Page 4

Two weeks after the CEO of D-Project gig, the dreaded day arrived.

My six-month probationary period was officially over.

I knew that Mr. Ragu would contact me in a few days about Johansson's request, and my only vague hope of pushing it off for a little longer was to keep my assignment slots fully booked.

But the problem was… I was now competing with others as equals for the easiest assignments, being just a regular, full-service employee. Sex was firmly on the table as part of most gigs, and I was very concerned I wouldn’t be able to secure those sex-free assignments on time.

Even though I hadn't been exactly prudish before, I just didn't want to be forced to fuck people that I wouldn't otherwise choose. In the past, I didn’t mind sex at all—I’d even been kind of an asshole about it, sleeping with a few of my brother’s exes purely out of revenge for their years-long teasing and humiliating ‘hunt the alien’ games.

But suddenly, the whole concept of being paid for sex just didn’t sit right with me. I’d never thought of myself as traditional or overly romantic, but maybe I was, after all?

The idea of wanting more hit me pretty hard after my brother Rain found his True Mate.

The guy was insanely beautiful—an ex-model, no less. God forbid! The idea of dating anyone from this industry again gave me shivers. Never again: no models, no actors.

But meeting the happy couple at my other brother Skye's college graduation ceremony made me sentimental. Seeing those two lovebirds together sparked something. Suddenly, I became jealous, craving to have a relationship for myself even more fiercely. Maybe not my own True Mate, since that seemed unrealistic within my rare subspecies, but maybe a High Mate? Meanwhile, here I was—spanking old CEOs’ asses while the months kept slipping by.

On the day my probationary period came to an end, I had to face the fact that my depression wasn't going away anytime soon. Fall was approaching, and still no roses, love confessions, or moonlight dates for me.

One morning, I just woke up, opened my laptop, and saw that the safe ‘locked commissions’ section was gone—they were all open, up for grabs for anyone at the company.

Now I had to focus hard to snag only the BDSM jobs without the actual ‘me-penetrating-them’ part. To do this successfully, I had to be faster than the other employees in evaluating scenarios as they gradually popped up. In maybe three to five seconds, I’d scan the list for the sex-free ones. But a few other employees had a similar strategy, so they’d often hit ‘accept’ just as quickly. And they had the experience to top me.

Already on the very first day—I miserably failed. I stared nervously at the screen, noticing the assignments turning gray (as in ‘taken’) every few seconds as I frantically scanned the details. Those bastards were good at grabbing the easiest ones! Within minutes, all the best jobs were taken.

Dammit!

There was only one left that no one seemed to want, and unfortunately, it also involved penetrative sex. Curious about why it was still available, I clicked on it and saw that it only offered a small amount of money.

Sometimes, as part of reputation-building, the company accepted clients who paid less, without guaranteeing an employee would take the job. We could pick these up if we wanted, but the company didn’t promise the customer anything.

This client had only paid $1,000—one of the lowest amounts I’d seen.

The commission included the client’s personal information and a photo, so I clicked on it just out of curiosity. The scenario wasn’t complex, but it still involved full service—meaning at least an hour of passionate sex. It was a twenty-year-old student, an omega. His photo loaded slowly, and that’s when I guessed why no one had wanted to take such a low-paying assignment.

The image that appeared was… let’s just say, unflattering. For some reason, it occurred to me that this might have been deliberate. It was a skewed selfie. The guy had a sour expression, like he didn’t even want to take the photo in the first place. A narrow jaw, a small upturned nose with freckles, thick bottle-bottom glasses, a mop of unusually colored hair—light amaranth—falling across his forehead and almost to his shoulders in unruly curls, acne scars dotting his skin, and… a prominent, large pink birthmark covering his entire left cheek in a shape somewhat similar to a rose!

I whistled quietly upon seeing it. With such a visible, giant birthmark, he must have had a rough time dating, some people staring, and maybe kids pointing him out. Poor guy.

