Oh, my sweet lord, oh heavenly father. Has my time finally come? Am I really about to get my first ever kiss from a real life (sort of) female?

  As I lean over the bar counter in the middle of this noisy room with my eyes closed, I can feel BB’s breath on my lips, and it’s making my heart race like crazy.

  [Heart rate 140 BPM. Automatic system shutdown if heart rate reaches 150 BPM.]

  Calm down, Rev! This is the biggest moment of your life, you don’t want to blow it by despawning here!

  She’s getting closer, I can feel it! Her breath’s getting hotter. Soon, our lips will touch, and the angels will sing, and—!

  Chomp!

  “Oi!”

  I jerk back, nose throbbing where BB bit me right on the schnoz!

  “What the heck was that for?” I demand, tears in my eyes, both of pain and disappointment. But she only laughs at me, holding her middle.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she says, also crying, though for very different reasons. “You looked so funny, I couldn’t resist.”

  “Wow,” I say, looking down at her, feeling betrayed. “Just, wow.”

  “You’re no mad at me, are you?” she asks, wiping the tears from her eyes.

  “Mad? No, of course not. Why the hell would I be mad that you pretended to kiss me just so you could bite me on the nose?!”

  BB gets a funny little pout that melts a little of my righteous fury. “I was only playing with you. I wouldn’t play with you if I didn’t like you.”

  “Wait, you…like me?”

  She pouts more, her cheeks warm and her eyes shift coyly back to her drink. “I thought that was obvious…”

  “You’re messing with me right now.”

  “Is that how it seems?”

  Hell if I know! I’ve got no experience with stuff like this at all… All I know is my heart races whenever I see her, and I’m in danger of despawning half of the time we’re together. But all of that, it probably means nothing to a girl like her… A girl like her, dressing and acting the way she does, she’s probably been with a dozen guys, already…

  “Whatever,” I say, frustrated, turning to go. “I haven’t got time to mess around with you.”

  “Rev,” she calls after me, just one syllable, but it stops me in my tracks.

  “What?”

  “Let’s…let’s get a room…”

  DATHUNK! Is the sound my heart makes.

  [Heart rate 147 BPM. Automatic system shutdown if heart rate reaches 150 BPM.]

  Breathe, Rev. Breathe.

  “Why?” I ask her, turning back to find her glancing shyly up at me again with those big, shiny eyes.

  “Are you really going to make me say it out loud? In front of all these people?”

  “Yeah,” I say, swallowing. “Say it right and don’t stutter. And don’t you dare lie to me.”

  She’s blushing again. She can’t fake the blush, right?

  Gesturing that I should lower my head a little so I can hear, she says into my ear, in a voice that’s barely above a whisper, “I’m like, totally into you. Let’s spend the night together.”

  GULP!

  A whole night with BB? Can this be real?

  But I was supposed to do my Charis quest tonight, the sensible part of my brain reminds me, unbidden. It’s why I got Sherbie out of the way. It’s why I came to this town in the first plac—

  Just then, BB gives my ear the tiniest nip, and it sends all my hormones into raging overdrive.

  Charis? Charis who? Charis can wait!

  “You gonna make me wait forever after a confession like that?” she says, pulling away sulkily.

  “S-sorry,” I say, and my voice cracks. “I’m kind of—like, totally—into you, too.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Yeah?” She gets the biggest grin, and it melts me completely. “You wanna do it?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, let’s…spend the night together…”

  Dazedly I see BB is talking with the innkeeper. They strike some kind of deal and exchange coins and a key. To me, she says, “Can you help me off of the chair?”

  I oblige her clumsily.

  “Here’s the key,” she says, slipping it into my palm. “Wait for me. I want to buy something from the store at the corner, first. You know, something more comfortable to spend the night in,” she says meaningfully, and I feel my brain will explode as I try to imagine it. “I’ll just be a few minutes…”

  “T-take your time,” I say, and she blows me a kiss as she saunters out of the inn. I watch her go with an ache in my chest, wanting more than anything to follow after her. But I should take care of my own appearance, it occurs to me. I haven’t had a bath since that plesiosaur tried to swallow me back in chapter 43. My cologne is a mix of dust, horse and sweat, with undertones of sasquatch and just a hint of goblin cheese…

  Yeah, I definitely should take a quick bath before BB gets back!

  I race upstairs to the room BB rented and get to work on my personal hygiene, contending with several system warnings threatening to kick me out of the game.

  “Tina!” I yell at her, frustrated. “Can’t you disable these things for one night?”

  “I’m sorry, Austen. For your own safety, SMark is legally obligated to—blah blah blah…”

  Damn it! I’ve got to calm down! Meditate or something, yeah. Deep breathing. I am one with the universe. Ohm… Ohm…

  After about fifteen minutes of this, I’m feeling somewhat more confident. Of course all that might go out the window the moment BB walks in the room, but—

  Speaking of BB, where is my date?

