Rule

Laikyn

“I can’t believe you dragged me to a sex party,” I whispered, feeling my cheeks flush but not from embarrassment.

If I were anyone else, I would’ve been appalled that the guy I’d been dating for nearly two months would be so presumptuous as to bring me to something as depraved as this.

I wasn’t for two reasons.

One, my mother was the one who had introduced me to Wes Carver, the son of one of her unsuspecting acquaintances—or future victims, as I liked to call them. He was the third guy she’d attempted to set me up with since I turned twenty-two nine months ago. I hadn’t yet figured out what she was up to—it wasn’t like Monica to play matchmaker for anyone, least of all me—but I was sure I would find out sooner or later. In the meantime, I was playing along.

And two … well, let’s just say depraved was right up my alley. I’d spent the better part of the past seven weeks attempting to get Wes Carver between the sheets, to no avail. He was holding out, which was the only reason I was still dating him—although I used the term loosely. It was more like hanging out while biding my time. If and when I fucked him, I would move on. It was what I did.

“It’s a party,” Wes argued with a smile.

“A sex party,” I corrected because, come on. No way could you look around this place and not think Sex!!! Seriously, it was everywhere. In some cases, quite literally. I mean, shit, the girl on the couch, riding that guy’s dick … Even though they were both fully dressed, there was no pretending it was anything but fucking. The sad part was I actually envied her. Too bad Wes wasn’t as accommodating as the frat boy currently gripping her hips and moving her on his dick.

“You said you wanted to get out of your comfort zone.”

True, I had said that. “I was thinking more along the lines of zip-lining.”

Wes laughed, flashing his perfectly straight pearly whites down at me.

Although I was only in this masquerade of a relationship for sex, I found I enjoyed being in his company. Wes was charming and funny, even if he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Handsome in the traditional sense with his dark blond hair, light brown eyes, and clean-shaven jaw. He dressed like a Tommy Hilfiger ad—casual prep, I called it. With his button-down shirt and his khaki shorts, the white sneakers, and no-show socks, he looked as though he was ready for vacation or class, neither of which he was going to.

Most of all, I liked Wes because he was normal, and my only objective in life was to obtain a sense of normalcy that would drown out my very abnormal existence. There wasn’t anything mysterious or daring about him, and I found that … nice. Probably had something to do with the fact that I was lacking nice in my life. Mainly had to do with my mother, who acted more like a rebellious teenager at forty than I ever had. Considering I’d just turned twenty-two, I probably should’ve been the one acting out, embracing my youth. Instead, she was the one who partied all night, drank too much, snorted even more, and lived like royalty.

Granted, Monica Quinn was royalty. Hollywood royalty. I blamed her millions of adoring fans for her inability to grow up. Everyone thought Monica Quinn didn’t give a shit about anything because she ensured that was the face she showed the world, but I knew better. Behind closed doors, she was insecure and needy, and she would do anything to ensure she was the center of everyone’s universe. Everyone but me, that was. If only they knew the woman I knew, they wouldn’t fawn all over her like she was some sort of princess.

Tell me, princess. What’s it like to be the daughter of a Hollywood queen?

I shivered as Diggy’s voice sounded in my head. I fought the urge to turn around to look for him. He wasn’t there. He was merely a figment of my overactive and quite traumatized imagination. Ever since I’d been rescued from that hell hole, I’d heard his voice often. Five years, five months, twenty-three days, and counting, and I was still looking over my shoulder for ghosts that didn’t exist. And the word princess was a surefire way of triggering my paranoia.

“Where’d your thoughts go?” Wes’s adoration had morphed into concern, evidenced by the little wrinkle across his forehead.

I shook off thoughts of Diggy and the hole I could still see vividly in the middle of his forehead.

“Laikyn? You okay?”

I nodded, then came up with a lie. “Sorry. Just thinking about my mother.”

And just like that, it wasn’t a lie. I was thinking about my mother.

“She okay? Your mom?”

No. “Always.”

Although Monica was the one who introduced us, I had yet to bring Wes around her, figuring he was better off staying far, far away. I had learned my lesson the hard way when I opted to introduce my last boyfriend—Rory of the hot sex in the locker room—to my mother over dinner.

That particular encounter was shortly after I’d been delivered back home by the white knight who’d put another hole in Diggy’s face. Despite being hounded by reporters and kids at my school, I was determined to go back to normal. Granted, normal was relative, and since I’d never been, I wasn’t putting too much thought into what I was doing. Case in point: introducing my boyfriend to my mom. I learned the error of my ways after she jerked off my seventeen-year-old boyfriend at the dinner table. Her dinner table. In her house.

It didn’t matter that Rory had actually liked it—ick—because Rory-of-the-hot-sex-in-the-locker-room had been a minor. Needless to say, he’d received a ridiculous payout to keep his mouth shut and a promise that he would never come around again.

Too bad because Rory really had been a good fuck.

Until this year, when my mother started setting me up, I hadn’t dated anyone since him. Not by the traditional definition, anyway. I’d had sex with plenty, exploring my youth and using sex as a coping mechanism for all my issues. Whether that was true or not, I didn’t know, but it seemed to appease my therapist. She didn’t force me to dig deeper once I’d admitted it. Yes, I preferred to keep my interactions with men casual. One-and-done worked well for me since I seemed to have a short attention span and a diva mother who had no business around men my age.

