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Walter laughed. “I don’t want anyone else but her.

She’s been in my thoughts every day since she left to come back here.

Every time I so much as stand near the woman I fall more and more in love with her.

I’d tried to forget about her while I was in Unseelie, but I couldn’t.

Being in the same realm as her now has wrecked me completely.

I’m a bumbling, begging idiot around her. ”

“I’m sorry, man,” I replied. That sounded horrible.

Walter unleashed a wicked smile. “Don’t be.

I just told you how much I love a good chase and a woman that makes me work for it.

Eletha is a prime choice. She’s the only choice.

When I finally get her to admit she loves me, it’s going to be the best moment of my life.

If it takes every day of my afterlife to win her over again, it will be worth it. ”

“Suns, romantic, aren’t you? I thought you’d say you liked to tie a girl up or lick honey from her toes or something wild,” I chuckled.

He smirked. “Which one of those is supposed to be wild?” “If those aren’t wild enough, then I may never be rid

of these scabies,” I mumbled, actually beginning to worry. I strongly disliked feet and I wasn’t particularly fond of honey.

“It’s the itch, the Tartarus itch, not scabies. Stars above.” He rolled his eyes in frustration. “I don’t know; try something really out there just to be sure.”

“Like what?” I threw my hands in the air. How was I supposed to just think of something sexually wild?

“I don’t know. It needs to be something you want but would never normally do. Tie her up and get rough with her if she’s okay with it. Most of the girls down here are more than okay with it, but check beforehand, just in case.”

I felt like a virgin being coached by an experienced friend, even though I was far from it.

“I don’t think I’d like that, and to be honest, I don’t think I’m really in the mood to hook up with a stranger anyway,” I said, cringing.

I wasn’t going to yuck anybody’s yum, but I wasn’t sure how fun it would be roughing anyone up unless they deserved it, and even then, it wasn’t very fun.

It was just what you had to do to be the good guy .

We stepped through oversized doors and back into the middle of the party just in time to see a decent-sized group of men and women waving to the crowd with heavy panting breath.

“Damnit, we just missed them,” Walter swore as we reentered the crowd. “Let’s get a drink. What do you want?”

The large space was still filled with shoulder-to-shoulder fae as we made our way to the large bar area in the corner, only now the air included traces of sweat and lust. I was never much of a drinker, but again, what did it matter now?

“Something strong—make that two somethings strong, actually,” I said, attempting to embrace the me I never let out, the one that would get rid of this itch.

Walter chuckled and ordered our drinks. “You sure you don’t want to go visit a sensation?” he asked with a look that told me he wished I would.

I took one of the drinks he handed me and downed the wheat-colored liquid before bothering to ask what it was. “Hhhhaaa—” I hissed, trying to let the burning vapor free from my throat. “What was that? My suns, I’m about to breathe fire from my?—”

Large blue eyes grabbed my attention across the room.

Immediately I rose from my chair for a better view of her.

The realization that she was looking back at me with those large sky-blue eyes sent heated tingles all over my skin, though to be fair, that might have been the liquid fire I just drank.

When she realized I was staring back, her mouth pulled up in a confident smirk.

I may as well have been staring at the sun, the way it heated things inside of me.

She was… Beautiful wasn’t even the right word.

She was incandescent. A vision of grace, radiating an effortless elegance that captivated my soul and lingered like the soft glow of the sunrise.

Our locked stare lasted a few seconds longer before she broke the connection to whisper something to another woman.

She was in a group headed down the hallway with the brightly colored rooms. I held my breath waiting for her to look at me again.

I rose off my stool and took a wobbly step in her direction.

I needed to know more about her. I couldn’t let her walk away.

What if I never found her again? It felt like a part of me I never knew existed would suddenly feel like it was missing if I never saw her again, if I didn’t talk to her.

Her powerful gaze landed on me again as she spoke to the person next to her.

She laughed at something the other woman said, the action making her chocolatey-brown hair swing across her shoulders.

For a moment, I would have given up everything I’d ever had just to graze my fingers across her fair skin just as her hair had done.