There was also information about his body type; the omega indicated he was chubby, whatever that meant. However, it wasn’t apparent since his neck and face, visible in the picture, seemed rather nondescript. Taking it all into account, including the low $1,000 price, I wasn’t surprised that no one had decided to take on this assignment.

The scenario itself was quite straightforward; the omega expected someone to break into his place at night while he was sleeping, tie him up, and then engage in various sexual activities, culminating in gentle intercourse. Yes, gentle, I had read that correctly.

What I also found amusing, or perhaps unusual, was that the guy expected very specific comments to be directed at him—he listed long tirades, insisting that whoever came to him should marvel at his body, praise his chubby love handles, express admiration for his plump buttocks, his small penis, his cute pink balls, and his beautiful tiny hole. Even appreciate his freckles! Not my words—his exact words! The person should eulogize these parts of his body, and also rim him thoroughly!

What? Rim? Oh, no! Not my thing.

Overall, very strange tasks. I shrugged because it simply wasn’t a commission for me. Still, for some reason, I stared at the student’s photo for a moment. And stared. Then stared even more. I closed it… then opened it again, just to look… just for a second. But it ended up with me staring for another few minutes!

Ah, fuck no! I’m not taking this one!

There was one funny thing, though. I actually had a birthmark of almost the same shape, kind of like a red rose, but by pure luck, mine was under my hair, on the back of my head. Well, surely a coincidence.

So, I didn’t get any job that day, but the next day, I sat down in front of my laptop, ready and alert.

It should start any minute now…

Wait! As I focused my eyes on the list of commissions that had already been taken—now appearing in pale gray—I noticed their dates. They should be from yesterday, but they all had today’s dates. What the hell? After a short investigation, I concluded that somehow, the commissions had appeared in the system a little earlier than usual while I was in the shower, and most of them were already claimed. Argh!

The only one left untouched was the commission for the redheaded student. Once again, I clicked on it absentmindedly, having no idea why. His eyes seemed to be staring at me, almost disapprovingly.

I found myself in a strange daze and only managed to snap out of it after a solid ten minutes! His photo seemed to simply mesmerize me.

The question was: why was this commission still stubbornly hanging in the system? Was really no one interested in taking it? I sighed, scrolling through the list disinterestedly. Other employees probably saw that the rest of the assignments for the day were worth amounts like $5,000, $7,000, or $10,000. No surprise that an offer of $1,000 didn’t really entice anyone.

So, once again, I didn’t take any jobs that day. I just looked away from the header that read ‘Home invasion scenario’ , ignored the green color on the offer that signaled availability, and the luring ‘Accept’ button, and… felt shitty.

After a few minutes of fruitless deliberation, I gave up, opened the photo again, and stubbornly stared. Our eyes seemed locked, and I fell into that strange daze again. No idea how long it lasted.

Suddenly, the phone beeped, and I flinched.

Fuck. It could be Mr. Ragu, asking about my readiness to fulfill the CEO’s ‘dark dreams’!

Clenching my jaw, I fixed my eyes on the display. Nope. Gladly, it wasn’t the case—just some text message from my dad about my brother Skye’s miserable condition (due to heartbreak), which I ignored. I already knew who his True Mate was, but the idiot didn’t want to believe my ‘alien intuition’, so be it. Not my problem.

Anyway, I had a somewhat pessimistic attitude towards the whole concept of True Mates myself, since my own could not be found among normal omegas, but only within my subspecies, which was extremely uncommon, so I never had high hopes for it and learned to live accepting my reality.

***

By the third day, I was getting pretty annoyed, constantly lurking by the computer screen, planning finally to get my perfect commission. But then, at the very moment when the system displayed a fresh, hot list of jobs to take, my laptop's battery refused to cooperate. The computer shut down!

"What is going on?!" I shouted as the screen went blank. I quickly opened my phone, but the internet was sluggish; everything loaded incredibly slowly. My frustration spiked, I started tapping so nervously on the screen that the phone eventually froze, and I had to restart it.

"Un-fucking-believable!"

