Chapter 3: The Morning After and a New Invitation
The first sensation was a deep, pleasant ache in his lower back. Then the smell: jasmine, sex, and the faint, stale sweetness of whiskey. Aidan opened his eyes. Golden morning light sliced through a gap in the curtains, illuminating dancing motes of dust and the curve of a bare hip beside him. Prae. Her black hair was fanned across his arm, her breathing slow and even.
Memory returned not as a flood, but in vivid, disjointed snapshots. Lin’s arched back. Noi’s shouted encouragements. The overwhelming, yielding warmth of one woman after another. The sticky feeling on his thighs confirmed it hadn’t been some fevered dream.
A soft sigh came from his other side. Ploy was nestled against his back, her arm slung over his waist. On the floor mat, Noi slept on her stomach, a sheet barely covering her. He could see Mai’s feet protruding from the kitchen, where she’d apparently made a bed of cushions.
He was a peninsula in a sea of sleeping women.
Carefully, he extricated his arm from under Prae. She made a small, protesting noise but didn’t wake. He needed water. And maybe a moment to think without being touched. He stood, his muscles protesting, and padded naked across the cool wooden floor to the kitchen. He drank two glasses of water straight from the tap, the liquid shockingly cold.
“Survival instinct.”
He turned. Prae was sitting up on the divan, the silk sheet pooling around her waist. She smiled, that knowing, playful smile. “Your body knows it has to hydrate. For the next round.”
“There’s a next round?” The question came out half-joking, half-terrified.
She laughed, the sound husky with sleep. “Not right now. But tonight.” She stretched, cat-like, and the sheet slipped further. “A friend of a friend. He has a place up in the hills.A villa. He’s having a party. Very private. Very exclusive.” She watched him, her dark eyes glittering. “He likes to have beautiful things around. Beautiful music, beautiful food, beautiful people.”
Aidan leaned against the counter. “And you’re invited.”
“We are invited,” she corrected, gesturing vaguely at the sleeping forms around the room. “Me, the girls. We’re the entertainment.” She said it without a trace of shame, a simple statement of fact. “And I told him about my new farang friend. The mathematician with the… impressive theorem.” Her grin was wicked. “He was very interested. He said to bring you. Said you’d be the star attraction.”
The words landed with a strange weight. Star attraction. It was a variation of what he’d already experienced, but framed differently. Prae’s apartment had felt chaotic, intimate, a secret. A villa party for a wealthy businessman sounded like a performance. A transaction.
“What does that mean, exactly?” he asked.
“It means delicious food, top-shelf liquor, a swimming pool under the stars, and more women who have heard the stories and want to see for themselves.” She stood, the sheet falling away completely, and walked toward him. Her body in the morning light was a masterpiece of subtle curves and warm brown skin. “It means you’ll be treated like a king. It means yes.”
She stopped in front of him, looking up. She placed a hand on his chest, her fingers cool. “You’re thinking too much. I can hear the gears grinding.” She slid her hand down his stomach, lower, finding him soft and spent. She took him gently, her touch clinical and possessive at the same time. “This doesn’t think. This just is. And it’s wanted. Let it be wanted.”
A complex cocktail of emotions churned in him—pride, anxiety, a dizzying sense of corruption, and beneath it all, a thick, undeniable thread of raw excitement. The thought of a hillside villa, of new eyes on him, new hands, new mouths… his body began to respond to her touch despite his fatigue.
“See?” she whispered. “It knows.”
From the floor, Noi groaned and rolled over, blinking. “You two are already starting without coffee? Savages.” She sat up, the sheet forgotten, and scratched her head. “Is there food?”
The mundanity of the question broke the spell. Prae released him and turned to the refrigerator. “I have mango and sticky rice.”
“Perfect.”
The apartment slowly came to life. Mai emerged from the kitchen nook, smiling shyly at Aidan. Lin woke and immediately reached for her phone, scrolling with focused intensity. Ploy stumbled to the bathroom. It was all strangely domestic, a morning-after without the usual morning-after awkwardness. They shared fruit, they passed around a pack of cigarettes, they talked about a new song at the club. Aidan was just… there. Accepted. A fact of the landscape.
Prae caught his eye and nodded toward the bathroom. “Shower with me. We need to get clean.”
The bathroom was steamy from Ploy’s use. Prae adjusted the water, testing it with her hand before stepping in. Aidan followed. The hot water cascaded over his shoulders, easing the soreness. Prae handed him a bar of sandalwood soap and turned her back, presenting herself.
He lathered her shoulders, her back, the dramatic dip of her waist. She leaned into his touch.
“This man,” Aidan said, his voice low under the spray. “The one with the villa. What does he get out of it?”
Prae glanced back over her shoulder. “A good party. A story. The satisfaction of providing something unique. For some men, watching is as good as doing. For others, hosting the spectacle is the power.” She turned around, soap suds sliding down her body. “Don’t worry about him. Worry about the six or seven girls who will have heard all about the farang professor by the time we arrive. They will be the ones looking at you like you’re their last meal.”
She took the soap from him and began to wash his chest, his arms, working her way down with a thorough, unembarrassed intimacy. When her soapy hand closed around him, he was fully hard again, the fatigue burned away by the heat of the water and her blunt certainty.
“There he is,” she said, stroking him slowly. “The main event.”
He put his hands on her hips, lifting her slightly. She understood, bracing her hands against the wet tiles. He entered her in one smooth motion, the hot water sluicing over them both. It was different now—not the frantic energy of discovery, but a claiming. A confirmation. Her tiny, tight cunt gripped him perfectly, a familiar, devastating heat. She met each thrust with a roll of her hips, her throaty moans echoing in the small, steamy room.
This was the rhythm of his new life. The world outside this shower, outside this apartment, with its lectures and textbooks and faculty meetings, was fading into a distant, black-and-white photograph. Here was the color. The sensation. The truth of what he had become.
He came inside her with a groan, his forehead against her wet hair, his body shuddering. She held him there until the water began to cool.
As they stepped out, towelling off, she looked at him in the foggy mirror. “You don’t have to go tonight,” she said, her tone casual. “You can say no.”
He met her gaze in the reflection. He saw the challenge there. He saw the unspoken question: Are you in, or are you out?
The thrill that went through him was answer enough. The dread was still there, a cold knot in his stomach, but it was intertwined now with something else—a hungry curiosity. A need to see how far this could go.
“What time,” he asked, his voice rough, “do we leave?”
Prae’s smile in the mirror was brilliant and final. She had her answer. There was no turning back now.