Chapter 14
chapter fourteen
Mateo
I wanted to pull my hair out. I was close to it, sitting at the reception desk of a new law office in Coconut Creek with an Excel spreadsheet of backwork, pages of firewall breaks and detected malware staring back at me. The building was dark, nothing but the blue light from the desktop keeping me awake for yet another late night working after hours. Most places preferred that I came when the work day was over so I didn’t disrupt employees or force shutdowns on programs. That led to a lot of lonely dinners and load buffering while I stared at my watch.
Working alone was taking its toll on me, but I was too proud to admit it. I had dug myself too deep into a hole to come back. Every time Natalia asked me if I hired a new assistant yet, I gave her the same spiel about the employment market being thin, and waiting for the right candidate to come around. Our Valentine’s content had taken a back burner, the live stream cut short by half an hour when I was late coming home, and though I knew she was unhappy with it, she didn’t press me too hard.
That was weeks ago.
I knew from my nightly recaps that Natalia was spending every waking minute she wasn’t working on planning the wedding. The catering was set, the room block was full, our photographer had been prepped, the suits were ready to be picked up by all the groomsmen at their earliest convenience, and our flights to Vegas were booked. I was grateful Tally had a handle on all of those things because I was silently losing my mind juggling the work of two at TechOps, and pretending having my parents as roommates wasn’t dramatically weighing on my mental resilience.
Plus, the anxiety was getting worse. That episode I'd had in the kitchen only set off a chain reaction and made me more panicked that things like that were going to become normal for me. I was worried about loud noises and tight spaces, too many people, tension. Things I was once so good at controlling. Being the point person was my literal job in the military, the reason I was "The Captain'' to all my brothers, and now I couldn’t even handle small pressures. Years of war and trauma were catching up to me quickly and the effects were leaking through and affecting my civilian life.
I needed to relearn myself again in some capacity. My brain was wired for Delta; those thoughts don't just dissipate. The need for control was valiant when I was in the service, but allowing myself off the hook now, even three years later, wasn't coming easy enough.
Bothering Natalia with it wasn’t an option either. I knew how stressed she was in her own life, with her own family. It would be selfish of me. At the end of the day, I was a grown man. I could deal with whatever mental shit I had going on myself. I could learn to stand up to my parents, and I could handle my business myself just like Tally was handling hers.
My phone lit up on cue with a text from Natalia, asking how the install was going and if she could expect me home soon. It was a Friday night, a live stream night. The loading bar on the desktop was only blinking halfway, which meant at the least I had another half hour sitting there waiting for it. There was no way I was making it home in time for the scheduled stream in ten minutes.
Instead of texting back, I hit the call button and pressed the phone to my ear.
“Let me guess,” she jeered. “You’re stuck at work again?”
A sigh rippled out of me. “I’m sorry. This law firm has several layers of security for file protection and I had to code and test every single one of them.”
"Our female audience has dropped off the face of the earth on Friday nights with you going into hiding. I did an analysis last week and the subscriber percentage was skewed by eighty-three percent in favor of both of us on camera together."
“You had a loyal following before me,” I reminded her.
“I work so much better with my partner, though.”
My teeth ground together and I leaned back in the computer chair, rubbing a guilty wrinkle from the space between my brows. “I promise I’ll be there next week for it. I’ll clear my schedule to make sure.”
“You could always hire someone to take a load off your shoulders,” she goaded.
I changed the subject quickly, pouring my attention into impatiently tapping the keyboard as if it might make the software load faster. “What are you wearing tonight?”
Sheets ruffled around in the background of the call. Tally was likely lying on our bed in a matching lingerie set waiting for the chat server to fill and the top of the hour to roll around. Without me physically there, she would be limited to using her fingers, or taking out a toy as a treat. “That’s privileged information,” she said.
“You act like I can’t hop on the stream as a viewer and see it for myself.”
