I pushed across the dance floor, toward my friend.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at some stuffy party with your mommy right now, Arabella?” Demetre asked Aran with a scowl. He drew out the syllables of her name like it was an insult.
Shane leaned on the wall next to him, his handsome features contorted into a sneer as he looked down at my best friend.
Watching them spew vitriol at my friend made my gut churn. Demetre’s apology was no longer accepted.
No one treated my friend like that.
Arabella might be tall, but she was still built lithe and delicate, like the rest of the fae. In contrast, the half warriors were brutes of muscles that took up all the space around Aran.
They were leaning on either side of her, and I didn’t like how they caged her in.
Her beautiful face was ice cold as she glared up at the men, but for a second, her turquoise eyes flashed with hurt as Demetre muttered something too quiet for me to hear.
I wasn’t sure what their history was, but it clearly wasn’t good.
Aran flipped her blue hair over her shoulder. “Focus on yourself. Don’t worry about me, little gladiator.”
Demetre bristled, and I could practically see the steam coming out of his ears. I wouldn’t call the almost seven-foot-tall warrior “little.”
He cracked his neck back and forth and scowled at Aran. “Then you won’t mind me telling your mommy that you attended this party? She wants to meet tomorrow to discuss the event. Maybe I’ll mention your involvement.”
“Hey, don’t you dare,” I retorted as I stepped between them.
Aran laughed like she wasn’t terrified of her mother. “It’s fine, Sadie. I don’t care what the little bird does. He doesn’t concern me.”
Then Aran grabbed my arm and dragged me away from Demetre.
I could feel his pink eyes glaring into our backs as we sashayed away across the dance floor.
As we walked, it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that Aran had been referring to his massive fucking dragon alpha form as a little bird.
Bold of her.
Once again, I loved her energy.
“Do you want to dance more?” Aran asked me as she pointed to the dance floor.
I wiped sweat off my forehead and grimaced; my feet hurt in my heels, and my lungs burned with exhaustion. “Not really.”
The world still sparkled around me with glitter, and it felt wrong to ruin the effects of the sparkle juice by going to bed early.
A crazy idea struck me.
“Aran,” I said with an evil grin.
She squinted at me. “Sadie?”
“I have a crazy idea, like completely wild, but I think we should do it.” I grinned uncontrollably.
“Oh my sun god, spit it out!” Aran jostled my arm. “I’m freaking stressed after dealing with Demetre’s shit, and I need some relief.”
I grinned even bigger. “Oh, I have some stress relief. We should go to a sex clinic tonight!” I yelled over the loud music.
Fae turned to look at us.
Aran arched her brow at me and tapped her lush lips with her perfectly manicured finger.
I mimicked her movements with my own fabulous nails. The paw print on my thumb was so cute, and I still teared up every time I thought about the nail lady’s generosity.
Yes, I was aware my mental health was hanging by a thread.
I punched Aran on the arm. “I checked when you mentioned it, and the village has one near the cafeteria. It says it’s open twenty-four seven and walk-ins are welcome.”
Aran pursed her lips and asked, “Wait, are you a…?”
“Yeah,” I quickly answered her unspoken question. “Are you?”
“Unfortunately.” She rolled her eyes.
I argued, “How are we ever going to have a successful hot-girl ho phase if we still have it intact?”
We were practically submitting to the patriarchy by not embracing our sexuality and shoving our vaginas in everyone’s faces.
Aran’s forehead wrinkled as she tried to process everything I was saying. Finally, she nodded.
I squealed like a lunatic and clapped my hands.
Five minutes later, we sat on plush red chairs as the receptionist clacked away on the purple crystal keyboard and chomped on gum.
Every few seconds, she blew a pink bubble and popped it loudly.
The only other noise was soft music, which crooned throughout the dimly lit room.
On the high ceiling, a massive crystal chandelier spun in a slow circle.
Aran and I paused every few seconds to stare up at it. With the sparkly juice pumping through our veins, the chandelier was magically shimmery.
We also held clipboards and pens.
I giggled with excitement as I flipped through the thick stack of pages on my lap.
We were at the sex clinic.
Thankfully, no one else was in the reception area, so I didn’t worry about someone calling us out or stopping us.
This was real. We were going to do it.
Operation Lose Our Virginity.
I didn’t think being a virgin was that big of a deal. Just because a dick hadn’t penetrated my vagina hole, that didn’t make me less of a woman or some bullshit.
However, I was stressed as hell and tasked with seducing an ancient vampyre of lore.
If I failed, I would be MURDERED.
Since my death was imminent, it seemed like a good time to have some sexual experiences.
Plus, it wasn’t as scary because Aran was also doing it tonight.
We were in this together and afterward could debrief our experiences and make fun of each other.
It was either get dicked down by a stranger or go back and fall asleep in my lonely bed because the alphas refused to touch me.
I pushed the thought of the handsome alphas and omega out of my mind and focused on myself.
It wasn’t a big deal that they made the sex pact; they could do whatever they needed to mentally survive the Fae Games.
If they needed abstinence, that was fine.
Personally, I needed to get railed.
I sent a small prayer to the moon goddess and asked her not to slut shame me.
Sun god knew she was already being super rude with the life path she was putting me on.
Low key, she better be more supportive during my ho phase, because right now her attitude was not cute.
I finished filling out the form with all my abilities, strengths, and weaknesses.
