Of Pillows And Pampering

I rented a house with a bloody history because it was cheap. On the first night after moving in, the faucet turned on by itself. I yelled into thin air, “Are you paying the water bill?!” The water instantly stopped flowing. I thought that was just the beginning of the ghost not bothering me. Unexpectedly, the next day, I saw a main course with two side dishes prepared on the dining table.

I am a pureblood succubus. Every seven days, desire consumes me. Stuart Newlin always complained that I clung to him too much, that I distracted him from his grand ambitions. Then, at the peak of my heat, when I needed him most, he blew me off. He chose to go to his female friend's prenatal appointment instead. The thing is, a succubus can't survive without being fed. Without that energy, that devotion… I wither. Unfortunate as it was to fall into the hands of a neglectful master, I had no choice but to seek another. My new keeper bore the bloodline of the Black Serpent. He had double the virility. Night and day, he poured himself into me. He worked tirelessly; I was more than satisfied. So when Stuart showed up with a massive bouquet of red roses, hoping to coax me back, what greeted him was the sight of me, flushed and glowing, curled up in another man's arms. His eyes burned with rage as he went mad, smashing everything in the house, raging that I was unfaithful, that I dared take another man to my bed. Smiling, I leaned into my new master's embrace and introduced them. "Let me make the introductions. You two have more in common than you think. After all, I've slept with both of you."

On the day I entered my contract marriage with Brian Janson, a flood of comments suddenly flashed before my eyes. [No…! The villainess is going to ruin the male lead’s purity!] [The CEO’s first time should belong to the heroine! Shameless woman, get off his waist right now!] [Are they going to do it or not? I’m on a tight schedule.] [Come on, have some loyalty to the main couple!] [If Brian knew he wouldn’t be able to give Quincy the ‘pure, untouched version’ of himself in the future, he’d probably drown in guilt.] Pure, untouched version? Sorry. I was born a villain, and making trouble is what I do best. So while Brianwas drunk, I leaned in without the slightest bit of guilt. The comments exploded again. [It’s over. They look like they’re about to get married for real!] [Am I seeing things? Did the male lead just… smile?]

I overslept and ran into my slacking boss at the diner. I was totally flustered, stumbling over myself, while he awkwardly tried to play it cool, rooted to the spot. The next day, rumors spread around the office that we were secretly dating…

A security guard caught a snake in our apartment complex and delivered it straight to my door. I was just about to scream when floating comments cut in. [The male lead got dumped and turned back into his real form just to spy on his girlfriend, and he actually got caught? This is funny as hell!] [He got dumped, and his girlfriend hates him. He's probably gonna cry himself to sleep!] [Aww, poor little snake can't curl up on his girlfriend tonight.] The big black snake looked pitiful in the guard's hands. It secretly sized me up with its slit pupils. I tried holding out my hand, and the black snake stared in disbelief. Two seconds later, it obediently rubbed its head against my fingers.

My heiress wife's childhood sweetheart has just announced his engagement to someone else today. For some reason, she seems heartbroken. As her husband, my mind turns into a mess when I hear the news. Everyone in our social circle knows that my wife's family is incredibly wealthy. When she buys luxury goods, she basically buys out the whole store. But today, she coops herself up at home and doesn't go out. Worse yet, she doesn't give me the money for this month's living expenses. I'm seriously losing sleep over this. "Honey, please accept reality and move on. Is there anyone who hasn't been a fool for love?" The second I hit send, my heiress wife bursts out of the bedroom, where she was holed up. "Tell me for whom you were a fool. For whom did you humble yourself?"

After eating a poisonous, hallucination-inducing mushroom, I genuinely thought I’d woken up inside a spicy erotica novel. I was the heroine—a live-in housekeeper working for a rich heir, the kind of impossibly handsome, impossibly wealthy man who only exists in fiction. When I opened my eyes and saw him standing there, I felt… oddly disappointed. I muttered under my breath, “Only six guys? What, do I need to take Sundays off?” The heir let out a short, disbelieving laugh. A slow, dangerous one. “If I’d known you were this bold,” he said, “I wouldn’t have bothered being gentle.” The moment the hallucination faded, I grabbed his sleeve and practically burst into tears. “Honey, I’m sorry. I swear I didn’t mean any of that.” He loosened his tie with maddening calm and murmured, “Relax. No one here takes Sundays off. And if you’re that eager to follow the plot of your little erotica novel… we can start right now.”

After waking up one day to discover I was coughing up flowers, everyone started giving me strange looks. It continued until my sworn enemy cornered me against a wall. His expression darkened as he chuckled softly and asked, "Oh, baby, have you been going out like this every day? Why don't you try mine instead?"

A random transmigrator, Rosanna Lacewin, finally gets fed up after living as me, Roxanne Lovelace, for five years. She then ups and leaves this world with her system, leaving behind my extremely spoiled son, Theo Sterling, and my unusually cold husband, Austin Sterling. Before I can even process my thoughts, I suddenly see a barrage of comments flashing before my eyes. "What kind of a disastrous start to a story is this? This is the first time I've ever seen such a stupid transmigrator! She arrived five years earlier, made a huge mess, and now, the original owner has to clean up the mess she left behind!" "That's right. All she had to do was just correct Theo's ways, warm up to Austin, and stop her family from bothering the actual main characters of the story. But she did none of that and only spent all her time enjoying herself and avoiding death!" "Theo's all spoiled now, and Austin is very distant from her. I'm feeling so annoyed just by looking at this family. I wish they'd just die." So, as it turns out, I'm just the cannon fodder in this story plot who dies young, and both my husband and my son will be the main antagonists later on.

Kenneth Parker, my childhood friend—and the person I've secretly had a crush on—isn't into men. In the end, I find myself wandering into one of those shops out of sheer loneliness and buying myself a toy. That night, just as I'm about to follow the instructions to use it, someone suddenly opens the bedroom door. Kenneth stands in the doorway, his face frozen in complete and utter shock as he stares at me. Blushing furiously, I try to pull the blanket and cover myself, but Kenneth rushes in and takes the toy from my hand. He says, "It's alright, Xavier. I'll show you how to use it."