She pulled in a breath but went otherwise quiet on the line. I struck a nerve. A glorious, exhibitionist nerve. My stomach tensed and a spark of intrigue jolted my cock against my zipper. There was an external CCTV security system on the outside of the building, but as far as I could tell from looking around the office space, there were no cameras on the inside. I slid my personal laptop out of my bag and opened it on the desk in front of me.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I said. “Knowing I was watching on the other end while you touched yourself.”
The hum of her voice crackled to life. “I thought you were working.”
“I have some time to kill.” I opened my browser and quickly found our page. I wasn’t home to play my part but that didn’t mean I couldn’t still do it from across town. My mind was already made up, and the pressure below my waist wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. “Don’t hang up the phone,” I told her.
“I have to go on in a minute,” she trilled, a gust of disappointment weaving through her words. “I can’t stay and talk.”
“I don’t want you to talk. I want you to listen,” I explained. “I want to hear all the breathy little noises you make in my ear while I tell you exactly the kind of thoughts I have about you while I’m working late, and I’m all alone.”
“Like what?” she asked quietly.
My palm slid down to readjust the growing bulge in my pants, but the contact only made the ache more prevalent. I kicked away from the desk, stretching my legs in the chair. “Put your earbuds in.”
Our mattress squeaked underneath her, and a bedside drawer opened and shut as she followed my direction. My pulse was hammering as I stared at the blank video screen, wondering what she looked like on the other end, wishing I could peel whatever barely-there piece of lace she was wearing off by my teeth and make her choke on it while I slammed into her.
Fuck, I couldn’t be thinking things like that. I was at work, I needed to remain professional, and jerking off behind the reception desk to live porn on a job was the least professional thing I could think of. Besides, I would rather treat it like foreplay, and take the pent up frustration from this back home to Tally afterward.
Her voice returned to the line, clearer and softer. “Can you hear me?”
“Start the stream, Natalia.”
She made a noise that might have wanted to be a word, but got lost on the way. I was well aware it was too early to go live, because there were still subs spilling into the chat window, and starting before the scheduled time might piss a few late arrivals off. I needed to see her body react to everything I said, though. “Be a good girl and get on that camera for me.”
A few seconds passed feeling like my chest might explode from anticipation, and then the computer screen lit up and Natalia was there in the video feed, perched on our familiar bed and wearing my favorite red bra and panties, looking straight into my soul.
“Fuck.” A growl rumbled from deep in my chest. “So fucking pretty, baby.” She had wireless earbuds in her ears that were hidden beneath the curtain of her long dark hair, but I knew they were there because a blush crept up her chest and blossomed over her cheeks. “Now do me a favor and stay nice and quiet, Tal. Try your hardest to keep that mouth shut. Don’t say a word while you do what I tell you. This is our little secret, right?”
She nodded, her top teeth sinking into her bottom lip. The pulse previously hammering in my ears shot straight down to my cock and I palmed it again, looking for some relief and finding less and less of it the longer I gazed at my fiancée.
“God, I want your mouth around me right now,” I said. “That’s what I think about when I’m working late and I’m so fucking hard that I can’t focus on anything else. Your pretty eyes looking up at me, and my hands in your hair while I shove my cock down your throat until you choke on it.”
Tally’s chest rose and fell faster and a breathy moan drifted out of her. I was stiff and swollen and there was precum gathering against the fabric of my briefs that made it hard not to move my hips looking for friction.
“Take your top off and let me see you.” Tally reached behind her to the clasp and her bra came loose; her tits dropped out in a way that made my eyes roll back. She was so devastatingly hot it would have brought me crumbling to my knees if I wasn’t already sitting. “Play with your nipples, baby. Roll your fingers over them.”
The rush from watching her trail her sharp fingernails across her chest to tug and circle the taut buds made it hard to breathe. A sigh rolled off her parted lips and graced my ears, and her head lolled back to expose her neck and her collarbones. The lighting was perfect. She was so smooth and delicate, and absolutely mesmerizing. My dick twitched against my palm and I groaned in approval.
