Recently, the book no longer appears in any of the Updates sections like Anime or Celebrities, which has resulted in a slower collection rate. Does anyone know the reason for this or how can I solve it?
Bonus Chapter!
Yay!!!
We require 30 additional Power Stone donors, 4 more reviews, and 1000 more collections to unlock the next bonus chapters.
Get those stones going boys and tomboys, we need to get those numbers up!
Join my Patreon
GodofPleasure
(dot)com/GodofPleasure
******
Beyoncé had not been to an arcade in at least three years. She had, somewhere in the transition from child to almost-adult, quietly retired from the category of experiences that felt too young for her emerging self-image. Standing at the entrance now, the sound of it washing over her, she felt something loosen in her chest that she hadn't quite realized was tight.
He didn't hand the cashier a ten-dollar bill. He casually slid a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill across the counter. The teenage cashier's eyes bugged out as he handed over two plastic buckets overflowing with gold tokens.
Marvin turned back to Beyoncé, holding out one of the buckets.
"I believe the modern vernacular for this situation is: *'Let us conquer this realm,'*" Marvin smirked.
Beyoncé threw her head back and let out a loud, uninhibited laugh, her earlier anxiety regarding her dress and her makeup completely vanishing into the neon lights. The absurdity of the situation—standing in an arcade with a boy who had more money than God and the vocabulary of a Shakespearean actor—was entirely intoxicating.
"Alright, Hollywood," Beyoncé challenged, her Texas sass finally breaking through her nerves. She grabbed the bucket of tokens, a fierce, competitive spark lighting up her dark eyes. "But don't go crying to your driver when I completely destroy you in Air Hockey."
"A bold declaration," Marvin challenged, stepping closer, his voice dropping into that deep, chest-vibrating register. "I eagerly accept your terms of war."
---
For the next two hours, the sprawling, chaotic arcade effectively became their own private, neon-lit drawing room.
Beyoncé completely forgot that she had spent the last forty-five minutes trying to dress and act like a mature, sophisticated adult on a high-stakes date. Surrounded by the flashing arcade cabinets and the pulsing bass of the overhead speakers, she reverted to any brilliantly competitive teenager.
At the air hockey table, she didn't hesitate. She kicked off her medium heels, leaving them neatly by the coin slot, and stood barefoot on the gaudy, asteroid-patterned carpet just to get better leverage over the table. She was a hurricane of motion, her eyes narrowed in concentration as she slammed the plastic mallet against the puck with lightning-fast precision.
She was trash-talking Marvin relentlessly, a bright, blindingly beautiful smile taking over her entire face.
"You're leaving your left flank open, little man!" Beyoncé teased, her Texas drawl slipping out as she fired a bank shot that ricocheted into his goal.
Marvin, for his part, played his role flawlessly.
His body possessed supernatural, inhuman reflexes; if he desired, he could have easily blocked every single shot she made before her human brain even registered the physical movement of his arm. But he didn't. He allowed her to score, parrying just enough to make the volley thrilling, maintaining the illusion of a desperate struggle.
He watched her with a profound adoration. As the sheer joy completely illuminated her features, the Incubus fed off her happiness. The raw, unadulterated emotional energy radiating from this sixteen-year-old girl was a thousand times more delicious to his soul than the cold, bitter fear of Wall Street executives.
"Yes! That's three to one!" Beyoncé cheered, doing a small, victorious shoulder-shimmy as the puck slammed into Marvin's goal with a loud *clack*. She pointed a triumphant finger at him, breathless and laughing, pushing a stray curl out of her eyes. "I told you, you can't beat me!"
"I am thoroughly humbled by your prowess, my lady," Marvin bowed his head slightly, placing a hand over his heart, though his deep blue eyes were gleaming with pure mischief. "You wield that plastic mallet with the unyielding fury of a Spartan warrior. I yield to my conqueror."
They abandoned the table and moved to the racing simulators. They practically threw themselves side-by-side into the rigid plastic bucket seats of a twin *Daytona USA* cabinet.
For ten minutes, they slammed the heavy gear shifters, shouting over the synthesized roar of the engines as their digital stock cars traded paint and crashed into the pixelated retaining walls of the virtual track.
