A Date with Cupid: A Stimulating Digital Valentine

By Red Hanner

In the four hundred years since his marriage to Psyche fell apart, Cupid hasn't exactly been twiddling his thumbs. He moved to America, changed his name to C.C. Archer, and built the world's hottest online dating site. When reporter Tina Day crashes his New Year's Eve party, she gets more than the interview she was hoping for.

Archer may be passing himself off as a chubby, nearsighted jerk, but when Tina peels back the façade, she finds he's still the God of Love at heart. After he falls for her, she figures the relationship is going to be all roses and poetry, but Archer turns out to be more interested in leather belts and strap-on dildos, custom made for Tina.

Dating an ancient god is complicated. He won't let her turn on the bedroom light, but he knows how to do amazing things in the dark. Was that or wasn't that an extra tongue and a few too many pairs of hands? Just as Tina is figuring the relationship out, she and Archer run afoul of an ultra-conservative senator with a goddess on her side. The senator heads a group of religious zealots, who want to use Archer's website to promote traditional marriage. They're willing to do anything to convince him, and if Tina can't figure out how to stop the crazies, she may never get to use that strap-on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Hanner
• Release date: Apr 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310382871

Red Hanner

Red Hanner was that girl in your third grade class who on career day raised her hand and said she wanted to grow up to be a stripper or a mortician. Neither of those things have panned out for her yet. She has a long history of writing strange, smutty things for private consumption, but has recently decided to be publicly consumed. For some reason, she's bent on producing a whole series of seasonal smut, starting with A Kiss from Krampus for Christmas and A Date with Cupid for Valentine's Day.

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A Date with Cupid

A Stimulating Digital Valentine

by Red Hanner

Copyright 2014 Red Hanner

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements

As always, I owe an enormous and probably unpayable debt to Clovia Shaw. My muse, my unrelenting taskmaster, my friend. Also, my thanks to Norma Johnson, Lisa Brackmann, and Danielle DeVor.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Gates of Eden

Chapter Two: Strangers in the Night

Chapter Three: Poison Arrow

Chapter Four: You Can Leave Your Hat On

Chapter Five: Whip It

Chapter Six: I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend

Chapter Seven: You Don’t Bring Me Flowers

Chapter Eight: Almost Human

Chapter Nine: Love Hangover

Chapter Ten: I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)

Chapter Eleven: Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Chapter Twelve: How Deep Is Your Love

About the songs

A Note from the Author

Chapter One: Gates of Eden

I'd been hunting C.C. Archer ever since he stood me up in a noodle bar in Harajuku. I trolled computer science conferences, and meet and greet sessions for Cupid's Shaft, where the flashy advertising promised he would be in attendance. Except he wasn't. At each one, the very good looking Vice President of Marketing took the stage to deliver the spiel and to apologize for Mr. Archer's absence.

I even joined cupidsshaft.com, The Hottest Dating Site in the World, trying to get a glimpse into the workings of C.C. Archer's mind. I took the Love Assessment quiz, but I didn't bother contacting any of my matches. Considering the turnover rate in my dating life, I didn't need that kind of complication.

The hunt for Archer was what put me in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve, cruelly sober and jetlagged off a flight from Dubai. In my purse I had an invitation to a costume party, hosted by the VP of Marketing. The invitation was in the form of a barcoded bracelet, what you'd expect from a computer whiz. I didn't ask how my boss Angela got her hands on it, because she is this harmless looking shark of a woman who has never met a stranger. Probably she met someone with a friend of a friend connection and spun an elaborate sob story about a niece with cancer. That's how she weasels her way around. However she got the invite, it was the closest we'd come to C.C. Archer. The closest anyone had come, because Archer didn't do interviews. Not even puff pieces.

Rolling my suitcases through the hotel lobby, the sounds of vice washed over me, jingling slots, clinking drinks, and giggling escorts. The lobby was full of people either in costume or in uniform. It was hard to tell which were which, but I figured the beefcakes and showgirls were on the clock. The witches, naughty nurses, Supermen, and the four people dressed as sperm, probably not. Probably.

I hoped Bethany the intern had packed me something better than that. I hadn't had a chance to find my own costume, because I was flying back direct from a cattle call of journalists at the unveiling of the world's briefly tallest building, where I'd done a butter-up feature on a prince.

Angela calls me her hatchet man, which is unfair on both counts. A.) I'm not a man. B.) I don't do hatchet jobs. I am a real journalist and when Angela isn't forcing me to give some Saudi prince a blow job in print, I do serious interviews with leading business people, entrepreneurs, and the occasional high-powered con artist. Angela spends so much time polishing the egos of billionaires, that when she lets me tackle a subject seriously, she thinks she's let her mad dog off its chain.

That was me, the mad dog, opening a FedEx box in a hotel room, with the clock running down to a new year. The mad dog, discovering that Bethany, the perky sorority girl intern, chose to outfit me as Eve. The sum total of the costume was a skintight bodysuit with sewn-on fig leaves, plus a big, glossy brown acrylic wig and a ridiculous stuffed snake. In the bottom of the box, an apple rattled loose.

As I pulled on the bodysuit, I was already penning the email I would send to Bethany when this was over.

Dear White Girl:

The packaging on your poorly chosen costume identifies it as Flesh Tone. Please note that this beigey-pink scrap of spandex may in fact be your flesh tone, but it is not mine. My skin is more of a warm amber color. In short, you've created a kind of primordial Bride of Frankenstein by attaching the head of a black woman to the body of white person.

