Chapter 15
chapter fifteen
Mateo
13 months ago
Natalia’s bedroom was entirely different than how I’d gotten used to seeing it. Her soft flowery sheets were usually rumpled and unkempt, her bed unmade, the mismatched throw pillows tossed hastily at the headboard—but now it was perfectly tucked with plain white sheets and two pink pillows.
The nightstands were bare, all but a box of tissues and a potted plant in the spot she kept her jewelry and her discarded hair scrunchies when she tugged them out after a long day. The place I would put my watch, or a box of condoms, a glass of water, my phone—all cleared like it was nothing but a prop. Her alarm clock was gone, the photo of her and her best friend from college nowhere to be seen. Even the pesky charging cord that stuck out of the bedframe and that I’d nearly gotten wrapped around my neck in my sleep was unplugged and put away.
It was like there wasn’t a trace of her personality left. In front of the camera, at least. Behind the tripod and the ring light all those bright-colored blankets and eclectic wall decorations were tossed on a chair and in the empty space on her desk. One half of the room was one way, what she wanted the world to see, and behind the scenes it was something completely different.
I stuck my hands in the pockets of my jeans while Tally clicked the mouse of her desktop around, pulling up a chat window and a video window. She waved her hand in front of the camera and it echoed on the screen.
“Did you get your test results?”
I plucked a folded sheet of paper I’d gotten from my doctor out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Clean.”
She scanned it thoroughly, the corner of her lips curling upward before she spun and filed it in a manila folder in her desk drawer. She handed me her own sheet of paper and I pretended to read it. Natalia was so adorably thorough, I was in love with this side of her and how seriously she took it, and for once in my life sitting back and letting someone else boss me around and take the reins was like fresh air to my lungs. I could trust her the same way I could trust myself.
“I use an IUD for contraception, so we’re safe there.”
“Tal, if you wanted me to get a vasectomy in order to fuck you raw I’d take myself into the bathroom right now with a pair of scissors.”
She put her hands on her hips and blew out an amused gust of breath. The time on my watch read nine forty, and I knew from our extensive talks about this and her scheduling that at ten on Friday nights Natalia did live camera sex by herself for her top-tier subscribing audience. But this week, for the first time ever, “Natasha” would have a male guest.
“Is this really fucking weird for you, too?” She wrung her fingers in circles.
I pulled her computer chair out and sat on it backwards. “What are you talking about? I’m just visiting you at work. This is our bread and butter.”
Tally glided over and took my face in her hands. “I know you joke as a coping method, but you don’t have to make light of every situation. It’s fine if you’re having second thoughts. I want to know these things before I take it too far.”
“I’m just trying to figure out where you learned how to make a bed that tight. I haven’t seen something like that since bootcamp, Tal. Impress me more, please.”
She jutted her tongue into her cheek. “I told you this is all very procedural.”
“I’m seeing that.” I lifted my head and met her for a kiss that turned heated when I sunk my hand into her hair and flicked my tongue through the seam of her lips. It took all my strength not to lay her down on the bed with my weight on top of her. “What’s next?”
Tally crossed the bedroom to her closet and rustled through the hangers, turning toward me with two of them pressed to her chest side by side. “Red or black?”
Fuck.
She was holding two equally lacy infinitesimal pieces of lingerie. My stomach flipped and a rush of pressure made itself known in my groin. “Red,” I said between clenched teeth. I abandoned the computer chair the second she slipped her shorts down her legs. “But I might rip them in half, so I’d say go with whatever set you like less.”
“We have to talk about this.” She tried to wrangle me, but I caught her around the waist, then plucked her spaghetti straps from her arms and hooked a finger into the neckline of her tank, tugging it down until her round breasts sprung free. I was admittedly very distracted by the smell of her skin, and the soft way she laughed at everything I did. She was delicate and gorgeous but also passionate and strong. I felt completely inadequate and undeserving of her on my best days, and focusing on anything other than Natalia was debilitating for me. When I wasn’t with her I thought about her, and when I was with her, I was obsessing over her. I was entranced, and I knew no one else would understand it. Not Pike, not the boys, not my brother. They’d probably think I was fucking nuts for doing this.
