The trip back ended up being surprisingly comfortable. In spite of my best effort at cleaning up, I still had werewolf blood and brains all over me, so Isabella kept her hands away.

  She even rewarded me with professional silence, so I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. When we parked under the tower, she finally glanced at me, lip rolled in disgust. “Clean up in a shower, put on a fresh suit, and tell Takezo to do the same. We are going to a party.”

  “Party?”

  “You heard me. I need to properly celebrate my level up.”

  She hasn’t leveled up in a while, has she? We took the elevator, and I stopped at the training floor while Isabella continued upwards. I found Takezo there, as expected. He was doing handstand push-ups with weights tied to his legs. A big box of protein powder lay near him, ripped open at the corner.

  Sweat flooded from Takezo, and he didn’t look up when I approached. “You smell like shit,” he remarked.

  “Rotting werewolf blood and brains. Haven’t had a chance to clean up yet.” I smiled. “But anyway, Isabella wants to go to a party with both of us. We are to clean up in showers, not in the pool, and to put on fresh suits.”

  He lowered himself from the exercise and slowly straightened. “For real?”

  “Yeah.” I motioned with my head to the elevator. “It’s a celebration for her level up, and she’s in an excellent mood.”

  We took the elevator up. Since our rooms each had a shower, we could prepare separately. I took a quick shower and dressed up.

  When I came back to the lobby at the elevator, Takezo already awaited there.

  He dressed the most casually I’ve ever seen him, in dark slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to expose corded forearms, each with a dragon tattoo that chased itself up to his elbows, one dragon red, the other black. The open collar on his shirt revealed the twin dragon's tail that ended at the base of his throat. The tight shirt also made a point of how much muscle he packed.

  I had to admit, he looked pretty great. Much better than I did in the usual suit, shirt, and tie. I didn’t really have anything else to wear.

  Heels clicking on the floor echoed, and Isabella arrived. We both turned towards her, and jaws fell, mouths gaping.

  She wore a Japanese schoolgirl-style outfit, except with her usual heels and a really short skirt. With the white shirt, black overcoat, a tie, and hair arranged into thick pig-tails, she actually looked the part, especially thanks to being short, skinny, and small-framed.

  Why did she even have that outfit?

  No, that didn’t matter. “What the hell are you wearing?” I said, before my filter could kick in.

  She did a quick spin, which ended with a playful smirk. “Isn’t it obvious? We’re going to party, so I’m going to party like an innocent exchange student on her first night out.”

  Takezo shook his head. “You are an absolute pervert.”

  She stepped to him, rested her arm over his shoulder, and leaned up against him. “And you love it.” She slid away from him and straight into the elevator.

  Takezo and I exchanged glances. This felt like we just woke up in a wet dream of an intoxicated succubus. “This is not normal,” he whispered before we caught up to her.

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

  We took the elevator down, hopped into her red Lamborghini, drove literally two blocks, parked, and headed for the club.

  The club awaited in one of those skyscrapers they built to remind the rest of the city that it was poor. We took the elevator to the sixtieth floor.

  A line snaked out from the club, filled with girls with lips like flotation devices, and men with ten grand watches. The bouncers looked like they could bench-press a Prius.

  We didn’t wait though.

  Isabella strolled forward, but no one looked at her. All eyes focused on Takezo, and the people made a path for us to pass. It wasn’t just that he looked like a yakuza enforcer. He emanated a suffocating aura of violence, which everyone subconsciously felt.

  We passed straight into the club.

  Inside, it was all glass and LED, a cathedral built to house the world’s worst behaviors. The air smelled like expensive perfume and the ghost of cocaine. Bodies moved in a synchronized, desperate rhythm, each one an island of intention, of lust, greed, hunger, and fear.

  We stopped to look for a booth, but Isabella stepped between us, catching us each by a shoulder. “All right. Peter, fetch us drinks. Takezo, get us a VIP booth. Whoever impresses me more gets the first dance.”