No love,

Tina

If the goal was for me to blend in while I hunted Archer, the costume was a catastrophic failure. Who wouldn't notice the two-tone naked woman with strategically misplaced fig leaves? The one for my crotch sagged halfway down my thigh and the ones for my boobs were riding up by my collarbones. The cheap ass bodysuit was already wrinkling around my knees and ankles like elephant skin.

Even a supermodel couldn't have pulled off that bodysuit and I wasn't a model. I mean, I'm not bad, but every bulge, ripple, and bump was on display through that layer of thin spandex.

Any self-respecting woman would have refused to be exposed and humiliated on that level, but I was a journalist. I committed to an extra level of humiliation. After a deep breath and a prayer for Bethany to have a year-long yeast infection, I stripped naked and slathered myself all over with cocoa butter. Then I sacrificed my favorite mocha silk g-string and the strap off my convertible bra. With my emergency sewing kit, I attached the big fig leaf to my panties and the two smaller leaves to the convertible strap, which I fastened around my chest to hold the leaves in place. The leaves were barely big enough to cover my nipples. But after a few test runs, I found that as long as I didn't make any sudden moves they stayed in place. Then I just had to work up the nerve to let a bunch of strangers see me nearly naked.

The invitation had come with explicit instructions that guests were forbidden to bring phones, cameras, or recording devices to the party, but with a little more stitch work I opened the snake's head and sewed my mini digital recorder into him. With the seam stitched closed, I could still manipulate the buttons to turn the recorder on and off. And the device was smaller than a tampon, so even if somebody checked the snake, they probably wouldn't find it.

I was about to put the shitty wig on, when it dawned on me how messed up that was. Eve came out of Africa. Like hell she had wavy, long hair. More likely she had cornrows like mine. Only probably without a weave. And hers probably looked better than mine since she hadn't spent the last 48 hours trying to sleep on a series of planes. Whatever. I looked a hell of a lot better doing me as Eve without the wig and the bodysuit.

On the way out of my room, I draped the snake over my shoulders like a green velour stole, and made my way to the party. The first stage of admittance was a pat down, which I didn't particularly need in my undressed state. My skin crawled, imagining the security guard taking inventory of my too small boobs, my firm but slightly dimply ass, and my runner's legs. It was worse than wearing a bikini, and I never did that.

Not many places to hide something in that costume, the guard said. I gave him a wink, trying to warm up to being the sort of woman who goes to a party almost naked.

Next up was the metal detector, and I got lucky there, because it wasn't like an airport security booth. It was two sides and an open top. I sashayed through the metal detector, holding the snake head--and my mini recorder--up above the top of the booth. The whole time praying for my fig leaves to stay put.

What next? I said. A strip search?

I don't think that'll be necessary for you, the guard said. He must have liked what he saw, because he kept looking.

On the other side of the metal detector stood another security guard, who swiped my invitation bracelet with a hand scanner.

Your name? he said, looking at his scanner screen.

Jill Davenport. That was the name Angela had told me to use. Maybe there was a real Jill Davenport and I was using her invitation. I didn't know. I'm looking for your boss. Is he here yet?

All the bigwigs are in VIP. You're cleared for it. Just head over. He waved vaguely toward his right.

I wanted to chat the guard up some more, see if I could get a hint about what costume Archer was wearing. Before I could, the guard had to go help the guy running the metal detector deal with the person behind me, who was in a Dalek costume. That was going to take forever, so I waded into the party. It sprawled across the entire floor of the hotel, spilling around banks of slot machines, champagne fountains and massive tables of food. There was a live band at one end, a DJ at the other, and a throng of people in between. Apparently, I was wearing a sign on my back that said, Please try to hump my ass, because I had to fight off a lot of that as I worked my way through the crowd.

When I made it to the center of the room, I found a raised platform covered in twinkly white lights, and surrounded by velvet ropes and muscle-bound bodyguards in custom pink polo shirts. A private party with a VIP section.

I hit the nearest bar to snag the other item I needed for my costume: an appletini. Then I headed to the platform. At the foot of the stairs, there was another guard with a hand scanner to check my bracelet. With a little nod, he unhooked the velvet rope and let me in.

I'd been worried that I'd have to vulture around trying to identify Archer, but right there, in the middle of it all, at the absolute center of the party, sat this low-slung 60s orgy-looking chair in gold lamé. In the chair sat a guy dressed as … wait for it … Cupid.

Cupido Crespo Archer was dressed as Cupid, and he looked even more ridiculous than I did. I'd ditched my bodysuit, but he was wearing a fat suit in some impossible baby's ass pink color. On his head he wore a curly blond wig, and over his face, he wore a creepy half-mask of a Victorian-looking Cupid with bright pink cheeks. His lips were made-up in a perfect cherub pink, and he even had a pair of fluffy white wings attached to his shoulders.

While all the people around him were talking and laughing and drinking, Archer lolled back in his chair, ignoring the party. He had one leg slung over the arm of the chair, his bare foot dangling. I figured I would only get one shot at my approach, so I went straight for it. I could feel people looking at me, but no one made a move to stop me.

Chapter Two: Strangers in the Night

I made it all the way to Archer's chair before I started to panic. I'd been running on caffeine and bravado, but there I was, getting ready to trick Archer into giving me an interview. When I'd committed to putting on my ridiculous costume, I'd imagined that I would walk up to