Highest Bidder

Once I apologized to her, but she refused to accept my apology. That’s the thing about Freya, she’s a warrior. She told me she wouldn’t change a single thing of our past. She said we had to go through that humiliating, horrible time to find the real people we were. That before a piece of metal can become a sword it must go through a baptism of fire. That was our baptism. We walked through fire to reach each other.

A murmur rippled through the congregation.

I knew I wasn’t supposed to turn around and look at her. I was supposed to wait until she got closer, but I’d always done things my own way. I turned around and watched her arrive at the entrance.

A sigh went through my body when I saw her. All my nervousness fled.

She was shining like an angel. God, everyone should be so lucky to see her gracing this aisle. She was so fucking beautiful.

Through her veil, our eyes met.

The music stopped, the whispers of the crowd faded away, and time stood still.

I felt a sensation of déjà vu.

I’d done this before.

With this woman.

In another life, another timeline, another dimension we’ve already stood this same way and looked longingly at each other. We are old lovers. That was why we could never get enough of each other. Why our lust burned like a lamp with endless fuel. We would go on forever. Even after we left these bodies. Our love was beyond time and space. Our love would never die.

She smiled at me and I felt my eyes burn with tears of joy and pride. I had been blessed with more riches than any human had a right to, but my life was empty until she came. She was mine. Only mine. Now and forever.

Then she began to walk down the aisle. This moment would be forever burned into my brain. Her hair was done up in glowing little curls that bounced with every step she took. When she got to the altar, her uncle lifted her veil.

Yeah, this was my bride. It was about fucking time I put my ring on her finger and gave her my name. And later tonight … I had a surprise for her.

I was taking her to the Blue Butterfly. She was about to taste extreme pleasure.

Epilogue

Freya Lucan

I came awake so early it was still dark outside. I turned my head and looked at Brent. He was fast asleep, his breathing even and calm. He must be exhausted after last night. Maddie wouldn’t believe it if I told her, but we spent hours and hours not fucking, but making love. Don’t get me wrong, I love fucking Brent, but last night Brent took me to the Blue Butterfly.

And the Blue Butterfly was not about fucking.

It was about a whole other thing. Something that neither Maddie or Ella had ever experienced and I could hardly wait for them to get hitched to someone special so I could send them off to the Blue Butterfly to experience extreme pleasure. Every time I went there, I was shocked all over again at what an intricate machine the human body was and how many hidden secrets it held. We know so little about what goes on in our bodies. I admit, the first trip I took there, I was skeptical. Being naturally suspicious of anything I didn’t understand, I thought it was bullshit.

Then an old woman with a prune face told me to touch my thumb, index and middle finger together. “Now hold your hands with your palms face down on your thighs and breathe.”

I did as she told me to.

“Remember how you feel,” she said. Then she had me do the exact same thing, but with my palms facing up.

“Breathe again.”

It was a shock to close my eyes and realize that just by turning my palms upwards it affected my body access oxygen in a subtly different way. I knew then, I had lived in my body for twenty-one years but I hardly knew it.

Then she smeared my whole body with a thick, heavily perfumed oil and proceeded to use a razor blade to remove the layer of oil. Her skill was such that I felt the blade like a feather on my skin, sweeping, sweeping and whispering lightly. Her hands moved so quickly and she seemed to pay so little attention to what she was doing I was certain she was going to rip my skin to shreds, but I came away with not even one cut.

The oil had a strange musky smell. Brent had already warned me that it was an aphrodisiac, but I did not expect it to so completely take over my senses. Once Maddie, Ella and me ingested magic mushrooms in a club and suddenly we were no longer in a seedy club with dirty floors. We were in a world of intense colors. The aphrodisiac was the same. It changed everything. Brent and I went for it for hours and hours and every second was intensely beautiful.

In the pale light of the morning, I reached out and touched Brent’s face. All my life I had dreamed of a man like him, a perfect Prince, a hero. God, I loved him so much.

He opened his eyes. “Hey Beautiful,” he mumbled sleepily.

“Hey Handsome,” I whispered back.

“I dreamed about you.”

I smiled. “Oh, yeah. What was I doing?”

His eyes were half-closed. “We were having sex.”

I laughed. “You lack imagination, Lord Lucan. We have sex all the time. Why do you have to dream about it?”

He stroked my hair back from my face. “We dream about the things that we cannot get out of our minds. You live inside my head, Freya. Every day, I fall deeper and deeper in love with you. I can’t imagine my life without you.”

“Oh, Brent. You cannot know how grateful I am that Ella told me about your club, and I went there to sell myself to some fat billionaire.”