Page 16 of Taken By the Crab King of Atlantis

Quan doesn’t seem to mind. “That sounds like a lot. But you’re the good one. Like… good grades and piano lessons?” They wrinkle their nose at the thought.

I nod and laugh properly this time.

“Like… getting a proper job? Studying something like business?”

“I study accounting.”

“Do you like it, like really?” Quan’s face tells me everything they think about the idea of enjoying accounting.

I shrug. “It’s okay. I’m good at it.” Normally, I would stop there. But not today. “I’ve always been the smart one, expected to get a good enough job to carry the next generation forward and take care of my parents in their old age. I won a piano scholarship to a fancy school in high school and had to leave all my friends and my sister, Aya. But I had to do it. It’s who I am. I guess I am the good girl.”

“So what would motivate a good girl like you to sell her virginity to a man like that?” Quan says, their smile pure evil as they gestures to Karkinos’ picture. “Because I don’t believe it’s only for your sister, and sweetheart, that is one hell of a duty.”

I laugh again because Quan is right. I felt a thrill when I first heard of the virginity contract, and again when I signed it. It’s not something I could ever admit in my normal life, but right now nothing is normal.

I shake my head. “Maybe I was excited to do something different, but I wasn’t expecting…” I gesture at Karkinos’s image. “That. Him. And he told me he’s trying to seduce me into staying in Atlantis.”

“Seduction doesn’t sound so bad,” Quan says with raised eyebrows.

“He’s more of an adventure than I was expecting,” I admit. “But the whole staying in Atlantis thing…”

“You don’t have to say yes to staying, right? There’s paperwork around that?” Quan does know a lot about this situation.

I nod. “But it would be easier if he…” I look at Karkinos’ image again. “Didn’t look like THAT.” I sigh, the stress fading now I’ve had a good cry. “That’s dumb, isn’t it?”

Quan shakes their head. “No, it isn’t. Everyone is afraid of something. And if you’ve walked the straight and narrow all your life, the wild side is pretty scary. But I’ll tell you a secret for free. It’s also a helluva lot of fun. So whether you made this deal to help your sister, or from some subconscious desire to step out of the straight line of your life, we’re going to make you look on the outside like you need to feel on the inside, so you can do your duty… and have sex with that smoking hot man.”

Quan fans themselves with one hand, eyebrows raised, before holding a hand out, ready for me to take it and start the makeover properly. I smile and take their hand.

6

KARKINOS

After Yen leaves, I go back to my desk chair and fight my rising arousal, clenching my fists.

She is everything I imagined and more, and it's hard now that I've met her to remember anything else matters.

Lust is still riding my body hard, and I haven’t felt this way in more than a hundred years. Was it like this with Yvette? I think so. But I had no reason to hold back in those heady days of youth.

The sweet scent of Yen’s arousal lingers in my office, invigorating my body. My chest swells as I breathe in the lingering trace of her. Is this the impact of the bond, already forming?

I could go after her now and consume the sacrifice early. She would not resist me, and her soft body would sing under my attentions. Her room is on the guest floors in the building. I could find it easily. But she has not seen the city, and with her own responsibilities back home, she would have no incentive to stay here.

My fists unclench slowly.

I force myself to pick a document off the pile in my in-tray.

The words blur before my eyes.

I’m not sure how long I sit there, battling myself, when there is a knock at the door.

“I wanted to walk through your schedule for this afternoon,” Kilandra says, walking in with a folder in her hand and Marina in tow behind her.

“You wanted to know how it went,” I say with a growl.

Marina runs to me, and I gratefully draw her into my lap, pressing my face into her hair and kissing it while she rifles through my top drawer and grabs her book and drawing pencils. She smells clean and sweet, and the lust in my body evacuates, leaving behind only guilt.

“How was it?” Kilandra asks, head cocked to one side.