She held up three fingers in my direction and mouthed three before blushing and continuing down the hallway with the group of women.

Scrambling to keep the mystery woman in sight, my eyes tracked the woman she had been talking to, only now noticing that it was Eletha.

I grabbed Walter’s shoulder. “Who is that? With Eletha?”

At the mention of Eletha, Walter’s attention snapped to where I was looking, catching the last bit of Eletha before the group vanished down the hallway.

“That’s the sensations that just performed their dance.

Eletha is close friends with several of them.

She personally trained each one of them to be able to protect themselves in case things with a client ever get out of hand.

She is fucking phenomenal.” His voice trailed off as he watched the space she had just left.

He handed me another drink and returned to his seat.

“Who is the girl she was talking to? The girl next to her?” I asked impatiently.

“What did she look like?” Realization hit him and he immediately perked up. “You saw someone you liked? I can talk to Eletha and find out what room she’s in tonight.”

Her three raised fingers clicked in my brain. “Three, she’s in room three!” I practically screamed across the bar.

“Okay, calm down,” he said. “Three is the room with the trapdoor we used. The one with the wax cabinet.”

Wax cabinet? I didn’t even care enough to waste more time asking about it. It could have been a bomb cabinet and I would still go there if she was inside. “What’s her name?”

“What did she look like? I only saw Eletha,” he replied. “She was about five foot five or so, maybe a hundred and fifty pounds? Brown hair that hit just below her shoulder, bangs. The tips of her hair were pink. Big blue eyes with thick, dark lashes.”

“Pink and brown hair? Do you mean red and black hair? That was Diana, unless you meant brown and purple, then that’s got to be Apple,” he said, deep in thought.

“What? How many women here have pink hair?” I said, exasperated.

Walter shrugged. “I don’t know. They all do it together.

Some of their hair grows that way and then the other girls help them put stuff over it that changes the color.

I don’t know. I can’t keep track of every woman’s hair color down here,” he snapped.

“It doesn’t matter anyway. You can ask her name while you tie her up and give her a hand necklace. ”

“Walter!” I shouted.

“What?” He cackled before turning serious. “Hey, you okay giving up some memento?”

Wicked thoughts of learning what the mystery woman tasted like clouded my thoughts. “Of course. How much will it take? It’s just memories, right?”

Walter suddenly looked concerned. “Sort of. When you come here, you have a set amount of memento, or valuable memories. They’re no different than tolkiens and coins here other than the fact that when you run out of them, you cease to exist—even in the afterlife.

Think about it like you’re playing a game and this is your starting amount.

Every time you buy something or get severely wounded, you’ll lose some of your memento, but also, every time you kill someone, or sell them something, you will get some of their memento.

You usually won’t know any difference, other than that you will start to fade and be forgotten if you begin to run out of memento.

Most fae down here just use it for drugs and prostitutes anyway. ”

Oh shit. This was significantly more complex than I had first assumed. “Does it hurt when you give it?”

“No, it doesn’t hurt, but you should know, when that memory is no longer attached to your soul, whoever was in that memory will no longer remember it. It will be like a blank spot in their mind that they can’t quite get ahold of. Humans call it déjà vu.” Walter took the last swig of his drink.

“Why wouldn’t someone just give away all of their bad memories?” To be honest, that actually sounded kind of nice. I had a few I wouldn’t mind getting rid of.

“Agh, see that’s where you get into trouble.

Sometimes that works, but you don’t get to choose what gets taken.

It just kind of leaves you and goes to the other person.

There’s usually a lot more that you’ve learned from those memories than you realize and sometimes that can leave you too.

We aren’t the same without our memories,” he said.

“You can restore your memento by taking others’ memories, but again, it’s mucky business.

If you’re out of memento and all you can get to stay alive are someone’s traumatic memories, it deteriorates your soul quickly.

Most of the time if that happens, they end up just giving the last of the memories away, so they don’t have to exist any longer. ”

“But…so if my soul can’t exist any longer down here and I have no memento left…” I gripped the counter.