Supernatural

Clutching a plain, grease-stained cardboard box of store-bought pastries in one hand and her keys in the other, Elena trudged up the final flight of stairs to her apartment. Her muscles ached with a deep, unfamiliar soreness, and her mind was a chaotic mess of regret, lingering adrenaline, and heartbreak. She finally reached the fourth-floor unit she shared with her three roommates. Moving with exaggerated care, she slid her key into the lock and twisted it silently. She pushed the door open just wide enough to slip through, sliding her boots off the second she crossed the threshold. She tip-toed onto the entryway floorboards, desperate to quiet her steps. Her grand plan was simple: stealthily sneak into her morbidly cold bedroom, lock the door, and avoid all human contact for the rest of the day.

That desperate attempt completely evaporated the exact moment she turned the corner.

Standing right there in the hallway, blocking her path, were her three roommates. They were staring at her, their eyes shining with eager, relentless anticipation.

"Hi guys," Elena offered a weak, pathetic grimace. She felt a furious blush creeping up her neck, her face suddenly burning as red as the cartoon on the Angry Birds T-shirt Sasha was wearing over her baggy grey pajama pants.

Lauren didn’t even offer a greeting. She immediately stepped forward, invaded Elena's personal space, and dramatically sniffed the air around her like a bloodhound. "Oh, absolutely," Lauren loudly declared to the room, pointing an accusatory finger at Elena. "You absolutely smell of a classic walk of shame. It's practically radiating off you."

Sasha, who had always acted as the group's self-appointed maternal figure, threw her hands up in mock celebration. "Well, there you have it, girls!" she cheerfully announced. "Elena’s long-held virgin saint status has officially been revoked! The era of purity is over!"

While Lauren and Sasha laughed, Callie remained entirely unamused. Callie was the pragmatic dad of the group, and her eyes were fixed solely on the box in Elena's hands. She stepped forward, snatched the plain cardboard box away, flipped the lid open, and scowled darkly at the contents.

"Are you kidding me right now?" Callie aggressively demanded, thrusting the box toward Elena. "You spent the night with a man who has bazillions of dollars in his bank accounts, and he sends you off with nothing but ten dry, store-bought bran muffins? What the hell is this? What happened to diamonds being a girl's best friend? Who exactly is this cheap guy?"

Not waiting for an answer, Callie dramatically threw her hands up in the air, shoved the offensive box of muffins directly into Sasha's chest, and stomped off into the living room.

"You," Lauren said, grabbing Elena firmly by the arm, "are not getting out of this. You have some serious explaining to do."

Without being given a single chance to escape, Elena was physically dragged down the narrow hallway and shoved into the living room. Lauren pushed her down onto the apartment's coveted, sun-warmed teal armchair. They affectionately called it the throne, primarily because it was positioned right in front of the lace-curtained window that caught the morning light. In their notoriously drafty and morbidly cold flat, that patch of sunlight was an absolute luxury. Today, Elena just felt like a prisoner tied to it.

"You are not allowed to start the grand interrogation without me!" Sasha yelled from the kitchen, her voice competing with the shrill whistling of the kettle.

"Then hurry up!" Lauren yelled back, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet on the paint-splattered area rug.

Elena slumped into the armchair, crossing her arms defensively over her chest. "There's nothing to tell," she mumbled.

"Oh, please. The tale of the virgin saint getting thoroughly wrecked by a billionaire playboy is exactly what we need this morning," Sasha squealed as she rushed into the living room. She carried a tray loaded with steaming yellow mugs of terrible, bitter coffee and a plate piled high with the dry muffins and some two-day-old hot cross buns. Sasha was the mom of the group, which meant she indulged them, but she also made the absolute worst coffee on the planet.

"Nobody got wrecked," Elena snapped fiercely, reaching out to take a mug. She took a sip of the coffee and winced. Even drowned in milk, it was a bitter nightmare.

"Sure," Lauren mercilessly teased, leaning closer. "That explains why the heavy stench of sex is practically clinging to your skin. I can smell the pheromones from here, El."

Elena panicked and quickly sniffed her own shoulder, immediately sending Lauren and Sasha into deafening peals of joyous laughter.

