She nibbled on her bottom lip. My elbow slid off the desk. I righted myself, gripping my knees, chewing on my gum with renewed vigour.
“Have you ever seen a twisted testicle?”
I almost choked on my gum. Grabbing a tissue, I quickly spat it out. Had I heard her correctly? Or was I misconstruing words that maybe didn’t quite translate between the two similar languages?
Her grin was wicked. “Well, I have … it was a very long time ago, but let me tell you, the image of it is still etched in my brain.”
So perhaps Ihadheard her right. She sat up, my eyes falling to her breasts as they dropped slightly with gravity. A vague thought flitted through my brain, an odd wondering at how they would feel cupped in my palms.
I scrubbed my hand over my face as she leaned towards the screen, whispering, “It looked like an overripe, overfull, very purple grape. It washideous!”
She flopped back on her pillows, a sigh falling from her lips. The sound of it had me straightening. It didn’t seem to match with her cheeky teasing. It seemed forlorn. Almost lost … although I was not the best person to interpret these things.
And then the moment was over, and she was pulling a large toy from her drawer and murmuring in English, “Here’s a little reward for listening to my silly Romanian ramblings.”
Still, no view below the waist. Just her upper body and her facial expressions as she worked herself over, making eye contact with those intense blue eyes of hers. “Yes, that feels so good! Oh … yes! Right there. Ungh … don’t stop, big boy, just … keep … doing … exactly …o Doamne, I’m coming!”
I clicked out of the app and spun from the desk, breathing raggedly. Abernathy, all alert now, glared accusingly at me … at my tented trousers, while Trinket, who was very attuned to my moods, pawed worriedly at my leg.
“I’m not having an anxiety attack, Trink,” I assured her, reaching down to scratch her ears. “Possibly an existential crisis, though.”
Abernathy tilted his head dramatically—I assumed the best cat-impersonation of an eye roll—and flopped back onto the bed and her panties.
I stifled a groan, pinching the bridge of my nose. I’d always prided myself on being able to separate the male hormonal urges when it came to sex with my work on Tickle. Mostly because porn had never done much for me. The gratuitous, performative nature of it always felt so fake, so hollow and shallow, that I could sit and review content for hours on end and walk away completely unmoved by it all.
But her? She moved me. Was it because she wasn’t just a face and a body on a screen? Because I knew a little about her? Because I wanted to know more?
Or was it because, when she stared directly at the camera, it felt like she was staring at me … talking to me … like I was the only person in the world who mattered to her in that moment?
I headed for my ensuite bathroom and ran myself a cold shower.
Over the next week, I found myself returning to her Tickle profile more often than I wanted to admit. I steered clear of any posts where she was obviously engaging in solo play, and if a chatty post turned that way, I clicked off as fast as I could. I did not need that sort of distraction while trying to puzzle her out.
Unfortunately, I was no closer to uncovering any motivations she might have had to be in my bedroom unsupervised, and certainly nothing to explain why she had remained in Australia past her visa expiry. I had, however, become borderline obsessed—along with thousands of other viewers—with her latest content strategy; making sexy posts to reply to seedy comments left on her account. What these cretins would never know was that she was trolling them in Romanian.
My favourite had been when one user—who, in the grand tradition of bogan boomer men, had a profile picture showing a red-faced, flabby man, baring his yellowed teeth in some semblance of a grin, with a can of beer in his hand—had commented, ‘How many filters r on that face of urs doll? Im in the market 4 a Russian mail-order bride but if ur catfshing me I am out’.
Her video reply, wearing lacy knickers and a bra with cups so tiny her pert breasts spilled out the top while she filed her nails, still had me chuckling when I thought about it …
“Firstly, you uneducated swine,” she began, her Romanian delivered in the sweetest tone. “I am Romanian, not Russian. It’s a whole other country, we don’t even speak the same language. Not that I would expect you to be able to tell the difference, you can barely speak English. Secondly, I do not come in the mail. The male comes in me. If he’s lucky. Whichyounever will be.”
She’d blown a kiss at the camera and murmured sexily, “Futu-te-en nara ta, nenoroticule.Pula ta este suficient de mica pentru a încapea.” The video had ended with her leaning into the camera, reaching for the end-record button, and giving me— and every other viewer—a close-up of her marvellous cleavage.
I’d barked out a shocked laugh, scrolling back enough to run her voice through a translator to confirm my suspicions. I’d been sure that she’d just told him to …
“She did!” I’d chuckled, leaning back to admire the words on my screen.
“Fuck your nostril, motherfucker. Your dick’s small enough to fit.”
I smirked at the memory, almost tempted to log in just to relive that odd sense of satisfaction … of pride … in the way she kept herself accessible, personable, while utterly destroying that pervert who’d crept into her content …
“What’s got you smiling like a fool?” Atlas asked, kicking his legs up on my desk. I snapped back to the present.
“I … I saw something amusing on a creator’s page.”
Atlas chortled. “Well, well. Is Mr ‘I’m Immune to Porn’ getting corrupted by his own app?”
I shook my head. “You do realise that not everything on Tickle is hardcore pornography, don’t you?”