Not to mention, I had an aversion to relationships. I had no desire for anyone to get close enough to figure out I was fucked up in the head. I preferred being the only one who knew about the nightmares or the ridiculous amount of time it took me to scope out an area—including my own driveway—before I could simply get in my car.

“Perhaps I could come by tomorrow. We could take your mom to lunch,” Wes suggested.

Perhaps not. “Mmm. Maybe.”

I accepted a shot glass from a passing waitress who was wearing baby doll lingerie and high heels, her nipples visible to all with eyes.

And Wes said this wasn’t a sex party. Uh-huh. Right. Then again, every party I’d ever been invited to had been a sex party. Like my mother, Beverly Hills wasn’t known for its discretion or calibrated moral compass.

“So, how’d you wrangle an invite to this place?” I asked as we stood together and looked around at the kinky chaos taking place.

“Chastity,” he said quickly, his eyes not meeting mine for the first time tonight.

I turned to face him, concerned. “Your ex-girlfriend?” 

“It’s not like that, Laikyn. We’re friends.”

Yeah, friends. So why couldn’t he look at me?

As though he heard my inner question, his gaze skimmed my face before scanning the room again. “I told her you wanted to get out and try new things, so she invited us.”

And by us, he really meant him, but Wes was far too nice to admit it.

“You talk to her about me?”

“Of course. She’s my best friend.”

I knew Wes and Chastity were “best friends” because he had a picture of them as his screensaver on his phone. When I’d asked him about the girl whom I had purposely called his sister, Wes snorted and admitted they’d become close since their breakup nearly six months ago. He then patted my hand and told me I had nothing to worry about as long as I didn’t have a problem with him being friends with a girl.

I was fairly certain Wes was delusional because, based on my understanding of the situation, Chastity was the girl stringing him along, and he’d resorted to calling her his best friend because she was no longer spreading her legs for him. Or so he said.

If I had a jealous bone in my body, perhaps I would’ve been worried about her. Chastity was one of those little blonde tarts. Petite, bouncy, with big tits and a tiny ass. We had absolutely nothing in common. I was tall to her short. Dark to her light. And though I wasn’t overweight—although I had been prior to my time with Diggy—I would never have the ideal female form by Hollywood’s standards. According to my mother, my forced diet had been a good thing (yes, she actually said that), but now she insisted I needed breast and butt implants—neither of which I would be getting—and I could use a nose job when I was ready to go under the knife.

I happened to like my nose, and I didn’t have a problem with my tits or my ass—or my narrow hips, for that matter—but I wasn’t sure Wes was on board. I was having no problem keeping the weight off, especially in the two months since I started seeing him because all the dates we went on consisted of some sort of cardiovascular activity.

Everything except for sex, that was.

We had yet to consummate our relationship, and for the life of me, I didn’t know why. He said he wanted to take things slow and get to know me before we moved things to the next level. I respected that. Mostly. I hadn’t been raised to see sex as something sacred shared between two people who would spend the rest of their lives together. From my experience, it had nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with a physiological response to stimuli. I wasn’t sure why Wes was making a big deal out of it, but I was hanging around to see if I could unravel him.

My abstinence was made a little more difficult when so many things sparked that dry kindling deep inside me. How long I could hold out was yet to be determined. For the time being, my vibrator was getting a good workout.

“And how did Chastity learn about this party?” I asked, dragging my thoughts back before they face-planted in the gutter.

Wes frowned. “This is her dad’s house.”

Well, that was definitely news to me. “Her dad? The doctor?”

“Yes.”

Based on Wes’s stories, Chastity’s dad wanted her to follow in his footsteps. Evidently, she fainted at the sight of blood, so she opted for the next best thing: pharmaceutical sales. According to Wes, that was the be-all, end-all of careers. A far cry from my desire to pursue my passion for art in place of a dollar. According to Wes, I didn’t understand what it meant to have to work for a living since I came from Hollywood royalty.

Did I mention his father was a high-profile defense attorney, his mother one of the most sought-after plastic surgeons in the country? Yeah. Like he knew what it meant to work for a fucking dollar.

“Did she warn you it was a fucking orgy?” I asked, unable to stop staring at the partially naked bodies moving through the room.

“Language, Laikyn,” he mumbled.

Right. Wes didn’t like foul language. Or meat. He lived on vodka and fruit—he was a self-proclaimed fruitarian who liked salmon on occasion and refused to believe me when I told him the vodka he preferred was made from potatoes. While he would never win any awards for dedication to one diet, he was pretty consistent, and I wasn’t dating him for his common sense.

I didn’t bother apologizing for the F-word because I wasn’t sorry. Not even a little. I’d spent my entire life being judged by others. From the first pictures of me, people felt it was their due to share their opinions of my clothes or my haircuts, what toys I was photographed playing with, the people I chose to talk to. I’d long ago stopped giving a shit what people thought I should be doing and decided to live my life how I wanted.

Truth be told, I didn’t care to be at this party, yet here I was, mixing it up with the Gen Z-ers looking to progress themselves socially by recording their daring acts of debauchery for their TikTok followers to rave about. Everyone here was donning a designer label, whether in T-shirts and jeans or short skirts and skimpy tops. There was no theme, but they likely claimed that was the theme.

Wes nudged my shoulder to get my attention. I followed his gaze to a guy finger-banging some girl in the corner.

“She said it would be eye-opening,” Wes said with a chuckle.

If he considered that “eye-opening,” perhaps someone needed to sit him down and have a conversation about birds and bees. That someone was not going to be me.