21. Soren
Soren
T en minutes ago, Aiden cleared his throat like he had something he wanted to discuss.
His eyes darted to me, then to Tase, and he let out a sigh, adjusting his seat in the chair.
Tase jerked his chin toward me but was looking at Aiden. “Go on. Spit out whatever it is.”
We all knew the signs.
Aiden scrubbed a hand across his scalp. “I’m not sure this is the right time,” he hedged.
I groaned, a pit opening up in my chest. “Dude, whatever you have to say, fucking say it.”
So Aiden told us about his findings. The cam girl work.
He’d found Gilli online by accident, scrolling through a newer phone app he’d just installed, modeled after OnlyFans. According to her profile, she’d been active for a few months.
“It’s not her.” Tase was immediately insistent. He went straight to the defensive. “She’d never do something like that.”
“And how do you know?” I asked him. “Are you best fucking friends now? ”
Aiden sighed and pulled out his phone to deliver proof. “Don’t believe me? See for yourself.”
“Dude, please don’t tell me you saved a video,” Tase moaned.
A few swipes, a few clicks, and Aiden held the cell up with the video playing.
At first my eyes landed anywhere else but the small screen. I growled, forcing myself to look, to listen as he turned the volume up loudly enough for us to hear the voice.
Some kind of digital filter obscured the woman’s face, but she lay on her side, crooking a finger to the camera, and those hips were…familiar.
“How do you know it’s Gillian?” My lips twisted into a snarl. “You’ve got no way to prove it’s her.”
And what’s with the username? CumeraShy1? Seriously?
Aiden cleared his throat before his gaze darted back to the screen. The woman shifted to her back with her hand massaging her bare pussy.
Fuck, I shouldn’t have looked.
I hadn’t wanted to look.
Hadn’t wanted to see my little stepsister, if that was her, naked and playing with her clit online for money. I had my doubts the same as Tase until…
I couldn’t help it. I looked.
This was a horrible invasion of privacy. It crossed a dozen lines in the sand and it shoved me in a box neatly labeled creeper .
“See?” Aiden’s voice sounded strangled as he paused the screen and pointed. “Those three freckles on the underside of her tit? It’s her. There’s no denying those.”
“How do you know about those freckles?”
“Jesus, man,” Tase told me with an elbow to the side for emphasis. “It’s clear how he knows.”
He’s seen them .
My heart thudded painfully in my chest. Knowing Gilli kissed Aiden, and he’d seen her breasts?—
Fuck me, but the other night, when I’d locked myself in my room, I thought I’d heard footsteps and hushed voices from the living room. Noise.
What had they been doing?
The thought set my teeth on edge and the horrible dark pit in my chest opened up into my abdomen. I wasn't sure if it was fury or lust or something combined from those two terrible things that brought on such a stormy mood.
So it really was Gilli.
A cam girl.
My brain twisted around this new information, searching for an alternative and coming up blank.
Aiden held the phone steady like a beacon none of us were powerful enough to look away from. “I thought you should know,” he said. “I couldn’t keep it to myself.”
My pretty stepsister was spread out on top of the mattress like a feast, tan and perfect and ready to be devoured.
I absorbed the sight, and the zap of lust through my system threatened a premature blow.
“Turn it off,” Tase urged. “Aiden? Off.”
None of us moved.
I fought to tear my attention away from the sight of her hand between her legs, talking in a low tone. Her face was still blurred by a filter but her body… Now that Aiden described the freckles, I recognized other similarities.
The curve of her ass, for sure. The hue of her skin for another, and the long line of her neck.
Her dark hair was shorter in the video but that could have been a wig. Gilli playing dress-up. She spoke to her audience and took suggestions on what to do to herself from whatever customers were in the live chat at the time she originally posted.
This was something intimate. It should make me feel wrong but it only got me hot. My cock twitched in my jeans and hardened the longer I watched.
Like a car accident, I thought distantly. I couldn’t look away.
And from the way Aiden and Tase ogled the screen and the latter kept licking his lips, that I wasn’t the only one impacted.
We all were.
And Gilli was there wearing a black lace bra and panty set, with no crotch on the panties, and with cutout holes around her nipples.
I wondered if someone bought the outfit for her as a gift. Who did she think about when she made the video? Who got her hot enough to make those sounds? It couldn’t all be faked, right?
Tase coughed self-consciously. He wore the guilty expression of a man who may have stepped too far over the boundaries and carefully adjusted the waistband of his pants.
