The alarm buzzed insistently, dragging me out of a sound sleep. Groaning, I rolled over and smacked the annoying clock, desperate to shut it up. The buzzing stopped, and I groaned again, pulling my covers over my head.

Ugh. I really didn’t want to go to work. How could it be Monday already? It was just Friday—

Friday! Jackknifing to a sitting position, I gaped at my bedroom walls, my heart beating wildly in my chest as memories of Friday night flooded my brain. I’d gone to an x-club with Jay… I’d danced with a K… I’d had sex with that K, and then—

Holy fucking shit. Had Vair bitten me? My hand flew up to my neck, but all I could feel was smooth skin. In general, my body seemed to be free of any pain, though I distinctly remembered feeling sore after the first fucking last night—and if my blurry memory of the second, third, and fourth encounters was in any way accurate, I should’ve been in serious discomfort. Had I dreamed up the whole thing, and if not, what the hell had happened and how had I ended up in my own apartment?

Jumping out of bed, I ran to the dresser, where my small handbag was sitting. Grabbing it, I fished out my phone and stared at the screen, my breath whooshing out in relief as I saw the date.

It was Saturday. I hadn’t lost the entire weekend; I must’ve simply forgotten to turn off my alarm before I went to bed last night.

Except I didn’t remember going to bed last night, I thought with a deep inner chill. The last thing I recalled clearly was that strange, mindless ecstasy after Vair had bitten me—or whatever it was that he’d done to my neck. A cold shudder ran through me at the memory, and it was only then that I realized I was standing there naked.

Completely naked—when I usually slept in a tank top and cotton briefs.

Someone had put me to bed last night… and that someone hadn’t been myself.

For the first time, it dawned on me that someone—most likely the K—had been to my apartment.

Maybe was still in my apartment.

I nearly hyperventilated at the thought.

“Hello?” I called out, my voice shaking. Frantically opening the dresser, I grabbed the nearest T-shirt and a pair of yoga pants and pulled them on. “Hello? Anyone there?”

Silence was my only response.

Picking up the phone, I opened the bedroom door and crept out into my tiny living room, trying to convince myself not to panic. Maybe it all had been a dream, and I’d just had too much to drink with Jay again. Maybe I’d fallen into bed naked and simply didn’t remember it. Weird things happened when Jay-style partying was involved.

Jay! My pulse spiked again as I remembered that he had been there with me—and that when I’d seen him last, he’d been gearing up for a close encounter with not one but two Krinar. What happened to him? Where was he now?

To my tremendous relief, the living room was empty—as were the kitchen and the bathroom. My apartment was tiny, just a converted studio, so there weren’t many places a K could hide. I was alone and safe for now.

Still shaking from the surge of adrenaline, I sat down at the kitchen table and dialed Jay’s number. He didn’t pick up right away, and just when I thought I would go out of my mind with panic, I heard his sleep-roughened voice answer, “Hello?”

“Jay!” I almost broke into tears. “Jay, are you okay?”

“What? Oh… Amy?” He sounded disoriented. “What—what’s going on?”

“Jay, what happened last night?”

“Last night?” I could practically hear the wheels starting to turn in his sleep-fogged brain. “Last night… Oh shit, baby girl, we went to the club! The fucking x-club! Are you okay? You disappeared with that K and then—”

“What happened to you?” I interrupted, not wanting to talk about my experience quite yet. “Did you sleep with those two Ks?”

Jay laughed with delight. “Sleep with them? Baby girl, we did everything but sleep, and it was the most intense shit I’d ever experienced—like Ecstasy combined with heroin and amplified tenfold. I don’t even know how I ended up home. We must’ve been partying all night ’cause I don’t remember a thing right now.”

“Right, uh-huh.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose, the adrenaline draining out of me. It sounded like Jay had gone through the same experience that I had. Whatever had happened to us last night was far outside the realm of normal sex, corroborating all those stories I’d read online.

I was certain now that the night had been real—which left the mystery of how I’d ended up back home after passing out at the club.

Or at least I assumed I’d passed out at the club, as my last memories were of non-stop sex and impossibly intense pleasure.

As Jay continued to talk, telling me all about how the K Barbie had gone down on him while she was being fucked by the male Krinar, I tried to work through the possibilities. The only thing that made any sense was that Vair had brought me home… which meant he knew who I was and where I lived.

He must’ve found my driver’s license in my purse, I decided after a moment of uneasy contemplation. If he knew more than that about me—if he knew I was a journalist—I doubted he would’ve let me go so easily.

I got lucky, and so did Jay.

When he finished describing his sexcapade, I told him about what had happened to me, leaving out the forceful nature of Vair’s seduction and my own helpless reaction to it. The fact that I’d ended up having sex against my better judgment—and that it had been the hottest sex of my life—was not something I wanted to analyze too closely.

“Wow, you go, baby girl,” Jay said admiringly when I was done telling him the night’s events in broad strokes. “You really let loose this time. I’m proud of you. So what’s next? Are you going to go back to the club?”

“No,” I said. One night of out-of-this-world sex was plenty for me. “Next, I write the story.”

It was time for my real career to begin.