by Megan Hart
“I don’t need to ask how you knew I was online this week, do I?” Eve said.
Lane shook his head.
“It’s the same way you knew it was me all along, wasn’t it? From the time when you left the coffee.”
He nodded.
She let her gaze cover him from head to toe, every inch, and if her scrutiny made him uncomfortable he didn’t show it. At last she looked him in the eyes. He was the same Lane she’d known for years, the guy with the smile, but he was more than that now.
And it wasn’t what she wanted.
“Thanks,” Eve said coolly and turned back to her monitor. “I’d better get back to work.”
She sensed him hesitating in the entrance to her pod, but he said nothing, and when she looked up, he was gone.
* * *
Gone. All of it was gone. All the entries she’d spent so many hours crafting. All the comments, the compliments, the conversations. She’d deleted all of it with a few keystrokes, even her instant-messaging account. Eris Apparent was gone.
She hadn’t been to work for the past few days. She wasn’t sick but had called in anyway, unable to face him. Unable to give him what he wanted.
“You let me down,” she scolded her computer in an attempt at levity she didn’t feel. “You were supposed to protect me.”
At least it would help her find a new job. Getting away from Digiquest couldn’t be a bad thing. She’d already sent in applications to two other, larger support firms where the pay and benefits were better. It would be good to make a break, she thought as she clicked through to another job listing. Two years was a long time to be stuck in a job she didn’t really like.
She’d ordered pizza, so when the doorbell rang she thought nothing of it. She should’ve known better, of course. Wasn’t a hot pizza delivery boy one of those clichéd fantasies she’d never written?
“Can I come in?” Lane leaned in her doorway looking more deliciously edible than any pizza ever could.
“No.”
“Eve.” If he’d tried to wheedle or charm her she’d have sent him away at once, but against his quiet plea she could do nothing. “Please.”
She stepped aside, granting him entrance without saying a word. He pushed past her, looking too big for her living room. He turned to face her, his hands in the pockets of his faded jeans. Damn him, the ones she liked.
“You haven’t been to work,” he said.
“I took some personal time.” She didn’t sit or offer him a chair.
“Because of me?”
She meant to deny it, but instead a sigh slipped from her mouth. “Yes. Because of you.”
“You deleted your blog, too.”
“You should have told me it was you!” she cried suddenly, and he stepped back.
“Would you have replied if you’d known?” Lane challenged her.
“No!”
He smiled. “I thought you’d figure it out.”
“I did,” Eve said in a low voice. “I just didn’t want to believe it.”
“Why not?” He sounded curious. For an instant she saw the words on a screen as if she were reading them. How much of a difference his voice made.
“Because...” She trailed off. “The blog...it was a way for me to be someone else. And I really wanted to be someone else, Lane.”
“I like who you are, Eve.”
She laughed, scornful. “You liked Eris.”
“And you liked Tell_me.”
“It wasn’t real!” she shouted. “None of it was real!”
“Is this real?” Lane demanded, and kissed her.
She melted into him. His mouth parted, and hers did too. He tasted exactly how she’d always known he would. He felt even better than she’d ever imagined.
“This isn’t going to work,” she warned, voice hoarse, but made no move to step out of his arms.
“It will,” he promised, his fingers already going to her buttons. “I promise?”
“How?” Eve gasped when his bare skin touched hers.
Lane’s slow smile went straight between her thighs as usual. “Easy. Tell me what you want.”
She gulped in a breath at hearing him say it aloud. Something flickered in his gaze when she didn’t respond at once; she felt the reflection of it in her own eyes, just before she took the chance and took his hand.
“This is what I want,” Eve said, and led him into the bedroom to make all their fantasies come true.
* * * * *
Indecent Experiment
A thousand dollars. That was a lot of money, Melissa Standish thought as she looked over the notice board again. Then one more time. She’d already walked past this notice about four times today, each time stopping to stare and ponder what a thousand dollars could do for her bank account.
She didn’t need new shoes or some fancy designer dress. She wasn’t even going to use it to take a trip, though heaven knew she needed one after almost twenty nonstop years of school. No, Melissa’s needs were far more practical than that. More urgent.
She needed food, rent, electricity. Just for another couple of months, until the semester ended. After that she’d be off to her paid internship with Triple Smith and Brown. She’d already put a deposit down on an apartment, booked her flight and arranged for her stuff to be shipped. In just a few months she’d be on her way to a guaranteed weekly income and the possibility of even more.
But until then, a thousand dollars would stretch a long, long way.
She’d done crazy things for money before. Sold plasma, which left her so weak and sick she didn’t think it was worth it. Waited tables. Delivered balloons in a tap-dancing gorilla costume. Nothing had earned her the type of quick and easy cash she was looking at right here on the board.
The drawback? PSYCH DEPARTMENT EXPERIMENT in big, red letters. That could mean anything. Melissa had once participated in an experiment in which she’d been hooked up to a lie detector machine and forced to watch porn while she answered questions about whether or not she was turned-on. That had only paid a couple hundred bucks and had been an easy enough few hours. Another time she’d agree to be in the control group for a new allergy medicine that had turned out to give her hives. That had been a profitable but seriously itchy couple of days. On the other hand, she’d also been paid less than a hundred bucks to test out the efficacy of underarm deodorant on people diagnosed with hyperactive sweat glands, and that had been disgusting.
