Bottle Service

  Copyright © 2024 by Brindi Quinn

  First Edition, 2024

  Published by Evermore, an imprint of Never & Ever Publishing | @neverandeverbooks

  Edited by Meg Dailey | @thedaileyeditor

  Insert artwork by Em Ryn Art | @emryn_art

  Cover bottle graphic by Dinah Draws | @dinahdraws

  Map by Centaur Maps | @centaurmaps

  Cover design by Brindi Quinn via Canva

  Interior formatting by Brindi Quinn via Vellum

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, brands, trademarks, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by U.S. Copyright Law.

  Original publication date: October 22, 2024

  Illustrated Paperback ISBN: 978-1-949222-91-3

  Standard Paperback ISBN: 978-1-949222-89-0

  Special Edition Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-949222-92-0

  Standard Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-949222-90-6

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Prologue: A Lost Reverie

  A Bomb-Ass Genie Honeymoon

  1. Honeymooners

  2. Phantom

  3. Bird People

  4. The Crystal Charcuterie

  5. Pretty Sure I’m Bait

  Amoira’s Story: Mother Dearest I

  6. The Token Human

  7. Wishes and Kisses

  8. Brothers III

  9. Brothers IV

  10. Brothers V

  11. Brothers VI

  Adelle’s Story: The Nymph’s Choice

  12. The Life of a Doll

  13. The Life of a Lady

  14. The Life of a Fish

  15. My Sweet Master

  A Bomb-Ass Genie Awakening

  16. Velis Takes a Stand

  17. The Laird’s Return

  Adelle’s Story: The Nymph’s Do-Over

  18. The Morning After

  19. The Morning After II

  20. The Coral Hub

  21. Bad Mommy

  22. *Cough, Cough*

  23. Dolly’s Naughty Little Fever Dream

  24. *Cough, Cough, Cough*

  A Bomb-Ass Genie Romance

  25. Irredeemable

  26. My Beating Heart

  27. All Together Now

  28. The One Responsible for This Mess?

  Amoira’s Story: Mother Dearest II

  29. Guests, I Guess

  30. A Bomb-Ass Genie Breakfast

  31. Let’s Get This Over With

  32. Rupturing Fate

  Amoira’s Story: Mother Dearest III

  33. Happy Birthday, Genie Boy

  34. Dolly and Arrik, Sitting in A . . . ?

  35. Brothers VII

  36. Three’s a Crowd

  Epilogue: The Heart’s Desire

  Acknowledgments

  About Brindi Quinn

  Paranormal & Dystopian Romance Books by Brindi Quinn

  Epic Fantasy Romance Books by Brindi Quinn

  Young Adult Romance Books by Brindi Quinn

  This book contains sexual content and drug use inappropriate for a younger audience. This book also contains a hearty dose of F-bombs and other adult language that may be offensive to some readers. Triggers include: swearing, blood, smoking, drinking, death as a plot device, power imbalances in relationships, emotional manipulation, and fantasy violence.

  Bottle Service is a little spicier than previous books in the series.

  Bottle Service is Book 4 in the Come True series and a direct continuation of the story. Do not be swayed by the sparkly cover. This book should not be read first.

  To everyone who has fallen in love with Dolly, Velis, and the unholy trio—Tatty, Bratty, and the actual devil.

  Author’s Note

  Dear Normal-Reader-Turned-Genie-Freak,

  Sometimes during giveaways, I like to gift secrets. Shortly after the first book in the Come True series released, I gave away a secret, and it said:

  At its core, Come True is a tale of two brothers.

  I’m so glad you’ve joined us on this journey.

  Xoxo,

  B.Q.

  Prologue: A Lost Reverie

  ~DOLLY~

  Before Everything

  Molted petals litter the streets, a reminder that things are changing. Good. The sky is the same bland gray it’s been all week—like it was last week, and the week before. I put off meeting these fake coworker friends for drinks then, but I wish I hadn’t.

  At least the place we’re going has good ranch. The best.

  That’s the one thing I’ll miss when I finally escape this shit state where the worst things happened to me. Where I met the worst guy and his gross friends.

  Fuck you, James. And fuck you, Gabe.

  I can’t wait for two weeks from now when my lease is up and I can finally go home. I miss my mom. And our unfriendly cat.

  I head down the hill past my quaint—charming, if I can brag a bit—apartment with the gate that’s creaked ever since my loser ex-boyfriend and I moved in three long years ago. The trees were full then.

  Cheating bastard.

  The streets may be ugly, and the sky may be too, but the air out here is nice. It’s like the press of a cool pillow to your senses.

  I reach the crosswalk and make my way across, waving at an impolite car slowly rolling through the blinking traffic lights. The water reflects yellow and white from the safety lights, the haze of headlights, and the dawn of streetlights. I reach the doors, push them open, and then stop.

  What the hell am I doing here?

