A New Take on a New Old Story

The smell of chlorine mixed with **** flooded Kevin’s mind with memories sharper than anything a decade old had a right to be. It took deliberate effort to still the part of his mind that clamored against them, and yet more to deliberately skip past the question of whether accepting them counted as collaboration.

It didn’t matter in the end—if he was going to give Penny’s idea a good faith effort, he needed the framework the memories provided, so he let himself drift back and tried not to worry at how easy it was.

Kevin hadn’t wanted to come to Miami. He certainly hadn’t wanted to stay in this hotel, but by the time the CIO had decided the conference merited his in-person presence, the three conferences that weekend had booked every location that met the company’s travel policy requirements.

The travel exemption had gone all the way up to the comptroller, and for thirty glorious minutes Kevin had assumed that would be the end of things. Then the approval went through and he realized he was stuck.

He hadn’t found out that his company had pulled out of the conference at the last minute until he’d landed, and by then the whole trip was paid for. Any changes he made would’ve been on his own dime, and as tempting as it was to turn right back around and march back to the ticket counter, money was tight enough that month that he’d accepted the vacation on the company dollar against his will.

Neon light turned the faces of the beautiful men and women partying here into something both more and less than human, and in the present day, Kevin remembered that he’d taken inspiration from the moment to describe an encounter with some partying Fae nobles in a game he ran a few months later.

He cast his eyes across the crowd with a slow deliberation he hadn’t possessed the first time through. The music was loud enough that conversation had to be held somewhere just shy of a shout, and the wall of noise pressured him, tried to **** him to hurry, but this time around he knew what he was looking for.

Knew why he was here.

He spotted her outside, through the open wall that led to the rooftop pool that overlooked the city, standing at the side of a group of three women who shared so many features it was impossible to mistake them for anything other than family.

Gorgeous. Blonde. Bodies built not to walk the runway, but to remind sailors of everything they’d left behind at port.

Three of them were in their early twenties, and the only reason Kevin could pick out the decade younger version of Penny from her sisters was the lack of cruelty in her eyes. Her sisters and mother showed their teeth from time to time, but the expression was something less than a smile and only slightly more subtle than a threat.

The oldest wore a cocktail dress that promised Penny would keep her figure well past her fifties. Her sisters wore swimsuits that wore the razor’s edge between advertisement and scandal as aposematism. Penny’s figure was flattered by a champagne colored dress that hugged her from chest to thigh and looked modest only by comparison.

The crowd of men arrayed around them stayed at arm’s length because stepping closer put them at risk of being judged unworthy and banished, but moving away was unthinkable.

Penny caught his eyes as he looked at her and her face lit up with the only real smile in the room.

This hadn’t happened the first time. In his memories, Kevin had noticed the women—it was impossible not to—but hadn’t let himself linger. He’d told himself that it was because he didn’t want to deal with the drama the pretty people always seemed to carry and pretended not to hear the voice that told him he wasn’t good enough to stand near them anyway.

Penny had been the one to approach him, fifteen minutes later, when the bartender had finally gotten around to pouring him his beer. He hadn’t even realized that she was a part of the group he’d noticed, at first, since the idea was so far-fetched it hadn’t even occurred to him.

Deliberately not retracing his steps, Kevin took a more active role this time. Smiled back, waited until he was sure she recognized the expression, then deliberately tilted his head towards the bar in an invitation.

Penny nodded her acceptance, and the pair set out to navigate a crowd dense enough to worry a fire marshal, until they were close enough to talk. A minute or two later they met up at one end of the bar, and Kevin wasn’t surprised to discover the bartender immediately acknowledge them as the blonde’s presence made a tangible difference in the social structure of the room. The man didn’t move in their direction instantly, but the pecking order of service had changed.

“You come here often?” Kevin turned his focus on Penny and softened the overused line with the humor using it ironically required, even as the volume he needed to use to be heard over the music tried to strip it of its warmth.

On someone who wasn’t already inclined to listen, it probably wouldn’t have landed, but Penny answered with a smirk that told him she knew what he was doing as she fired back, “Does that line ever work?”

From someone else the question might have been loaded with venom, but while the noise and the light and the crowd layered themselves over the siren, they couldn’t cover up the sympathy which had led her to break from her family. The mirth in her eyes told Kevin to play along, and he grinned as he answered, “That is yet to be determined. I’ve never used it before, but the tropes say that it’s what you say to a beautiful woman when you meet her at the bar. That’s far enough outside of my experiences that I thought I’d try to find out if there was merit to the approach.”

It turned out that there was—assuming the beautiful woman in question was inclined to talk to you in the first place.

