Page 25 of Control

“Title?” I said as he walked closer to Reyna and I as we sat on a bench by a small pond filled with ducks and geese.

“Is that what you all are calling it?” he said to me in a high pitched and lively voice. “I mean you and the other two have these new names now and they look an awful lot like titles that members of royal families might have. You know, like Duke of York or Dutches of Cambridge. That sort of thing.”

“I’d never really thought about that,” I said, keeping my voice low and not even attempting to match his energy level. I looked over to Reyna and I could tell the constant attention I was getting was beginning to wear on her. I had tried my best to deal with it on my own, but I also wanted to be close to her so we could spend time together but it felt like there was no escaping it. “I mean if ‘title’ makes sense, then yeah. I guess.”

“So you are some sort of royalty then!” he said back to me as if trying to convince me of his implication.

“What? No!” I was getting irritated with where he was trying to take this and I had only made it worse by engaging him.

“If they shoe fits, right?” I could tell he was really pushing for a story that would get him the clicks he wanted.

“No. The shoe doesn’t fit. I’m not royalty. I don’t know what the others have said or how they feel, but I can tell you right now I’m not royalty. Hell, I’m an escort for God’s sake. You really think an escort is worthy of being royalty?”

“Stranger things have happened!” he said, all while recording me and making notes in his HUD for an article he would later write call “Our Royalty Has Arrived!”

Each day I logged on felt like more of the same. I would get on, see that I had dozens and sometimes hundreds of messages, I would check to see if Reyna was on and then I would head out to try and get in some work. I’d made plenty of money from all the gifts I was getting, but it never felt right to accept them. I’d always felt that if I was getting gold or money, I had to work for it and if that meant going out and servicing clients, I was going to do that and that situation also brought with it its’ own complications.

Whereas previously I could manage to have a couple of clients a day which worked out fine for me, I was now suddenly getting bombarded with requests not only from my regulars, but from hundreds of others who weren’t even looking for sex. Most of them simply wanted to meet and talk to me. At first, I took a few of them on but found myself answering all the same questions over and over, most of which I didn’t have a good answer for. They also wanted to touch me because of my faint, but ever present purple glow.

Realizing the requests would just keep coming, I had decided to raise the asking price for my services to see if that would curb it. It had zero effect so I raised my prices a 2nd time that same day to a completely ridiculous amount that amazingly, many people were still more than willing to pay just to meet me. That very day, I had become the most expensive escort in the game, making nearly 5 times as much as the next one below me, all while still being the most highly sought after. Through all this, Reyna was there, looking after me and making sure I didn’t become overwhelmed.

As each day passed, I could see that all of this new found fame and popularity that had been thrust upon me was wearing on her. She was becoming frustrated and irritable. We couldn’t go out and spend our in game days together like we used to. We couldn’t spend time in our rooms without me getting constant alerts about messages, gifts, and service requests. As much as I wanted to appease everyone that came to me looking to talk, I had begun to slip and Reyna, the most precious person to me in Aurora, was quietly slipping out of my grasp. 10 days after I had been granted my title and all the additional responsibilities that came along with it, I wanted to do something nice for Reyna so I took her to a small outdoor cafe so we could have hot cocoa and blueberry muffins while we relaxed in the sun. Little did I know, that date would be her breaking point.

“Hey you fucking whore!” a voice yelled out as Reyna and I sat there trying to enjoy our time together in peace. “Yeah, you at the table! You suck any white dick today?” With that comment, I could tell they were obviously screaming at Reyna, her association with me also adding to her popularity. Thousands more people had been looking into her since we were always seen together. They’d learned about her public fantasies and how she liked to play them out. They’d talked to others that had heard of her and her kinks. They even started a large forum thread on her and made fun of her and demeaned her, calling her fantasies stupid and accusing her of being an attention whore. I knew for the most part Reyna could handle all the negativity, but the fantasy that she’d shared with me had suddenly become the topic of choice among many in the in game community who wanted to know more about her.