  This place is a wonderland of abandonment, painted in a film of aged light and reeking of that same sticky smell that always makes me wonder whose past it is I’m breathing.

  I don’t know why I even crossed the street. I meant to keep going, down to that bar on the corner with the sexy, golden fries and sexy, slurpy ranch.

  But my feet have their own plan. They lead me deeper into the archives of a thrift store that’s like a lost and found in a pocket of time. It’s fun to hunt here on the weekends. Last time, I found a really cool vase. Not sure what I’m searching for now . . .

  My fingers trail over knobbed glass and textured pottery, mixing my smudges with all the others that have come before, until I land on one piece that stands out among the rest. It’s practically begging for attention, with that fat little bottom and that slender neck. And walls dark enough to keep whatever secrets might be plugged up inside.

  It’s a glass bottle, and it looks like something that may have stored precious oils in biblical times.

  I don’t need it. I’m in the middle of downsizing because I’m shamefully moving back in with my mother while I apartment- and job-search back home.

  So why did I just grab it around the neck?

  It feels good. Solid. Right.

  Right?

  I slip it into my cute little purse, the one I gifted to myself over this last year of self-betterment while I lived out an unfair sentence in an apartment I inherited—because I was the only one on the goddamned paperwork!

  Two weeks left. Two weeks until I finish out this lease and go home to the Midwest.

  I think I might be attracted to this bottle.

  In a sexual way.

  That’s what I think as I take the relic from a sink-bath I prepared for it while the TV behind me rambles off a rerun I’ve seen a million times. Anyone else have a hard time focusing?

  From my kitchen counter, the bottle gleams at me, the light from my apartment’s antique high ceilings glinting across the base like a dark grin.

  Someone tell me why I thought about this bottle the entire time I was at the bar. Someone tell me why I rushed home in a spring rainstorm just so I could . . . be alone with it.

  I bend to its level and admire the strange, murky color.

  This is new for me. Inanimate objects.

  I mean, I’ve seen specials about it. I know it’s a thing.

  But it’s, like, really a thing.

  I reach out a finger and poke the glass, feeling the smallest spark travel from my fingertip, up my veins, and down my spine—like someone just hit me with a cool stream of breath.

  What am I even doing?

  Why did I just stroke it?

  And why am I now lifting the thrift store find to my mouth?

  The moment my lips touch it, the warmest sensation floods through me, and the world goes dark.

  At the edges of reality, I hear a voice in the shadows—raspy, low, like the warning purr of a lion. “You’ve kept me waiting, Master.”

  It smells like tobacco.

  A Bomb-Ass Genie Honeymoon

  Chapter 1

  Honeymooners

  ~DOLLY~

  Current Day

  It’s possible I need a break.

  From magic.

  From adventure.

  From hot genie brothers.

  From being a heroine in a story that no longer feels like it’s mine.

  Because what in the actual fuck is going on right now?


  Behind us, the horizon is a fresco of bleeding reds and oranges, the sun like a comet crashing into the sea. And there, in the crystalline shallows, bobbing like a bad omen in a realm it doesn’t belong—

  “That’s Arrik’s bottle.” Panic claws at my chest. “Velis, WHY is Arrik’s bottle—”

  “It can’t be.” Velis stands with his bare feet rooted in the glittering-white sand, his rather nice, extra-tan arm flung across my chest to keep my feet from marching forward. His honeycomb hair tosses in the breeze, his absolutely lickable chest looking extra heroic in this light. Then, wearing a pair of flowery swim trunks, he genie-dashes forward, scoops up the antique vessel he bequeathed to Arrik, and lobs it into the sea like a professional javelin thrower.

  There is a distant, quiet plop.

  “Velis?!”

  In a flash, his hand is on my shoulder. In another, the scent of salt and waves fades, replaced by an elaborate blend of flowers.

  From the balcony of our rental, Vel’s eyes reflect the magical coastline, like he’s searching for answers in the far-off waves, trying to make sense of what we just saw and whether that bottle even exists.

  “Maybe it doesn’t,” I blurt out, grabbing his hand to ground us both. “Exist.” Then, more certain: “Velis. Maybe the bottle doesn’t exist.”

  Could it be denial? Maybe. But something about this feels . . .

  Vel suddenly snarls, “Fucking hell! How do I keep falling for this?”

  Something about this feels Beckhamy.

  “I mean, that is part of his secret power,” I say. “And that’s got to be what this is, right?”

  I already have a genie. I already have a soulmate. And if Beckham wanted to provoke us, he knows the best way would be by creating the illusion of Arrik’s vessel washing up on our honeymoon island.

  I let out a slow breath, the weight of implication lifting. Phew. Solved. Quicker and easier than most.