“That’s it, sweetheart. Now pretend it’s just us, and spread your legs open for me. I’m going crazy wondering what that pussy must feel like right now. Are you wet, angel?”
“Yes,” she cried out.
My jaw clenched. “Oh, Tal, what did I tell you about keeping that fucking mouth shut? You’re supposed to be my quiet, quivering little slut right now. Since I’m not there to shut you up myself, you’re going to need to listen to me.”
Her head dipped and she nodded slowly, going from sitting on her calves to her ass, and parting her knees so that I could see the damp lace barely covering the flesh between her legs. She was slick with arousal, positively begging for a smack of my fingers or a lash of my tongue, something to touch her clit and satiate her.
“Slide your panties down your legs,” I told her. “Then I want you to put them in your mouth. See if that doesn’t teach you how to stay silent.” Her eyes widened and a rush of color tickled her skin on the live stream as heat pooled in my abdomen. I worked my wrist faster, bringing a climax within reach, while her thumbs hooked into the band, pushing her thong down and off her ankles. She hesitated for a moment, staring into the screen where she knew I was staring right back. “Now, Natalia.”
Her mouth popped open, and she shoved the thin lace between her lips, biting down on it. Every nerve in my lower half was on edge, thrumming in warning and a sweat started at my back while my cock throbbed for the touch I was denying myself.
“How does that desperate little cunt taste?”
Natalia whimpered and her gaze fell to half-mast as her hips jarred forward, searching for something to rub against. The chat window was moving too fast to read, but the audience was loving every second of the show she was putting on. I squeezed my erection as if that might alleviate any of the delicious pain and a hiss pulled through my teeth.
“You’re fucking soaked,” I said. “Touch your pussy. Show me how badly you wish I was there to take some of that ache away, baby.”
Tally speared her fingers through her core, brushing the nerves at her peak in slow circles, and a whine of satisfaction tumbled out around the lace in her mouth. She moved her hips against her hand, and dropped her middle finger down to tease her entrance and plunge inside.
Another garbled fuck snuck out of me watching her finger herself. “You look so empty without my cock inside you, Tal. I’m so hard right now wishing I was there putting every inch of me in that tight hole where I belong. I know you’d be a perfect wife and squeeze every drop of cum out of me.”
She was nodding again, breathing hard through her nose, her eyes pinched shut and a wrinkle forming between them as her legs threatened to close around her hand. My balls drew tight, and the familiar feeling of near bliss spread through my body. I grunted out a protest. “Keep those fucking legs spread open, Tally. You’re driving me so crazy I could come just looking at you right now. Fuck .”
Natalia massaged her clit faster. The sounds of her struggling with her mouth gagged and her own euphoria building sent me over the edge. A ripple of pleasure coiled down my spine and made me go completely rigid, legs flexing, my fingers twitched against my shaft practically begging to pull my dick out and tug on it. There was no one around, there was no reason not to let go, and for weeks in our house I’d been holding back. I couldn’t. This was as much of a punishment to myself for not being there for the live as it was a reward for the both of us later when I was.
It was pure fucking torture to be watching her writhe on our bed, searching for release without me there to fuck it out of her. The room spun in a circle and my vision swam, I forced myself to refocus on the live stream. Tally’s knees were shaking, her fingers were trembling against her supple clit, she was teetering on the precipice of an orgasm and I couldn’t let that happen. She knew the rules.
“Don’t you dare fucking come, Natalia.” I sat up, pulling the chair closer to the open laptop while she struggled to fight the urge. “I’ll take care of you when I get home.”
She ripped her hand away from her core and yanked the earbuds out, tossing them on the bed and tugging the red panties out of her mouth. Tally’s pupils were still blown and her cheeks fully flushed when she slid off the edge of the bed and ended the live stream.