“And you made it look pretty damn hard.”
“All good?” Scott asked.
“Yeah, we’re…” Thomas bit his lip, staring at the camera screen. “Oh…”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Don’t be mad…”
“I’m immediately fuming,” Scott growled. “What did you do?”
“I forgot to press record.”
“What!”
Scott looked around the room at all the remaining inflated balloons. They circled him, vibrating with laughter.
“Thomas!”
“It was an accident.”
“No, it wasn’t you… You bastard.”
Thomas abandoned his innocent façade. “Yep. Now take your clothes off. All of them.”
“What?”
“You’ve worked up a sweat, and you’re too exhausted to do that horrible fake moaning.”
“It wasn’t horrible.”
“It was. Your subscriber is paying £2000. He doesn’t want you to banshee cry each time your butt bursts a balloon; he wants to see you sweaty, messy and run ragged by the request. This isn’t for your enjoyment, it’s for his.”
“I’ll get you back for this,” Scott warned.
Thomas smiled. “I’m sure you will. Now stop bitching and take your clothes off.”
Scott huffed, then got undressed.
“Turn towards the window slightly,” Thomas said.
Scott glared as he shuffled until Thomas told him to stop. “Yeah, gleaming skin. Perfect. Grab your first balloon.”
Scott picked one. He didn’t imagine Janice’s face, but Thomas’s.
Every balloon had Thomas’s face.
Thomas’s smug fucking face.
“Go.”
Scott started popping.
He went at it like a man possessed.
By the time he was finished, only oneThomas faceremained, and that was the one behind the camera. Scott collapsed on the wooden floor, relishing in the cool surface against his sweaty skin. His arse cheeks stung. His lungs burned, and his thighs ached. He didn’t know how he was going to get back upstairs to his room, thought he might stay the night down here, surrounded by the remains of two hundred dead balloons.
It had been a massacre.
