Regrets always come later in life. Did I have regret? Not really… I just wanted to say something wise. Although, I kept thinking that I’m supposed to regret giving my virginity to Alexander. Why was I having a trip down memory lane? Oh right, I was drunk. And suddenly memories of Alexander came rushing through my brain.
The day he picked me up from the street and offered me to be his escort with a lot of money, I told him clearly that I would not share my body with him. And he was fine with that clause.
“I only want someone to accompany me when nobody would,” he said to me. His thick eyelashes drooped over his ocean eyes. He looked… lonely.
It was dark inside his car that night, but I could see that his body was toned. He was a gorgeous male specimen. Even his facial hair looked delicious on him. It made me wonder how on earth a Greek God like him felt lonely and needed to pay for a company.
That night, I thought he might have some personality disorder that made people shun him. And when I remembered what I looked like that night… I thought I might be right. My hair was messy, with lots of clumps because I had not combed it for a few days. Streaks of tears were still evident on my cheeks because I had been crying the whole day to the point of my eyes got dry. And I had not changed my hoodie and jeans for two days.
I looked awful. And he wanted me. It was obvious that he was mental, right? Well, either that or he had a weird kink.
“How old are you?” I dared to ask him as he drove me. I know, it was pretty crazy for me to just jumped in the same car with a stranger without even knowing the destination. But I was not in my right mind.
“Thirty-three,” he said. “I’m guessing you’re… twenty?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Good. You’re an adult.”
“I told you, I’m not sleeping with you.”
By then he had driven me to a simple building. There was a guard who recognized his car right away and let us in. It was dark, but I could see that the front garden and driveway were huge. When we finally arrived at the building, my jaw almost dropped.
“Welcome to my apartment building,” he said, “You’ll be staying here from now on.”
I got out of the car and tried to calculate the cost of the building. It had only three floors and was built in a minimalistic yet futuristic design. “I… I can’t afford this.”
“It’s free for you to use.”
He nudged me to go inside. And my jaw felt like it had dropped to the floor when I saw the inside. It was a literal castle compared to my old home. “No one else is staying in here. So you can use all two rooms in the building.”
“Two rooms?”
“Yeah, each floor is one room except the first floor is for the lobby and living room.”
A man with white hair walked to us. He was wearing a grey tuxedo. The man who later I knew as Xavier bowed to Alexander. “Welcome back, Master,” he said. Xavier did not even bother to greet me as I stood there awkwardly, feeling I did not belong at all in the luxurious building.
“Ann,” he called me, “the bathroom is on the second floor. There’s a set of clothes waiting for you on the bed.”
I quirked my eyebrows up. “You’ve prepared for this? To pick up a girl from the street?”
I turned my body to finally looked at my ‘Sugar Daddy’ in brighter lighting for the first time. I was right. He was gorgeous. And he was taller and bigger than I imagined him to be. Perhaps because for all my twenty years, I have only seen boys around the same age as mine. But right then, standing in front of me, was a man.
Alexander was wearing a black shirt with grey pants. He was a bit tanner than me, his eyebrows were dark and thick, and his lips were… delicious.
Not wanting him to notice that I was ogling at him, I quickly walked myself up the stairs and took a long shower. Yes, I deliberately took longer than I was necessary. I might have had broken down once or twice during the shower and was taking my time to wash the remnants of tears.
When I was done, I put on a black bathrobe and decided to let my hair dry by itself. As the water dripped on the floor, I found Alexander was already waiting for me on a coffee table. A paper was seen on the table. I approached the table and immediately read the contract he had put together.
“Did you wake up one day and decided you want a,” I read what was written on the contract, “Sugar Baby?”
Alexander did not answer me, instead, he only looked at me with that blue eyes of his. It was unsettling. I have never been looked at so intensely like that.
I kept on reading the contract in detail. I would not want any vague words binding me in unfavorable conditions in the future. Weirdly, I actually found the contract favorable for me. “You are not putting the rent of this building in the contract?”
“No. It’s free for you to use.”
“So, if in the future I want to quit… I only need to ‘pay for the initial payment and all the money I spent on my black card?’” I read the exact words written on the contract. “I have a black card?”
Alexander took out a black card from his pocket and extended it to me. I took it, trying to make sure it was real.
“Yes. Easy right? But why would you want to quit?” he asked.
“Well, who could tell what the future holds?”
“True.” He leaned on the table. “You can also use the money from the black card to pay for your tuition.”
I blinked at his words.
“Of course, if you do so, then you got to pay back the whole intuition fee when you want to quit.”
“Y– you’d allow me… to go to school?”
“I’d like a company that I could talk with. So, yes. I’d like a smart Sugar Baby.”
When I was still stunned at the opportunity he presented to me, he continued to say, “Or I could take your tuition fee out of the contract. Meaning you don’t have to pay me back that fee if you decide to quit like you won’t have to pay for this building’s rent.”
He must have seen the interest in my eyes because he then said, “With a condition, of course.”
“What is it?”
He did not answer straight away. Instead, he asked me, “Are you planning your retirement already? When you have not even started?” He chuckled. “I am positive that once you start, you would not want to quit.”
Wow. This guy is so full of himself, I thought at that time. So, personality disorder it was. Perhaps a bit of narcissism.
“I just don’t want to pass on a good opportunity,” I said carefully, “If you put a reasonable condition… well, let’s just say I’m a gold digger. You’re offering me a lot more money than I have ever seen in my entire life and now I am addicted to the thought of having more.”
He smiled at my answer, finding my words amusing. It was just the honest truth. And I was glad he was not turned off when I said I was a gold-digger.
“I don’t think of you as a gold-digger,” he said gently, “Though you might be an opportunist.”