Maybe I was.
“You talk.” I took one of Tally’s nipples into my mouth and her back arched toward the sensation. “I’m listening, angel.”
“This is serious.” She pulled my head back up. “Tonight’s live stream is relaxed. We feel out the audience for what they might want to see and go with the flow. We can make a game plan if you’re more comfortable with that. Or we can start slow and move onto sex as you open up, but I need you to remember that I’m not expecting anything at all from you, Mateo.”
Up until that moment I’d been brushing off my nerves as excitement. In my mind it was simple—I was having sex with Natalia like I’d done dozens of times before. I wasn’t afraid of the audience. I couldn’t see them so I could pretend they weren’t even there, but the pressure I felt to perform for her outweighed all of that. I was terrified of fucking this up for Tally. To not be good enough, or sexy enough, or well trained enough to make her proud of me. That simple insecurity was tearing me apart. What if she never wanted to work with me as a partner again? What if, after all this, she decided she didn’t want me anymore?
The day she told me she was a cam girl, I knew that it wasn’t going to change the way I felt about her. She was fucking brilliant, level-headed, careful, and calculated, and she held so much respect for herself that I couldn’t help but respect her exactly the same way. Maybe another man might be too jealous for this or too possessive, and there was nothing wrong with that, but I looked at Natalia and I wanted to lift her up on my shoulders and shout at the top of my lungs. I wanted to show her off, wanted other people to look at what was mine and wish with all their might that they’d ever have a chance. She comes home to me , sleeps in my arms, makes love to me and no one else. Never again.
“I’m following your lead.” I dropped my forehead to hers. “If I need a break, or I need to stop, I’ll tap your ankle.”
“I’ll do the same,” she said. “Let’s talk about limits. This will change depending on what we’re filming, but for live cam I’m not comfortable with any type of physical degradation. No slapping, hitting, spitting is a hard pass, and if you pee on me I will smoosh your face in it like a dog.”
“Understood.” I cracked a smile. “I also concur with those.”
“Unless we plan it, I don’t want to be tied to anything. You can restrain my wrists or ankles with your hands, hair pulling is fine, and light choking is A-OK. Doggy or missionary look better on camera, but I’m not married to either.” Tally took a steadying breath. “Do you have anything for me?”
I did have a request. It was selfish, and I’d been thinking about it for days knowing this night was coming after we first discussed the possibility. There were things I was okay with, and things I wanted to keep just for myself given our unique arrangement. If Natalia and I were going to do this, bare all, have sex for an audience, I needed one thing.
“I don’t want you to come.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh.”
“I’m okay with sharing parts of you, Tally. But not that. I want that to belong to me.”
Tally thinned her lips and shimmied her tank over her head, leaving her stark naked and tauntingly poised. My eyelids shuddered closed. “I can do that,” she said, disappointment seeping off her tongue.
She didn’t understand. She thought I was telling her I didn’t want to make her come, or that she wasn’t allowed to come, like a punishment or something, but that wasn’t it. I fully intended to bring this woman to orgasm. Privately.
I grabbed her hip and tugged her body flush against mine, my erection rubbing against the soft skin of her belly. “I think you’re mistaking this as me telling you that I’m not going to make you feel good, Tal. I’m going to do my job, make you all warm and limp and satiated, but that’s too real for me to give away. Does that make sense?”
“So you want me to…fake it?”
“For the camera. For the people who aren’t me.”
Her bottom lip folded between her teeth. “Should I make a really obnoxious noise, like a mating call?”
“Naturally.” I grinned. “Like you’re on another plane of existence.”
“Like a ghost?”
I coughed out a laugh. “If there’s one person on this planet who could make orgasming like a spirit hot, it would be you, Tal.”
