They fucked for half the night, and he came in her pussy a second time, but when he woke up sometime before noon from the light creeping in between the curtains, she was gone. Which he certainly appreciated. He’d much rather walk back to where he parked his car than deal with the awkward conversations that inevitably followed spur-of-the-moment sex. 

When Matthew reached for his phone on the nightstand, he found one of her business cards sitting on top of it where it would be impossible to miss. He wasn’t sure what he expected when he flipped it over, but what he found was a little heart and a small note. “This was fun. Consider it the only thing you’ll ever get for free from a lawyer. Next time it’s going to cost you dinner.”

That made him smile, but it also made him wonder. It was pretty rare to get anything from a lawyer, but sex from a hot one? That seemed to be about as rare as winning the lottery. Was it really possible that Alejandra was turned on by the idea of men beating up rapists, or was there something more to this? He suspected Tomé, of course, but he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to ask her. 

“Excuse me, but are you bewitching every woman who comes across my path to make them want me even though I already told you not to?” he said to himself as he put down the card and reached for his phone. “Yeah - that will totally work.”

What he found on his phone killed that whole train of thought. His notifications had been completely blown up overnight. Fortunately, he’d messaged his dad to tell him that he wouldn’t be coming home tonight, so there were no frantic messages from them, but it seemed that the story of what had happened was all over already. Normally when he woke up, he had a flirty message or maybe a nude from one of the women he’d been banging. Today was no exception there, but in addition to that, there were tons of messages from different guys and girls asking him if he’d really gotten arrested and if he’d really started a fight and Jason Morgan’s house party last night. 

Matthew had no idea who Jason Morgan was, of course, but as he read each message, he was more interested in all the wild theories. Some of them were pretty close to the mark, of course, though no one seemed to know who he’d rescued, others were way crazier, and he got a good laugh reading through the list as they got more and more unlikely. He’d found a guy sleeping with his ex-girlfriend, and he’d tried to kill the dude. He’d gotten too drunk and started fighting people that tried to reign him in. Someone insulted his shoes or his outfit. The whole thing had been a devil’s three-way that had gone totally wrong. 

Some people thought he’d been there with Maria, which made a strange sort of sense if you thought about the whole thing in terms of the game telephone. Hell - the way things were going, that would be a new rumor: he’d been fucking Maria when her boyfriend burst in on them, and then Matthew had to fight the guy with his dick hanging out. He’d heard crazier shit. 

But when he got to Maria’s message, he stopped laughing and read. ‘Hey. I’m so glad that you were there last night; I don’t know what we would have done without you, Matt. I tried calling once I got out of the police station, but you were probably asleep, so I just wanted to let you know. Annie is fine, and I told the police everything I could to make them believe that you were the hero in all this.’ 

‘So, hero, why don’t you call me tonight, and maybe I can reward you properly with drinks at my place? After everything you’ve been through, I feel like this is the least you deserve….’

He set his phone down on the bed beside him and just stared up at the ceiling. Was everyone trying to fuck him now, he wondered? Was it even possible to juggle this many women at once? Even if he only fucked them one night a week each, he was fairly sure that he was running out of days in the week. 

Matthew took a shower after that because the longer he laid in this bed reeking of sex, the more his mind was going to run in circles until something broke. So, for almost ten minutes, he basked in a nice steamy shower until his mind shut off, his body relaxed, and he felt clean. He could worry about who he was fucking next and the consequences of all that another day. Right now, he just wanted to get home and get the big reveal over regarding his black eye and split lip. 

So, he checked out of his hotel and spent the next half hour walking back to the scene of the crime. His car was right where he’d left it, and it was only after he noticed that his backpack was still sitting on the floorboard of the passenger seat that he almost gave himself a heart attack as he realized that anyone could have stolen Tomé from him while he’d been away. 

It took him a second to calm down before he could start driving, and he vowed that from now on, he would be more careful and attentive. 

“It would have been a cheaper mistake to leave all my money in unmarked bills for someone to steal,” he muttered to himself as he tried to mute the fury he felt over such a stupid mistake. 

At home, his step-sister saw him before he even had a chance to tell anyone and said, “See, I told you he was in a fight,” to his stepmother, who was sitting in the living room. 

“Did you win?” she asked.

“Definitely,” Matthew said, not offering up any details about the where or the why. “I’m fine, by the way.”

“You lose your job, then you get in a fight? Doesn’t sound fine to me,” Margaret said with a shrug, barely looking up from the TV, “but that’s your Father’s problem, not mine.”

Matthew clenched his fists briefly but said nothing and continued upstairs. The only woman he wanted to talk to was in the book he was carrying, not sitting in that living room judging him. 

“Tomé - what the hell is going on?” Matthew asked as soon as he’d closed the door and pulled out the book. 

‘Going on? Nothing has changed, Matthew. You asked how you could get with the one that got away, and this is the long, winding path that leads you there.’

“I was going to ask about that too,” he said, “but that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, why does EVERYONE suddenly want to fuck me or fuck with me?”

‘Are you saying that you think I have something to do with this?’ Tomé seemed to be feigning some kind of innocence, but he wasn’t sure if the spirit in the book could lie to him or not, honestly. ‘Matthew, you were always a handsome young man and inches away from being able to accomplish this on your own. All it took was the confidence and experience of a few women and a couple new outfits, and now you’re exactly what the women in your life are looking for.’

Matthew was skeptical, but he had no idea how to go about voicing those concerns to a book without taking the risk that he might upset the spirit inside, so he swallowed it down and said, ‘Can you promise me that you’re telling the truth and that you haven’t put a spell on any of these women? Please, Tomé? For my peace of mind?’

‘Of course, Master, she wrote smoothly without delay. I promise that the only person that’s been the recipient of my spells is you and that I would never lie or cast something without my owner’s approval. I can’t. That’s where my power comes from, after all.’

“Okay,” he agreed, somewhat mollified. “Thank you. Now tell me more about Annie; what’s the plan there exactly?”

‘Of course, Master. I’d do anything for the man that finally 

breathed life into me after years of rotting on a shelf. As to the woman - you know that sometimes I can’t give you all the details. That would only ruin things in motion and make future plans even harder.’

“Not even a little hint about what’s coming up next?” Simon asked. “School is going to be wrapping up in a few weeks, and I thought I might want to do something big to celebrate, you know since I’m rich, and I’ll be moving soon and everything.”

‘That sounds like a lovely idea Master. A trip might be just the thing to find the right moment for sparks to fly’ Tomé’s words didn’t say anything, but Matthew did notice that she agreed to something that was ever so slightly different than what he’d said. Was that a hint? He was pretty sure, but he wasn’t about to dig in further to find out.