He stood from his chair and walked towards me. “I can put another clause excluding your tuition fee from the contract. We will put that as the price for your virginity, instead.”
Ah, now I know his kink. I could not help to think that my virginity was actually what he was after from the beginning.
But the tuition fee as the price of my virginity… medical school was not cheap. And I was so close to quitting because I had no more money. If I accepted his term, I would only lose my virginity… but I could still maintain my future.
I guess I am an opportunist.
After altering the contract until I was satisfied –we put in the virginity and tuition fee clause, as well as several clauses to ensure he would not abuse me both physically or mentally, also would not sell me off to another party, I finally signed the damn paper. Two copies of it. Alexander let me keep one copy.
Then there was only one thing I needed to do that day.
Alexander led me to stand next to the bed in the middle of the spacious room. He sat on one edge, my body was between his legs. “Strip,” he commanded.
None of the Underworlders dared to speak up. The vampires that were hissing at me took steps back. The werewolves that were growling at me whimpered in fear. The warlocks looked shocked and some of the fairies were shivering. It felt amazing to finally show how they could not toy with my life anymore. It felt divine to have control over my life. Take that, you annoying Underworlders. Lex suddenly laughed out loud. He grabbed his stomach as though I was being funny. It annoyed me greatly, and I was about to reprimand him when suddenly he said to the entire garden, “The ones who object the Dark Lord will have to go through me first.” I realized what he was doing. He made sure the Underworlders know he had my back. Our eyes locked, and I sent him silent gratitude. “You’ll have to go through me too,” Tony said beside me. “Me too,” Renald said. Michael shrugged. “Me three.” I smiled at the boys, feeling full because they had my back
I took in a huge gasp of air as I finally opened my eyes. My lungs felt like being drowned and then burned because it had stopped breathing for a while and oxygen was flooding in madly. The light burned my eyes too and for a moment I had to blink furiously just to adjust to the light. It was funny. All I had to do was just manifest my will to keep on living and there I was. Alive yet again. I saw Tony’s yellow eyes first. They widened at me, shocked because he thought I had died. His face crumpled when he hugged me tightly before. And now he looked at me blankly. I could still see the tears pooling in his demonic eyes. At other times, I would have boasted about the fact a demon almost cried for me. He really was the sweetest demon. “Miss Ari!!” Renald cried out. He pulled me into his embrace. The smell of earthy fragrance from his skin hit my nose. But his embrace gave me warmth, and I found myself clinging to him, to make sure I was really al
I turned in the voice’s direction. After blinking twice, I realized that the figure in front of me was real. He seemed to be in the same realm as me, the ghost/afterlife/whatever-it-is-actually-called realm. The men didn’t notice his presence at all. He looked similar to Bar, with a body cloaked in a black hood. But he was way bigger, and he had a scythe in his right hand. Looking up, I find his skeleton face. And when I looked into his red eyes, I knew instantly who it was. “Dark Lord…” “No,” he said, “That is not my title anymore.” I could be wrong, but I saw him smiling sadly. After all, how could a skeleton smile or give any expression whatsoever? Expression comes from muscles, and skeletons do not have muscles. They are just bones. “Are you here to pick me up?” I asked. My voice trembled slightly. I was still not ready to go. My eyes flared up in heat as well. But the skeleton man shook his head. “That is not my job anymore,” he s
People like to theorize about death. For a clinician, there are two types of death; one is the condition of brain dead, where the brain is no longer active to even sustain the basic biological need and would need to rely on a machine. The other is when the heart stops beating. My heart has stopped beating. I could have explained the entire thing from a biological perspective but that would make this chapter into a scientific journal instead of a story. The thing is, we humans are too afraid to die that we conjure this unnatural belief that there is something beautiful in the afterlife. That someone would pick our souls up and deliver us to a better place. But that was not what I experienced. Death was quite… empty. It was nothing extraordinary. Just my soul leaving my body. No pain. No anguish. Nothing beautiful to see. In fact, I was seeing the same scene before I died. Someone had called my name before, but I forgot who it was. The f
“Mateo?” I felt my knees weakening as I locked eyes with a hooded figure in a dark cloak in front of the gate. His voice sounded like a hoarse whisper, but it was loud. And it made my skin crawl even more. I couldn’t see his entire face, as half of his upper face was covered by the hood. But I could clearly see his red, glowing, menacing eyes. “Yes,” he said in an eerie voice. The man grabbed two iron bars of the gate slowly, showing long and dirty nails. The little skin that I saw was pale, and he looked super skinny, only skin on bones. “Who are you?” I asked, “And what do you mean you have Mateo?” The man stretched his hand beyond the iron bars of the gate. He opened his palm. Instantly, red-orange dust appeared from his fingers and created what seemed like a circle of firework in the air. In the middle of the circle, appeared a boy in a dark void. I couldn’t breathe. The boy looked at me with fear in his eyes. He looked emancipated
Renald, Tony, and Michael were already sitting at the dining table. They didn’t start eating until Lex and I took a bite first. I sat on Lex’s right side, just like before. Next to me was Tony. And across from me were Michael and Renald. I ate my food leisurely. They served this amazing baked chicken with salad. And the red wine they served that night tasted somehow sweeter. Perhaps it was just my good mood. Mending my relationship with Lex cheered me up a little. I felt less stuffed. As though a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. It felt weird, though. Because I didn’t feel like this with the other guys. I didn’t even know how strong the strain in my relationship with Lex had affected me. But just when I was about to sip my wine, Tony sniffed the air close to my hair. I jolted a little, still not use to these supernatural men sniffing me. But there was something wrong this time. He looked at me with an intense gaze. His yellow eyes flashed before me a