “Sure.”

“Oh, you do? Because, you see, you and Chey kept me and Scarlet up last night with all your bedroom antics.”

“Oh,” he said, trying to show apology, the whole while his scalp tightening and his sack crawling.

“My plan was to jump out at you when you came into the bathroom. But you didn’t come to the bathroom.”

“No, I didn’t,” he said, swallowing hard.

“And it wasn’t you.”

“Wasn’t me what?”

Sully exploded with exasperation, “Jesus, Byron, I’m giving you a chance to come clean. Why are you making this hard? I saw Cody with”—he pointed two pronged fingers to his eyes—“okay? Twenty-twenty vision. It was Cody coming out of your room, not you. And I saw you come out of Carla’s room, man.”

Byron let out a long blubbering sound through pursed lips and sank against the hand railing. He threw up his hands and rolled his eyes to the sky in surrender to Sully. All right, you caught me.

“Fucking amazing, Byron,” he said with breathy admiration. “You and Carla.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, and repeated, “Me and Carla.”

“Swapping.”

“Yeah, okay, swapping.”

Now Sully showed a look of inspired disbelief and what Byron thought could be admiration. “Wow. Just wow. So, again: what was it like? Or don’t you dare fucking tell me you guys have done this before.”

“With Carla and Cody?”

“Oh, my God. You’ve done it with some other couple, too?”

“What?—No. Definitely no. Last night was the only time.”

Sully tossed a light punch on Byron’s upper arm. “That makes more sense. I can’t believe you guys did that. Carla and Cody, okay, maybe I could see it. Scarlet already said she thought they did that—”

“Oh no, Scarlet knows, too?”

“What, I’m not going to tell her?”

“Of course you’d tell her,” he muttered and palmed his forehead. Fucking great. Poor Chey was going to hear about it from Scarlet. “Is Scarlet mad at Chey?”

Sully thought about it for a second and shook his head. “No. What would Scarlet be mad?”

“She’s got that big sister thing going on with Chey.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess. But no, she wasn’t mad at Chey. She didn’t say anything to me, at least. She’s just as blown away as I am, though.”

“I’m pretty blown away, too.”

“I bet. Well, hey, look at it this way: you went into Carla’s bedroom and you’re here to tell the tale. That’s got to count for something, right? I’d figure you wouldn’t even be able to walk out of there when Carla was done with you. Oh my God, and Cody— I bet Chey could barely walk after Cody was done with her.”

“What do you mean?”

Sully frowned like the answer was obvious. “Cody is the male version of Carla.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“And the guy’s got a pipe on him.”

Byron’s stomach soured at the truth. “Yeah, he does.”

Sully didn’t dwell on that particular copper tang of jealousy, showing renewed excitement. “Byron, man, this is insane. Insane in the best way possible.”

“What are you, jealous?”

“I don’t have the balls to even entertain the idea of something so crazy. I even hinted at something like that, Scarlet would kick me in the nuts.”

From Sully’s excited eyes and his new blushing disposition, Byron had to ask: “Wait a second—would you want to do it?”

He shook his head. “I’m going to live vicariously through you, Byron. Something like this would never even ping on my radar. Tell me how it happened. How the hell did you convince Carla? Or, wow, how did you convince Chey?”

“Carla seduced me—”

“Oh, come on.”

He showed Sully no humor and leveled serious eyes at him. “I’m telling you, she seduced me. But— And this is a big but: Cody seduced Chey.”

“Shit, dude.”

“I can’t even be mad. I was practically messing around with Carla at the same time Cody was putting the moves on Chey. We bump into each other later and we’re both hiding our guilt and trying to figure out how we would ever even approach asking the other one about this idea of, like, swinging, or whatever.”

“Yeah, you guys totally wife-swapped.”

“We did.”

“And this all happened yesterday. You guys don’t have some flirty group chat Scarlet and I aren’t invited to?”

“No, we never talk about sex on our private group chat. And it’s only you who’s not invited.”

“Har, har.” He looked around again and as he craned his neck to look rearward toward the windows on the yacht’s upper cabin, Byron could see Sully’s jaw trembled. The guy was really stoked about what happened. Like Byron was some adventurer bringing back tales from lands unknown to the peasants who could only dream of such riches and glory. He looked back and, voice reduced to a whisper, asked, “What was it like with Carla?”

