Nolan held my hair back as I threw up in the half bath by the mudroom.
And then he just…took over. Instead of giving me sleeping pills the way Chase did, he carried me upstairs and put me in his bed, and now I was too hot, slightly squashed, and…weirdly at peace. Even though the red room was still fresh in my mind, the panic attacks had been held at bay. And although Nolan’s dick was pressed against my back like an overachieving zucchini, I wasn’t freaking out. We were both fully clothed. Nolan wasn’t Uncle Porter. I didn’t have to be afraid.
While Jez’s relationship with Cole had started—quite literally—with a bang, my relationship with Nolan was more of an evolution. We’d begun as friends, lost our way, and now we were gradually getting closer again. He took liberties, but not too many. He pushed me, but not too hard.
As much as I was capable of love, I did love him.
I relaxed in his arms, replaying the events of last night, running through the conversations, trying to block out the gore. Something was bugging me. A fragment of a thought buried in blood. I scratched around, trying to find the thread and tug on it. Finally, I got it.
“What’s a butternut special?” I asked. Was Nolan even awake?
“A what?” he mumbled.
I hadn’t let him watch the feed, although he must have seen the horror etched on my face as he flitted in and out with coffee. Why give both of us nightmares?
“A butternut special. I think it’s some kind of kink thing.”
“This is from last night?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What was the context?”
Room 72 also had rules, and they enforced them more strictly than I did. Only one person spoke out loud, and that was GutterMuse, who acted as a compere-slash-director for the festivities. Viewers typed their reactions and requests, and he relayed them to the_dollmaker and KeepHerQuiet as he considered appropriate, before finally joining in with the action himself at the end. Later, when edited versions of the footage were sold via the dark web, the conversations were removed altogether.
There had been six players in Room 72 last night–GutterMuse, the other two “torture artists,” as they billed themselves, and three viewers besides me. It was a viewer who’d made the comment, the one who called himself cash.dominus, and it wasn’t so much the wording that had piqued my interest as GutterMuse’s reaction to it.
“One of the assholes last night said it was ‘better than a butternut special,’ and the boss man gave this soft chuckle, as if it was a joke and he was in on it.”
And there had been a subtle familiarity in their interactions that was missing from the others. Getting onto the invite list for Room 72 wasn’t easy—I’d only managed it by stealing accounts from existing “guests.” Had cash.dominus found his way in because he knew GutterMuse in real life?
“Never heard of it,” Nolan said. “Maybe it’s a regional thing?”
“I tried googling, but nothing came up.”
“Fisting with root vegetables? What if they’re using condiments as lube?”
“Ugh.”
“Folks use beef tallow as a moisturiser, so…”
“Not me.” I shuddered because although I liked a good steak as much as anyone—except Sin, obviously—the idea of slathering dead cow on my face didn’t appeal. “Gross.”
“You have psychos murdering women live on camera—gross is their schtick. Did you ask the FBI about the butternut thing?”
“Not yet. I doubt they’ll know the answer.”
It promised to be an awkward conversation, and the FBI just wasn’t that good, not anymore. After the last president installed a bunch of sycophants at the top, most of the good agents had either taken early retirement or quit to go into the private sector. Under President Harrison, the new director was trying to turn things around, but it was going to take ten years to fix what the other guy broke in ten months. So much institutional knowledge had been lost.
The last time we had a shot at catching GutterMuse and his sidekicks, the Federal Bureau of Idiots had flooded the area with fools in suits who stomped around with all the subtlety of a herd of buffalo. So, Gutter had just moved on to another state and started over. At four a.m. this morning, I’d told Branning that if he made the same mistake again, I was done. Fucking with criminals online was supposed to be an entertaining hobby, but since I stumbled across this literal shitshow, I hadn’t been having fun anymore. I longed for the old days, for sunny summer afternoons spent catfishing romance scammers and cosy winter evenings curled up with a cup of cocoa and the contents of a corrupt politician’s hard drive. Things that actually made a difference. Chase had christened me Robin Hoodie because I stole from drug dealers and donated to rehab programs, and what was wrong with loungewear?
“Then try asking Brax,” Nolan suggested. “Kinks are his specialty.”
“I need my phone.”
Nolan had longer arms than I did, and he fished around on the nightstand and found it. I asked the butternut question and snuggled back against his chest, making myself comfortable. He groaned.
“What?”
