The Breeding Prize - Aya Morningstar Page 0,6
a corner, and I lose sight of her.
I jump out of the chair and move to get a better angle. I turn the corner and can see her again, so I stop there.
Three
Annabelle
“I want to get your opinion on something, Priya.”
“I think you should go for it. That guy is big, imagine how big his di—”
I take her by the arm and pull on her. I walk her further down the rows of the new releases, until we turn the corner enough that Raiska can’t see us anymore.
Priya tilts her head at me. “Why did we stop here?”
“Watch,” I say, pointing at the corner.
We both stand and watch, and just a few seconds later Raiska appears from behind the corner. He looks at me again, and he just stands there with half of his body obscured by the corner. He’s peeking out from a corner and staring at me, barely blinking.
“He just needs a trench coat, and maybe some kind of scary rusted hook to murder me with,” I whisper.
“As long as he’s naked under the trench coat, and as long as he makes me cum before he murders me, I’d take it.”
I look at her with my “please be serious” face. She purses her lips and nods. “Sorry, Annabelle. Yeah, so he’s kind of...intense.”
“Think with your brain. Not with your pussy. If he didn’t look as good as he does. Even if he were an 8 out of 10…”
I look over and he’s still just standing half behind the corner, his eyes glaring intensely at me.
“If he were not so damn good looking, I’d be terrified,” I whisper.
Priya is nodding, but her mouth is hanging open. She’s just staring at Raiska.
I snap my fingers in her face. “See?”
“I see the problem,” she says. “What did you guys talk about at lunch? Or did you not do much talking?”
This is hopeless. I can’t tell Priya the truth. There’s no way I’m going to be able to get a second opinion on any of this. If I told her the truth, she’d never believe me. We are good friends, but if she came and told me that she had been selected as the fertile prize in the Breeding Games, I’d never have believed her. I can’t expect her to believe me. Hell, I barely believe me. I keep half-expecting to look back and not see Raiska. I keep thinking I might wake up in bed and realize this was all a very inventive and fucked up dream.
“You know,” I tell Priya. “At lunch we just talked about normal date things. We just got to know each other, stuff like that.”
I learned that he can’t drive very well, and that he can lift an entire car up.
“Is he rich?” she asks, smiling.
“Uh, I don’t think I asked about his income.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “I guess you don’t want to give gold digger vibes. And if a guy looks that good, he could be broke. Hell, I’d be a sugar momma for a guy like that.”
“You’re a part-time librarian. You aren’t going to be anyone’s sugar momma.”
I end the conversation with her before she asks me for more specifics. My break is over anyway, so I get back to work.
Working while Raiska all but stalks me is slightly uncomfortable and slightly endearing. Still, it reminds me that I’m in actual danger, and I feel safe having someone as strong as Raiska standing vigil over me.
There’s a man sitting near Raiska in the work area, and every time I look at him, he’s eating a cheese steak. I keep thinking my brain is malfunctioning, because sometimes the cheesesteak has gotten larger than it was the last time I looked, and yet he’s taking a bite and chewing every single time I see him. After almost twenty minutes, when I see him with a cheese steak that has one single bite out of it, I decide to pretend to shelve some books where I can keep my eyes on him through the rack. I watch as he devours the sandwich, and when he’s done, he reaches into a briefcase and pulls out another sandwich. He bites into it.
He’s a big man. Almost as big as Raiska, but it’s mostly muscle. There is no fat on him. I wish I could eat cheese steaks by the half-dozen and still be in perfect shape.
With that mystery solved, I head back to the children’s section. Even though I just organized it before lunch, it’s a complete