Overall, though, Melissa had earned quite a number of paychecks from the psych department over the past four years here in grad school at Winchester University and never had a truly bad experience. On the other hand, she’d never been paid more than three hundred bucks for whatever she’d agreed to do.
They were now offering a thousand.
The number, a nice, sleek ONE with three fat zeroes behind it, kept calling to her. She was going to be late to class if she kept this up, and Professor Spane was notorious about his lack of patience with students who arrived late. He might not dock her grade for it—but then again, he might.
Melissa grabbed one of the tabs with the number on it and tucked it into her pocket. For a thousand bucks, she’d be willing to do most anything.
Anything at all.
* * *
Matt Ingram looked again at the ATM receipt in his fist. Dammit. How could he have insufficient funds? Surely he hadn’t spent that much over the past two weeks, which was how long it had been since the last time he’d checked the balance. The machine couldn’t tell him what had gone wrong, of course, just that the forty bucks he was trying to withdraw so he could go grab a couple of beers with some friends didn’t exist. Not in this world, anyway. Maybe in some alternate universe where Matt wasn’t broke.
“Shit,” he muttered, stomach sinking.
No night out with the guys, no beer and wings. He might as well go home and study, and by this point Matt thought if he had to face another evening hunched over the books, he might just jump off a bridge, instead.
“Hey, buddy.” Damian had come up behind him to clap Matt on the shoulder. “You coming out with us tonight? Spend some time with the bros?”
Joining Sig Epsilon had seemed like such a great idea back in his undergrad days, and Matt had to admit there was still something nice about being able to head over to the frat house for parties when he felt like it. But he’d sort of outgrown the whole “brothers” thing a long time ago, while dudes like Damian had totally embraced it, even eight years after their freshman pledge class had first bonded over cleaning disgusting toilets and other pledge chores.
Matt closed his fingers over the slip of paper in his hand. Damian had a trust fund or some shit like that, money from mommy and daddy, not to mention summer and holiday jobs in daddy’s company to pad the bank account. Damian would probably even spot him a pitcher and a platter, he’d done it before. But Matt didn’t want to be beholden to the guy any more than he already was, even if they were “bros.”
“Can’t, man. Got a major test coming up.” Matt didn’t have to fake the look of disappointment. He really had been looking forward to just hanging out tonight, maybe watching the game, just...chilling.
“Dude. You can’t work all the fucking time, you know?” Damian clapped him on the shoulder again. “Seriously. I know it’s grad school and all, but really.”
“Yeah. I know.” Matt wasn’t happy about it, but he’d rather tell the other guy he couldn’t come out because he had to work rather than tell him the truth—he was flat broke.
“Shit.” Damian looked vaguely concerned. “But you’re on for Cancun, right? Spring Break, man. Your last one.”
Matt had never actually gone on a Spring Break trip, not to Cancun or any place else. He’d spent every Spring Break for the past eight years working his ass off on the loading dock at the same factory job he’d had since high school. He was going to grad school just so he didn’t have to work there the rest of his life. “I’d like to, but....”
“Dude. Don’t bail. We got a totally sweet deal on a condo. Eight hundred bucks each, including airfare, and the place is all-inclusive. You know what that means, right? All the food and booze you can eat and drink. And the babes, dude. The babes.”
Damian’s expression clearly showed what he thought of that. It was something akin to the look a religious man might have upon seeing the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast. His hands shaped a female figure in the air, out then in, then out again. A girl with tits and ass that curvaceous would be so top heavy she’d probably be unable to walk, Matt thought, though he totally got the appeal.
“Yeah, I know I said I wanted in, but that was before the holidays, and I thought I’d be picking up more hours.” In fact, Matt had spent most of the holiday break on his parents’ couch watching TV, the hours simply not to be had at the factory. Times were tough.
“Dude, we’re holding your place. Need your money by the end of the month, or we’ll have to give it to someone else. And trust me, man, you don’t want to miss this. Can I count on you?” Another clap on the shoulder, this time with a squeeze of fingers. Damian looked serious.
“Yeah.” Matt nodded, thinking of sand and sun and booze and babes. Of a great Spring Break blowout, the last possible one before he’d graduate and hit what he kept thinking of as “the real world” even though the one he’d been living in had seemed pretty fucking real. “Don’t worry, man. I’ll get it to you.”
Somehow.
* * *
“Melissa, it’s good to see you!” Ada beamed as Melissa came into the tiny classroom where the interviews were being conducted. “C’mon in. Randy’ll be here in a couple minutes. What can I get you to drink?”
“Is this part of the experiment?” Melissa asked with a grin.
Ada laughed. “Oh, gosh, no. Don’t worry, we’re not studying the effects of caffeine addiction on stress management or anything like that. Not this time, anyway.”
