Page 64 of The Pleasure Contract

Ducking my head, I try to get his attention. “The humans,” I explain. “The ones that are abducted from Earth, just like me. There’s more of us, and-”

“Oh, look! Here they come!” Glex interrupts, excitedly tapping the glass with his pointer finger. “Come, sit back down, my dear. You’ll be able to see everything on the screens. You are in for a real treat even if it is a training game!” He says, urging me back to the red velvet couch.

Ah, shit. Have I lost him on this already?! I barely got started!

Defeated, I plop my butt on the seating and down the rest of my drink. The TV screen glass in front of me shows a split-screen of two entrance tunnels, both teams striding slowly out into the arena, their heads held high. And, I have to admit, Az looks so fucking hot. He’s shirtless apart from a piece of leather armor on one shoulder, wrist braces, and this glowing blue stone stuck in the middle of his chest like a gaudy pendant from a necklace with no chain. His get-up kind of makes me think of a gladiator – and I guess he is, in a sense, since this is violence for entertainment.

I’d completely forgotten DJ was even here until she started playing AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ quite loudly, the electric guitar intro being the perfect soundtrack for a badass sporting entrance.

“What in the name of The Four is that?!” Glex asks, his hands over his ears as he grimaces at my little DJ.

“Uh, nothing!” I say, hurrying to touch the cool surface of DJ, silencing her Earth music just as we get to the rhythmic drum beat. “My comms unit is a little quirky, is all.”

“You should get that fixed,” Glex says, holding up his empty glass to signal to a server that he wants more without even looking or saying a single thing to the staff member. “So, you see,” he says, gesturing back to the arena outside and the screens on the glass, “the two teams meet in the center, shake hands, and then return to their half. The Arena Masters will then start the play by revealing their chosen terrain.

I watch the screens as both teams’ First Drak Riders, Az and Zyre, shake hands with serious looks on their faces. When they retreat to their half, there’s a countdown on the screens, which ends with a loud starting siren.

And that’s when the whole arena in front of me changes.

28

Az

It’s not like a whole lot changes now that Lois is here watching me play – my strategy is always to put enough balls through the advantage hoops to release Lady and Puff. I play best in the air, after all. But… apparently, I also want to show off a little bit.

“Why are you aiming for the drak release hoops so soon?” Vex asks as he sprints alongside me in this newly conjured jungle terrain. He leaps deftly over a jagged rock that Pax must have commanded to jut up from the ground beneath Varrex’s feet. “I thought we’d agreed to aim for gaining more ground before anything else?” he grunts, choosing to ignore the fact that Pax is trying to use his knowledge about his old ankle injury against him.

“Relax,” I shout back, quickly stopping to climb a tree and take stock of what’s going on in our opponent’s half of the arena. “They’re nowhere near our border yet,” I yell back down at him as he stands there, hands on his hips, while he catches his breath. “We have plenty of time to gain more ground. And look-” I say, plucking a red flaming drakball hidden in the branches of the tree. “I’ve just got one of their balls – double the advantage points!”

Vex shakes his head at me as I jump down. “This is because your female is watching, isn’t it?”

I grin as I say, “I don’t know what you could possibly mean.”

“I mean, you want to release your drak as soon as possible so you can go do your fancy tricks in the air. That’s what I mean.”

“Hey, horn-lockers!” Jorren calls from where he and Zevan are fighting off a hoard of razor-backed hounds. “If you two could decide which one of you gets to wear the bride collar in your breeding contract later, some of us are trying to win a game here?!”

Luckily, both Varrex and I have already put a drakball through a weapon advantage hoop, so both possess a set of throwing fangs – small, double-sided daggers, balanced for accuracy at range. Without much effort, we dispatch the remaining razorbacks, turning them to dust as soon as the weapon makes contact.

“Besides,” I say, turning back to Vex. “We can’t show our hands in this game. Pax already knows us like he knows his own horns. If we show him what we’ve been working on since he left, they’ll have the advantage for next moon’s league game.”

“That goes both ways, by the way,” Rykor says as he approaches, being flanked by both Thax and Ral, their game spears out as they survey our surroundings. Rykor’s eyes have a milky film over them as he’s currently engaged with assessing our opponents’ plays and managing their terrain. I’ve tried logging into an Arena Master’s neuro patches before, but found the whole thing too much. It was like watching two realities at once, one superimposed on the other – ours and our opponents’. All that on top of conjuring trees, rocks, beasts, and gameplay? Nah – give me the drak saddle any day. “You know Pax’s plays better than anyone,” Rykor continues, his eyes going momentarily clear as he disengages from the game and checks in with us. “And I’ve studied all his past games. The only unknown to them right now is me. So I’d say we have the upper hand no matter what we decide to show them today.”

“Well, then,” I say, grinning as I reach for the drakball pouch at my hip. Pulling out the red one I’d recently collected, I hold it up, pinched between two fingers. “What do you say about us giving them a proper show today?”

From the corner of my eye, I see it. The advantage hoop I’d been looking for. It’s floating in mid-air over the deep, yawning crevasse that Pax has designed to split our terrain in two. The hoop is positioned to be too far from either side for any sane person to attempt without a drak.

“Az-” Vex warns, but it’s too late.

I take a running jump into nothingness, stretching my limbs as far as they will go, almost willing myself to take flight. There’s a split second where my brain is already selecting my meals at the healing center, and my heart is holding its breath. Miraculously, though, my hand hooks onto the base of the hoop. Breathlessly, I toss the drakball through it.

The ball disappears, and the thing makes the chime sound that is music to my ears – possibly my third favorite sound in the universe. The first being that little breathy gasp my Lois makes when she reaches her climax.

And the second being…

My grin only gets wider when I hear the very distinctive roars of Puff and Lady.

“C’mon, ladies,” I say to myself as I hang here one-handed on the hoop like a mad-male. “Let’s show them how it’s done.”