I smacked her arm. “I know where you live.”

She laughed, nodding. “Okay, okay. Click that button that says Enter Yondareth. It will put your Beast into the world and then you can run around and get quests.”

I did as she said. After a minimal waiting period, I was standing at the edge of a city gate. On one side of me was the entrance to the city, on the other side was a meadow. As I’d seen before in promotional artwork, videos and, most recently, the demo that Mia and Katya had run in the warehouse, the graphics were amazing. It really looked like I was standing in another world. Blades of grass shifted in the wind. Different bricks of varying colors were discernible in the city wall. Nearby, other figures stood, some elves, some dwarves, other humans. All different skin tones, hairstyles and features. Everyone had a name floating over his or her head.

“Now what?”

“You want to go up and talk to the NPCs—they’re the game-generated people. The other avatars represent real people behind them. NPCs with quests have a shield symbol above their head. You complete quests to gain experience and items which help you gain levels for your character.”

Not too long after, Sid left me to get ready for bed. She wandered into the room between brushing her teeth, brushing out her hair and her various other nighttime routines to give me pointers or nod approvingly at what I’d accomplished.

“This old elf guy in the kilt wants me to go pick a bunch of flowers for him. That sounds like a dumb quest,” I said as she flipped back the covers on her bed.

“You have to do that quest. There’s a whole big story behind it. It’s so romantic. And it leads to other, higher-level quests. Everybody does that quest. It’s like a tradition in Dragon Epoch.”

“Ah, okay,” I said, shrugging.

Sid let me know she was turning the lights out and going to sleep. I grunted at her, plugging my ear buds into the headphone jack so the sounds of the game wouldn’t disturb her. I figured I’d play for another half hour or so before throwing in the towel and getting some shut-eye.

The next time I looked up at the clock, it was four a.m.

Four. Freaking a.m. And I had to get ready for work in two hours.

The game had sucked hours of my life in immersive amusement and I hadn’t even realized it. At all. Man, this stuff was better than crack. No wonder so many people loved it so much.

Even when I lay down, though, it was hard to sleep. I kept thinking about what had happened between Jordan and me at his house. Though it had felt so good and my body had even begun to ache again with the memory of it, I knew I could never follow through with these feelings. I had to fight them.

But…I might have fantasized about him for a little while before I fell asleep. There was nothing wrong with a healthy fantasy, was there?

One way or the other, this job was going to be the death of me.

Chapter 8

Jordan

One way or the other, this woman was going to be the death of me.

Adam had camped out on my couch for a few hours after she left, helping me go over the paperwork. At first he’d thrown me a few questioning glances, and for good reason. It looked bad…the time I’d taken to answer the door. The way she’d been dressed. Adam probably thought we’d been out on a date together. But up until the moment I’d kissed her, it had all been completely innocent…well, as innocent as not wanting her to go out and pick up some other guy could have been, anyway.

I buried the rest of my weekend in work—and working out—figuring that was the surest way to get that woman out of my mind. I was spending way too much time remembering the way she felt underneath me as I kissed her and touched her body. And it was a hard sell to get my own body to not react to it.

My Monday early-morning meeting with the investment banker was lackluster. He’d been fairly cranky about our current situation with the viral sex tape. But the good news was that he seemed to think there were steps we could take to avert disaster.

Adam wasn’t going to like his suggestions, though. Regardless, I was going to do anything—anything—to keep this project going. And I was rubbing up against the two-week deadline he had imposed on me. I’d have to turn the charm all the way up on this one…and point it right at my best friend.

“Sexual harassment training?” Adam spun from his office window to pin me down with his black stare. “You aren’t shitting me, are you?”

I held my hands out to him, palms up, an ‘I give up’ gesture. “He had a couple other stipulations as well. There’s all this controversy now going on in the gamer community regarding sexist attacks against women—”