Melissa settled into the uncomfortable, hard-backed chair. “In that case, I’ll take a Coke on the pysch department’s dime.”
“No problem.” Ada looked up as her partner Randy came in. “Can you grab Melissa a soda?”
“Sure thing.” Randy nodded at her and returned a moment later with a can of store-brand cola. “Good to see you, Melissa, how’s it going?”
They got through the small talk quickly enough. Randy and Ada were stereotypical research nerds, albeit with slightly better social skills, but they weren’t really interested in chitchat. They were all business as they handed Melissa the paperwork she was accustomed to filling out to take part in the experiments. Health history, release forms, information on how she wanted to be paid. And then....
“Wow,” Melissa said, looking over the questionnaire. It was by far the most extensive they’d ever asked her to fill out, at least ten pages long compared to the more standard two or three. And by far the most...intimate.
“You didn’t know what you were signing up for?” Randy asked.
Melissa shrugged. “When I called to make the appointment, they didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask. I just figured I know you guys. And I need the money.”
Randy and Ada gave each other a look, and Ada shifted in her chair. She looked serious. “The reason we chose you as one of the participants, and believe me, Melissa, there were a lot more applications than we’re used to getting, was because we’ve worked with you before.”
Melissa nodded, glancing again at the information they were requesting. Number of sexual partners, frequency of sexual activity, current birth control methods, a more extensive health history including STD testing release forms. “Yeah, I figured that, but...this is....”
Randy cleared his throat. “This isn’t quite the same as the time we tested you on the porn stuff, though it is going toward our overall thesis materials. This time, Ada and I are interested in studying sexual attraction and reactions. Is the desire to have sex with someone based on something purely physical, mental, spiritual or a combination?”
Melissa didn’t really care what the purpose of the tests were. She just wanted the money. But looking over the information on the questionnaire, unease tiptoed through her. “You want to know what sort of man attracts me? All these physical characteristics, personality traits, stuff like that? My attitude toward casual sex?”
She paused. “Is there more to this experiment than this questionnaire?”
Ada nodded. “Well...yes.”
Melissa blinked. No wonder the pay rate was so much higher this time. “You want me to have sex with someone for this test?”
Randy smiled. “We’ve set up an increasingly intimate series of encounters in which we’d like you and the additional research participant to engage. You’ll be provided the space in which to engage in these activities, as well as the time frame, along with specific instructions on how to report on your experiences.”
Melissa’s eyebrows raised. “You want me to have sex with someone!”
“What we’re trying to determine,” Ada said, eyes bright and cheeks pink, “is the effect of predetermined qualities or anticipation on sexual attraction and response.”
“In other words,” Randy said excitedly, “we’re going to pair you up with someone based on all of your information, and we’re going to see how long it takes you to want to fuck!”
Melissa started laughing. Hard. Randy and Ada looked at each other, back and forth, smiling but looking quizzical.
“Are you serious?” Melissa asked.
They were totally serious. Her laughter faded as she stared at them, expecting one or the other to announce this was it, she’d passed the first phase of the experiment, whatever it was. But as Randy and Ada merely looked at her without even taking a single note, Melissa realized they meant every word they’d said.
“You’re going to pay me a thousand bucks to introduce me to someone you want me to sleep with.” She said this carefully, making sure she got everything straight.
“The choice, ultimately, is yours,” Ada said. “We can�
�t obviously pay you to have sex with someone. That would be illegal. We’re just paying you to agree to...um...well, to engage in specific activities within a certain time frame, designed to encourage the sexual response.”
“And if I meet the guy and don’t want to have sex with him, what then?” Melissa wasn’t entirely put off by the notion of sex with a hot stranger, chosen to meet her every specification. Hell, she’d had more than a few dates that had been with guys who were little better than trolls, and during her longest dry spells she’d actually considering sleeping with one or two of them.
“We’ll ask you to record your feelings and emotions relating to the decision to have sex or not to have sex, and everything will be taken into consideration. On his end, too,” Randy explained. “I mean, maybe he won’t want to sleep with you.”
Melissa blinked again. Randy wasn’t exactly the most subtle shade of pink in the spectrum, so she couldn’t really take offense, even though it had been her experience that most men would sleep with just about anything. And she was far from just anything. Maybe she wouldn’t win a beauty pageant, but then she’d never be the sort to enter one, either.
“And how long is this experiment?”
“Five nights. You begin a week from Monday—that will give you enough time to fill out the paperwork and get all your health records updated. Every night from six to ten p.m., here at the lab.” Ada tapped her pen against the paper. “Once you’ve signed up, in order to get your payment you’ll have to complete the sessions for all five nights and record your impressions of the experience. You’ll drop off the reports every day before noon. Of course what, exactly, you do during the experiment is up to you. I mean, we really can’t make you, um....”
“We just want to find out how long it takes you guys to decide if you’d like to bang like a screen door in a hurricane,” Randy put in.
Melissa quickly looked over the list. Five sessions, with increasing levels of “intimacy.” She’d once slept with a man she’d known for two hours—what would she want to do with one after twenty?
