It was three o’clock in the morning on Friday by the time I got back to my dingy apartment. This time, half the blood wetting my shirt was mine.
I peeled the fabric off in the bathroom, wincing when I caught sight of my stomach in the mirror. There was a three-inch gash on my left side from a knife I hadn’t been fast enough to dodge. Goddamn turf war bullshit. Why the fuck had we even been involved? That wasn’t what we usually did for the higher-ups. My old man must have owed someone a favor or something.
Fucking Christ, I thought, reliving the night in my head. If I’d been any slower dodging the blade, it would have punctured my lung.
My eyes dropped to the scars riddling the rest of my torso. They stood as a stark reminder of how many close calls I’d had over the years, how a split second of distraction could have ended with me in the hospital, or worse.
I bent down, wincing, and grabbed the first aid kit from beneath the bathroom sink. After showering off, I went about dressing the wound. I’d gotten good at stitching myself up, though luckily, tonight, no actual stitches were required since the gash was pretty shallow.
Only after it was dressed did I allow myself to pull up Lauren’s latest video as a reward. With a tap, it started playing, her familiar bedroom flashing to life before my eyes. Golden light streamed into the room, bathing her four-poster bed in dappled shafts of amber. She kneeled in the middle of the comforter, wearing a matching set of cream-colored shorts and a tank top.
Her fingers toyed with the hem of the shirt as she gave the camera a sultry smile. I hit pause just as she started to pull it over her head and went back to the beginning again. Tugging my phone close, I zoomed in on her face, focusing on her eyes, studying her expression. Several days had passed since my brothers and I sank her father’s car in the river—plenty of time for Tommy to get reported missing—but I saw no grief in Lauren’s eyes. No worry.
Had she not heard? Or did she know and not care? Not that I would blame her if she didn’t, but not knowing if the news had broken about Tommy was starting to get on my nerves, and I decided it was time to bite the bullet.
I pulled up my dad’s contact, my thumb hovering over the call button. He and I hadn’t exactly been seeing eye to eye lately, and a large part of why I was holed up in the city was to avoid him. It felt like every interaction turned into an argument, and living under his thumb during the whole Bradley Bluhm debacle had pushed us to a breaking point. I needed this time away from him, but my need for information about Lauren was even stronger, so, with a deep breath, I called him.
He answered on the first ring. “Where the fuck have you been?”
I almost hung up. The man made nothing easy. Every fucking conversation had to be contentious from the start. “Busy.”
“Fucking busy?” Dad barked. “It’s been days, Junior.”
“And I got all the shit done that you asked me to,” I fired back. “It’s not like I’m out here fucking around. It’s not like I took a blade to the ribs tonight because I was sitting in my apartment twiddling my thumbs.”
He sucked in a breath. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I bit out, refusing to let the concern in his tone soften me. He wasn’t worried about my safety, not really; knowing Dad, he was more concerned with how my death would impact his life. “Can I ask you something, or do you want to nag me some more?”
Dad shut his mouth so fast, I heard his teeth click over the line. I didn’t have to see him to know he was clenching his jaw hard enough to crack a molar. A small, ugly thrill of triumph zipped through me, knowing I’d gotten to him.
We always brought out the worst in each other.
“Ask,” he growled.
“Has the news broken about Tommy yet?”
Dad was quiet for so long that I didn’t think he’d answer me. “Why do you want to know?”
Fuck, I should have asked someone else. I thought enough time had passed and I’d done a good enough job covering my tracks that Dad would have forgotten all about Lauren by now, but I could tell from the suspicion in his tone that I was wrong.
“I just do,” I said.
“This isn’t about his whore daughter, is it?”
Rage boiled up from the pit of my stomach. Men like my father were why patricide was a thing.
I took a deep breath and pushed my anger back down, forcing an unaffected calm into my tone that had taken me years to perfect. “No. Has Tommy been reported missing yet or not?”
“Yesterday. When are you coming home? Your mom’s been worried.”
Ah, the guilt trip. Of course he would turn to that when badgering hadn’t worked.
“A few days. I’ve got some shit to look into in the city.”
He hung up on me.
