A sex toy engineer with one big secret finally meets her match, and together they’ll put their own products to the test in this steamy romantic comedy. Scout Porter is screwed. Not literally, of course. Literally, she’s a twenty-six-year-old virgin, thanks to a relationship so disastrous she swore off love and sex for good. Metaphorically, she’s screwed because the entire office of BuzzCorp, the sex toy start-up where she’s head engineer, just found out. Scout needs her team to stay focused on their upcoming launch, not her lack of a sex life, so she finds the simplest solution: lose her V-card, and fast, then back to business as usual. Enter Hudson Bailey, the nerdy and charming software developer hired to build the app for Scout’s latest creation. The only problem is, he’s as inexperienced with sex toys as she is with sex. Fortunately, he’s all too eager to learn, and they agree that one very educational, totally professional hook-up will solve both of their problems. All for research, obviously. But their little experiment yields unexpected results--chemistry so off the charts Scout starts to think she might actually want more than just a one-time fling. When their budding relationship is threatened by the return of Scout’s notorious ex, both Scout and Hudson will have to decide if they’ve reached their climax as a couple, or if they’re willing to risk everything for a chance at true love.

Autorentext

Alys Murray is a novelist and screenwriter based in New Orleans. She received a BFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and a Master's in film studies from King's College London. Alys is the author of the sweetly romantic Full Bloom Farm series, and she's the screenwriter behind five films on Hallmark and Lifetime. A Netflix x Inevitable Foundation Visionary Fellow, Alys is a proud advocate for disabled voices and stories in entertainment.

Klappentext

**If she builds it, they will come.

A sex toy engineer with one big secret finally meets her match, and together they’ll put their own products to the test in this steamy romantic comedy.**

Scout Porter is screwed. Not literally, of course. Literally, she’s a twenty-six-year-old virgin, thanks to a relationship so disastrous she swore off love and sex for good. Metaphorically, she’s screwed because the entire office of BuzzCorp, the sex toy start-up where she’s head engineer, just found out. Scout needs her team to stay focused on their upcoming launch, not her lack of a sex life, so she finds the simplest solution: lose her V-card—and fast—then get back to business as usual.

Enter Hudson Bailey, the nerdy and charming software developer hired to build the app for Scout’s latest creation. The only problem is, he’s as inexperienced with sex toys as she is with sex. Fortunately, he’s all too eager to learn, and they agree that one very educational, totally professional hook-up will solve both of their problems. All for research, obviously.

But their little experiment yields unexpected results—chemistry so off the charts Scout starts to think she might actually want more than just a one-time fling. When their budding relationship is threatened by the return of Scout’s notorious ex, both Scout and Hudson will have to decide if they’ve reached their climax as a couple, or if they’re willing to risk everything for a chance at true love.

Leseprobe
1

Start Off with a Bang

Hudson Bailey was as useless as my vibrator.

I'm sure that was just the sexual frustration talking. However, as I lay back against the headrest of my Cleveland Airport Ramada bed, that was all I could think.

Take the new guy to the sex toy convention, they said.

It'll be fun, they said.

"They" were Clara Mason. As my boss at BuzzCorp, a rising star in the sex toy industry, Clara was thoughtful, ambitious, open-minded, hardworking, understanding, insightful, and sharp-elbowed.

On the Hudson Bailey issue, she was also very, very wrong.

It hadn't been fun at all. Hudson was new to BuzzCorp. A contractor, he was brought in on a short-term deal to create the software for our latest, greatest, and completely top-secret sex toy-The Fantasy. According to Clara, he was at the top of his field when it came to, I don't know, numbers or The Matrix or binary or whatever it was he did at his laptop all day.

The problem was that he didn't know anything about the industry. When I explained to Clara that he was unsuitable for the job on every level but the most basic, she treated me to a ten-minute lecture on his résumé, which apparently included rescuing a failing music streaming app and keeping a multinational stock trading platform from collapsing. In her estimation, we were lucky to have him and his technical expertise. Not only that, but his inexperience was a benefit. His fresh eyes were just the thing we needed to take this potentially industry-shaking toy to the next level.

I should have called bullshit then. I should have pressed Clara to find someone, anyone else. But I had confidence in Clara. When she hired me two years ago, I was only BuzzCorp's second employee. We'd built this company, and dozens of sex toy designs, together. Maybe Hudson Bailey wouldn't be that bad.

But oh . . . it was bad. It really was.

During his first two weeks at BuzzCorp, he and I hadn't had much reason to talk. Until now, our work had been fairly siloed. I led the engineering team on the design and functionality of the toy itself, while he designed the app and software that would control that toy. Eventually, our work would marry up, but this trip was the first time I'd really hung out with him.

The proximity was torture. I was my job, and I liked to keep things as uncomplicated and unmessy as possible, which meant keeping everyone at a polite and professional arm's length.

But Hudson?

If I was the negative end of a magnet, he was the positive. If I was a drive gear, he was an idler gear. If I was peanut butter, you better believe that man was sweet and sloppy jelly.

Inseparable.

This convention turned into the tag-along show, starring me, the engineer who got shit done, and Hudson, the handsome sideshow who clearly didn't know what the fuck he was doing. He did a good dance of pretending to belong, but the signs were there. Like, for example, when we walked up to a booth and he asked one of the most famous porn actresses in the world about the technical specs of the product she was promoting because he didn't recognize her. Or when he very loudly whispered, "That couldn't possibly fit," during a demonstration of a fairly midrange butt plug.

I'm sure that my mask of professionalism had slipped this weekend. That he'd seen my frustration. As hard as I tried to hide it behind bland pleasantries and focus on the task at hand, I couldn't keep my annoyance totally at bay. And now, my time dragging his admittedly appealing dead weight around was interfering with my nightly solo session.

It wasn't even that there was anything wrong with Hudson. He wasn't rude or creepy or anything like that. On the contrary, he was . . . thoughtful. Eager to learn. Curious. Attentive, even. And despite his frustrating inexperience, he had his moments. Like when we'd gotten on our flight to come here and he'd lifted my carry-on into the overhead bin for me. Or when he'd slyly managed to shift the attention of various old creeps trying to chat me up during the convention mixers. Or when he'd bring me complimentary cookies any time they put out a fresh batch in the event hall.

Or this evening, when I'd been giving my final speech to a crowd of fellow engineers, and during the review of our client feedback-pretty explicit feedback, lots of orgasm talk-I looked down to see him starin…