  Curtains of flowers drape the entrances to our treehouse, the whole thing shaggy with velvet-like petals. Velis pulls me through, his warm grip hasty. This multi-level dwelling, dripping in vines and built into an enormous umbrella-shaped tree with winding stairs both outside and in, looks like it’s taken right out of a book about fairies.

  Fitting, as the place is absolutely infested with pixies that really make you question how secure this supposed mask over us is.

  “How do you think he found us?” I set my beach bag onto the coatrack by the door, a knotted structure growing from the floor with branches still attached. That’s how most of the furniture is here, and I don’t care if Velis cheesed it up just for me—I love it. I feel like we’re in a fae’s hidden hollow. I feel like we’re teeny tiny.

  Velis is already two floors above me, genie-darting around and checking the perimeter, feeling up the walls for breaks in his magic like he’s searching for secret compartments.

  “He shouldn’t have been able to find us. We’re supposed to be under the estate’s full protection,” he calls over the rustic railing of the highest floor, where there’s an actual telescope and a secret sky window perfect for gazing at the stars.

  Was I not just saying this? It seems like people keep getting through Daddy’s ‘impenetrable’ forcefields pretty easily.

  “Actually, I don’t think anyone’s truly broken through yet.” Velis’s voice slips into a phantom whisper against my ear before he vanishes onto the roof, where his footsteps thump overhead.

  “Elaborate,” I say to a lamp. While I’ve grown used to this alternative method of communication, I still need something to focus on while speaking. The branches of the lamp have flower buds sprouting from them, with a few mushrooms decorating the base.

  “Beckham didn’t escape my father’s office that day,” Vel continues. “He just went invisible. Father knew he was there the whole time. It was all part of his evil plan. And Beckham getting through the defenses at the ambassador’s wing? I lowered the shield myself when I thought he was Cal.”

  I wait for Velis to reappear but sense him moving farther away, down to ground level, where he seems to be genie-blessing the tree’s roots. “And Amoira inside your father’s office?”

  “Arrik told you, Beckham’s charm magic is so attuned because ‘both’ his parents had high aptitude for it.”

  “Meaning your father also has charm magic,” I fill in the blanks. “And you think it was him in your father’s office that day, disguised as Amoira, when he was supposed to be off on business? I’d say that’s very much within the realm of possibility. He could have done it to motivate Arrik into rescuing you from your nymph relatives.”

  In fact, before he found out Amoira was involved, Arrik was ready to dick around with me another week. Time and again, Daddy has proven to be a master manipulator. Ninety percent of my experiences since meeting Velis seem to have been shaped by the Reilhander patriarch.

  “He could have been the one to tell Beckham where we are,” I conclude.

  A much easier theory to stomach than Arrik’s soulmate-seeking vessel legitimately being out there, rocking around in the sea.

  Velis appears behind me, making me jump at the sound of his voice. “My father?”

  “The only person who knows where we are. And he’s already sacrificed us repeatedly, all in the name of trying to force redemption into your irredeemable brothers. I wouldn’t put it past him to send Beckham to crash our honeymoon.”

  But, as recently proven, maybe ‘irredeemable’ isn’t as certain as we once thought. In the tiniest corner of his dead, black soul, Beckham may have felt an ounce of light, once in his miserable life. I can’t fully blame him for that—he wasn’t exactly set up for success. But look at how much Arrik has grown compared to the others.

  Then again, Arrik is a bit extraordinary.

  A flutter of warmth rises in my chest, which I quickly frost over as my laird’s frosty eyes zip to mine, but he knows he shouldn’t be inside my head. He acts like he didn’t feel it at all.

  “Your father was already throwing us at Beckham before. If Beckham can suddenly feel things, wouldn’t your father be doing everything in his power to get him near his most empathetic son and his unwillingly soft human?”

  “You are disturbingly good at thinking like my father.” Velis pulls me to him by the hip as if to reaffirm his appreciation for my softness, both inside and out. He plants a quick kiss on my cheek. “I like this theory, Doll.”

  “So do I.”

  Better charm magic afoot than the special love vase setting its sights on me not once but twice for two different Reilhander brothers.

  I.

  Am.

  A.

  MONOGAMIST.

  If Beckham so much as pines at me, I quit.

  Velis watches my silent tangent with suppressed amusement. It’s one of the reasons he and I exist so peacefully. There are a lot of things that feel like too great an effort to say. But it’s still nice to have someone hear them. And care enough to listen in. And respect me enough not to use it against me. Ever.

  I offer, “Beckham’s proven he doesn’t have the stomach to kill us. He actually stopped when his mother and grandfather tried to make him kill you. Do you know how much restraint that must have taken? And then he let me go too. Arrik said that once he felt empathy for the first time, it came easier—and less resentfully—the more he felt it. Maybe it’ll be the same for Beckham.”

  “When did Arrik tell you all that?”

  During one of our telepathic phone calls near the end.

  “Ah.”

  Shit. The conversation always seems to swivel back to Arrik.