A Little Buzzed - Softcover

Murray, Alys

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593819713 ISBN 13: 9780593819715

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

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 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.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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 2022 RespectAbility Fellow, Alys is a proud advocate for diversity in media.

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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 staring up at me like I was a Playboy Bunny pinned up on his wall . . . and he was sporting the semi beneath his jeans to match.

Fuck, there it was. The thought I'd tried not to bring up again. The real reason I couldn't make myself cum tonight. The sight of him, semi-erect, as he watched me lecture about sex.

I shifted uncomfortably in bed. The sheets, which had felt so luxurious when we'd checked in, scratched at my hardened nipples and my exposed thighs, reminding me of the orgasm that had evaded me.

"Hmph."

Trying to push him out of my mind, I crossed my arms and refocused. I was not going to waste another second thinking of him.

Besides, I wasn't going to be able to go to sleep this horny. Something had to be done.

Taking long, slow breaths, I fell back upon one of my calming thought patterns.

Problem.

Proposed Solution.

Test.

Result.

That was just how my brain worked. No matter what I did or what problem I faced, I filtered it through the scientific method.

Problem: Need to cum, can't stop thinking about Hudson Bailey.

Proposed Solution: Find some way to stop thinking of him while also orgasming.

With that in mind, I set about step three-testing. But just how to go about that?

Given how tormented and sweaty and near-orgasm I'd gotten over the last hour, I probably needed a shower. So I started there.

Leaping out of bed, I dug through the various freebie bags I'd been given over the course of the convention. Butt plugs, nipple clamps, paddles, Womanizer . . .

"Ah, there you are," I muttered.

From the bag I retrieved two new items from one of our biggest competitors: One was a knockoff of a Hitachi Magic Wand, which would have been forgettable on its own, but unlike the Hitachi, it could be used around water, and the other was a thick dildo called The Spreader, which featured a suction cup bottom, perfect for solo play.

My entire body awakened as I put my toy cleaners to work in the bathroom sink. There was nothing like it, that anticipation of knowing an orgasm was just on the horizon, and I bit my bottom lip to try to keep my excited breath from echoing off the marble bathroom walls.

But then, as I dried off The Spreader, my hands stilled as a memory caught up with me.

Hudson, handing this to me at the welcome party, after he'd won it in a door draw. He'd winced awkwardly when he'd opened the package and offered it to me with almost painful sheepishness.

"You know, in case you need it for market research, or whatever."

Instantly, that memory twisted into a fantasy. Hudson, feathering the thick dildo down my skin . . . Hudson, doing some market research on me.

I dropped the dildo to the edge of the vanity.

Fuck no. This was against the entire ethos of this experiment. Thinking about Hudson was the problem I needed to fix. I could not solve that problem by masturbating to the thought of my coworker. This was a bad idea. Time to abort. I needed to get in bed, take a melatonin, and forget about-

As I went to grab the melatonin from my makeup bag, my arm accidentally brushed my nipple.

"Fuck."

My body almost contracted at the contact. I gripped the vanity counter to keep upright. Oh God. I was even more pent-up than I thought.

The experiment was back on.

I clenched my thighs a little tighter. All thoughts but making myself cum-now and very...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593819713
• ISBN 13: 9780593819715
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 369
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland