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Introduction
The notification popped up on Iris's screen just as she was debugging a particularly stubborn piece of code.
MANDATORY TEAM RETREAT: Oct 20-22. Cascade Mountains. Camping. No devices.
She stared at the words, her stomach sinking. Three days. In the woods. With her coworkers from Vertex Solutions, a tech startup where she'd been quietly coding in the corner for eight months, avoiding eye contact and small talk with equal fervor.
"Did you see the email?"
Iris looked up to find Jordan Blake leaning against her cubicle wall, arms crossed, dark eyes unreadable. Jordan was one of those people who seemed to exist outside normal categories—sometimes in tailored button-downs that emphasized lean shoulders, sometimes in oversized hoodies that obscured everything. Short dark hair, sharp cheekbones, an androgynous beauty that made Iris's brain stutter every time they made eye contact.
Which was why she usually avoided it.
"Yeah," Iris said, pushing her glasses up her nose. "Sounds... woodsy."
Jordan's mouth quirked. "You're not outdoorsy?"
"I'm indoorsy. Very indoorsy. My idea of camping is a hotel without room service."
"It might be good," Jordan said, and there was something in their voice—amusement, maybe, or challenge. "Getting out of your comfort zone."
Iris felt heat creep up her neck. Jordan always seemed to see right through her carefully constructed walls of politeness and distance. It was unsettling. And lately, increasingly... something else.
"I'll try not to get eaten by bears," Iris muttered.
Jordan laughed, a low sound that did things to Iris's pulse. "I'll protect you from the bears. Promise."
And then they were gone, leaving Iris staring at her screen, code forgotten, heart doing something complicated in her chest.
The parking lot at the trailhead was chaos. Twenty-five tech workers who spent ninety percent of their lives in front of screens, now attempting to organize camping gear with varying degrees of competence. Iris watched Mark from accounting try to figure out tent poles while Sarah from marketing debated the merits of different trail mix brands.
"Chen! Blake!" Their manager, Dave, waved them over. "You two are tent partners. We're going alphabetical, and since it's an odd number and you're next to each other..."
Iris's brain short-circuited. "We're—what?"
"Sharing a tent," Jordan said smoothly, appearing at her elbow with two massive backpacks. "That okay with you?"
Their eyes met, and Iris saw something there—a question, maybe even nervousness, though Jordan's expression remained carefully neutral.
"Yeah," Iris heard herself say. "That's fine."
It wasn...
Morgan Chase (they/them) spent a decade as a therapist working with LGBTQ+ youth and adults, witnessing firsthand the lack of authentic queer smut fiction that honored both desire and emotional truth. After years of activism and community work, they began writing the stories the queer community deserved—hot, honest, and unapologetically diverse. From their shared artist loft in Portland, Morgan crafts stories across the spectrum: gay romance, lesbian love, trans experiences, and polyamorous relationships. Their lived experience as a non-binary person brings authenticity and insider perspective that ensures representation isn't performative—it's genuine.
