Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Zora
“You’re the biggest idiot on the planet, Zora,” Noah grumbled at me, rummaging through the drawers in the office with a frantic energy that was not helping me. “I can’t find any.”
“Shit!” I hissed, jumping in beside him to look as well. My body was buzzing with stress, making my fingertips tingle and my heart feel all stupid and fluttery.
I knew they kept a stash of them in here.
Or they used to, before Bailey took over and made it a much more aboveboard place to work.
We no longer lied about our identities; we were way more upfront about safety, kinks and whatever.
And apparently, we no longer kept a stock of morning-after pills in the office drawers.
“Bailey’ll kill you for this,” Noah said, tutting and shaking his bleached blond head.
I looked at him wide-eyed. “It’s my fuck-up, I’ll fix it.”
And it was the biggest of fuck-ups. I’d just lost myself in the man in every way. Nothing like that had ever happened before. I always had the most level of heads when at work, even when I had to fake it; my mind was switched on for keeping myself safe, both physically and mentally.
But Harry… he’d twisted up my sensible brain like some kind of demon. I wasn’t supposed to have sex that night, even with a condom. It went against our safety protocols. I wasn’t protected after coming off the pill because it made me fucking suicidal… oh holy shit.
“You’ll have to go to the pharmacy,” Noah winced, standing up straight when we both came up empty again. “What were you thinking?”
“That he was a good fuck, and we had condoms?” I paused. “That we failed to use.”
God, why had I done that? Why hadn’t I stopped him? Truth was, it hadn’t occurred to me. I’d been so deep into what we’d been doing that the thought of making him wrap it up didn’t once enter my mind.
Idiot.
I was for sure an idiot.
What type of whore wasn’t on birth control?
The kind that got suicidal with hormones and squicked out at the idea of the coil but was bracing herself for the appointment, anyway. I was good at keeping myself safe, refusing cream pie scenes even when I was on the damn pill.
Until Harry. Until our scene finished and I wanted more from him. Lost myself and any sense of level-headedness I might have once had.
Then he left, dragging himself away with a scatter of kisses over my body and a longing look. That’s when it crashed down. When I could still feel him between my legs, his cum pooling under my ass to remind me what a fucking dumb bitch I’d been.
“What time does the pharmacy open?” I asked Noah, looking at him with panic in my eyes, thrumming through my veins.
I wasn’t even dressed yet, had stumbled out of the session with Harry, my robe thrown haphazardly over my ravaged body, on a mission to get my hands on those damn pills as soon as my mind switched back on.
Noah found me while he was returning from one of the rooms with a bucket and a mop in his hand, and dropped everything to help. My angel.
His phone was in his grip, his brow furrowing. “8am,” he said.
“Six hours from now.” I nodded, steeling myself. “That’s fine. I have no more bookings anyway. Bailey had me on strict no dicks near my cooch duty.” I winced. “I’m gonna go home and get some rest, grab it in the morning.”
“You need money?”
My heart warmed as I looked at my friend.
He was genuine; he’d give me everything he had if it meant my wellbeing.
He could afford it too; being in a thruple was like being a fucking millionaire these days — three incomes, three sets of hands to carry the weight.
The dream, man. I shared a dingy apartment with a roommate, and we scraped by each month.
But I shook my head. “I can pay for it.” I paused and looked at him, a man so deep in love with two other women he hadn’t once checked out my body through the see-through robe, and smiled. “Thank you, Noah.”
“Any time, Zora.”
Sleep came easy that night, but waking up did not. Waking up came with the fucking flu. With a fever making me loopy, a throbbing headache and an elephant on my chest preventing any deep breaths.
For a full ten days I laid up in bed, melting from high body heat, hacking up what felt like more than the two lungs I had in my chest, and generally suffering.
Delirium, only lightened when my roommate slipped in, a face mask on, to give me sips of soup and force me to swallow pain relief and cool water.
“Shh,” Bellamy said when I tried to get up, to claw my way out of bed. “Just rest babe, I’ll watch out for you.” They paused stroking my hair, and scooped up my phone from the table. “I’ll let work know it’ll be a few more days.”
It was on the tenth day that I unstuck myself from my disgusting bedsheets and stumbled into the living room of our small apartment. Disheveled and stinky, but in desperate need of a drink. A tiny bit revived.
“She has arisen!” Bellamy yelled, jumping up from their seat and coming to the small kitchenette we had.
The place was compact, just enough space for the two of us and a handful of furniture.
We’d met when I moved in, Bellamy’s old roommate dipping out all of a sudden and leaving them desperate.
As luck would have it, I was desperate too, running from my family, who disagreed with every choice I ever made.
“Shh,” I grumbled. “Too much noise, not good.”
“Alright, cave dweller,” Bellamy laughed, wandering over and pulling me into a hug. “Nice to see the grumpiness in full swing. Means you’re almost you again.”
“Thank you,” I muttered into their chest, enjoying the warmth. “You’re the best.”
“Only the best for my special girl.” Bellamy kissed the top of my head and turned away, returning with a bottle of water from the fridge. “Drink up. We need to get you back to normal.”
Groaning, I plodded over to the sofa and sank down onto it.
The cushions sagged, but it was still warm from Bellamy’s body, comforting.
They were watching a documentary about what looked like the sea, dolphins and shit, and my brain switched off for a cozy moment, hooked on the motion of the water, the sway of the animals as they swam and dove.
“Normal seems so far away,” I said, blinking back the hypnosis these shows always brought.
Bellamy laughed, scooping up my legs and settling where I’d been stretched out on the sofa, before resting my feet on their lap. “Tell me about it.”
We sank into a brief, comfortable silence, both lost in our heads.
“The club phoned a bunch,” Bellamy said, breaking the quiet. “I told Noah you were done for, but you’d let them know when you could come back to work.”
“Ugh, I need at least another day or so before I go fucking about with randoms…” The thought made me nauseous.
Plus, the last time had been so amazing it haunted my dreams in the best way possible. Visions of Harry plagued my mind through the flu haze. When I fell in and out of consciousness, it was his face, his touch that carried me over.
It was ridiculous. He was a client. A man who paid me for the experience and got every bit of his money’s worth. No doubt he’d jumped off that bed, said his goodbyes and wandered off to continue his life, satisfied and not giving me a second thought.
It was only me who was haunted by him.
“Noah also wanted to check that you’d got that… thing,” Bellamy continued. “He only said thing, though, even when I pressed.”
“What fucking thing?” I grumbled, scrunching up my face. “What the hell is he talking about, strange man…”
For a minute, the dolphins on screen had my heart, my attention. I swigged from the bottle of water, trying not to let it dribble down my chin in my reclined position, and I watched those squeaky fuckers dive through the water without a care on the planet beyond the next seal they could fuck up.
What was Noah on about? He knew I was sick, that I was in no way, shape or form able to run errands for him. Fuck, I was ten days post-shower. A few spongings here and there from Bellamy, but…
Oh.
Fuck.
No.
The thing.
I remembered what the thing was.
“God fucking damn it.”