Then, for a brief moment, something strange crossed my mind. I’d once heard that sometimes Fate plays a crucial role in pairing people. I smiled to myself because, of course, it sounded ridiculous—surely, that wasn’t what was happening here. Impossible. Just fairy tales and urban legends.

So, I decided again to skip the redhead’s commission that day. I ignored my intense gut feeling and moved on, only praying that Mr. Ragu didn’t call me.

That same night, I had a dream. I found myself wandering through an amusement park filled with hundreds of people. At the center stood a large, colorful nest. As I approached it, I felt a tug on my arm. I turned and spotted someone dressed in a fluffy, red bunny costume. The person handed me a rose-shaped helium balloon with a long ribbon trailing behind. The bunny tilted his head and extended one hand, as if urging me to take the balloon.

"Don’t let me fly away!" came from his fluffy mask.

And then I woke up.

It was a funny, bizarre dream, and the first thing that popped into my mind was the rose-shaped birthmark on that student. A balloon? Seriously, Fate? My mind was playing tricks on me, for sure.

But again, I opened up the photo and engaged in a silly staring session.

On the fourth day, I finally lost faith in the reality of it all. I sat by the screen with my laptop plugged in, staring at the list with determination, making sure the battery wouldn’t die on me again. I pressed the cable firmly into the socket, checking it every five minutes. But just as new commissions appeared, and I rushed to click on the first one, a prompt flashed on the screen: "Your session has expired; you need to log in again."

I let out a string of curses and flung the mouse against the wall.

It was some god-awful bad luck.

When I finally logged back in, the other employees had already snatched up the remaining commissions, and there it was, yet again, just that unlucky amaranth-haired student left in the system. Yep.

I yelled a colorful curse loud enough to shake the walls, got up, and stepped away from the screen, my head spinning.

Anyway, my other duties were waiting.

That day, I had my usual appointment with the ‘dog client’. In my bad mood, I wasn’t exactly thrilled about strolling around town with a guy in leather gear who was only half-heartedly committing to his canine look. But the gig paid reasonably well, and it had been five days since my last one. So, off I went.

I pulled up to his place—it was in a pretty affluent neighborhood; I’ll give him that. He could afford Dark Dreams, so clearly, he was doing well for himself, whatever it was he did all day when he wasn’t moonlighting as a dog. Also, I had no idea if he was an omega or beta; I was on suppressants, so I couldn’t pick up on his Allure scent.

My ski mask already on, I hit the buzzer, keeping things anonymous as always.

He let me in, and right from the gate, I was immediately greeted by loud, cheerful barking. And no, not from an actual dog—just him, living out his canine fantasy. Moments later, the door opened, and there he was, ready to go.

This guy had a leather mask fitted to resemble a dog snout, with pug-typical ears and brown, bulging lenses over his eyes to complete the pug look. He was already on his knees, gloves that mimicked paws on his hands, kneepads securely in place for maximum crawl comfort. There was even a fluffy tail attached to a butt plug, thoughtfully covered with a strip of leather, so any passersby would just assume it was a regular tail—a permanent part of the costume.

His leash hung on a hook nearby. I never ventured past the entryway into his house—client’s rules. So I just stood there, gave him the usual pat on the head, and said, "Good boy." He wiggled his butt happily, wagging his pseudo-tail (and in the process moving the plug inside, of course), making excited doggy noises.

We never actually spoke. He’d just bark, whine, or growl a bit. Honestly, I had no clue what his deal was, and he had no idea about mine. Once a week, though, we’d do this little routine, and I’d take him for a walk around the local park.

I grabbed the remote for the butt plug and then his leash to clip it to his collar, and he leaned forward to help me, looking downright grateful.

"Heel, boy. Time for a walk," I announced, and off we went, down his fancy front path, lined with pricey ornamental shrubs that probably cost more than most people’s monthly rent.

He was obedient as always, trotting along at my side while I occasionally entertained him by tapping the remote for his tail-plug to give it a little buzz. We reached the park right around five, peak people-watching time, which was most likely the whole point for him. This type loved to be stared at and thrived on the sight of shocked faces around them.