  I consult my system clock. It’s been thirty minutes, didn’t she say the store was just at the corner? She should have been back by now…

  Perhaps she’s run into some kind of trouble, my overactive imagination tells me. Perhaps she’s run afoul of ruffians or some shadowy city monster? What if she needs my help?!

  I jump up and don my armor, burst into the hall and run down the stairs and into the street. I look both ways, trying to figure out which way she’d have gone. I settle on the right, only to come to the corner and find it’s just a residence, no store. I turn and run back the other way, but to my chagrin as I reach this corner, I find there’s no store here, either.

  What on earth? Was she confused about the store’s location? Perhaps she got lost looking for it, and—

  A thought occurs to me then. An awful thought. I dismiss it as soon as it comes into my head, but like a persistent itch, it won’t leave me alone.

  What if she never meant to go to a store at all? What if she had no intention of spending the night with me, and instead tricked me into giving her a thirty minute head start on—

  On the Charis quest!

  I don’t want to believe it of her! I want to believe all those words she said to me back at the inn were the truth, and that I am mistaken in thinking she could betray me. But there’s only one way to find out…

  I pull up the quest, A Stolen Relic, and track it to find the church on the south side of town. Mounted, it takes me three minutes to get to it. Inside the darkened building is silent.

  I unsummon Horse and make my way through the front door, which creaks noisily as it opens. Inside looks like a typical fantasy church, with pews and some statues and some kind of symbol at the front of the darkened building I can’t make out.

  “Hello?” I cry, and my voice echoes in the big room. “Anybody here?”

  “You didn’t last long. You’re less patient than I gave you credit for,” comes a familiar voice, and I look up to see a spark of light start in the palm of BellissimaBaby’s hand. She’s sitting on one of the rafters, holding a piece of a wooden staff in her other hand. I can only assume it’s a fragment of the quest item. “You can’t blame me for wanting to get to it first. Especially when I considered the boss guarding it would have a long respawn time. Eight hours, according to the forums.”

  “Are you serious?” I say, staring up at her in disbelief. Though more than that, I feel disappointment. “You did all that just to get to the boss before me?”

  “Well, yeah. I knew I couldn’t delay once I heard you were on the same quest. Sorry for playing with you like that. You won’t hold it against me, right?”

  Is she kidding? I think, feeling blackest bitterness climbing up my throat, fairly choking me. I’d have given her the first kill, if she’d only asked. Even knowing the respawn time, even before she said she’d sleep with me, I’d have given it to her! But she had to go and pull a stunt like this. Had to go and say she was into me, and treat me like an absolute idiot! Hell, maybe I am an idiot. For falling for it.

  “You look upset. What’s bothering you, Rev, honey?”

  “I told you to tell it to me straight. I told you not to lie to me!”

  “Oh, but I wasn’t lying,” she says, blinking guilelessly at me. “I really do like you. Just, not enough to sleep with you. Not yet.”

  “Don’t string me along!” I cry, exasperated. “Don’t toy with my heart!”

  “It wasn’t your heart I was toying with. It was your d*ck,” she says with a smirk. “You think I’m the kind of girl who’d give it away for nothing?” she sneers down at me. “Don’t treat me so cheaply. Even in a game, my virginity’s worth more than that.”

  “Wait, your—”

  “Men are all alike,” she cuts me off. “You only care about one thing.”

  “Well, yeah. I do want that thing, but that’s not all—”

  “Sure,” she says sarcastically. “You thought I was cheap, so you get a cheap shot in return. It’s only what you deserve,” she says, sticking her tongue out at me as she rises to stand on the rafter. Then without another word, she leaps from that rafter to the next and the next, finally somersaulting to the ground in front of the door, making me realize she was definitely playing with me back at the inn, when she pretended to struggle getting in and out of a bar stool.

  “I’ll remind you,” I say, staring back at her from the opposite end of the aisle, “you were the one that brought it up. That whole spending the night thing.”

  “Yeah, and you actually bought it. Hook, line and sinker.”

  “Well, sorry for liking you!” I shout back at her, exasperated, at the end of my rope with this woman. “Sorry I wasn’t strong enough to resist an invitation like that. But don’t imagine I’d do it with just any girl, either!”

  “No?” She tilts her head to view me thoughtfully. “If you’re telling the truth, well, that’s something to consider.”

  “Yeah? Well consider it! Consider it good and hard, and fall in love with me while you’re at it, so I can reject you in the most spectacular way and break your heart, too!”

  BB throws her head back to laugh at me with a wide mouth. God, I hate that laugh! She’s so obnoxious!

  “Good luck with that, Rev, honey. And have fun camping the respawn. Maybe next time we meet you’ll work up the courage to invite me to your guild, yeah?”

  “In your dreams! Aggravating wench!” I cry after her, but BB has already vanished from the doorway of the chapel, and disappeared into the night…