Courts and Cabals 2 G.S. D'Moore (the little red hen read aloud .txt) 📖

strings to make it happen,” Lilith smiled as well as I slipped open the envelope, and pulled out a laminated pass.

The letters VIP, and underneath it, Very Important Penis, were in a bold yellow font on a backstage, all access pass to the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo starting January second and running through the fourth.

“I . . .” I wasn’t sure how to respond. No one had ever given me a pass to a porn convention.

“Dani thought it would be a good idea to get you out to see Vegas,” Lilith explained. Despite everything we’d just gone through with her insecurities, and her mother, she seemed totally cool with me going to see a bunch of porn stars in a VIP setting. She was just awesome like that.

“Wait,” my brain caught up to what she was saying. Chugging a couple cups of coffee with whiskey, on an empty stomach, was starting to hit me. “How am I supposed to be going out at all? I can’t leave the hotel.” The details on the pass said it wasn’t being held at Caesars.

“That’s the beauty of this,” Dani plopped into the seat on my other side. “This is the carrot, but make no mistake, the stick is coming.”

“You’ve got training to attend between now and January,” Lilith decrypted Dani’s statement. “If you succeed, you can go; with the proper protection.” I didn’t think she was talking about condoms. “If you fail then you can’t, and trust me, you don’t want to miss this.”

That left me with more questions than answers, but no matter how much I pushed, they wouldn’t give me any more details. “Fine,” I relented, and pulled out the blue Tiffany’s box.

Dani’s eyes went wide, and she looked at Lilith. Lilith looked at the box with trepidation. When I just whipped the box out, I didn’t consider what it looked like. Slowly, I slid the box over to her. I didn’t get down on one knee or anything like that. She accepted the box with hesitation, and flipped open the lid.

The unease melted off her body and she smiled. “I love them,” she pulled out the earrings I’d picked out for her.

“I don’t really know much about jewelry,” I confessed, and what I did know was the more expensive the better. Caesars had a store in its shopping section, so I was able to have Fern go down and pick up something I ordered. “I thought these would match your eyes.”

I’d picked out gold earrings – not the big hoops that people tended to favor nowadays – but something a little more conservative. I figured she could wear these during her cabal business. Each had several emeralds inlaid in them in some design the jeweler assured me was classy and modern.

Apparently, I’d hit the nail on the head, because Lilith was beaming like a kid on Christmas morning as she slipped them into her ears. Dani gave me a side look and nodded a job well done.

“Now where’s my gift?” Dani crossed her arms under her impressive cleavage and tapped her foot.

“It’s in the mail,” I replied. It was a gag gift, something very Dani, that I thought she would enjoy.

She was okay with that. We settled in to talk about nothing for the next hour, and had a few more cups of coffee just because we could. It was like we were all back at St. Vincent’s, hanging out in the student center, and it put my heart at ease. At some point, I’d reached over and taken Lilith’s hand. She never let it go.

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. Peter was walking by and poked his head in. “Did you hear the news?” he asked.

The only news I’d heard was a too-graphic description of what Dani had walked in on a couple of imps doing down in the gym last night. The words banana dick had been thrown around a lot more than I was comfortable with.

“Your mother made her decision, and she chose Cam,” he gave me a nod of respect, which must be my own Christmas gift from the Pegasus.

I didn’t know he’d just thrown another grenade in the middle of my life.

Chapter 10

Lilith reacted so fast I thought she might be bipolar. One second, she was laughing about banana dicks, and the next, her face was colder than the iceberg that sunk the Titanic. She jumped to her feet and rushed after Peter. I could hear her yelling from somewhere else on the floor.

“What just happened?” I asked Dani, who was shaking her head.

“Every year, Venus selects a lucky cabal member to share an evening with,” she began.

“Oh shit,” that explained a lot.

“Don’t get me wrong. It’s a tremendous honor to get one-on-one time with the boss. Most people in the cabal never even meet her,” Dani seemed to be choosing her words carefully. Since she never did that, I suspected she was aware of the difficulties Lilith and I were having. “To be clear, this doesn’t mean sex. I’ve known a few people who said they had a lovely evening full of delightful conversation. Sure,” she backtracked a bit, “some said there was mind-blowing sex involved, but some don’t even remember what happened at all. It’s all up to what the winner and Venus want.”

“Winner?” that implied there was some sort of contest.

“It’s a lottery they hold every year, and . . . I kind of entered you as a joke,” Dani grimaced as rage flashed across my face.

I clenched my fists tight enough my knuckles popped. “You’re killing me, Dani,” I said after taking a few deep breaths. “Lilith and I had just fixed things.”

“Yeah, I saw her grinding on your junk,” the dwarf looked legitimately upset, so I didn’t rub it in. “All you need to do is resist Venus. No