The next machine they encountered was a glass box containing a dense assortment of plush animals—bears, dogs, and a soft pink rabbit with disproportionately large ears. They were pressed together in a highly mathematically cruel way that the arcade designer had clearly intended to make retrieval nearly impossible.
Marvin stood before the glass with the focused, stillness of someone taking a situation seriously that the situation had not expected to be taken seriously.
He studied the chaotic arrangement of the toys for a long, silent moment. He was actively reading the geometry of it—the exact vector the claw would have to travel, the tension of the metal prongs, and the structural integrity of the stuffed rabbit that was half-buried beneath a heavy, weighted panda bear.
"That one," Marvin said softly, pointing a pristine finger at the trapped rabbit.
"Marvin, that one is impossible," Beyoncé said, shaking her head, leaning against the glass next to him. "It's literally under everything else."
"It is under *one* thing," Marvin corrected smoothly, sliding two golden tokens into the slot. "Which is an entirely different problem altogether."
He placed his hand on the joystick. He moved the claw with a precision that was not entirely natural. It wasn't overtly, obviously supernatural—he didn't use magic, and it was nothing that would register as physically impossible to a casual observer. But there was a terrifying quality of *certainty* in each micro-adjustment that was several standard deviations beyond what a twelve-year-old boy's hand-eye coordination should have ever produced.
He made a small, invisible adjustment in the probability of the claw's grip. A barely perceptible, magical nudge in the tension of the dropping mechanism as it descended.
The claw dropped. It closed.
The pink rabbit came completely free of the heavy panda with the buttery ease of something that had simply been waiting its entire life to be picked up by him. The machine deposited the toy into the retrieval slot with a cheerful, synthesized chime.
Beyoncé stared at the slot, then up at the claw, her jaw slightly slack.
"How did you—"
"Strategy, my lady," Marvin said smoothly, reaching into the slot, retrieving the rabbit, and presenting it to her with a small, courtly gesture.
She took the plush toy, hugging it against her chest, looking back and forth between him and the machine with narrowed, highly suspicious dark eyes. "Do it again."
He did.
Six more times over the next twenty minutes, they moved from machine to machine. At each one, Marvin applied the same quiet focused attention, producing anything she indicated with a passing glance or a whispered word.
He extracted a bear with a pink satin bow. A small, velvety stuffed elephant. A plush sun with a smiling face that had caught her eye for approximately half a second before she'd looked away. Each time, the metal claw descended with that slightly uncanny certainty. Each time, the targeted toy emerged.
And each time, he presented it to her with the exact same unhurried courtesy, as though the mass production of birthday gifts from rigged mechanical apparatuses was simply a natural, expected component of his daily schedule.
By the time they reached the seventh machine, Beyoncé had her arms full of plush animals. She was looking at him over the pile of stuffed fabric with an expression that was equal parts sheer delight and genuine, prosecutorial suspicion.
"You're cheating," she accused him, trying to keep a straight face.
"I'm winning," Marvin replied effortlessly, adjusting the cuffs of his blazer. "Those are two fundamentally different things."
"How exactly are they different?"
"Cheating implies the breaking of established rules," Marvin purred, tilting his head slightly, his Incubus charm wrapping around her like a warm breeze. "I am simply applying... *resources*... that the game designers failed to account for."
"What kind of resources?" she pressed, stepping closer.
He smiled at her—the particular, devastating smile that answered a question by completely replacing it with a more interesting mystery—and smoothly moved on to the next bank of machines.
She decided to let the interrogation go, primarily because she was currently holding a stuffed elephant and finding it incredibly difficult to maintain any kind of serious, prosecutorial focus when she was having this much fun.
They moved to the basketball shoot-out. Beyoncé was surprisingly accurate, sinking shot after shot with a clean grace. But here, Marvin decided to show off just a microscopic fraction of his physical control.
He casually picked up the miniature rubber basketballs with one hand, tossing them with flawless impossible precision.
*Swish. Swish. Swish.* He didn't miss a single shot. The digital counter on the machine frantically tried to keep up as he broke the all-time high score in under sixty seconds, never once breaking a sweat or disturbing the perfect, elegant styling of his golden-brown hair.
Beyoncé stopped shooting entirely. She stood with her hands resting on her hips, staring at him in disbelief.
