Page 6 of Invade Me

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.

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