4
ORLANDO
L’Trell sent me the URL, which was a plain-looking survey type website. After entering my info and selecting the longest time period possible (a full weekend) I was sent a Bitcoin address to deposit my funds into escrow. I balked at the price—$10,000 for one weekend?—but then pulled up my cryptocurrency hot wallet and sent the funds. Hopefully it wasn’t a scam.
When the transfer was confirmed, I was given an address and a meeting time for my physical the next day. The whole thing made me feel incredibly uneasy, like I was being catfished into a scam. But I trusted L’Trell, and the totem somehow told me it was what I needed to do.
It was a normal health clinic with too-white walls and sniffling people waiting in the lobby. After giving my name I was immediately taken to the back, where the no-nonsense nurse had me strip down before using a cotton-swab to investigate my junk. She put the swab in a plastic baggie and then drew some blood, and then I was being ushered out without needing to pay.
L’Trell told me it took days, or even weeks. Not everyone was chosen, he said. The escorts got to select who they wanted.
“So in the mean time my $10,000 in Bitcoin just sits in escrow?”
“Bro, I warned you…”
The next week passed by slower than any week of my life. As a cryptocurrency trader, I got to choose my own hours. I wrote bots to make most trades for me based on price fluctuations, so besides checking those and ensuring nothing was malfunctioning I didn’t have much to do.
I tried killing time playing Madden on my Xbox, but my heart wasn’t in it.
I went to the bar with Josh, and used every cheesy pick-up line in the book. Even he was looking at me with pity by the end of the night. I tried salsa dancing at the club again, but gave up after stepping on my partner’s toes.
I called Ethan and walked through everything with him, and he seemed shocked that I couldn’t find a mate. Like it had been easy for him and Sam. Natural.
Maybe I was forcing it, he said. As if I had any other choice!
“If you can’t find your mate up there, you could always come on down to meet us,” Ethan said a day later. “Roland’s off screwing around in Africa, and we’re still working on Andy, but if you get down here I bet we can figure out your issue.”
“Maybe,” I said, though I knew the totem wouldn’t allow that. My mate was in Chicago.
Which only narrowed it down to a million women. Great.
It was hopeless. Between the pounding in my head and the constant buzzing of the gryphon in my chest, I wasn’t myself. How was I supposed to find a mate like this? I could barely even hear myself think, let alone woo a woman with my charm.
And then, when I was close to giving up, I was chosen.
*
I showed up to the hotel as nervous as I’d ever been in my life. I’d paid a shitload of money in exchange for an illegal service. Cops would surely jump out from behind the lobby plants and arrest me for solicitation.
But no cops appeared with guns drawn. There was only me, and the manager smiling politely, and the bartender cleaning pint glasses with a cloth.
I walked to the bar on stiff legs and ordered a drink for courage.
I doubted this would work. Whatever weird gryphon-totem-mate system Ethan insisted I was now part of, hiring an escort seemed like cheating. There were no shortcuts to superpowers, at least not in any movie I’d ever seen.
But the totem in my pocket felt curious, almost excited to see what the weekend brought.
I looked at my watch. I was still really early. I was about to order my second drink when she appeared.
She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life. I know people say that sometimes, but I honestly meant it. An oval face with sharp cheekbones and eyes that tilted a tiny fraction. Silky hair the color of the night sky flowing down her head and back. She was mixed race, like me, though I couldn’t tell specifically what aside from it was a wonderful combination. Her dress clung to her body like a glove, tight down her breasts and over hips wide and luscious.
I realized I was holding my breath as she approached. The totem seemed just as pleased, like Ethan said it would.
We hit it off, more than just two people completing a financial transaction. I could feel our mutual attraction through the totem, and gradually that boosted my confidence.
Yet I couldn’t be with her, not yet.
I wanted to tell her about the totem. To warn her of what sleeping with me would mean. That was my plan: to do so over dinner, because even if she laughed in my face and thought I was crazy I would have at least tried to tell her.
But then she was taking me by the hand and leading me away. Up the elevator, silencing my words with her full lips and pressing her body against mine, and she led me into the hotel room and unzipped my pants and was touching me with her hands, and I had to have her, couldn’t even think about anything until I had, and she rubbed her ass against my dick and rode me backwards while looking back through eyelashes as long as needles…
I tried. I really did.
And in the end? It worked. Ethan was right. Like all my teenage years of sexual frustration let out in five passionate minutes, the release was incredible. As soon as it was over I could feel the gryphon’s joy inside of me, like the collar had been removed and now it was time to let it out of the cage. I stopped sweating. My breathing calmed, and the fog left my brain.
I put a hand on my chest and muttered to myself, “Oh, yeah. I can feel it.”
She looked back at me from the bathroom doorway, dress still hiked up to reveal her plump ass and wonderfully thick thighs. “I felt it too, baby. We’re going to feel a lot more of that before the night is done.”
“No, not that,” I said, struggling for the words. “It’s… well. It’s what I wanted to tell you about.”