Page 118 of Impromptu Match

A tickling sensation on my bare chest drew my gaze down, and I stared in mild horror at the pink love-heart pasties covering my nipples, sparkly tassels dangling from them. Slowly looking back up at my reflection in the mirror, I tried to remember anything from last night. Any detail at all.

All it did was give me a headache, so I gave up and shuffled over to the shower.

This definitely wasn’t as bad as the last time, I decided as I peeled off the pasties with a wince and got under the water. I was hungover as hell, yes, but at least I wasn’t throwing up. Maybe we’d been sensible and drunk some water before bed. Plus, we’d eaten a big meal this time. Not just ice cream mixed with rum.

Holt was still passed out spread-eagled on the bed when I got back into the bedroom. He had a single sock on, and his smoky black eyeshadow was smeared over his cheeks. A rush of overwhelming affection pierced the shakiness in my stomach, and I perched on the edge of the bed to smooth his wild hair back from his face, then leaned down to kiss his chin, realising too late that it was coated in drool.

He snorted and smacked his lips, then groaned and rubbed his eye as he rolled into me and buried his face against my hip. We had plenty of time before I had to get to work, so I let him sleep and got up to get dressed—slowly, having to stop every few seconds as my head swam. As I was putting on my socks, I noticed the remnants of a stamp that hadn’t completely washed off in the shower on the back of my hand. Peering closer at it, I could only make out the words “Queens of” followed by an illegible smear.

We’d gone somewhere? I frowned, trying to remember as I stood and tugged my pants up my legs. Looking at the stamp again, I had a hazy vision of a big, meaty hand taking mine to press the ink into my skin. A bald head gleaming under neon lights as a leather daddy winked at me and said, “Have fun, babydoll.”

Where had we gone? Was that where the top hat had come from? I stared at it, trying to remember which of us had been wearing it. Holt, I finally decided, picturing him snatching it off someone’s head as they passed him. In a… bar? A club?

And… he’d been on a stage at some point. I remembered staring up at him, grinning so wide my cheeks hurt. Then I remembered… getting on stage with him. Holt pressing a microphone into my hands. The two of us singing an eighties power ballad, hideously off-key. Extremely drunk. Thinking we sounded amazing.

Oh god. Karaoke.

After buttoning my shirt and stuffing the tails into my slacks, I grabbed my hot pink tie. It felt fitting to wear it today—the day I would be quitting HutSec. Because I was going to work for Goliaths as their marketing manager. Excitement chased away the nausea in the pit of my stomach, and I grinned over at Holt still passed out in the bed.

We needed coffee. I wanted to remember every moment of today, and hopefully recall what else we’d got up to last night. I got the sense that others had been with us at the karaoke place. I was now remembering a thick, muscular arm flung over my shoulders while I watched Holt on stage, a big body swaying into mine and a loud, brash voice singing along with him.

When I left the bedroom, I stopped dead at the sight of a tangle of muscular limbs on my couch. A round butt in a tight, short leather skirt, with a burgundy tail poking out through a discreet slit and a big, bat-like wing draped over the back of the couch, with a different grey one coming from below.

Gabe was passed out on top of Biff on my couch. Oh, good lord, they’d come with us. And so had…

I jumped when I spotted Kit curled up, fast asleep, on top of my refrigerator, their tarsal claws twitching like the paws of a dreaming dog and their big moth wings tightly folded around them. Vince was stretched out on the floor between the kitchen counters, a champagne bottle still clasped to his chest and his inhumanly long tongue lolling out of his mouth. For some reason, he was once again dressed only in a towel. One of my towels. I must’ve let him shower here, I guessed…?

A pair of hairy goat legs were sticking out from under my small dining table. The snores coming from Heidi were giving Holt’s a run for their money. I almost screamed when I noticed the severed head resting in a bowl half-filled with popcorn, my heart rate calming only marginally as I spotted the rest of Dullahan Dan curled up under the window.

Oh god. There were more champagne bottles littering the floor in here. And red roses everywhere. Dan’s body was hugging a big blow-up penis against his chest like a stuffed toy, one of Gabe’s enormous platform heels had slipped off the tangle of feet dangling over the armrest of the couch and I was pretty sure Biff was only in his underwear.

Well. We’d certainly… got up to something last night. Tiptoeing over empty bottles and various body parts, I manoeuvred around Vince’s passed out body to put on a pot of coffee. I was pretty sure we’d all need it.

Wincing at the creak it let out, I opened the dishwasher as quietly as possible to get some clean mugs. Just as I was leaning down to grab them, I heard a grunt from below, followed by…

“Mmm, that’s a hell of a sight to wake up to.”

Straightening in a rush, I whirled around to see Vince struggling upright and scrubbing his face as he grinned up at me sleepily.

A bark of nervous laughter escaped me, which made Kit snort themselves awake and almost fall off the fridge.

“Um, m-morning.” I quickly grabbed the mugs and stepped away from Vince.

“Wha’appened?” Kit slurred, still half asleep. Maybe still even drunk.

“Taylor the human knows how to party.” Vince slowly got to his feet, seeming unconcerned when his loosely knotted towel almost slipped off. He just winked at me and lazily readjusted it. “Whoops.”

I swallowed, turning back to stare at the coffee, willing it to drip faster into the pot. “Do you, um, remember what we… did?”

“Oh yeah. Takes a hell of a lot to get a ghoul blackout drunk,” Vince drawled, leaning back against the counter beside me. “We drank a lot of champagne, but not enough for that.”

“We went to a karaoke bar, right?” My brow wrinkled as I tried to remember more.

Vince chuckled. “Yeah. Well, no. We went to karaoke night at a drag bar.” He nodded over at Gabe and Biff on the couch. “Gabe and Corey were performing.”

I looked around, wondering how the hell I’d missed the gigantic orc in here, but I couldn’t see him.

“Corey didn’t come back here with us,” Vince told me. “Said he needed his beauty sleep. He and Carl went home.”

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