  With a theatrical roll of my eyes, I headed to the bar. Before I even reached it, I saw Takezo enter a booth.

  A couple ran out of the booth, tripping over each other, eyes wide with terror.

  I leaned on the bar, and the barman was instantly at me. Weird. That had never happened before. Moreover, he looked nervous, eyes twitching, smile overly broad and unsure. “What would you like, sir?”

  Sir? His gaze betrayed him though, darting towards Isabella and the booth. I wasn’t what made him nervous. I just came with a woman who looked like the daughter of a Yakuza boss, and her bodyguard. So, I was trouble by association. For a split second, I wondered what Isabella could like.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  She was Venezuelan, but she hated the country, as far as I understood her. So, rums were out of the question. Aside from that, I had little to go by. But with her build, she would get drunk even from a small beer.

  With a smirk, I pointed at the booth. “We sit over there. We need champagne with three glasses, and Tequila. A lot of Tequila. Also, if you can arrange some coke and Molly, you’ll be tipped greatly.”

  He nodded.

  I headed to the booth. My plan was simple. Knock Isabella out with booze and drugs and survive the evening. Or, if that failed, knock myself out using the same method.

  Inside, I found Isabella sprawled over Takezo’s lap. She sat leaning with the back of her head against his chest, her hair keeping his arms away from her, her hand holding his head bent backwards, just so he couldn’t reach her.

  He didn’t seem to mind though.

  I sat down near them. “They’ll bring the drinks shortly.”

  Like a snake sizing up a calf, Isabella slid from Takezo and found her way into my lap, tying my arms away with her hair.

  I got the point. She was the one who was going to be doing the touching, and we were there to entertain her with our frustration.

  Drinks arrived. A couple of waitresses brought in a bucket with champagne, a tray with tequila shots, and another tray with two bowls, one filled with white powder, the other with a pile of blue, diamond-shaped pills.

  “My, my.” Isabella released our arms, withdrawing her hair. “For once, someone made the correct order.” She reached into the trail with Mollys, grabbed three, and tossed them into her mouth. She drank them down with two shots of tequila.

  I narrowed my eyes. No way she could be unaffected by that.

  “Now, you two will get your shares, don’t worry. You will do three sets each.” With nimble fingers, she freed papers from under the bowl and used them to arrange the white powder, clearly cocaine, into three lines. “This should be around the correct dosage. You snort it like this.” She held her nostril, bent down, and snorted a line. “Don’t do more than a line at a time.”

  Takezo and I exchanged glances, again. The hell were we supposed to do?

  He slightly nodded. Get high with her, apparently.

  Isabella moved things on the table and then sprawled over it. She moved up her skirt a bit and pulled up her shirt a lot, revealing her entire midsection, her stomach toned and completely flat. With her hair, she grabbed the cocaine and created two lines on herself, one on each thigh. She poured tequila over her stomach, filling the belly button, and finally, she arranged a Molly on each side of the bottom of her neck. “Snort a line, drink a shot, down a pill. You decide who goes first.”

  Yeah, we were definitely going to get high with her. If there ever was a party like this at the university, I didn’t get invited.

  Takezo motioned for me with his hand to go first.

  I shook my head.

  He grabbed me by the shoulder and shoved me forward. Do your part, the unsaid words.

  All right. I knelt by the table, and he did the same, on the other side. I blocked one nostril, leaning forward. I snorted the line from her thigh, dragging my face up on it. Then, I drank the shot from her stomach, and finally, I moved up and licked the Molly from her collarbone.

  In the process, all the blood from my body moved into one area, my loins. I couldn’t think at all, much less straight. I sat back down.

  Takezo took his turn. He took his time snorting the line, licked the whole stomach clean after sucking the shot from her belly button, and missed the Molly three times before he caught it between his lips.

  Isabella cackled, sliding down from the table. “Time to go dance.”

  The drugs hit, and the entire world turned into a blurry fever dream. Isabella dragged us to the dance floor, except she did not dance. She did violence, in the form of grinding on either of us, biting necks, shoulders, and arms, and grabbing more ass than I touched in my entire life.

