“No, I … it wasn’t like that at all. I checked on the accounts of every creator that Atlas invited.” The blush really had spread down to his handsome jaw. He ruffled his curls nervously, and the sleek Siamese—Trinket—leapt off the bed and trotted over to paw at his leg. He reached down and stroked her.
“So … you watched my content? And what did you think of it?” There was the husky purr again. Would he admit that he’d gotten himself off to me like so many people in my comments did?
A not-small part of me hoped for that.
He completely refused to even glance in my direction. “I think it’s a very smart strategy—teasing viewers with enough tomake them want to follow for access to your more explicit content. You’re giving them a value-add proposition, and it’s paid off.”
“Is that all?” I asked archly.Come on, Henry, I’m trying my hardest to flirt here!“Nothing else you … learned about me?”
“Well …”
I held my breath.
“You’re also … real. Well, I suppose that’s an assumption on my part. You seem very real. Your chatty posts get so much engagement, as much as your self-pleasure posts. It’s intimate in a way that a lot of the more hardcore content isn’t. Watching those posts made me feel like I was …” His words trailed off, and I realised that I was the one blushing, now.
“Like you were …?”
He shrugged, his eyes flashing to mine and then away. “Like I was your partner, having a chat at the end of the day before bed.”
“Oh.” He’d managed something that very few people could. He’d rendered me virtually speechless. I suddenly recalled fantasising about the married couple, but replacing the man’s face with his. Intimate partners. Not fuck buddies.
I cleared my throat. “Well, you take your business very seriously … Atlas is the persuasive business partner, I’m guessing?”
He nodded, scooping Trinket onto his lap. She flicked her tail and climbed onto his desk, bunting her head against his arm until he presented his hand for her to rub against.
“What would your ‘hot horse’ have looked like?”
I blinked at the sudden change of subject. “Uh …”
Abernathy chose that moment to scramble back onto the bed and deposit himself in my lap.
“I mean, if I’d whipped out a crack pipe and started packing it, what would your response have been?” he clarified. I swallowed back the memories.
“I probably would have told you to get the fuck out,” I rasped.
He tilted his head to the side, not quite meeting my eyes. “You would have tried to kick me out of my own bedroom?”
“No, not literally, of course. I just fucking hate drugs.” I focused on the warm, fluffy mass in my lap, refusing to let the past overtake me. “Iwantnothingto do with them … or people who involve themselves with them.”
My words were met with silence. I glanced up, finding him watching me, concentration furrowing his brow like he was trying to puzzle me out. I held still, although the urge to squirm under his scrutiny verged on unbearable. His pocket buzzed, and he looked away, pulling out his phone. He sighed down at the screen before putting the phone to his ear.
“Atlas?”
Slurred shouting was audible even with the phone pressed to his face. “Where the fuck are you? You’re missing our party, and I wanna make a speech, and it’ll look weird as fuck if you’re not here when I do it!”
Henry pushed his glasses up on his head and massaged his eyelids with thumb and middle finger. “I’ll be there in five.”
“Fucking mint! I’ll give you until the end of the next song.”
The line went dead, and Henry shoved his phone back into his pocket, sliding his palms down his legs. His fingers dug into his knees over and over again.
Without thinking, I reached over and covered his hands with mine, squeezing. The clawing stilled, and he exhaled a shaky breath.
“You don’t have to go up there, you know,” I whispered.
He shook his head and leaned back, his hands sliding out from under mine to reach for his vape. Another pull, determination written on his handsome face.
“I do.”