Sometimes I’d toss a stick for him to ‘fetch’, but with that mask on, he couldn’t really pick it up, so he’d just nudge it along with his paws. Not exactly realistic dog behavior, but hey, I didn’t sign up for authenticity. Today, I wasn’t in the mood; I’d have preferred to just sit on a bench and watch the swans gliding by.

So, we wandered over to the pond. I plopped down, pointed at the birds, and said, "Look, boy, swans. Go bark at ’em." As he obediently barked away, I sank into a cloud of stress, running over my problems in my head.

Sighing and rubbing my forehead through my mask, I tried to clear my mind of negativity. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed ‘the dog’ had lost interest in the swans and was sitting beside me, legs folded up, ‘paws’ straight in front like a loyal mutt waiting for a command. He made a soft, almost sympathetic whine.

Strangely enough, it made me want to talk.

"Business has been weird lately," I admitted. Normally, of course, I wouldn’t spill my guts to a client, but it wasn’t like he expected in-character conversation anyway. He knew I worked for the company he hired and nothing else, so it wasn’t against his scenario rules.

"There’s this one gig hanging around in the system that no one wants. And no matter what I do, I’m left only with this one. Power outages, logging issues, timing conflicts—you name it, it all kept me from getting any other jobs."

He whined encouragingly, tilting his head.

"It’s, well, a ‘special’ gig," I added, sighing. "Some young guy who’s, uh, looking for a home invasion scenario but with a fuck at the end, and that’s not my thing. I’m here for clients like you," I added with a smirk. "But it’s been days, and I’m seriously wondering if the universe is trying to push me into this."

He let out another quiet whine and wagged his tail sympathetically while I continued, "Funny thing is, the kid has a birthmark, the same shape as mine. Weird coincidence, which just makes it all the more… mysterious." I shrugged. "Anyway, sorry to vent. I bet you’d rather go mark some bushes, right?"

I stood up, and he let out a happy yip, moving closer, brushing his head up against me like some kind of oversized cat.

After a quick detour to the nearest bush for his bathroom break, we headed to the dog park, where some real dogs gave him a curious sniff. He took it well; I just pressed his remote once for good measure, and he spun around, his tail going, and gave a couple of long, enthusiastic whimpers.

Then, as always, it was time to head back. But before we wrapped up, we had to hit the main event. We found a quiet part of the park, and as the routine always went, I let him hump my leg while I used the remote. I dealt with it—‘the dog’ was fully clothed, and I didn’t have to worry about any unfortunate stains.

Afterward, I walked him back to his place, unhooked the leash, gave him a final head pat, and said, "Good boy." But instead of the usual bark and wave of his tail, he… stood up! Wow.

Suddenly, we were face-to-face. Well, not quite—he was around 6’1". Definitely a beta, I guessed. He looked at me through those brown lenses, and I just stared back, totally thrown.

Then he spoke.

"I think you should take that job." His voice muffled but surprisingly smooth and young—maybe even boyish. He could be around twenty, by my judgment, so close to the redheaded omega’s age.

I blinked, stunned to hear an actual human voice from behind the mask. He tilted his head slightly.

"I know, advice from a ‘dog’ might not make much sense, but trust me on this one."

"And why’s that?" I asked, more out of shock than anything.

"When Fate’s that persistent, it’s usually worth listening. Trust your gut." He sounded dead serious.

I could’ve laughed it off and told him to go lick his… balls or watch the birds on the balcony and bark at them incessantly, but I just mumbled, "Thanks. Maybe I’ll do just that."

He gave a slight nod, and I gave him one in return. Well, my parents raised me to be kind to animals, after all. And that was our goodbye.

I headed home, determined. Dog-man or not, his advice actually hit home. So, I sat down at my computer and opened the dreaded photo again.

Our eyes met.

"You won!" I muttered, and just like that clicked on his commission to hit ‘accept’.

Oh, well! I had to appease Fate somehow.

Exactly at that second, my phone rang, making me jump.

‘Mr. Jun Ragu’ appeared on the screen.

"Hello, Storm."

"Hello, boss."