I set my phone down, hands shaking. One day, this goddamn temper of mine was going to bubble up and explode all over everyone around me. Years of unresolved resentment sat heavy between me and my father, most of it so ugly I repressed the shit out of it. My fallout with Lauren occupied the top spot on the list. I’d never forget what he said to me the night Tommy kicked my ass: Better it happen now, like this, than for Lauren to get really hurt.
Taken at face value, it might sound like he’d been looking out for her, but his ominous tone had turned it into a threat, like if I didn’t stay away from Lauren, he’d be the one to hurt her next.
Yeah, Tommy was out of the picture, but my old man was still a problem. One I would have to deal with, and soon. A fight had been brewing between us for years, and not just your run-of–the-mill yelling match, but the big one. The one where I told him I didn’t want to do this anymore, that I didn’t want to end up like him, which was where I was going if I continued down my current path.
Needing a distraction from my troubled thoughts, I swiped my thumb across my phone and brought up Lauren’s video, still paused, still zoomed in on her face. Fuck, she was beautiful. I hit play and let the video keep rolling, and up went Lauren’s shirt, over her head before getting tossed out of frame. My cock swelled at the sight of her dusky nipples, already pebbled from the air rushing over them. Her waist was flat and narrow, flaring at the hips. She’d filled out some in the last decade, and the curves looked good on her.
I watched while she stroked her hands up her stomach and cupped her tits. Perfect tits. Her head fell back as she played with her nipples. She didn’t look like she was acting. She looked like she was enjoying herself, and that’s why it was so goddamn addicting to watch her, why I’d watched nearly every video on her Me4U page over the years. The woman came to life on screen. She was completely unselfconscious, gave herself entirely over to pleasure. But my favorite thing was when her personality peeked through whenever she laughed or made that low, frustrated moan that hinted she was close, but needed something more to push herself over the edge.
I’d learned all her sounds, studied the way she made herself climax. It might have seemed obsessive, but it wasn’t; it was strategic. One day, I would use everything I’d learned against her, make her come faster than anyone else had, convince her that my hands and my tongue and my dick were made to get her off. I wanted her to crave me, need me.
Was it manipulative? All kinds of messed up? Absolutely.
I didn’t give a single, solitary fuck.
On-screen, Lauren opened her large dark eyes and stared directly into the camera. “This is what I’d have you do to me.” She gently pinched her nipples, and I decided the extra hundred bucks I’d paid for dirty talk this time was more than worth it. “I’d make you stay right here, first with your hands, and then your mouth, until I was absolutely soaked.”
I unbuttoned my jeans and reached inside my boxers to grip my dick. “What else?” I demanded, my voice low with need.
She slid a hand over her stomach and plunged it inside her shorts. “And then I’d have you touch me here. Not my clit or my cunt,” she said, and my dick went rock hard to hear such filthy words coming out of what was once such a sweet mouth. “I’d have you tease me, close, but not where I need you most.”
My eyes tracked the movement of her hand beneath the whisper-thin fabric of her shorts. She was doing exactly what she’d said, teasing herself, running her fingertips ever closer to her center.
“Do you want to see?” she asked.
“Yes. Show me,” I ground out, stroking my hand up my cock. This was why Lauren had so many subs. She was good at her job, made it feel more like we were doing this together and I wasn’t jerking it to a prerecorded video.
Her smile turned coy as she pulled her hand from her shorts and slid her fingers along the waistband. “Say please.”
I shook my head. I’d never begged for it in my fucking life, and I wasn’t about to make an exception, not even for her. “Drop them, Lauren. I want to see how wet you are for me.”
She smiled wider, like my answer pleased her, and slowly began shimmying them off. A small triangle of hair, neatly trimmed, came into sight, and then her shorts went the way of her shirt and she was completely naked.
Her hands returned to her tits, cupping, kneading, stroking. My gaze roamed over her. With so much skin on display, I didn’t know where to look. I wanted to memorize the sight of her, and not just the way she teased herself, but the smaller tells that showed me how much she liked nipple play. The way her stomach tensed. The way her breath shuddered out when she gently pinched herself.