Byron showed a wowed face, eyes roaming around. Sully chuckled with excitement. “What do you think it was like? Carla is wild.”

“Carla is certainly wild, man. Yeah. So you guys had full-on sex? Penis-in-vagina sex?” In case Byron wasn’t following, Sully inserted his index finger into the grip of the other hand and stabbed it in and out.

“Full-on sex, Sully. And pretty much anything else you can imagine.”

Sully chuckled again, talking to himself, saying, “Carla is so hot. She’s, like, built for sex. I can’t believe she let you put your dick in her.”

“Why the hell not?”

“You guys used condoms, right?”

“Of course,” he said. Though only one of them had stuck to the condom rule. He never should have used a condom with Carla if Chey wasn’t going to.

Something crazy just occurred to Sully, and he jolted, eyes wide, a squeak of an inhale muffled in his throat. “Oh, man,” he said, and grabbed Byron’s arm.

“What is it?”

Sully checked over his shoulders again, then got close—probably because he was too ashamed to make eye contact when he whispered, “Did you titty-fuck her?”

He wished he did. But said now, “Of course.”

Sully’s mouth went O-shaped. “She let you do that?”

“Carla’s wild, you know that. She’d let you do anything you wanted to her.”

Why hadn’t he titty-fucked her? Too scared to ask. Or too consumed by thoughts of Cheyenne with Cody across the hall and all the things that other man might be doing to her. Thinking of how his wife might like it, too. Like it and want it the way he’d wanted Carla.

“All right, you're sparse with details. You’ll tell me.” He crossed his arms and went up on his toes. “In time, you’ll tell me everything. In time, you’ll be mad I’m not showing interest and you’ll come to me.”

“You’re an idiot,” he said, assuming a rather fun superior tone. “What do you want to know? Carla went down on me. Jesus, Sully, I’m in their room two minutes and Carla’s on her knees sucking my dick.”

Sully made a fist and lightly rapped the knuckles on his forehead like he couldn’t take it.

“We had sex in every position. We went through a box of condoms. She just about wore me out. She’s insatiable. I thought I would fade, but I rallied. In the end, I left her pretty satisfied.”

“Huh,” Sully laughed and nodded.

Byron frowned. “Huh, what?”

“Oh, yeah. You should have heard the noises coming from your room.”

“What noises?”

“Chey was crying and wailing for two hours like a cat in heat. I say to Scarlet, ‘What the hell is Byron doing in there?’ And she’s like, ‘I never knew Byron had it in him.’”

“What do you mean, wailing and crying? Crying crying?”

“Not boo-hoo crying, Byron. What the hell crying could I mean? Sex sounds. Cries of passion or whatever. Do you think Cody told her sad stories for two hours?”

There was a funny flutter in his stomach and a liquid gurgling in his intestines. In his ears he heard phantom sounds of his sweet Cheyenne making those sex noises she made when they were together, but these phantom noises were louder, more desperate, more . . . pornographic. “Two hours?”

“You had two hours with Carla. I can imagine the sounds coming from her room: you crying and wailing, maybe a paddling or a whip-crack. Or real crying. You crying crying while Carla uses your junk as a speed bag.”

Byron regarded the side of Sully’s head as Sully stared out now with an amused expression, squinting into the sun and the light breeze, thinking this was funny. He gritted his teeth and muttered, “Carla’s tits are amazing.”

“I can’t believe you got to feel them.”

“I’m a lucky guy,” he said. “Plus, I think Carla has a little crush on me.”

Sully cocked his head, eyes still out at the view of the lake. “Did you do butt stuff?”

The strength to lie had seeped out. Down his legs and over his feet and spreading across the deck like spilled milk. He shook his head. “No. No butt stuff.”

“What about Chey?”

He squinted and groaned. A dull ache formed behind his eyes and his neck throbbed. “I didn’t ask her if they did any . . . butt stuff.”

Sully exhaled long and loud, shrugging his shoulders. “You are a lucky guy, Byron. I mean, holy shit, Carla Weber. You slept with Carla Weber. Good for you, man. I couldn’t do it. I mean, I’d love to, but I couldn’t handle Scarlet going off alone with fucking blue-eyed Cody and his abs and his giant crank.”