"Stop it, you guys!" Elena pouted, her cheeks burning even hotter as she took another sip of the awful coffee.

Callie, who was sitting cross-legged on the grey L-shaped couch, dramatically gasped for air, waving her hands as if she couldn't breathe through her laughter. When she finally collected herself, she leaned forward and asked the ultimate, crude question. "I just need to know one thing," she demanded loudly. "Are the billionaire's pubes just as red as the hair on his head?"

Sasha collapsed onto the couch, howling with laughter, tears streaming down her face at the sheer audacity of the question.

"No comment!" Elena snapped fiercely, crossing her arms tightly over her chest again, glaring at the coffee table.

She absolutely refused to answer them, but her own traitorous body instantly betrayed her. A familiar, deep tingling physical ache flared right at her core, triggered purely by the vivid memory of Dominic's cock buried deep inside her vagina. The memory wasn't vague or polite; it was the heavy, stretching fullness of his massive size, the slick friction of his relentless thrusts, and the way his dark red pubic hair had brushed against her wet skin. Just thinking about his rigid erection sliding inside her made her core throb intensely. A fresh wave of slick moisture pooled between her thighs right there in the armchair, making her shift uncomfortably.

"Earth to Elena!" Lauren screamed, clapping her hands right in front of Elena's face. "Oh my god, look at her! You are practically drooling. What dirty things were you just thinking about?"

"Nothing!" Elena lied quickly, shifting her legs to ease the throbbing ache between them. She was deeply embarrassed by how effortlessly turned on she had become just from a stray thought.

Sasha finally sobered up, setting her coffee down. All the teasing amusement vanished from her eyes, replaced by genuine, demanding curiosity. "So? Come on, tell us. How was your very first time? Was he as incredible as his playboy reputation claims?"

Elena stared into her mug. She had no previous baseline to compare Dominic to, but ignoring the intense physical soreness radiating through her thighs every time she moved, she knew the truth. She wouldn't mind doing it a second time, a third time, or a hundred times. He had known exactly how to touch her, how to pleasure her, and how to thrust into her until she was screaming out his name.

The three of them stared at her, their eyes wide and unblinking.

"Well?" Callie pressed impatiently.

Elena pushed up her black-framed glasses, her face flushed a deep, vibrant crimson. She bit her lower lip, looked down at her lap, and shyly admitted, "It was supernatural."

Her three friends immediately erupted into joyous, deafening squeals of victory. Lauren jumped up and down on the rug, while Sasha and Callie high-fived across the couch. The living room was filled with the loud sounds of their triumphant celebration.

"Are you going to see him again?" Sasha asked eagerly, her eyes practically shining with romantic hope.

Elena looked up at them. Her shy smile rapidly collapsed, her bottom lip trembling violently. Within seconds, her face crumpled entirely, giving way to heavy, bitter tears that started streaming rapidly down her face.

"Whoa, hey," Callie said, her dad-instinct kicking in as the girls immediately rushed forward to surround the armchair. "Was the sex really so good that you have to cry about it?"

"He's getting married, you guys!" Elena bawled loudly, the raw devastation tearing out of her throat. She aggressively wiped at her dripping, snotty face with the back of her sleeve, completely losing her composure. "He's getting married, and I want him so bad! I just want him to make me feel good again!"

"Wait, what do you mean he's getting married?" Lauren gasped, her eyes going wide with shock. "Dominic Davenport has a strict 90-day dating rule. Everyone in Riverwood knows that. He doesn't commit."

"He found a woman worth breaking his infamous 90-day dating rule for!" Elena wailed, snatching a tissue from the box Sasha offered and blowing her nose with a loud, aggressive honk that always stunned everyone coming from someone so tiny.

She hiccuped through her sobs and explained the horrible truth. She told them how she had overheard the conversation at the club, and how this past weekend had merely been his bachelor party celebration.

Upon hearing this, the atmosphere in the apartment instantly shifted gears. Her friends’ joyous excitement rapidly curdled into deep, protective fury.

"Are you serious right now?" Sasha fumed, her face contorting with anger at Dominic. "He still took you home under those deceitful circumstances? He took advantage of you while he's engaged? Unbelievable! What a disgusting dick!"

