He stepped back and winked at me. Then he backed away, leaving me no chance to respond. Not that I had any idea what I would say. A part of me wanted to call out to him, to bring him back to me, but I knew I would only end up making a fool of myself. There was no point in me saying anything. I wasn’t even sure if I should have asked him why he was toying with me, because I didn’t know if I would like the answer. Or maybe I would like it too much…
There it was, the dragon of desire that had awoken during the Astro Games and didn’t seem to want to go anywhere. This was going to be a very difficult job for me.
“Hey, Karly, you ready to get going?” Ben asked, finally catching up with me. “We’re going to go to our rooms now, get ready for Pleasures. It’s bound to be an intense night, don’t you think?”
I smiled and nodded. Of course, the night wasn’t over yet, it had barely begun. There was still so much to happen, which was thrilling. I couldn’t wait. I fell in line with Ben and the rest of the crew as we started to exit the room. Alek reached out to me as I passed him, grazing my arm and sending a shocking thrill of electricity all the way through me. I smiled and waved goodbye to him, just in time to find myself in front of Hatcher. He wiggled his fingers, waving to me as well.
“See you later on,” Chase promised, torturing me some more with his seductive words. “At Pleasures, right?”
I nodded, dumbstruck, as Rory approached and stood beside Chase like they were already well acquainted. It was weird, knowing that they were friends and that I was turned on by both of them. This place was full of bears, but it seemed only Hatcher, Chase, Rory, and Alek got to me this way. I couldn’t even begin to notice anyone else. I even turned back as I reached the door, needing to see them all once more before I exited the place completely. There I found all four of them looking at me, staring at me intensely. In any other situation, this would have been awkward or maybe even creepy. But this wasn’t anything like that at all. It felt good, it felt right. It was almost as if I needed all of them to make this feel good. To make this feel like what it was supposed to be.
It was a hard to turn away from them, but I had the promise of seeing Chase at Pleasures to keep me going, and that was enough to have me soaring. I needed to dress good for tonight, to look my very best in my nicest possible outfit, because there was the very exciting prospect that anything could happen. Anything at all. It had been a long time since I’d felt so much anticipation.