Sell My Soul (Sixty Days 1)

I didn’t even glance at my whispering dorm mates on my way down the hall. I stepped out of the front door and kept my head high on my walk through campus, doing my best to keep my breathing steady and my back straight as I passed by a whole host of wide-eyed gossips.

I didn’t care. Couldn’t care. Didn’t have the capacity for any higher stress levels than the ones I was already juggling.

And yet, despite the mountain of pressure brewing, the devil on my shoulder still called my name.

There was an undeniable zing of excitement running underneath the whole sorry lot of it.

I hated myself for it, as always.

I wanted nothing but to feel revulsion, as always.

I wished I was just a regular girl wanting regular missionary sex with some buff guy from college. I wished I was one of a couple of ordinary siblings with ordinary jobs, watching crappy TV on weeknights while the others pinged me about the cliff-hangers on social media.

I wished I had family pets, and old cringy family photographs of me in bad knitted jumpers.

I wished I was a good girl with good happy dreams. That I’d grown up with fairy tales read to me at night before bed, and the door left ajar with a sliver of light to ward off monsters.

Maybe that would have stopped me chasing after big monsters as a big girl and hoping they grabbed me tight and made me suffer. Made me beg. Made me take it all and scream for more.

I knew when I saw Carolyn and her sister waiting at the entrance of the pier that nothing in this world would stop me chasing the monster who’d already made me hurt for him. My nerves fizzed right through me, my throat dry as all hell when Rebecca Lane saw my approach and smiled her beautiful smile.

She was stunning. Totally and utterly.

In that one moment my ugly duckling fears were up and at me.

Her hair was even glossier than I remembered. She was dressed in skinny designer jeans with platform heels, her tits hoisted high and her hips bared to the wind, even in the chill.

There was no way I’d be on a par with her for sixty days. Not even close.

Carolyn was dressed down in comparison, a sweater zipped up to her chin with her fingers in the pockets. Her grin was huge as she saw me, going against the grain from the rest of the populous these past few days and whispering something potentially nice about me in Rebecca’s ear.

I felt as awkward as shit when I finally reached them, hovering somewhere between a wave and a hug and not knowing where the hell to pitch myself on the friendship front. Carolyn made the decision for me, grabbing me tight and rocking me around like a campus bestie she hadn’t seen in weeks. I returned her enthusiasm with everything I had.

Her perfume was amazing. Floral in a cutesy way that had me smiling bright over her shoulder. I met her sister’s eyes mid-hug and hers were so different from Carolyn’s that my breath stopped dead in my throat.

Rebecca Lane’s eyes were deep and dark and intimidating as sin. They twinkled with a dirty knowing that made the devil on my shoulder burst into song.

She really had experienced an ocean of absolute filth in her sixty days, that much was clear. A dark little shiver of intuition dared to tell me she’d enjoyed it, too.

Carolyn dropped me from the hug and turned to her sister. “Rebecca, this is Paige. Paige, this is Rebecca.”

I held up a hand, hovering awkwardly all over again as the other girl took a step toward me. Her hips swayed like a catwalk model’s, even in that one simple movement. She was confident. Really confident. More confident than I could be in a million years.

“Hi, Rebecca,” I said. “Really pleased to meet you.”

“Same,” she replied. “Carolyn’s told me plenty about you.”

Her tone was thick with knowing.

“Let’s do donuts,” Carolyn prompted. “I can’t wait for you to try them and put the competition to bed. Campus ones are way better, for sure. You’ll agree with me, Paige, I know you will. Rebecca doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

She took my hand in hers and I was tugged along the pier. She told me about the flavours, so much about the flavours. About icing, and powdered sugar, and how sometimes they come out warm enough to be just so.

She sounded so far away.

But Rebecca’s voice didn’t sound far away at all when she spoke next.

“I don’t think Paige gives two shits about donuts, Carolyn. She cares about surviving sixty days of hardcore filth and coming out minted.”

Carolyn stopped dead in her tracks at the comment and I put on the brakes just in time to stop along with her. “Jeez, Becca, at least let us get a fucking table first, yeah? She’ll need the sugar rush to cope with the horror.”