His shaft swelled in a painful instant at just the thought of her name.
He closed his eyes and let his head fall against the couch arm as he gripped himself, jerking with rough, punishing strokes. Seeking to exorcise this sickness out of his body.
He needed to stop obsessing over her.
His hand moved faster and faster, tears of frustration gathering at the sides of his squeezed-shut eyes as Library Girl apologized to him, placed a gentle hand on his heart as she kissed him softly. Shyly offered to touch him. Kiss it. Lick it. Make everything better.
“I’m sorry, Tyoma,”she told him inside his mind.“I’m truly, sincerely, so, so?—”
The orgasm ripped through him like an explosion, and he came with a guttural groan, his cock spewing cum across his chest as she faded from his mind.
For now.
But she’d be back. She always came back. It had been bad before, but since Berlin…
He sat back up on the couch, disgusted with himself. He hadn’t managed to clock twenty-four hours between these needed exorcisms since that night. Not even once. The sick obsession that never fully faded was already settling back in, dribbling shame down his chest in the form of his hot spend.
He snatched the baijiu bottle up with his sticky hand and took a long, burning swig. It wasn’t helping. Nothing was helping.
But he had to let her go.
Yom raised his phone, determined to delete the spyware app he couldn’t stop checking and rechecking. But first, some masochistic instinct made him check the messages Tommy had received from Lydia one last time.
One more reminder, he told himself. One more reminder that this woman was nothing but a pathetic liar.
His eyes flared when he saw the messages marked as Read.
Moreover, there were two more below them now. From Hanson.
HANSON: hey shortie sorry I been outta pocket but I can’t hook up tonight
Yom let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Hanson hadn’t decided to cross him, to prove some point about America being the best, or to get a spot he didn’t deserve on the Minnesota Raptors—or any of the hundreds of reasons that had gone through Yom’s head when he’d decided to plant spyware on the other player’s phone.
But then he saw the next message.
HANSON: How about Friday? After our game?
YOM
Yom did not deletethe spyware app.
And, despite his stated antipathy toward both Lydia the Liar and Hanson theGandon, he couldn’t stop himself from obsessively poring over every text they exchanged in the following days.
In fact, instead of deleting the spyware app he’d planted on Hanson’s phone, Yom toggled its notification button to the on setting.
Consequently, he received a buzzing notification on Thursday, in the middle of his strategic management class, when Hanson received an outrageous request from the girl he’d relabeled “Lydia DTF” in his phone.
LYDIA DTF:Question. Would you be open to leaving a key under your mat, so that I can be there waiting for you naked when you get home from the game? That’s always been a fantasy of mine.
Yom breathed through the dark, clenching sensation twisting through his chest.
There was no calculated waiting period before Hanson deigned to respond this time. Instead, Yom found himself sickly riveted as he watched Hanson immediately text back in real-time.
TOMMY: For realz!?
LYDIA DTF: Yes! I want to be your reward when you win.
TOMMY: How about if we lose?