"Yeah, that's messed up," Lauren agreed viciously.

However, Elena shocked them all by loudly and firmly claiming the blame for herself. "I asked him to take me home!" she admitted through her tears. It would be so easy to let Dominic take all the heat, but she couldn't lie to them.

"Why on earth would you do that when you knew he was getting married?" Callie asked patiently, stepping fully into her Dad role.

"Because I wanted to be a little reckless!" Elena yelled, her misplaced rage violently bubbling over. The sheer volume of her voice startled her friends into silence. "I was a good girl for twenty-four years! I obediently played by the rules my entire life. I did everything right, and I saved myself purely for the right guy. And what the hell do I have to show for all that good behavior? A devastatingly broken engagement just one single month before what was supposed to be the happiest day of my life!"

"Oh, Elena... I'm so sorry," Callie murmured softly.

Crying hysterically now, Elena kept ranting. "If playing fair worked, I would be in Greece right now on my honeymoon! I know what I did with Dominic was wrong. I know I shouldn't have, and now I'm as nasty as Tessa for sleeping with someone else's man. But I got tired of playing fair, and I was hurting so badly. For at least seven hours, I was happy in Dominic's arms. God, I was so happy... and now all I feel is the exact same crushing hollowness I've felt for the past six weeks."

Sasha's expression softened into one of deep sympathy. She stepped closer. "Oh, honey," Sasha suggested gently. "You sound like you have it bad for this guy. Did you actually fall for Dominic during the night?"

Elena fiercely and instantly denied the accusation. "No! Dominic was just a temporary physical rebound. He just distracted me. I am still deeply in love with Sebastian."

Lauren crossed her arms and glared pointedly at Elena's left hand. "If that's true," Lauren said sharply, "then why are you still wearing that?"

Lauren was glaring directly at the dazzling, expensive princess-cut diamond ring that was still stubbornly sitting on Elena's ring finger. The facets caught the sunlight from the window, flashing a brilliant, mocking sparkle.

"You really need to finally take it off and move on," Callie urged gently, echoing the same advice they had been giving her for weeks.

But Elena stubbornly clutched her left hand to her chest, protecting the tacky reminder. She tearfully shook her head. She knew keeping it was pathetic, but she couldn't help it. "I can't," she explained, her voice cracking with fresh grief. "This ring is the absolute only tangible proof I have left that my four-year relationship had ever been real. That I actually mattered to Sebastian once upon a time."

She squeezed her eyes shut. If Sebastian hadn't cruelly kept their shared dog—the sweet little Maltese poodle named Snow that they had adopted together—she might have found the strength to mail the ring back to him. But he had taken her dog, and the ring was all she had left.

"I'm going to bed," Elena whispered exhaustedly. She stood up, placed her half-empty mug of bitter coffee on the bamboo coffee table, and wiped her eyes.

"Are you going to go visit your parents later today? Should we wake you up?" Lauren called out after her.

Elena flatly declined the suggestion without looking back. Her parents had openly and viciously blamed her for the failed engagement, insisting she must have done something incredibly stupid to drive Sebastian away. The absolute last thing she needed right now was another brutal, self-esteem bashing interrogation disguised as a family lunch.

She retreated down the hallway to the isolated safety of her morbidly cold bedroom. The chill in the air instantly bit through her clothes, a stark contrast to the blazing body heat she had been wrapped in just hours prior. She aggressively drew the heavy blackout curtains shut against the daylight, plunging the room into absolute, isolating darkness.

Without bothering to change her clothes, she crawled onto her queen-sized poster bed and buried her trembling body deep beneath her heavy, brightly colored duvet and the mountain of scatter cushions. Curled into a tight ball, she cried herself to sleep, her sobs echoing softly in the empty room.

As her conscious mind began to slip away, deeply troubled, heated dreams of Dominic's large, warm hands touching her skin began to flood her subconscious. She felt the phantom weight of him, the intoxicating scent of his cologne, and the supernatural pleasure he had given her. And as she finally drifted off into a heavy, exhausted slumber, her absolute last waking thought was a profound, aching wonder if she would ever in her life get to feel the luxurious touch of his thousand-thread-count silk sheets against her bare skin again.