“Go away!” Reyna yelled back to him as he stood across the street from us. “Trying to have some peace and quiet with my friend.”

“You mean ‘The Queen?’” he said back to her. “Funny that of all the people in this place she chooses to spend her time with a race play cock whore! That’s your thing, right? You just love those white cocks!”

“Fuck off!” I said, losing my cool with him. I knew Reyna could take care of herself, but he and all the negative attention she and I had gotten over the last ten days had taken it’s toll on me. I’d had enough.

“Uh oh!” he said in a mocking tone which drew the attention of several other players in the general area, calling their attention to Reyna and I. “Queen’s mad, everyone! Look out! She might get her little whore friend to suck all our dicks to stave off the bad guys!”

“You fucker!” I screamed while getting up from my chair. Reyna stood up as well, but not for him. She knew I never liked seeing people come after her or any of our friends and she knew I had no problem getting in someone’s face to settle things.

“Ana, no!” Reyna could see I was livid. “Ana, stop! He’s not worth it!”

“Oh no!” the man said, still in his demeaning and mocking voice. “Our little princess is mad! Better call the knights to save the day!” I’d lost my cool and Reyna knew she had to do something. Knowing we were paired and on “follow” where if one of us went somewhere, the other would auto teleport with them, Reyna teleported us back to my place so we could be away from the troll.

“Ana!” Reyna said to me as soon as we spawned in. “What is happening to you! I asked you to stop and you were ready to kill that guy!”

“He was attacking you!” I said, raising my voice for the first time ever in Reyna’s presence. “I can’t just sit by and let them talk to you like that.”

“I know,” she said, trying to calm me down. I ran my hands through my hair in frustration and ripping out my hair tie allowing my long locks to flow freely.

“I won’t sit by and let them treat you that way,” I said back to her. I pulled my hands from my hair and looked up to the ceiling. I stared upward for several seconds while taking a few deep breathes. The stress of all the attention and the ridicule that had found its’ way to Reyna was becoming too much. I knew something had to give and when I turned around to see Reyna staring at me in tears, I knew we’d reached that moment.

I instantly stepped closer to her but stopped short as she put her hand up in front of her to stop me. I stood there a moment, flabbergasted and unsure of what was happening in that moment. I said nothing to her, our only communication taking place through our locked eyes for over a minute. She began to cry like I’d never seen before. Reyna and I had shared some of our deepest and darkest secrets, many of which brought us to tears. We had become accustomed to consoling each other and picking each other back up through it all, but I’d never seen her cry the way she did that day. After each of our insanely intense sessions or even on days where it was just the two of us, all I thought about or wanted in my life in Aurora was to be with her. I’d grown so attached to her that I had secretly started considering if I should reveal to her who I was in real life. She’d hinted to me that she was considering the same, but I never pushed her on it, only wanting her to do so if she were completely comfortable with it.

“I can’t do this,” she said to me, her eyes beginning to swell. “This is just…it’s too much. I’m…a burden on you. Since you got your title, it’s been non stop and I can’t…I just…god damn it.” She was having a hard time expressing herself, understandably so. Again, I stepped to her and once more I was rebuffed when she lifted her hand to stop me.

“Reyna,” I said, hoping to assuage her worries. “It won’t always be like this. They’ll eventually get bored with it and move onto something else. It’s just like getting something new to look at and play with. It’s shiny and new for only so long until they move onto the next thing. It will get better. We can do this!”

"I can't!" Reyna cried out in despair as the tears rolled down her cheeks. “I know you think it will settle down and things will get better, but people like that guy today…they’ll always be here and they will always say these horrible things. You can’t fight them all. It’s impossible!”

“But you didn’t do anything wrong!” I said to her, wishing she would let me take her in my arms.

“They don’t see it that way,” she said back to me. “To them, I’ll always be ‘that race play whore’ that somehow managed to get in your good graces. They’ll keep talking and spreading rumors and eventually more people will talk and they’ll wonder about you and why you’re always with me! They’ll know! They’ll figure out what we do together.”

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