Fixed 01 - Fantasy Fix Read Free Page B

loudspeakers. She tried her best to ignore it and stuck like glue to her friends. If she lost them, she’d never find them again in the gyrating throng of identically black-clad bodies. Of course, that went both ways. If she could slip away unnoticed—
    A hand clamped over her wrist.
    “Stay close!” Ava leaned into their little huddle, but she still had to shout to make herself heard any farther than six inches away. “Let’s head over to the bar and get a drink before we plan our attack.”
    Ava always had been perceptive, and she refused to let go of Reggie while she squeezed and shimmied her way through the crowd toward the black-lit bar at one end of the cavernous room. Reggie figured Ava guessed she’d been planning to bolt.
    The women squirmed their way across the dance floor like an amoeba with five pseudopods. Getting up to the bar required the judicious use of a few elbows and an immunity to insults. As the first to reach an empty inch of space, Danice yelled an order for five drinks, and the others closed ranks around Reggie, who promptly rolled her eyes.
    “Come on, guys,” she protested when they hurried to snag a tall bar table that had just been vacated. “Don’t you think you’re being just a little paranoid? I’m here. I came. I answered my door when you picked me up instead of refusing to buzz you in. I put on these excuses for clothes you told me to wear. I even let you plant a bag full of sex toys in my closet! I’ve surrendered. I’m not likely to go anywhere now.”
    “Because we know you well enough not to trust you,” Corinne pointed out, accepting a dark brown beer bottle and taking a moment to survey the crowd. “Ava was the one who thought the corset would be enough to keep you from running. But I brought a leash along just in case.”
    “Bite me.”
    “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
    “Children, please. We have more important things to do than squabble like three year olds. Reggie looks fantastic in her corset, and I’m sure a leash won’t be necessary, unless her fantasy wants her to wear one.” Ava glanced discreetly at her watch. “We have exactly four hours and fifteen minutes before the party ends and Regina turns back into a pumpkin. Battle stations.”
    Reggie’s four friends faced the four corners of the bar and started scanning for potential partners. Frowning, Reggie leaned close to Missy’s ear and spoke in a low murmur, “I thought you said Ava already had someone picked out.”
    “She does, but she wants you to squirm a little,” Missy hissed back, her eyes on the masses of men and women passing before her. “Could you at least look a little nervous? If she knows I warned you, she’ll kill me.”
    Looking nervous would not be a problem. Reggie felt more than a little out of place surrounded by a few hundred twenty-somethings, all of whom seemed to have a genuine fear of sunlight. She hadn’t known you could see so many white faces outside of a mime convention.
    With a sigh, Reggie scanned the crowd and hoped Ava’s friend turned out to be significantly different from any of the men she’d noticed so far.
    The crowd really wasn’t her type. Most of them were too young for her, and even the ones who were her age or older somehow managed to look like children playing dress up. How could she feel attracted to someone so desperate to escape reality he wished he were a fictional character? She had always preferred her men to have a grip, not that you’d know it from her track record. Take Gregory, for instance. Apparently most of the women in lower Manhattan already had.
    Sipping her beer and leaning her elbows on the scarred table, Reggie figured since her friends wanted to do all the work in picking up a man for her tonight, she could indulge in a little brooding over her recent failures.
    Greg epitomized her “type,” which probably meant she should reevaluate the concept of types. He’d been confident, attractive, intelligent and