The two ordered drinks, and this time around Kevin went for a cocktail he could sip rather than a beer designed to advertise his masculinity. Penny’s gin and tonic came out with a slice of lime, a dozen juniper berries and a sprig of rosemary submerged beneath the surface. The pair stared at it wordlessly for a few beats of music, then burst out laughing.

Things got easier from there.

Kevin remembered being overwhelmed by Penny’s presence. He’d had a casual girlfriend and an open relationship at the time—though a different set of memories informed him that while he’d crushed on Clara at the table, he’d never managed to ask her out. He’d come to the bar because he was stuck in the city and she’d warned him that he’d regret not taking the chance to see what the night life was like.

He hadn’t expected to actually talk to a woman, let alone take one back to his hotel room. When Penny had approached him, it had left him so off balance that he’d never managed to voice the question of ‘why me?’

Even when she’d taken him to his hotel room after no more than twenty minutes of conversation, he’d been too wrapped up in the hormonal surge of attraction to wonder why she was trying to get him out of the bar.

Penny didn’t rush, this time, and Kevin could feel the difference. It was no less charming to have a gorgeous woman show pay that much attention, but this time when he asked her questions, the siren was willing to let her guard down an answer them.

They talked, and they got to know each other, and whatever awkwardness might have been interjected by the format of Harem Hotel was buried beneath the chemistry of two people learning their personalities meshed better than either of them expected.

Kevin told Penny about growing up in the Midwest. About being the kid all the others branded as ‘the smart one.’ Never bullied in a way that left bruises, but never unaware of the distance between himself and his peers he’d never been able to close.

When she told him about the rotating cast of men that trailed like so much wreckage in her mother’s wake, it wasn’t to make it a competition, it was to highlight the shared sense of isolation. The two had approached it from vectors that shared nothing in common, but both knew what it felt like to feel like the only person in a room who knew what was going on, hate it, and be powerless to stop it anyway.

They moved to the railing on the far side of the pool when they got their second set of drinks. The music was quieter there—still loud, but they didn’t have to shout—and when one of Penny’s sisters tried to take the opportunity to poach an interesting find, she found herself stopped flat by the glare of a man who’d had more women that were more impressive, more imposing, and more attractive begging for his attention earlier in that day.

She turned around before she got within ten feet of him, and when Kevin turned his attention back on Penny, he almost lost himself in her smile. “Do you want to get out of here?”

The question shouldn’t have caught him by surprise, yet Kevin was astonished to discover his heart was racing when he heard it. He grinned. “There is nothing I’d like more.”

The elevator doors were closed when they reached them. Kevin hit the call button, turned to look at Penny, and was surprised to find his back against the wall a moment later as she kissed him.

He’d kissed her before, but not like this.

Never like this. As the siren’s body pressed against his own—as her hand slipped up the back of his neck to tangle through his hair—Kevin rediscovered the difference between desire and obligation.

Within minutes of the show’s start, her tongue had invaded his mouth to activate Harem Hotel’s translation magic. However awkward and stiff it had been, there had still been a part of Kevin that appreciated a gorgeous blonde’s lips on his own.

The memory evaporated like so much morning dew as the heat of Penny’s passion hit it like a summer morning sun. She devoured him, soft moans escaping her lips as she lost herself in the first moment of genuine human connection she’d experienced not just since the start of the show, but for several years prior.

Kevin was stunned only for a moment before he returned the kiss with fervor. His hands slipped up the back of her dress to touch the bare skin of her shoulders, his eyes drifting shut as he lost himself to touch and taste and the passion of the moment.

The elevator dinged, the sound of laughter from within broke through the haze of desire soon enough that Penny’s lips broke from Kevin’s before the doors opened. Her body remained pressed to his, though, and the trio of young women that stepped into the hallway glanced over, tittered with laughter, then headed down the hallway towards the bar.

Penny reached out, grabbed Kevin’s tie, and used it to lead him into the now empty elevator. The doors slid shut as he hit the button for his floor, and her lips found his again before it had time to descend.

A few minutes later, breathless, the pair stumbled out into the hallway. Kevin’s room was at the far end of the corridor—blessedly free of noise from the elevator, but obnoxiously distant now.

Penny shot a sly glance at Kevin, then suddenly took off at a half run towards it. It wasn’t the kind of exertion her body was made for, but the adrenaline of the moment meant that when he caught up to her at the door the faint sweat they’d each built felt more like a prelude than an indictment.

