Page 44 of The Pleasure Contract

Az is quiet beside me. When I finally do look at him again, I can see his jaw ticking and his hand balling into a fist at his side, only to flex out again. “But he-” he starts, visibly swallowing down some kind of very difficult emotion. “He was bonded with your mother,” he manages to grit out, the words slow and raspy.

I do this weird little head wobble that I hope he can see means ‘yeah, but… not how that works back on Earth, big guy’. We don’t have bonding venom. Just promises at the end of the aisle. And, in my experience, promises are easily broken.

“That… that wasn’t the worst of it.”

Az blinks at me with the most incredulous look; it was almost amusing.

I nod my head and continue. “My mom later told me she only did what he asked of her twice. She said she’d do anything to keep food on our table and a roof over my head. But then Jerry started dropping hints that he was going to ask something else. That’s when she grabbed me and my baby photo album, and we ran to the other side of the country with just the clothes on our backs.”

“What was he going to ask?” I hear as I stare at the babbling water feature.

I turn to look up at Az. “He was going to ask Mom to convince me to start sleeping with men for money, too. I wasn’t even seventeen yet, and was still a virgin. He said a friend of his wanted to pay him a lot of money to be my first, and that they shouldn’t dismiss the idea.”

Az. Looks. Horrified.

He clenches his jaw so tight, I think he might actually crack a tooth.

“I didn’t understand why we were running from my step-dad at first, but after a while, my mom told me the whole story. What she’d done. What she’d allowed him to talk her into. And what she refused to ever happen to me. She said it was the wake-up call she needed about what kind of man Jerry really was.”

Az looks like he’s about to throw up.

I put a gentle hand on his very tense forearm. “That was a long time ago now. And we never saw Jerry again.”

“He promised to protect and care for you and your mother,” he states, almost growling.

“And he didn’t,” I reply, folding my arms over my chest. “People can never hide their true character forever, Az. There’s nothing you or I can do about what a shitbag Jerry turned out to be.”

I stare at him for a moment or two – all seven-foot-something of him is still absolutely seething. It really is quite a sight to behold. Who would have thought such a sweet guy could seem so formidable and menacing? I can almost see the promise of murder in his eyes.

For some strange reason, that makes me soften toward him, and I place my hand on his arm again. “It’s not Jerry, or what he did, that got me upset. It’s the fact that I miss my mom so, so much.”

His anger simmers, and his shoulders relax just the slightest. “I know what it is to miss a mother, little Lois,” he says, that deep, rumbling tone gently vibrating in my chest. “My mother is no longer, but yours-” Az straightens slowly, his gaze fixed ahead of him. “Yours… maybe there could be a way-” he looks over his shoulder at the double doors that led us into this chapel before grabbing my hand and tugging me out of there. “We need to get DJ.”

19

Az

If anyone knows how to do this, it’s Pax. He had been our most successful Arena Master in the history of the Northern Principality drakball team. Watching him work was incredible. He always found a way to manipulate our opposition, conjuring the most fearsome creatures in holographic form or creating the most amazing arena terrain to set the game on. He always pushed boundaries and set new precedents. He was the one to come up with the idea to design the playing field with seventy-five percent perilous seas when we found out the First Rider on the Western team is not a strong swimmer. No wonder the Capital’s team poached him away from us.

“Az, where are we going?” Lois asks, trying to keep up even though her strides are much shorter. Her personal comm, DJ, floats beside her.

She’s still allowing me to hold her hand – something that shouldn’t make me feel like my heart is about to burst out of my chest, considering the things we have done together.

“To see a friend of mine who owes me a favor.”

The concierge staff in the lobby of Pax’s building don’t even try to ask for my credentials before buzzing us through.

“I don’t really think they wanted to let us in back there,” Lois comments, still glancing back at them. I’m sure they’re still staring after us, too. I am a prince, and I am touching a female right now, after all.

I shrug and keep walking. “Perks of being my father’s son.”

By the time we reach Pax’s door, Lois is a little flustered from keeping up.

She looks fucking delicious like that, and I instantly start to wonder when the next time we’ll put that pleasure contract to good use will be.

But then the door opens, and we get a brief glimpse of Pax’s shocked face before he’s trying to close it again.

“Ah-” I interject, my boot over the threshold as I issue him with a look that I hope makes one thing very clear: he can’t just shut a door in my face. “I’m not here to break a horn for abandoning us, P, don’t worry.”