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1
“Mm…” I purred. I was lying on the softest of silken sheets, my hair perfectly fanned across my pillow. A hand skimmed its way up my calf, the fingertips light enough to almost tickle. I looked down to see a blond-haired guy shoot me a rakish grin as his caress moved upwards. Another trailed across my stomach, circling my belly button before raking up my ribs. Ooh, the owner of this one had dark brown hair, dark skin and the most beautiful sea-green eyes. I leaned back into the pillow, closing my eyes as an additional pair grasped my ankle firmly, before pushing the thumb against the tough muscle of my instep. Hands slid over my shoulders, moving lower and lower, my back arching to meet them. Hands, so many hands, but if they would just move up or down that little bit further…
Beloved. The voice was a low buzz in my mind. Tess, you need to wake up.
Not yet, I pleaded. Two of them were sliding up the insides of my thighs, coming closer and closer…
Tess, there are strange men in your bedroom again.
My eyes snapped open. I wasn’t on satin sheets; I was lying on my own cotton ones, ones that had those tiny little balls all over them. “What the hell!” Around my bed kneeled four, no, five men, each touching me. I jerked my feet away from the man massaging them. I didn’t want to, he was doing an amazing job. I mean some guys, they say they’ll massage your feet and then it becomes this half-hearted, slightly firm, rubbing thing which you have to pretend to be grateful for when a couple of rounds of shoving your plantar fascia against a spiky therapy ball would be much better. No, his fingers were like velvet-covered iron…and they were moving towards me as if my feet and his hands were magnets. “What are you doing? No!” I said, brushing the rest of the very gropey hands off me like one would do a cluster of spiders.
“C’mon babe,” a guy with light brown hair and blue eyes that, I shit you not, sparkled, said with a grin. Tha
t was no mean feat in the dark gloom of my bedroom. “You know you want this.” He reached out for me and I batted his hand away, giving it a good couple of slaps when he seemed persistent. My dragon…dog, ah, dragon-dog jumped up on the bed and growled when the guy struggled to get his head around the idea of no. All of them pulled back, giving me some much-needed space.
“Bloody Ash…” I mumbled, reaching over to grab my phone off the bedside table. One of the remaining guys, tall, big with dark hair and equally dark inked tattoos, took the opportunity to look up my now rucked up nighty as I did so. “Are you right there, mate?” I said. He just gave me this long, slow smile like that was supposed to be sexy or something. I sat cross-legged and Miazydar flumped across them, to protect me from anymore Peeping Tom incidents. “We talked about this,” I muttered, unlocking the device and thumbing the Messages app open.
Surprise! Was the latest message from my dear sister.
“Goddamit!” I said and threw it down on the bed. I was stuck with a harem of five gorgeous guys for the day. “Right, well I guess introductions are in order. I’m—.”
“Tess, we know, beautiful,” Sparkle Eyes said with a breathtaking smile. Seriously, there were sunsets who just turned around and flounced away in jealousy in the face of that beauty.
“Right,” I looked at the guys surrounding the bed, taking them in more clearly now the adrenalin was pumping through me. Dark hair, blond, brunette, sandy, yep we had the usual spread of reverse harem contenders. I’d put money on one being a Talon or a Cooper. “OK,” I said, “let’s play a game I like to call, ‘Tell me the first letter of your name and I try to guess it’,” I said.
“That’s a game?” the last guy asked. He had long black hair and dark skin.
“Humour me,” I said.
He shrugged, “Starts with a ‘C’.”
“Right, C. How about Caelen, Cameron, Connor--.”
“I’m Connor,” Sparkle Eyes said.
“Of course you are.” I looked over tall, dark and ethnically ambiguous for a moment and then clicked my fingers. “How about Crowe?”
“Holy shit, how d'you do that?” Bad Boy Cliché with the Tattoos said.
“Of course it’s Crowe.” I rubbed my forehead.
“Yeah, my mom’s Lakota on her Dad’s side.”
“Is that culturally insensitive?” I tapped a finger on my lip. “I feel like it is, but I’m not sure why?”
“A guy saying he’s part Lakota is culturally insensitive?” the blond guy asked. “What drugs are you on, babe?”
“No, no, it’s the sexual fetishization of qualities of certain races, along with the Othering process of usually making them somehow subtly subhuman. Like, I bet he has some sort of mystical powers.” The guys' eyes all flicked to each other. “Oh really? He’s not a werewolf or something?” More shifty-eyed silence. I sighed and rubbed my face. I needed a shower, coffee and to get the hell to work and I wasn’t sure how I would do that on the back of the Tess-mobile with this horde. I took a deep breath and called my sister.
“Look, I don’t know how the hell you know—” I held my hand up to Sparkle Eyes, no, Connor, indicating he would have to wait. Which he did. All of them did, just sitting there, shirtless, looking like a very obedient troupe of marching boys from Mardi Gras.
“Tess, my darling sister!” Ash said. I could hear the laughter in her voice. Bloody bitch.
“You’re going to need to come and pick up the Chippendales, as they won’t fit on the bike.”
“Oh, I dunno, you guys could form a pyramid like those trick motorbike riders.”
“They usually have at least three bikes to do that,” I heard the muffled voice of my sister’s partner, Gabe down the line.
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Can I draw your attention back to the glass casket, the faerie prince who was an arrogant douche, that ‘is he evil or is he a misunderstood love interest vampire guy”—I could just imagine her ticking each bloke off on her fingers—“Oh, and that guy who was only partially corporeal. Like, was he a ghost?”
“He was a sensitive soul, trapped between the realms of life or death.”
“Yeah, so I had to deal with one of them, every damned morning.”
“I know.”
“And you said you were sick of being the geeky sidekick.”
“Yes, I know.”
“So now’s your chance! The curse has returned and seems focused on you now, thank God. You have the dragon dog and the harem of guys and the cool motorbike with a sidecar.”
