Chapter 1 The Party

"Oh yes! How much I've missed you, Kathy. Ride on it, ride that dick…"

I let out a deep sigh, playing with my throbbing cunt as I flipped to the last page of my dark romance book. The words were blurring together now—not from the poor printing, but from the heat pooling between my thighs. I'd been reading the same paragraph for five minutes.

"I need to hide this book," I muttered, cleaning the white discharge off the chair with a tissue before tossing it into the waste bin.

Every night I dreamed about Viktor Stone. My biker crush since year 1 at Lockwest College. Dark hair that fell across his forehead like he didn't care how he looked—except he clearly did, because it was always perfectly messy. Piercing eyes that seemed to bore into someone's soul. Broad shoulders that filled out his leather jacket in a way that made me forget how to breathe. And a serpent tattoo that wrapped down his left arm, scales catching the light whenever he moved.

Many students at the college whispered that he didn't look human. That there was something off about him—something that didn't quite fit into the normal world. But I cared less about the whispers and more about the way my body reacted whenever I saw him.

"Elara…"

"Geez!" I scrambled off the bed and dashed into the bathroom the moment I heard my best friend's voice. Sia would absolutely lose it if she found me like this—drenched in my own fluids, flushed and desperate, having just been intimate with myself over a boy who wouldn't look at me for a nanosecond.

"I'm in the bathroom, Sia!" I called out, letting the hot water from the shower cascade over my skin. It brought back that nostalgic burn—the same heat that had been rising between my thighs just minutes before.

"Your room smells nasty, Elara. Did something die in here?"

I heard Sia flop onto my bed with a heavy thud.

Did I hide that book? Are my fluids dried up already?

"Elaraaaaaa!" Sia's shrill voice cut through the shower steam. "What sort of book is this?!"

I didn't wait for her to finish. I scrambled out of the bathroom, wrapping a towel around my chest, nearly slipping on the wet tiles in my panic.

"You can't read it!" I screamed, lunging for the book and batting it away from her hands. "I just got it recently."

The lie came easily. We both knew I had a whole collection of dark romance novels hidden on my shelf—they'd been sitting pretty in my library for a year now, dog-eared and well-loved.

"You look so innocent to be reading this kind of book, you corny bitch." Sia smirked, flashing me a flirty look that meant she was absolutely going to tease me about this for weeks.

"Oh please, Sia. Come off it." I pulled on a long gown, yanking my hair up into a ponytail before collapsing onto the bed beside her. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

She always had that look when she was cooking up something mischievous.

"Have you forgotten already?" Sia pouted, her dark eyes glinting with amusement.

"Forgotten what?"

"Elaraaa!" Before I could finish, she swatted at my arm. I squealed, dodging away from her.

"What?!" I demanded.

"The party, you idiot. The end-of-year party at Sloppy Cafe tonight!"

"No… I'm not going. I don't feel too good." The lie tasted bitter. I felt fine—better than fine, actually. But I'd rather stay home and sleep than go out. My introverted nature had always been my excuse, and it usually worked.

"You sure you don't wanna goooo?" Sia dragged the last word, her voice taking on that particular tone that meant she already had something up her sleeve.

"No, Sia—"

"Viktor Stone will be there."

My heart literally skipped a beat. I felt something catch in my throat—a lump of air and longing that I couldn't swallow down.

"Uhmmm, how did you know that?" I tried to sound casual, like my interest was purely academic. Like my pulse wasn't already racing at the mere mention of his name.

"Now look who's blushing." Sia laughed, that knowing, teasing laugh that said she could see right through me. "The biker associations are having a meet-up at the club tonight. Viktor's a big guy in the motorcycle industry—everyone knows he'll be there."

Viktor. The same guy I'd been intimate with only in my imagination would actually be at the party. In the same room. Breathing the same air.

"Alright, I'll go," I heard myself say, trying to sound reluctant even as my heart threatened to burst out of my chest. "But I won't stay long."

"You can't deceive me though." Sia grinned. "Now let's get you dressed up. Thankfully you've already had a shower."

I let out a slow chuckle, even as heat crept up my neck. If only she knew why I'd needed that shower.

Sia had a hard time choosing my clothes. I wasn't a social person—my wardrobe reflected that. Mostly black, mostly neutral, nothing that screamed ‘look at me’. Eventually, we settled on something more elegant: a fitted black dress that actually hugged my curves instead of hiding them, with a leather jacket that made me feel slightly less exposed.

"You look hot," Sia declared, doing a final spin around me.

"Okay, now let's go before you chicken out again."

The club was already packed when we arrived.

Sloppy Cafe was exactly what its name suggested—dark red lighting, velvet booths, the kind of place that smelled like expensive alcohol and desperation. The bass from the music vibrated through my entire body, and I could feel the weight of bodies pressing in from all sides.

Sia immediately pulled me toward a group of our coursemates, and I let myself be absorbed into their circle.

We laughed, we chatted, we pretended to be the kind of people who fit naturally into spaces like this. But my eyes kept scanning the crowd.

Looking for him.

It took ten minutes before I found him.

Viktor was sitting in one of the VIP booths with his only friend—a tall guy with sharp features and colder eyes than Viktor's, if that was even possible. They weren't drinking the usual neon-colored cocktails that everyone else was nursing. Instead, they both held glasses of something dark red.

