I stopped his hand.
He gave me a look that said: “Are you serious?”
“I’m taking the morning after pill in the morning. What does it matter now?”
“What happened at the opera house was an accident,” he balked.
“I trust you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t.” He studied me with an unbreakable focus. “I’m trying to do what you said, but I can’t ignore this anymore. What’s up with you, Regan?”
“No. No. No. You’re ruining the mood. My pussy is drying up as we speak.”
“Move your hand so I can put on the condom, then I’ll get you wet again.”
When his hips jerked forward, impaling and filling me with his condom-wrapped cock, his hand wrapped itself around my hair, preparing me for a bumpy ride, and I forgot our tiff.
The sun and the onset of a migraine shocked me out of my sleep. The mere act of opening my eyes to the light sent an aching throb across my forehead. Everything had a Gaussian effect with unsteady white and black splotches decorating the surrounding scene.
I pushed my forearms against my aching head and stifled a groan. I moved my head to rest the opposite cheek against the pillow. While blurry, the sight wasn’t something I’d normally see. Emile was sleeping on the pillow next to me in my bed.
I brushed my hand across the stubble on his jawline. “What’s this?” I asked, hoping I hid how much pain I was in, even though I couldn’t stop squinting and wincing. A steel pendulum was knocking between my eyes and up my forehead. “Sleeping? You never stay over like this.”
He found my lips and gave me a tender kiss. If it wasn’t for my migraine and exhaustion, I would’ve mounted him, riding him like he was a bull at a rodeo.
“Do you mind if those are closed?” I asked, referring to the windows, pouring an aching light into my room.
He nodded—I thought—and rolled off me. The second I stumbled blindly out of bed, he grasped my waist and forced me flat on my back.
“I’ll get that. Stay.” After he crawled over my body, his stark naked form was only a mass of blurry tan figures and movements as he waved his hand over the sensor to retract the blinds. The blackout Grecian blinds covered the large windows, snuffing the violent light from the room.
I hid my face in my pillows, frustrated the darkness didn’t ease the ghost in my brain, pounding his lead-weighted drumsticks inside my head. I felt the chill, forcing me to pull a chenille throw over my naked body. “I need a cigarette.”
Emile’s movements were a blur as he retrieved two skinnier blurs from a big white blur on my end table. The spark of amber lit the room for a moment. A small paper butt stroked my lips.
I rolled to my back with my arm over my eyes and manipulated the cigarette with my unoccupied hand. “Aren’t you going to say anything about my smoking?”
“I know it’s a vice to cover a bigger issue.” His noisy and exhaustive breath resounded in my bedroom. “You’re starting to worry me. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m going to have to…” I tried to remove my arm and open my eyes, but the mere act of moving even my eyelids made my pain worse. “Back away from this for a while.”
“Oh?” His tone made me wish I could see beyond the blurry screen to register his expression. “I thought we enjoyed each other, Regan.”
“We do,” I said, “but we’ve talked about this.”
“We have?”
“Remember? We both agreed this was temporary. And you told me I would never be a long-term fuck buddy.”
“Funny. I don’t remember the conversation.” Emile settled into bed, resting partially on top of me with his chin settled between my breasts.
“You should go,” I stated, unable to hide my melancholy.
“I can tell you don’t feel good. I’ve felt it for a while now. You can tell me anything. You know that. The doctor’s appointment you don’t want to talk about? Can you talk about it now?”
“That would make us something we’re not.”
“In my mind, we’re friends.”
I gave him a phony smile. “I’m going to have to cancel all future dates for now. If I need you, I’ll call you. Honest.”
“If that’s what you want,” he said with a shrug.
“You don’t have to be so agreeable and level-headed all the time.” I couldn’t say the obvious. Pride, or maybe fear, stuffed the words into a place too far to reach. I wanted to tell him what was wrong and hope it was enough to make him stay. I knew it probably wouldn’t be enough, and then I’d lose my only semblance of a friend.
“I agree because I know better than to argue with you. It’s great you think I’m level-headed. Guess my careful words make it seem that way.” He paused, almost as if he was taking his time to search for what I couldn’t say. “I hope you change your mind about spending time with me.”
“Why? Will you miss me?”
“Regan,” he started, “I have a reason for being this way with you.”
“You don’t have to explain it.” I dismissed him with lazy movements. “We’re good.”
He slid from me and dressed in silence.
When I heard the front door latch, I wobbled into the bathroom and raided the medicine cabinet. I couldn’t read any of the labels of my prescription bottles and hoped I took a double dose of pain meds instead of anti-nausea medicine and collapsed back on my bed.
An unsteady light danced across my closed eyelids and coerced them open. I reached out, clutching the digital card I didn’t remember placing on my nightstand. The phone number changed from the last time I looked at it. I had better place the call before the card self-destructed.
“Executive Suites,” a cheerful guy on the other end answered. “How may I direct your call?”
“I don’t know.” My uneasiness cut into my words. “One of your employees gave me her card. I think her name is Michelle.”
“One moment please.”
He put me on hold with the clearest quality classical music I’d ever heard through a landline.
