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.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from A Little Buzzed by Alys Murray, which releases on February 17th 2026.
If she builds it, they will come.
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.
EXCERPT
Hudson Bailey, a software engineer with zero experience with sex toys who just got hired at a sex toy company, walks in on the company’s chief engineer, Scout Porter, looking through an online dating website. The entire office just found out she’s a virgin, and she’s very keen to fix that little problem…As soon as possible. But choosing a partner is difficult when Hudson is the only one she really wants.
“And what is your type, Scout?”
Oh, no. I shouldn’t have brought up the type thing. I idly picked at a stray thread dangling from the cuff of my cardigan sleeve. Anything to avoid telling him the truth. That I didn’t want any of these guys because they weren’t him. “I haven’t really thought about it.”
“Don’t overanalyze it. It’s that zing. What guy makes you zing?”
I don’t know how to answer that without totally giving myself away, dude. And I can’t give myself away. Not to you.
He tried again. “Or maybe this: when you’ve imagined what sex would be like – real sex, good sex, the sex you’ve wished for – what’s that guy like?”
Say something. Say anything. Just don’t say, he’s exactly like you. “Um. Tall.”
“Pity for the short kings out there, but at least it’s a start.”
Hand back on my mouse, I scrolled down the seemingly endless pages of dating profiles, mostly for something to do. But the longer I talked, the longer the partialism of it all – shirtless torsos, crinkle-eyed stares, buzz-cut heads – spiraled me into something like a trance. Before I knew it, I was doing that nervous talking of mine. The one where I said entirely the wrong thing.
The truth.
“And gentle. And thoughtful. And maybe like he wouldn’t necessarily beat me in a fight – you know, a little softer or lankier or whatever. None of those big burly types. Curly hair. Long fingers, nice hands. And he’d smell good – really good. He’d be able to talk to me about stuff that wasn’t sex. Science or math or philosophy or the last museum he went to. But he can’t be too serious. He needs to be able to have fun, too. A nice laugh. A good smile. Looks good in a pair of jeans. Bookish. Nerdy. Kind eyes – I don’t care about the color. I like glasses. And…”
I trailed off, the weight of one particular set of kind, bespectacled eyes bringing me back to reality. Closing the tab on my screen, I stood up from my chair and leaned against my desk to face him.
“And I want him to care about me. When I do have sex for the first time, I don’t want anonymous. I probably should. It’d be safer. Less risky. Easier to wham, bam, thank you m’am. But I want to be with someone who actually likes me. I don’t need forever. Just a one-night stand. But still. I want to feel safe. To know that it’ll be good.”
For a few moments, all we heard was the whir of the 3-D printer as it went about its work.
“Quite the Mr. Right,” Hudson mused.
“Don’t make fun. I’m fully aware that it’s ridiculous.”
“I wasn’t going to. I was going to say…”
As he trailed off, something strange happened. Something absolutely baffling. Hudson raised one perfect hand, ghosted the tips of his fingers up my knee, and lightly, almost incidentally, traced the hem of my skirt.
My entire body erupted in goosebumps. I licked my lips involuntarily.
Was he…was he touching me on purpose?
“Say what?” I prompted.
Hudson glanced up at me from under his eyelashes. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn he looked…hungry. “Your dream man sounds a lot like me.”
I’m not sure how I managed to concentrate with his fingers dancing across my knee.
But somehow, a snap plan occurred to me.
Problem: Need to lose my virginity.
Proposed Solution: Find someone to have safe, emotionally unattached sex with.
Test: Have sex with Hudson.
Result: Some potentially amazing virginity-losing shenanigans?
“I have an idea,” I said, breathless.
“Yeah?”
“Would you…How would you feel about a trade?”
His fingers paused on my knee. “I’m listening.”
“If you still want those sex toy lessons, then I’ll give them to you. And in exchange, we should have sex.”
The air between us pulled – a bridge jumper’s cable about to snap and break our necks or rebound and send us soaring.
Hudson let out a long breath. His expression turned wolfish. “I think that’s a fair trade.”
“It only makes sense,” I said, trying to tamp down my swell of sentiment with good, old-fashioned practical, scientific thinking. “I’ll get to know what sex is like, which can only improve the quality of The Fantasy. And you’ll know more about sex toys, which will achieve the same result.”
“You don’t need an excuse to do what you want, Scout,” he said, leaning closer. “You can just have it. You can just have me. If that’s what you want.”
“I do.”
“Good,” he said. Once again, those fingers did their dance across the skin of my thigh, awakening deep, primal lust in me. “Because I want you. You’re my type, too.”
“That’s so hard to believe,” I muttered.
Hudson’s gaze flattened, as if it was the height of stupidity not to think I was eminently bang-able. “Haven’t I made it obvious?”
Obvious. I tried to think back over the last few weeks we’d known each other, examining them in a different light. Yeah, he held doors open for me. Gotten me cookies at the conference. Listened to me. Stood up for me at the airport. Accidentally kissed me.
And yes, sure, he’d gotten an erection during my talk at the sex toy convention. But that wasn’t…
He wasn’t…
My surprise made him shake his head.
“You clearly don’t know what you look like bent over a drafting table.”
He’d been ogling me in the office? He’d been lusting after me from afar like Mr. Kinkz-william Darcy?
“And,” he continued, “that kiss at the airport might not have been on purpose, but ever since, I’ve had a very hard time thinking about anything else.”
Wow. Maybe the Lloyd thing messed me up more than I originally thought. Had I really gotten so bad at realizing when someone was into me?
Or had I just been hiding from it?
Well. No more.
“Prove it,” I challenged.
“Gladly.”
In a single bound, he stood, captured my cheeks with his big hands, and breathed in my surprised gasp as our lips touched.
Excerpted from A Little Buzzed by Alys Murray Copyright © 2026 by Alys Murray. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