Kevin took the initiative this time and leaned down to kiss her once more. He tried to keep it short and split his attention between her mouth and his efforts to retrieve the key card from his pocket, but it was hard to focus on anything other than Penny and he was slightly breathless when he finally succeeded at his secondary task.

The door beeped and the pair slid through together. The room within should have been innocuous. Kevin had only arrived a few hours before, and while the hotel was more fashion forward than the corporate-standard he would normally have booked, it was still just a hotel room. It contained his laptop, his half-unpacked suitcase, a dresser, mirror, bathroom, and a queen sized bed.

It also contained a rush of memories that finally succeeded in stealing the momentum from Kevin and Penny as Lily’s implanted weekend caught up to them. The season’s Master glanced at the bed, then at the voluptuous blonde beside him, and his mind supplied the image of her on her knees before him, champagne colored dress shoved down around her waist as she buried his cock between her impressive breasts.

Her face told him that, while she might not have remembered the exact same moment, her mind wasn’t too far from his. The flush the siren wore wasn’t just from exertion, nor were her lips parted because she was winded from the jog. Kevin broke character. They’d pretended, for the evening, to be two young adults meeting for the first time, but the concern in his voice wasn’t from memory, but from the present. “Penny, I—you know you don’t have to do anything, right?”

A moment later, his back hit the wall as she pressed herself against him. Her hands slid up his chest and tugged at the tie, loosening the knot until it slipped free and fluttered to the floor beside him. Her fingers worked at the buttons of his shirt next, working by feel as her bright blue eyes stared into his while she pleaded, “Let this just be us. Forget about the show, about everything. If nothing else is real, let me turn this night into something real.”

Kevin kissed her again, and lost himself in the fire of Penny’s passion. He gasped into her mouth a moment later when her hands worked his zipper free so one could slip inside. The fingers that wrapped around his cock had none of the uncertainty or inexperience of youth, and if there was a performance to her movements it was meant only to convey that she wanted every part of what she was doing with the whole of her heart.

There were very few words in what happened next. The pair stumbled their way to the bed in a tangle of limbs, neither willing to take their hands off the other for long enough to make undressing a clean affair. Kevin fell onto the bed because his pants hadn’t made it down past his ankles, and while Penny managed to kick her shoes free her dress was pulled up over her hips instead of removed.

When Penny slid forward to straddle Kevin, he felt the heat of her through the thin scrap of fabric which was all that separated them. The moan she let out when she felt his length trapped against her reached deep inside him and awakened something that had been buried in men since long before the discovery of fire.

Penny pulled her panties aside with frantic fingers and rolled her hips to capture and impale herself on Kevin in a single motion. Her desperation and hunger drove him as much as the feel of her slick heat around him, and as soon as his lips were parted to let out a moan of his own he found them covered again by the siren’s hungry lips.

The pair lost themselves in a sea of passion. Any memories that might have surfaced, any comparison to implanted memories was washed away by the tidal **** of Penny’s motion. If Kevin held any lingering doubts about the singer’s sincerity, those shattered when she let out a keening cry as she crested her first orgasm and her entire body quivered atop and around him.

It wasn’t enough, and as soon as her body was able to cooperate she resumed riding him as though **** to share with him the pleasure that threatened to overwhelm her. When her movement grew frantic enough for a heavy breast to slip free, it took no more than a moment before she pulled her dress down so it bunched around her waist. Penny arched her back and ground down on him, and the sight of her breasts blocking the hotel room’s single overhead light like cliffs drowning out the sun seared itself into Kevin’s mind as his own orgasm hit him hard, hot, and fast.

He emptied himself inside her, unable to fathom even the concept of holding on a moment longer. Penny went still when she felt the first hot spurt of cum splash inside her, then let out another note of hungry longing as her channel clamped down on him and pulsed with rhythmic hungry need.

She collapsed atop him, and Kevin found himself drowning as her tits enveloped his face. Soft, warm, slick with her sweat and overwhelmingly present, he found himself pulled from the depths of his ecstasy by the incongruous thought that if this was how sirens drowned their victims, it was no wonder sailors couldn’t pull themselves free.

A laugh that was as much joy as it was humor burbled its way past his lips, only for Penny to join him with a breathless giggle of her own a moment later. Her hips rolled slowly as she reveled in the feel not just of Kevin’s cock—still trapped within her folds—but the hot and sticky sensation of the cum that stuck to her like the answer to a question she didn’t know she needed to ask.

She lifted herself enough to shift her weight back, sliding her chest against Kevin’s through the open front of his shirt—he’d never managed to shrug it free—so that she could kiss him again, slow and hot and hungry enough to show that even though the edge had been taken off, she still had room for dessert.