She shut her eyes, her lids fluttering, and I knew she was ready for more. And yet she stayed right where she was, pushing herself higher, harder, until she was forced to sit back on her heels because her thighs started to shake. All through it she spoke, telling me what she liked not just with her body but with her words.
“Here. Right here.”
“Just like that.”
“Soft, and then hard.”
I wondered if she knew how much she was giving away, how much ammunition I’d stockpiled over the years. She wouldn’t stand a chance against me when I finally got her within my grasp. Instead of drawing it out like this, I’d go straight in for the kill.
“Stop teasing us both,” I growled, my hand starting to move faster over my cock. I wasn’t used to waiting for the things I wanted. I’d been teasing myself right along with her, and my impatience was starting to get the better of me.
As if she heard my command, she dragged a pillow between her thighs and trailed the fingers of a hand down, down, before slipping them between herself and the pillow.
“I’m soaked,” she said, the words more of a moan than anything articulate.
“I bet you are,” I told her. “You took your damn time getting us here, Lo.”
She cracked her eyes open, a mischievous smile splitting her face. “So grumpy.”
My hand froze on the head of my dick, and I hit the pause button to double-check that this was, in fact, a prerecorded video, and I hadn’t accidentally accepted an invite to a live session or something. On screen, Lauren froze, and a rueful grin tugged at my lips. She’d probably clocked my impatient streak from past sexting sessions and was now using it against me.
I’d have to find some way to pay her back later, once she was mine.
With a tap, I hit play, my pulse thundering in my ears as Lauren started to move. I started moving again, too, my hand stroking up and down my cock as I watched her. I’d seen too many videos of this woman to count, but these custom ones were always my favorite. Because they were just for me.
The camera angle shifted slightly, showing me more of a sideview, and I had just enough time to wonder if there was someone in the room with her, helping her film, before the first moan slipped through her lips and nothing else but Lauren mattered anymore.
Her position and the pillow hid most of what was happening from sight, but I knew the moment she slid her finger—fingers?—inside herself, because her lips popped open on an even louder gasp, and she turned her head to stare straight into the camera.
“God, you feel so good,” she said, her eyes fluttering shut again as if she were imagining me there in the room with her.
I stepped into the fantasy with her, kneeling behind her on the bed and shoving her hand out of the way so I could replace it with mine. She teased one of her breasts herself, while I went to work on the other, pinching and stroking her nipple even as I sank my fingers into her slick, tight heat.
“Do you like how wet I got for you?” she asked.
“Yes,” I ground out. “But I want you wetter.”
She shifted her hips forward, grinding her clit against my palm, fucking herself onto my fingers with total abandon. She was glorious. Wild. Perfect.
“I want to feel you come,” I ordered.
“I’m going to come,” she said, as if she’d heard me. “You’re going to make me come so hard.”
“I’m right there with you,” I told her, my balls starting to tighten.
A heartbeat later, we came together, both of us shuddering, both of us breathing hard. Spots danced across my eyes. Fuck, that was amazing. She was amazing.
I watched her slump sideways onto the bed, laughing in a way that made my chest hurt. She sounded so free, so happy. I would have killed, literally, to feel that alive for once; I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d laughed.
Her gaze met mine through the camera. “Holy shit, that was good. Was it good for you, too?”
I grabbed a wad of paper towels and started mopping myself up. “I think I got some on the ceiling, so, yeah, I’d say it was.”
Again, that infectious laugh. “I’m going to sleep so well tonight.” She stretched on the bed, languorously, her arms high overhead and her toes pointed.
I wanted to crawl on top of her and make her come again. And again. Until she was so exhausted she could barely keep her eyes open. Only then would I let her sleep, and only for a few hours before I woke her for more.
“Hey,” she said, drawing my gaze back up her body. Her expression was open, intimate, her eyes soft with the afterglow of pleasure. “Thank you for doing this with me.”
“Don’t thank me, Lo,” I told her. “Don’t ever thank me.”
I locked my phone and finished cleaning myself off, and as the haze of pleasure dissipated, my mind began to spin. No, I hadn’t figured out how to get free from my father yet, but I needed to find some way to do it. And fast. Because it was time for a new chapter of my life to start.
I was done fucking around on the internet like some weirdo; I needed to see Lauren in person.