  Takezo moved with natural grace, doing his best to keep her more on him and less on me. I didn’t mind, but Isabella wasn’t easy to direct. At the same time, he sidestepped any other girl who tried to dance with him.

  It wasn’t all that bad until we returned to the booth and did another round of the triple set. That made everything shake and blur so much more. But I could still see Isabella clear as day, felt her every touch, couldn’t get the smell of her sweat from my nose, and her hand from my ass.

  Time flew as if it weighed nothing, and the dance floor started thinning. When a couple of blondes kept Takezo a touch busy, Isabella weaved to me, grinding against me as if trying to polish rough steel. She caught me by the hair and pulled herself up on my body, her lips reaching my neck. “You know what’s your problem?”

  I tried to grab her, only for her hair to catch my arms. “What?”

  “That you’re forbidden.” She licked up my neck all the way to the ear. “And forbidden fruit is the sweetest. It’s so much fun to touch, to grab, to lick, to nibble on, to toy with. But I can’t get more, which is so frustrating that you have to pay for doing that to me.”

  “How am I forbidden?”

  “Because you’re my apprentice.”

  Horseshit. “How is that enough to stop you?”

  She giggled. “That’s the fun part. Everyone knows, except for you.” She bit me in the neck, her teeth burning a mark into my skin. “You don’t know. You can’t know. You shouldn’t know. And so, I won’t tell you, because out of everyone, I know the best why you can’t know.”

  I was too tired, drunk, high, and horny for this. “Can’t know what?”

  She giggled again. “The frustrating part with secrets is that if you know what the secret is about, then you know it.” Still grinding against me, she moved my head to look towards Takezo.

  He was just about to shake off the two girls, slipping away to head back to us.

  “You know what’s his problem?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “You. Because if I can’t get what I want from you, then he’s not getting what he wants from me either. I’ll share my suffering with him, with interest.” She squeezed my ass once more, let Takezo tear her off me, switching to grind against him instead.

  I stared at them, dumbfounded. If I were sober, I could probably figure out what she meant. But the only thing I could think of right now was that he had better give her back.

  We both knew we were playing Isabella’s game exactly the way she wanted us to play it. But we couldn’t help ourselves.

  As the alcohol and drugs took their course, exhaustion started taking its toll. The club had also almost emptied, so we all headed home.

  The night outside felt cold and quiet. We walked in a loose triangle, nobody speaking. I felt like I was coming down from a month-long fever.

  We all forgot about the car, taking a walk to her mid-rise. In there, we marched into the elevator. The air inside thickened. Upstairs, three beds awaited us. But both Takezo and I kept our eyes glued on Isabella. We didn’t have to use all the beds tonight.

  “So,” Takezo said. “Whose room do we go to?”

  “Hmmm…” Isabella raised her finger to her chin, as if contemplating. “Well, I’ve got a wardrobe full of magical sex toys, and there’s this really mean tentacle dildo I haven’t given a ride in a while. So, I think I’ll use my bed for that. As for you, I’m sure you don’t need guidance on how to use your hands.”

  She had a… what?

  Takezo glared at her, whole body twitching with the impulse to grab her. “You cannot be serious.”

  The elevator beeped, the door opening.

  Isabella walked out, heading for her chambers. She pulled off her shirt and threw it aside. With her thumb, she unhooked her bra, discarding it without even looking back. “Night, boys.” She vanished into her chambers, slammed the door shut, and the locking mechanism echoed through the lobby.

  Takezo shook his head. “At this point, I’m impressed. She’s even worse than the succubi.” He headed for his chambers.

  Well, that was that, apparently. I headed into my chamber. I took a quick shower and collapsed into bed.

  A wet squelch echoed through the air, followed by Isabella’s visceral moaning. I had never heard a sound from her chamber, but right now, it felt as if the wall between our rooms was really damn thin.

  Not by an accident, almost surely.

  Luckily, sleep found me soon.