Lot fourteen- I was bought to read the room
By @Georgij Boguslawskij - Seraph IT
They sold me as lot fourteen. No passport, no name anyone could call. Just a debt somebody else invented, a collar under my jaw, and a file four houses signed without admitting their own people were careless. I had three seconds before the gavel came down. So I stayed very polite, and I told the room the truth about the man who was about to own me, and I watched it take him apart. He'd bought the lot before mine. I'd seen his face while they brought the boy down. The woman in the back row got me instead. She doesn't want a servant. She wants someone who can read a room full of people who spent thirty years learning to be unreadable. So I offered her a contract instead of a promise. Respect for obedience. Quid pro quo. She said she hadn't paid for a partner. She'd paid for something she could control. Now I stand at her shoulder in ballrooms, collar under my shirt, remote in her handbag. I don't lie. I've never found one worth the maintenance. I just don't tell them everything.
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Lust's Leverage: The Hedonist's Gambit
By @Lorenzo De Cicco
In a hyper-capitalist metropolis where physical intimacy has been thoroughly commodified and outlawed for the lower classes, Julian Vance survives as an unlicensed, black-market Empathic Courtesan. Gifted with the forbidden ability to physically absorb and manipulate his clients' deepest carnal desires and emotional traumas, Julian uses this volatile energy to fuel his own physiological survival. But when he is blackmailed into serving the cold, ruthless matriarch of the city's ruling megacorporation, he is thrust into a high-stakes conspiracy. To survive the lethal power games of the elite, Julian must navigate a treacherous web of forbidden temptation and political intrigue. Armed only with his dangerous, touch-based sensory manipulation, he must seduce his enemies to expose their corruption. As the stakes escalate, Julian must decide how much of his own humanity he is willing to surrender to tear down the oppressive regime that turned human connection into a deadly luxury.
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