I regretted calling. It was a silly idea, anyway. What was I doing? What if it was a pseudo-religious sex cult, or a pyramid scam?
“Michelle Mastin.”
I opened my mouth, but couldn’t speak.
“Would you like to make an appointment, Regan? I can squeeze you in for today.”
Her knowing my name didn’t put me off as it once had. My lifelong diet of careful planning, decision making, and responsibility had starved me to death. It was time to be gluttonous.
She claimed the company could fulfill my bucket list. Dying alone after becoming a member of the Bitter Bitches Club didn’t sound appealing. I took a chance and made arrangements to meet with Michelle.
CHAPTER THREE
EXECUTIVE SUITES WAS eight blocks from Barcel, in a building made of obsidian glass and black metal. It stood forty-stories tall in between a bank and a five-star hotel. The simple print above the door with the address looked inconspicuous, but modern.
Black leather furniture juxtaposed against gray marble floors and walls decorated the grand lobby. Inside, the glass darkened the entire space to the point of making it appear as though it was nighttime in the middle of the day. The crystal chandeliers were the only light source in the lobby. The scene was a prelude to a nice restaurant, not a corporate business.
A security desk stood at the end of the lobby, and beyond it, a small hall led to the elevators. To the side of the elevators was a grand staircase.
People mulled around me, eager to get to their tasks for the day. The well-dressed and coiffed employees piqued my intrigue right away. While they varied in ages, all were strikingly beautiful.
The place was unreal. Was it a modeling agency, or the headquarters of an adult wish fulfillment center?
“Are you here for an appointment, ma’am?” a woman, dressed in a gray wool skirt suit, asked while approaching me from the stairs. Jet-black hair layered and styled with pristine curls bounced around her sh
oulders.
I passed the digital card her way.
Her eyes lit up, and she pushed her thumb across the screen, making it turn from red to black. “Welcome to Executive Suites, Miss Barcel. My name is Sandra, should you need anything. Allow me to take you to your appointment.” With a nod, Sandra turned on her heels to head up the stairs.
A massive privacy wall stood behind a large black desk. Couches and chairs were scattered on either side of the open area.
From behind the desk, Sandra handed me a tablet; an electronic application for services. She guided me around the privacy wall toward a set of elevators in the middle of the large space with vaulted ceilings and no windows. She opened a panel that stood between the two large brass elevator doors and punched a series of numbers into it. An elevator door opened, allowing us to move inside the car.
The elevator ride took less than a second. Strangely, I barely felt the car move.
Correction: I didn’t feel it move.
A grand black desk stood between the elevator and Michelle’s office.
“Good morning, Miss Barcel,” the receptionist greeted me with a smile and stopped what she was doing. “There’s another meeting in Miss Mastin’s office now, and she’s running late. Would you like a beverage while you wait and fill out the application?” Her crystal blue eyes darted to the white mod leather seating set against the wall leading to Michelle’s office.
“No. I’m good.” I gave her a fake grin and took a seat in one of the leather chairs, setting the tablet on my lap.
Five minutes later, whoever was meeting in Michelle’s office came out. I glanced at the first guy, recognizing him as Michelle’s dining partner from the other night. We gave each other cordial nods, and he went about his business.
The man who came after him left me frozen while searching my bag, set on the floor beside my feet, for information I needed to retrieve to put on the application.
He was one of those guys that just demanded attention. While you took notice, the world around you slowed because he was insanely beautiful, with his square jaw, rose-tinted generous lips, heavy-lidded dark ebony eyes, and a haircut I knew he didn’t skimp on by visiting a second-rate barber. Even his beard, which could’ve doubled as two-day stubble, was well groomed. He was quite possibly an Egyptian God walking on Earth. I couldn’t confidently affirm his nationality. When could someone ever tell another’s origins by simply looking at him and never hearing him speak a word? Short-sighted people who need to travel, that’s whom.
He caught me staring and smiled at me, revealing his bright white, straight teeth, and deep-set dimples in the center of chiseled cheeks.
The cool room turned into an overcrowded sauna.
His smile made him pretty. His tailored black-on-black suit and shiny Italian leather shoes made me feel very underdressed in skinny jeans and a vintage black Living Colour tour t-shirt marked with splotches of bleach during the first time I attempted to do my own laundry.
“Good morning.” His quiet but deep voice dripped with a panty-wetting cadence. He could’ve told me to take off my underwear right then and there, and I would’ve obeyed. Hell, he already made me feel a little wet. Who needed panties around him, anyway?
I crossed my legs, and stared ahead, doing the exact opposite of what I wanted to do. Fuck.
I tried to excuse my behavior; he had to be cocky as hell, up to the hilt in women falling all over him, and didn’t need another dropping to her knees and opening her mouth like it was raining chocolate.
His pretty brown eyes returned to the receptionist as he leaned across the desk. They had a hushed conversation with each other. I soon realized I couldn’t stop staring. The receptionist looked entranced with him. She kept calling him “sir” with a flirtatious smile and sat straighter in her desk chair, as though he was the big man in charge.
“Regan?” Michelle stood in front of me, amused by the fact that she had to snap her fingers to get my attention. “I’ve been calling your name for a minute. Are you all right?”
