Free Bedroom Games by Jill Myles

caught me.
I’m up to no good.”
    “As long as it’s something I can edge in on,
I don’t care if it’s good or bad.”
    There were times when I appreciated having a
partner with questionable morals, I decided. I showed him the
object I’d hidden in my hand—the recorder.
    He looked vaguely disgusted. “More ghost
hunting?”
    “You wish,” I said. I’d used the recorder for
ghost hunting the first night I’d gotten it, but when eight hours
of recordings had turned up nothing but snoring, I decided to use
it for something slightly more nefarious. “I hid this in one of the
flower pots in the smoking area.”
    Several of the people in the house were
smokers—Marla, Lenore, Sunnie, Fido, and Casper. Jendan was super
into fitness, so he was probably the most ridiculously healthy in
the house. I doubted he even drank. I hadn’t seen Katy or Liam head
down to the smoking area, so I guessed they didn’t smoke. Brodie
didn’t, either. Of course, that meant that the smokers often went
out to have a cigarette and chit chat, and that meant that the
non-smokers were rarely in on the conversations. It was something
I’d noticed early on, and I’d considered taking up smoking just to
muscle in on the private conversations…but I couldn’t stand the
taste or the smell.
    Having a recorder was the next best thing,
though. Maybe even better.
    Brodie sat up as I showed him the recorder, a
gleam of appreciation in his eyes. “You are a genius. I could kiss
you.”
    “You already did,” I replied pertly, but I
couldn’t help but smile at his words.
    “Yeah, but this time you could act like you
enjoyed it,” he teased.
    I glanced over at him from under my lashes,
curious. Had he thought I hadn’t enjoyed the impromptu kiss? It had
taken me by surprise, but…it wasn’t a bad kiss. “I didn’t enjoy it
because your kisses don’t mean anything, Brodie. You pass them out
like candy.”
    He chuckled, unhurt by my tart accusation.
“So do I get to listen in on the tape?”
    “As long as you promise not to burn me and
tell the others I’ve been recording them.” Even Jendan didn’t know
I was borrowing his recorder for sneaky purposes. I thought it
might seem too shady, so I’d kept the secret to myself.
    Plus, I was a little curious about what
Jendan was saying about me, too.
    Brodie made a ‘cross my heart’ motion on his
chest. “You’re my partner. You can trust me to save your ass as
long as it’s attached to mine.”
    Fair enough. I slid a little closer to him on
the couch and we bent over the recorder, listening. The first few
minutes were nothing but silence, so I started to skip ahead every
few minutes, listening for voices. When I heard someone, I’d rewind
and then we’d listen in on the conversation.
    We listened to that darn recorder for hours,
our heads bent together. And we found out a wealth of information,
only some of it surprising.
    Mickey was hitting on every woman in the
house and failing miserably. That wasn’t surprising.
    Lenore was furious that she’d been put up for
the vote, and she was busy campaigning to get out Katy and Liam.
That also wasn’t surprising, though the viciousness of some of her
words was startling—and kind of lame. I lost track of how many
times she referred to Liam as a “tattooed hooligan.”
    Casper and Sunnie and Fido
seemed to be in an alliance together, which worried me. They didn’t
trust Brodie, didn’t trust me by default, and had pulled Marla in.
Marla assured them that she had Jendan’s vote and that he’d align
with them. They wanted Liam and Katy gone ASAP. Not only because
they’d won last time, but Katy and Liam weren’t exactly playing the
best game. They tended to hang out in their room together and just
talk quietly between themselves. Brodie had mentioned to me that
his sister was a bit of an introvert, and it seemed that Liam was
too. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when it came to a
game like House Guests ? It was pretty