Page 12 of Hate Mates

A sad reality I never thought I’d have to face, but here I am.

I slump forward. “You’re right.”

“Of course, I am,” she trills, grabbing my laptop off the coffee table, one of the few personal items I salvaged during my surprise eviction. “We’ve fixed your housing situation, and there are hundreds of tech companies in Silicon Valley in need of an experienced personal assistant, so that’s all but checked off, too. That leaves only one thing…”

“If you’re referring to my love life, forget it. That road is closed.”

“Who said anything about love?” She flashes her perfect white teeth, a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes that sets me on edge. “I’m talking about lust, baby…dirty, filthy, no-strings-attached lust.”

She’s got to be joking.

“What the hell, Maeve?” I shout, flinging my leg off the couch, knocking the half empty bottle off the table and onto the floor. I take a heroic leap off the couch and crawl after it as it rolls across the marble. “I’m not screwing some random guy.”

“While getting plowed in the bathroom of a bar might do you a world of good, what I’m suggesting is tamer, more anonymous, and requires a hell of a lot more imagination.” I pause on all fours as she opens my laptop and enters my password. After a few seconds of manic typing, she sits back with a dramatic Vanna White-style gesture at the screen. “Ta-da!”

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s ClickBait, a new, fantasy, role play sexting app. The company that owns it reached out and offered a lot of zeros for me to promote it to my followers.” She gives me a wide, Cheshire Cat grin. “But my best friend needs a job and some excitement, so I figure it’s a win-win.”

Awin-win? She’s lost her damn mind. I’m a personal assistant who hides behind a desk tucked inside a cubicle. She’s the top influencer whose entire life plays out online. This is not a simple trade-off. It’s like dropping a mouse in a snake tank and expecting it to adapt.

“No. In fact,hellno.” Crawling back to the table, I plunk the bottle down and rest my forearms on the edge. “AndClickBait? Who the hell named it, a bunch of frat boys with a pocketful of roofies?”

“No, a tech company with one hell of an advertising budget,” she says, her gaze sharpening. “Come on. What do you have to lose?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe my dignity?”

“Think of it like an interactive version of those romance novels you used to read. Before that idiot entered your life, you were obsessed with them. Remember how you used to talk my ear off about all your favorite ‘book boyfriends’ and how unfair it was that they didn’t exist in real life?”

Of course, I do. Fletcher felt threatened by them, so I stopped reading. Dark romances were my favorite. There was just something about the raw possessiveness of a villain that left me weak in the knees.

“See,” Maeve accuses, pointing a long, red nail at me, “that’s what I’m talking about. You have that goofy smile on your face right now. Those book boyfriends made you confident. Back then, you owned your sexuality. Then, you got with a dick nozzle who thought fucking you missionary style on a new surface was‘thinking out of the box’.” She curls her fingers in air quotes, a scowl on her face.

I wince. Three years of boring sex with a selfish man wore out a lot of vibrators. Getting shot down every time I suggested something new and exciting chipped away at my self-esteem.

I frown. “Things were different back then.”

“No,youwere different,” she counters, tapping a nail on the screen. “But I bet this app can find the old Izzy and bring her back.”

“Oh, sure.” I roll my eyes. “Because a robot knows how to get a girl hot.”

“It’s not AI, smartass. It’s a database of real men ready to bring those same book boyfriends to life in a way you never thought possible.” She sighs. “Look, your confidence took a hit. I get it.” She taps a button and an art-drawn image of a dangerous-looking man in a black suit pops up. “But what better way to get it back than with a mafia boss.” She scrolls again, and another avatar appears. “Or a billionaire dom or a werewolf shifter or even”—turning the screen around, she grins and waggles her eyebrows—“Lucifer himself.”

Something in my stomach clenches. I expected ram horns and sharp teeth, but the image of Lucifer is nothing like that. He’s in a hooded black cloak with black motorcycle gloves, his face painted black and white like a skull. But it’s his eyes that have me mesmerized—stark blue and soulless, almost as if looking at them too long will turn you to stone.

“Hello, Earth to Izzy…”

I look up to find her head cocked and lips pursed in smug satisfaction.

Crap. How long was I staring?

Sweepingwhat’s left of my pride off the floor, I climb back onto the couch. “It’s clear you’ve never seen aDatelineSpecial.”

She gives me a patronizing chuckle. “Stop being dramatic. There’s no danger of ending up zip-tied in someone’s trunk. It’s a perfectly safe, fantasy role-play site. Just two anonymous people getting their freak on behind the safety of a screen.”

“I don’t know. It just seems so…”

“Dirty?” she says, lifting both eyebrows. At my reluctant nod, she sets the laptop on the coffee table. “Yeah, that’s kind of the whole point.” There’s an awkward silence as she engages in more furious typing, then retrieves her discarded phone and stands. “There, I’ve made you an account and linked it to my credit card.”

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