I reared back, my nostrils flaring. Shit. Was that why they’d gotten back late tonight?
Was the chicken dinner a peace offering from Tase after sampling something he should not have sampled?
He broke eye contact and the truth hit me like a mallet to the face.
Goddamn it. We were fracturing. We were splintering apart and the only thing I could think of was to point the finger at Gilli.
We’d been fine before she showed up.
A cam girl.
Now, I’m holding the cell phone in front of her face. “What is this? Gilli?” I push.
The sound of panting comes from the video still playing on the screen. I don’t need to look to know what she’s doing. Her hand is low and dragging between her pussy lips .
My cock gives another twitch and hardens further on reflex.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gilli hedges.
The flash of vulnerability in her eyes shreds me. Don’t focus on it. For the love of God ?—
“You’re a fucking online porno queen. That’s what I’m talking about. Your secret is out.”
Is she seriously trying to dispute what I’ve seen with my own two eyes?
Gilli shakes her head and clenches the knot of the towel between her breasts. “It’s not me. The face is blurred. Could be anybody. Besides, I’m too shy to do any of those things.”
Bullshit. She wants to feed me lies? She’ll have to do a hell of a lot better. I’m not hungry enough to accept them.
“You think we need to see your face to know? Your freckles .” I’m going on what Aiden said because I haven’t seen her tits for myself.
I don’t want to .
I want her to go home. I certainly don’t want the ends of the towel to fall open with her movement and show a stretch of long golden leg.
My mouth is bone dry and my cock hard enough to press painfully against the inside of my pants, a gut reaction to a beautiful woman, not because it’s her.
Not with her long dark hair soaking wet and curling at the end. Not with her eyes shadowed, her white-knuckled hands desperate to keep the towel in place.
Rather than backing up, Gilli faces me fully and sticks her chin out. Petulant and bratty in her go to defensive maneuver.
“Everyone has freckles, Soren.” Her lips purse. “It’s not me.”
Damn me. I shouldn’t want her.
I’m broken .
Right now, it’s the two of us in this room and not a shit is given for Tase and Aiden. Not even the shock on Aiden’s face when I grabbed his phone makes me turn back from whatever the hell it is I’m doing.
Confronting her, a part of me reassures. Figuring out the dangers she brought with her.
“You’re gonna tell me the truth, Gillian,” I demand.
“You come in my room like a demon escaping the underworld, throwing a cell phone in my face, and expect me to spill?” Her chin lifts higher. “Get the hell out.”
“Not until you start talking.”
“Like it’s going to change anything.”
She scoffs, but her tongue darts out, and seeing it, seeing the beads of moisture on her skin, I’m seconds away from?—
What? From what?
From physically taking her in my arms and demanding she speak to me?
I want to know her secrets, to drag them out of her myself. But I’m stunned into silence as I watch her. Adrenaline rushes through me and burns my veins until I’m not sure if I want to jerk off or puke.
“Maybe it will change everything,” I counter. “Is this what you’re running from? Did something happen with one of your—” What do I even call them? “Clients?”
Then she groans on the video and I nearly crack. My attention dips down to the top of the towel again and the nipples I swear are visible beneath the material despite the low light.
I’m about to fucking explode and I’m not sure what to do about it.
Scratch that. I’m absolutely sure what I’d like to do about it and I’m desperately clinging to the wrongness of it.
She shrugs. “What do you want me to say? You’ve got the lines scripted in your head. I’ll never match them.”
“These clients pay to watch you strip.” I sound strangled.
Darling little Gillian Kerrigan gets naked and touches herself online for money. What else does she do ?
“That’s part of it,” she replies angrily. “Fine, Soren. Judge me if it will make you feel better.”
She moves swiftly toward the clothes on the floor and I step to block her path. Her eyes narrow in challenge.
Will it make me feel better to slap a label on her, on this person who seems to shrug off every description I try to hand out?
“I want to understand,” I grind out.
“It won’t help you. You’ll still be angry.” She throws up her hands in despair. “Why are you always so angry ?”
It’s never been about her; she’s just a prime target when I’m not able to hurt the person I’m most angry with. Shit, two people. Myself and my father.
The sound of her moaning in the video cuts off when the screen locks and I don’t have the heart to open it back up, to force her to face what she’s done.
She isn’t ashamed. I see it clearly. Or if she is, she’s got it buried down too deep for anyone to notice.
I’ve got to know. “Why did you start doing it?”