I didn’t realize I was in a daze. I caught Mr. Perfect’s eye while strolling into Michelle’s office. He gave me a wink and a crooked grin, implanting his fishhooks and reeling me in to devour me. I nearly ran into the wall—okay, I actually ran into a wall. Michelle grabbed my shoulders and showed me the doorway.
Upon Michelle’s arrival inside her office, the windows—once clear—turned pitch black. Dim lights flickered on. Michelle’s image reflected in the darkened glass.
“I’m so sorry you had to wait,” she said, moving toward her desk.
“I know—” I fanned myself to cool my temperature while whispering to her like Mr. Perfect could hear me, “you have got to be fucking him every day and twice on the holidays.”
“Having sex with whom?” The word ‘fucking’ would’ve sounded foreign from her mouth. She was so proper.
I pointed my chin over to the glass door, watching him. “That demigod.”
While he made his way to the elevator, he paused like he knew someone was eye-fucking him. He thumbed his lips, and his eyes lifted to catch mine. He gave me another grin as if he was inside my head and knew every single X-rated thought I had.
The elevator doors closed, and I could still feel the pull inside my body. I shivered dramatically.
“Regan?” Michelle’s charming laugh brought me back to this planet.
“Who—” I cleared my throat, realizing my voice was cracking like I was a pubescent boy. “Who was he? Can I have him?”
“I’m glad you changed your mind. I think you’ll be happy with what we offer here.”
I shook my head because our conversation didn’t follow. Was she trying to tell me that Mr. Perfect was something they offered? Because I’d sign over all of my assets to have one night with him. “I don’t know what it really is.”
“Do you still have the list you made previously and your completed application?”
I handed her a folded up piece of paper and the tablet.
She studied both objects. “For legal reasons, I have to tell you that we don’t offer sex as an option in our packaged experiences.”
“I’ve been through this before,” I explained. “I’m—was a busy woman, thanks to my career. Conventional relationships weren’t possible.”
“There’s only one other issue. While we pride ourselves on an immersive and realistic experience, I can’t guarantee your Experience Creator will agree to the marriage.”
“I know it’s way over the top. You know I’m dying. We won’t be married for long, and we can make sure the paperwork keeps us both safe.”
“I don’t mean to be harsh or imply that I don’t believe you. We can offer you something against our typical program due to your life-threatening illness.”
“Wait.” I scanned my list of crazy and implausible fantasies. “The vampire line item isn’t a problem, but marriage has to be discussed?”
“You would find it surprising how often we receive requests similar to the vampirism kink. We have an archetype that aligns with the lore of vampirism. In fact, it’s something we specialize in. The differences are slight, but I think you’ll enjoy it either way.”
A strange man walked in then and stood beside my chair.
“Mr. Paré will escort you to our testing facility,” Michelle said. “I hope you’ve cleared your schedule for the rest of the day. Our tests can take anywhere from an hour to half the day to complete.”
THE SUBBASEMENT LEVEL appeared to be a sterile lab for serious dissections and studies. The stark white walls and state-of-the-art health equipment set the space apart from the rest of the facility. White plastic privacy cubicles spanned the entire space and had computers built inside them.
Through glass double doors stood a corridor appearing to extend for miles. Countless doors leading to private places lined the halls.
Mr. Paré halted at an empty desk and pulled out a chair. “You’ll undergo a series of personality questions to test your reactions and
comfort levels.”
“It’s really important that I’m surprised. The last thing I want is to be comfortable.”
“Would you like us to input no personality?” Mr. Paré was far from engaging or warm. With every passing moment of our interaction, his face soured.
“I have this vision in my mind,” I relayed, my voice floating on a dream. “A story of how I want things to go and who I want to be—who I will be.”
“Enter additional information in the comments section. The test is a requirement for everyone who seeks our services. You can’t skip it. Once your questionnaire is complete, we’ll test it against our standard personality requirements. If you pass, you won’t receive formal notification of your initiation date. Your experience will start at the will of your Experience Creator.
“Because we pride ourselves on realism, at no time during your experience are you permitted to reference the experience, or attempt to break the character of the person involved in controlling your experience. Do not disclose the details of the experience to anyone you believe to be directly, indirectly, or free from involvement with Executive Suites. If you violate the rules, we’ll cancel your account, and terminate the experience without warning.
“If you’ve told any of your friends or family about Executive Suites, or in rare cases, they were present when you were approached, you must sever ties until the experience ends. Should you prefer it, you may list the individuals who have knowledge of Executive Suites. We’ll contact the individuals and have them removed from your life before the experience begins. Be advised, if you contact them after the experience ends, they won’t respond to you unless your Experience Creator believes they will add to your experience.”
“You don’t have to worry about friends. I have none. Well, I had one, but he’s not a friend anymore.”
“Everything you’ll experience will look and feel real,” he continued without addressing my confession. “Never question the validity. We pride ourselves on realism, even in what’s considered extreme scenarios. Never alert the authorities or officials about what you see and hear.”
The Vamp Experience_The Full Experience Page 3