Please take your time to answer the following questionnaire as attentively as possible so we can select the right partner for you.
Would you like to be the one performing primal play or the one to have the primal play performed on?
Performed on.
Do you want your partner to be a man, a woman, or non-binary?
Man.
Body type?
Muscular.
Blond(e), Brunet(te) or other (please specify)?
Brunet.
Do you want your partner masked or not?
I hesitate before I click on Masked.
It’s true that I’m showing this part of me, but maybe we’re not ready for face-to-face yet.
I click on I’ll be masked, too, during the act.
Height preference? Please select from the list below. Click on ‘none’ if you have no preference.
I click on 1.95 m. Landon’s exact height.
Clothes?
No Preference.
Tattoos?
Yes.
Lan has some, but they’re hidden.
Setting?
No Preference.
Time?
After sunset and before midnight.
Day?
No preference.
Safe word. Upon saying this word, your partner would halt the act immediately.
Smoke.
Enter your limits below (please be as specific as possible).
Gagging. Drugging. Any use of an enhancement drug.
Those are the only things that make my skin crawl. They bring back memories of when I breathed wrong, existed wrong, and fought but found no way out.
After I review my selection, I click Submit.
Thank you for your selections. We’ll notify you once we’ve paired you with a compatible partner. Please note that this process might take a while until we’re confident we’re able to satisfy your choices.
That makes sense.
I spend a few more minutes reviewing and rereading my answers to make sure everything is correct. I’m about to exit when a red dot appears at the top of the screen.
I click on it and freeze.
Congratulations, we have found a partner with your specific criteria. We’ll temporarily share your location with your partner during the hour(s) you decide the act will happen.
Details of the meeting are below. If you wish to reschedule or cancel, click here to do so.
I scroll down to the details, my heart hammering so hard, I think I’ll faint.
This is really happening.
4
CECILY
“Where are you going?”
I come to a halt in the middle of the living room, plaster a smile that’s awkward at best, and face my best friend, Ava.
She’s staring at me with a hand hiked up on her waist. Ava is blonde, slender, and the cliché of a bombshell social butterfly.
No clue how someone like her became friends with someone like me. I’m a year older than her but feel like I’m a generation away. Where she’s loud, I’m reserved. Where she’s extroverted, I’m introverted. Where she’s searching for trouble at a club, I’m all for quiet nights in.
But I guess it’s our differences that have made us gravitate toward each other since we were kids.
And this is about the worst time to be caught by her.
“A night walk,” I say coolly. Definitely not sounding suspicious at all.
Not.
Ava’s eyes narrow to slits, barely allowing any of the blue to peek through. “You’re going to do something fun without me, aren’t you?”
“No.” My voice is high-pitched, uneasy, and sounds absolutely terrible.
“You totally are.” She headlocks me teasingly. “How can you leave me all alone? Do you have it in your heart to let me flounder in misery by myself?”
I poke her in the ribs. “Stop being needy.”
That only makes her tighten her hold on me, nearly choking the living hell out of me.
The door to the flat opens and in comes a pretty doll in a beautiful purple dress with matching flats and hair clips.
Annika, our fourth roommate and a new friend, pauses at the scene, frowning slightly before she grins and speaks in an American accent, “What’s going on?”
“This bitch was going to betray us and wander out alone for fun times.”
Annika’s eyes widen. She’s the brunette version of Ava, only seventeen—going on eighteen, as she likes to remind us—and is the personification of a people person.
Always kind, smiling, never makes others feel unwanted or uncomfortable, and has the energy of a butterfly on steroids.
“Take us with you,” she says enthusiastically.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Ava agrees.
“I’m not going anywhere.” I shove her away. “It’s just a walk.”
“We can walk, too. Right, Anni?”
Our friend bobs her head up and down with excessive energy, then pauses, all the joy dropping from her face. “On a second thought, if Jer finds out I was walking at night, he’ll put me on house arrest, and I’m not a fan.”
“Your brother really sucks.” Ava pauses. “No offense.”
“He has his moments, I guess.” Anni’s expression continues to be caught in that disappointment limbo. “You girls go. I’ll root for you from here.”
“Nonsense.” Ava flips her hair back. “We can always have a girls' night in. Right, Cecy?”
The mention of my name brings me back from a weird state. An out-of-body experience, as if I’m seeing myself from outer lenses.
I was out of focus—here in body but completely elsewhere in mind, as if my spirit was abducted and I was left hollow.
It started after Annika mentioned her brother’s name.
We’ve known since she was admitted to REU this semester that she’s a mafia princess and her much older brother, who’s almost twenty-four, is not only a mafia prince, but also the heir to a blood-soaked empire.
I first heard his name when I got into uni last year. Anyone on Brighton Island is well aware of that name and the promise of fear it brings.
Jeremy Volkov.
Leader of the Heathens, part of the Russian mafia, and the current reigning monarch over the whole of TKU.
I’ve seen him around during the time I’ve been at uni, mostly at the fight club that Ava is obsessed with going to, because, of course, someone like him is attuned to violence.
I’ve only met him once, two days ago when he found out Annika was at the fight club with us and proceeded to drag her out. The controlling behavior left a bad taste in my mouth and I got in his face about it.
Something that he definitely disliked and disregarded, and then he proceeded to kick Anni out.
The whole encounter made me happy that I don’t know him on a personal level. People like him, and the whole of the Heathens who get off on old patriarchal rules and only care for their gratification, deserve nothing but distaste.
I’m just glad I won’t see him anymore.
You totally did last night at the initiation.
I pause at that thought. Yes, I knew Jeremy was one of the guys in the masks. He wouldn’t miss the initiation, considering he’s their leader, but for some reason, in the back of my mind, I refused to dwell on that option.
“Cecily Annabelle Knight!”
I startle at Ava’s voice, realizing that I got lost in my head again.
I hike up a hand on my hip. “Why are you calling me by my full name?”
“Because you zoned out.” Ava snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Welcome back to the world of the living. As we were saying, girls' night in?”