"Okay. Seriously. How are you doing that? Are you a robot?"
"I am simply highly motivated by the prize," Marvin purred smoothly, pointing toward the very top shelf of the redemption counter across the room. Sitting there, looking down at the arcade, was a massive, ridiculously oversized cute plush lion, easily half the size of Beyoncé herself. "A lion for a queen. It seems only fitting for today."
They played everything.
They played Skee-Ball, which Beyoncé was considerably better at than she had any logical right to be. Marvin lost the rounds with the calculated grace of a man who was actively *choosing* to lose, simply because watching her leap into the air and celebrate was producing a vastly better emotional return on his investment than winning the tickets would have.
And then, they found the dance stage.
It was a bulky, newly imported Japanese rhythm cabinet—an early precursor to the dance games that would eventually sweep the globe. Bright neon arrows scrolled rapidly up a CRT monitor, commanding the players to step on corresponding metal floor pads to the frantic beat of high-tempo techno music.
"Oh, you are going down," Beyoncé challenged, her eyes lighting up. She was a trained, professional dancer who spent eight hours a day in choreography studios. This was her undeniable domain.
She stepped onto the metal pad, her bare feet moving with breathtaking, fluid perfection, hitting every single arrow with effortless, rhythmic grace. She was a natural phenomenon.
But when Marvin stepped onto the Player Two pad, the dynamic shifted. The boy didn't just step; he glided. The Incubus possessed microscopic control over his physical form. He matched the frantic, scrolling arrows with impossibly elegant, rapid footwork that looked less like an arcade game and more like a rehearsed waltz perfectly sped up to a techno beat.
They were laughing so hard they could barely breathe as the speed of the game doubled, then tripled.
"You—how are your feet moving that fast?!" Beyoncé gasped through her laughter, trying to keep up, her eyes darting to his side of the screen.
In her distraction, she missed a step on a combination. Her foot slipped on the smooth metal edge of the pad, and she lost her balance, pitching backward with a startled yelp.
Before her brain even registered the fall, Marvin moved.
He abandoned the game entirely, crossing the space between them in a literal blur. His arm shot out, catching her firmly around the waist, stabilizing her instantly and pulling her flush against his chest.
The booming techno music of the arcade seemed to drop away.
Beyoncé gasped, her hands instinctively grabbing his shoulders. She looked down at him. He was physically shorter than her, but the overwhelming density of his presence made her feel entirely, completely protected.
His nebula-blue eyes were locked onto hers, burning with a dark, intense heat that had nothing to do with arcade games.
"Who so ever shall catch a falling star, shall hold the heavens in his hands," Marvin murmured softly, quoting poetry into the charged space between them. He slowly, gently helped her stand back up, though his hand lingered warmly on her waist for a fraction of a second longer than necessary. "Are you alright, my lady?"
"I'm... yeah. I'm fine," Beyoncé breathed, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird, the flush on her cheeks entirely unrelated to the physical exertion of the game.
---
By the time they had completely exhausted the machines and accumulated a literal, physical mountain of paper tickets, they had been inside the arcade for nearly two and half hours.
They hauled the miles of paper to the glowing prize counter. After acquiring the giant lion, they had just enough spare tickets left over to exchange for a random collection of items that included a bright green plastic ring, a tiny stuffed bear, and a packet of pastel candy necklaces.
Beyoncé immediately, happily tore open the plastic and placed the candy necklace around her neck.
Marvin stood at the counter, finalizing the transaction, while Beyoncé leaned against a pillar to slip her heels back onto her feet.
When she turned around, he wasn't just holding the cute stuffed lion under his arm. He walked toward her, holding the cheap, green plastic ring between his fingers.
And then, right in the middle of the crowded arcade floor, the billionaire little man dropped smoothly to one knee.
"The spoils of war, my lady," Marvin declared, holding the plastic ring up to her. His velvety voice carried just enough theatrical volume to cut through the arcade noise, making the groups of passing teenagers stop dead in their tracks and stare in awe at the tailored boy kneeling before the beautiful girl. "Procured through blood, sweat, and an alarming amount of pixelated basketball."
*****
I can't reply to your comments but don't let that stop keep commenting. My Discord link is in my profile and also here.
Join my Patreon
GodofPleasure
(dot)com/GodofPleasure