For “power,” I wrote, “alpha saber-toothed tiger”; for “strength,” “mauling”; and for “weakness,” “running.”
For a second, I started to write about the homicidal voice in my head, aka the numb, but crossed it out because that might not be a desired trait in a bedroom partner.
Thinking about the numb reminded me I hadn’t used it in a while, and I sent up a prayer that it activated during the next challenge.
If it didn’t, like last time, I was going to lose my shit.
Literally, because I would probably die.
My eyes widened as I looked over the next few pages of questions, and Aran giggled next to me.
Wow, the fae were thorough.
The sheet had list after list of sexual preferences.
Flipping through quickly, I read “choking,” “paddling,” “butt plugs,” “hot wax,” “edging,” “nipple clamps,” “humiliation,” “oral sex,” “hair pulling,” “foot fetish,” and “elbow fetish.”
“Who has an elbow fetish? What can you even do with an elbow?” I asked Aran as I stared down at my elbow. It was knobby and unattractive.
Aran shrugged. “Maybe suck on it?”
I flipped, and flipped, and flipped pages.
There were over twenty pages of checkboxes, and thousands of activities listed in small font. If we filled out the clipboard, we would be here all night.
I was still tired and wanted to go to bed sometime soon.
“Um, is there any way to speed up the form process?” I asked the receptionist.
She clacked away on her crystal keyboard and popped her gum. “No.”
I sighed and started checking yes for everything without reading.
Since it was my first time, I literally had no idea what I was into, so I obviously couldn’t say no to anything.
Aran looked over at me and followed my lead. She shrugged and asked, “What’s the worst that can happen?”
I narrowed my eyes at her as I finished checking the yes box on the twentieth page. When she put it that way, it sounded very ominous.
I said, “Maybe we shouldn’t do thi—”
The receptionist cut me off. She grabbed the completed clipboards out of our hands and brought them back to her desk.
With a bored expression, she flipped through them.
“All right. Sadie, room 1. Aran, room 2. You will wait there and receive further instruction until we locate your perfect match.” She gestured down the hall.
Suddenly, I realized I hadn’t thought about the specifics of the encounter too much. I whispered to Aran, “How do they find people for us to do it with?”
Aran waved her hand like I was being crazy. “Almost every fae in the realm signs up for the clinic system. Everyone gets alerts on their crystals of possible sexual matches, and then they decide if they want to accept. They have a one hundred percent sexual satisfaction rate, so you don’t need to worry. Plus, the village is a massive complex, so I’m sure they’ll be able to find us good partners.”
I nodded and pretended I was not worrying, when inside I was screaming and running around with my hands in the air.
“I don’t know how it’s both of your first times with your…advanced ages,” the receptionist said as she popped another bubble loudly.
I fought the urge to rip the gum from her mouth.
Instead, I stood up like a calm, sexually confident woman, and walked down the hall to the door labeled room 1.
Aran’s door was next to mine, and she gave me a thumbs-up of encouragement. “Let’s do this shit.”
Then I, literally and metaphorically, walked into the next stage of my life.
The room itself was dimly lit and sparsely furnished. There was nothing in it but a small wooden chair and a mirror on the wall.
After a long moment of me standing there and wondering if I was going to have sex in a chair, I sat down on it and tapped my heels.
I waited and waited.
Who knew a sex clinic could be so boring? I was not impressed.
Finally, after about fifteen minutes, the door opened, and a fae woman walked in.
She walked toward me, and I gnawed on my lower lip. I’d requested a guy, but I didn’t want to make her feel bad by rejecting her.
“Your partner has asked that you wear this.”
Then, with literally no warning, she pulled a black hood over my head. My vision went completely black.
The woman spoke, but her voice was deeper and different. “The hood is enchanted so you can’t see or smell anything. It also distorts sounds.”
“Um, what?” I asked and tugged at the cloth; however, no matter how hard I pulled, it wouldn’t move.
“It is enchanted so only your partner can take it off.”
Then the door squeaked as it was shut.
The bitch left.
She literally put an enchanted cloth over my head that I couldn’t take off and had the audacity to leave me.
Who did that?
Yep, I was feeling way less confident about this whole sex clinic experience.
Apparently, my partner had a kidnapping fetish.
When you were about to lose your virginity to a strange fae in a violent realm, it was not the best sign that they wanted to put a bag over your head.
Upsetting.
I knew my features were a little too fierce, my red eyes startling, and my cheekbones harsher than most fae’s, but I still didn’t think that warranted a bag.
Silently, I cursed the receptionist.
She couldn’t find one fae that didn’t find my looks repulsive?
I twitched back and forth in my chair as nothing happened.
The longer I waited in the dark, the more I wished I had read through all the different sexual kinks and not checked yes for everything.
If a dude came in and started pouring wax all over me, I might actually start crying.
Oh my sun god, maybe that was why he was making me wear a hood—so he didn’t have to watch me cry.
I stared at the inky blackness of the hood and noted sadly that no sparkles appeared, no matter how much I squinted.
So much for my great idea to have sex while under the influence of sparkle juice.
I sat in my little wooden chair and felt sorry for myself that I was about to lose my virginity to a kidnapping role-play fae who couldn’t stomach my face.
Finally, there was a distorted creaking noise, like a door opening.
Footsteps echoed.
It was time.