Wine, maybe? Except it didn't look quite like wine. It was too thick, too rich, too visceral somehow. And the way Viktor held his glass—like it was sacred, like it was necessary—was strange.

But no one seemed to notice or care. The music was too loud, the crowd too thick, everyone too drunk to pay attention to what two dangerous-looking bikers were drinking.

I was still staring, still trying to figure out what was in that glass, when a guy suddenly appeared in front of me.

"Wanna dance?" he asked, his words already slightly slurred.

I practically jumped out of my skin. The moment my eyes left Viktor, panic flooded through me—the same panic you feel when you lose sight of something precious in a crowded room.

When I turned back, Viktor was gone.

"Fuck," I muttered, shaking my head. The guy was still standing there, waiting for an answer, but I had no interest.

"No thanks," I said, turning down his offer and walking away before he could push it further.

I found Sia near the dance floor, already looking tipsy, her movements loose and uninhibited.

"Elara!" she squealed when she saw me, nearly spilling her drink. "Come drink with me! Stop being such a kill joy!"

"Sia, maybe we should slow down—" I started, but she was already pushing a bottle into my hands.

"Drink," she commanded. "Stop being boring."

That's when I heard it—a snide comment from one of our coursemates, one of the guys who'd always called me weak, always made me feel small for being quiet and introverted.

"Look at little Elara, too scared to even drink properly. What a weakling."

Something hot and ugly bloomed in my chest. Defiance. Anger. The need to prove them wrong.

I lifted the bottle to my lips and drank. And drank. Until the world started to tilt slightly, until the music became softer and somehow louder at the same time, until I couldn't quite feel my limbs anymore.

I was drunk. Properly drunk.

The room spun when I tried to stand, so I slumped against the wall, trying to remember how to breathe. Sia was still dancing, still drinking, still completely oblivious to the fact that I was about one more sip away from passing out.

Then Sia's hands clapped together sharply, cutting through the noise.

"Let's play a game!" she announced, her voice loud and drawling.

"What game?" someone asked.

"Truth or dare!" Sia fumbled in her bag and pulled out a crumpled card. "I've got dares here. Intimate ones."

My stomach dropped.

"No, Sia, let's go home—" I tried to pull her away, but she broke free, grabbing my wrist and pulling me down onto the floor with the rest of the group.

"We're playing," she said firmly. "Elara's playing too."

The game started. Dares came and went. For my first two turns, I got dares that involved drinking—which only made me drunker, which only made everything spin faster. By my third turn, I could barely see straight.

But when I picked the final card, something in my chest seized.

"Give a lap dance to the hottest guy in the room."

The words swam in front of my eyes. I was too drunk to process what they meant. Too drunk to care about the implications. Too drunk to do anything except what my body seemed to want to do anyway.

I stood up, wobbling slightly, and scanned the crowd.

My eyes found him immediately. Viktor. Still sitting in that booth with his friend, still drinking that strange red liquid, still looking like he didn't belong in this world.

And something in my drunk brain decided that he was the answer. He was the hottest guy in the room. He was the one I needed to dance for.

My legs carried me toward him before my mind could catch up.

I didn't remember crossing the room. I didn't remember the music shifting or the crowd parting slightly. I just remember reaching his booth and, in what felt like the boldest moment of my entire life, sitting directly on his lap.

His eyes widened—the first real emotion I'd ever seen from him. Shock. Cold shock.

I started to move, started to do what the dare demanded. My body was warm and pliant and desperate. My hips moved against his lap in a way that should have been seductive, but in my drunken state was probably just clumsy.

For one perfect second, I felt his hands start to reach toward me. Like he was going to touch me. Like maybe this would actually happen.

Then his expression went completely cold.

He grabbed my waist—not gently—and pushed me away with enough force that I stumbled backward.

I fell hard, hitting the floor with a sickening thud that knocked the air out of my lungs. For a moment, all I could do was lie there, stunned and aching and humiliated.

The crowd went quiet. Then someone laughed, and the moment broke. The music continued. The party continued. And I lay on the floor, feeling every ounce of my courage and my drunkenness drain away, leaving only shame.

Sia helped me up, her own drunkenness forgotten momentarily in her concern.

"Shit, Elara, are you okay? What the fuck was that about?"

I couldn't answer. I couldn't even look in Viktor's direction. All I could do was let Sia drag me away, away from the booth, away from the crowd, into the bathroom where I threw up for the first time that night.

The following morning, I woke up with a banging headache.

My skull felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. My mouth tasted like stale alcohol and regret. I was in my dorm room, still in my dress from last night, and Sia was passed out beside me, her makeup smudged and her hair a complete disaster.

I didn't remember how we'd gotten here. I didn't remember the ride home or getting undressed. I just had fragments—the music, the crowd, the feeling of falling—and a deep, gnawing sense that something terrible had happened.

I reached for my phone with trembling fingers.

My heart dropped to my stomach.

My screen was filled with notifications. Messages. Photos. Videos.

All of them showing me on Viktor's lap.

All of them showing me falling.

All of them shared across the entire college's social media.

My hands started to shake.