"You know why I'm calling?"

How could I not…

"Johansson?"

My boss let out a small huff.

"Exactly. I gave you a few days to mentally prepare yourself, but it’s coming your way. I can’t string him along much longer."

I closed my eyes and breathed out, "But I just took another assignment. The omega student and a home invasion scenario."

The deafening silence on the other end of the line made me halt my breath.

Please. Please. Please—postpone it!

Finally, Mr. Ragu made a long grunt. "Okay Storm, this time I will postpone it, but only for the time of this commission. After that, get yourself together. It’s not going away, Storm. Mr. Johansson is very much in love!"

Closing my eyes, I let out a quiet, desperate swear.

It's been like that my whole life. Ever since I was sixteen, there was always a certain type of person around me who just… wanted me to fuck them because I was a purple.

At first, it seemed fun. I had this low-hanging idea that having a lot of sex would boost my confidence and make me feel like I was something, but it only laid bare even more insecurities. The empowerment thing came out empty. So after a while, I started avoiding casual hookups. None of them actually wanted me . They wanted an idea of a purple—like I was some kind of novelty or toy. I mean, I didn’t have anything against people with fetishes, but I was tired of being someone's kink instead of being treated as a real person, someone to respect or have a serious relationship with.

That was one of the reasons I married Tom. He wasn’t all that into me sexually—it was more about how I could boost his status and keep things interesting. He liked the fun, the attention, the stares, the envy. It felt like a new dynamic, and I fell for it… but of course, like all illusions, it didn't last. Still, there was no love there, and surely, no respect.

Walking in on Tom with his fuckboy screwing on the bed I bought, in the apartment I paid for, while I was working twelve-hour days so we could have a good living, was the ultimate proof that I needed to search for some other type of people in my life.

Now it seemed that my old life was coming back to haunt me, in the form of a fifty-year-old alpha with a humiliation kink. I was back to being a walking-talking dick.

All the things interesting about me were… me being a purple.

There was nothing I could do but quit, and I still had 20k to pay in installments. Damn it.

As Mr. Ragu said his goodbyes, I put the phone down and glanced at the laptop.

Suddenly, this commission didn’t seem so bad—maybe even something to look forward to? Johansson was such a downgrade compared to the redheaded student.

Staring at the screen, I sighed.

Minutes passed in silence, and my depression settled back in. Oh, well. It was just another gig. There was nothing that would come out of it—nothing positive for me, no hope. Just a job. I swallowed hard, again feeling that dreaded emptiness inside. My mood grew darker and darker.

But staring at the omega’s face was, in a way, pulling me out of that miserable feeling, so I gave in to it with full dedication.

"Save me, Damien. Save me somehow," I whispered, without even realizing it.

Whoa!

Did I just give him a nickname?

I had no idea what his real name was—it wasn’t given in the commission details. Names were only provided in cases that absolutely required them, like scenarios in public settings. If I was going to the CEO of a company, it made sense to know his actual name, but with private people, in-home scenarios, it wasn’t necessary.

Anyway, my mind was doing some weird tricks on me.

When I focused really intensely, there was this distinctive glow around him, like a purple tinge. Yeah, definitely. There was a strange luminescence that spoke to me, that drew me in, something about him… I couldn’t quite grasp. It kept slipping away, though I wanted to catch it—so much. But why? It’s not like I believed we could have a high mateship, right?

In the past, when I was still working in Fate's Choice, from the moment I discovered that I could somehow sense people's high matches, I tried many, many times to ‘sense’ my own highly compatible mate, but for some reason it never worked. I had even begun to believe that perhaps I could not use my own intuition on myself. Why should it be any different now?

What was worth mentioning—with the commission firmly in my inbox, the system suddenly ran perfectly—no issues, no expired sessions, no battery or power glitches, no crashes. Everything just worked. Fucking miracle.

Again, I locked eyes with the redheaded student in the photo, staring back at me.

"So. Will you save me, Damien?" And then I burst out laughing. Hell no, there was no salvation from my private hell. There was only more misery.

***