She leaned forward, nuzzling her face into my chest. I had already been acutely aware of how naked she was and how warm her body felt but my skin prickled with the need to feel it bare against hers. I reached up and tugged my shirt over my head, dropped it to the floor with a soft thud, and ran my hands through her hair as she kissed my chest delicately.
“I love the way you smell,” she whispered, her lips skating over my tattoo. “Is that weird to say?”
“No, it’s a sign of compatibility. It’s a primal instinct to be attracted to the smell of a potential mating partner. So in a way you just told me you want me to breed you.”
Her eyes flared excitedly. “You don’t even know the ideas you just put in my head.”
She helped me out of my pants, and tugged down my boxers. I was already aroused; I had been since walking into her apartment with the understanding of the night ahead. I still made a point to give myself a few rousing jerks and get the blood flowing. Which came easily watching Natalia slip into her lingerie a few steps away.
“Are you sure about this?” Her attention flitted to the computer screen and back, landing on me with sobering, doe-like eyes. “One hundred percent?”
“I’m sure about you, Tal. I’m sure I want you. I’m sure I want all of this with you. I’m sure if you let me, I will make you the happiest woman in the world. I’m fucking sure, okay? I’ve never been this sure.”
She kissed me with a force strong enough to knock me over, hopping up to wrap her legs around my waist. One small shift and I could slide home inside of her but instead I walked us to the desk and dipped down enough for her to hit play on the open window. Within seconds bubbles of viewers began popping up. The live chat was filled with comments searching for us on the empty bed.
“Give me your consent,” I said.
“You have it.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I added quietly. “I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be right now.”
Tally’s mouth turned into a smile, a sparkle shone in her eyes, and she kissed me one more time before I took us both into the frame of the camera. Immediately the engagement from her audience doubled, small hearts dotting the page. The number of people in the server ticked upward steadily on a counter in the corner.
“Sorry I haven’t been live in a while,” Natalia spoke out loud to the viewers but never took her eyes off me. “It’s because I’ve been enjoying this man so much, I couldn’t go a night without him.”
Comments started rolling in and I fixated on trying to read every single one of them. There was a feeling inside me that was new and uncharted. I wasn’t sure how to respond to it, but my stomach rocked like a boat drifting out to sea until Tally tugged my chin toward her to bring me back.
“Don’t read them, you’ll get stuck there in your own head,” she mumbled. “Focus on me, and follow my lead.” She unfurled her legs and sat on the mattress, eye level with my hips, and glanced up at me for permission that I granted with a swift nod.
Then her mouth came down on me, swallowing me, and heat licked up my spine while my balls drew tight to my body. It was an instinct to thread my fingers through her hair, and just as naturally my touch wandered, down her neck to her chest, squeezing her perfect tits that I so desperately wanted to feel in my mouth. While she told me not to look, I was new and curious, and it was nearly impossible not to wonder what the people watching were saying on the other end of it.
This all relied upon me. Natalia already had a rabid audience, and my participation would either help or hurt her. I hoped for the sake of this relationship it was the former.
I turned her face toward the camera and we both watched my tip knock against the inside of her cheek while the viewer numbers rose, the comments hitting fast and frequently, positively enthralled with the addition of a live partner. My confidence spiked and I thrust to the back of her throat hard enough that a tear welled at the corner of her eye. My heart stopped.
“Christ,” I bit out, swiping it away with my thumb.
Fuck. Fuck.
I was too rough, too fast. I let myself get carried away almost immediately when this was supposed to be about me easing into the act. I couldn’t scold myself hard enough, and dropped my fingers out of her hair to caress her cheek, mouthing an apology. “I’m sorry.”
What she did next was unexpected. Partly because I thought I blew it, and also because I was still learning things about Natalia every single time we were together. Learning her quirks and kinks and how she liked things, and apparently face fucking her hard enough to make her cry was a good thing because she pulled me down on the bed by my cock and cried out, “I want you inside me.”
Every scratch of her fingers down my back was electricity, and each nip of her perfect little canines against my swollen lips had me fighting back as I took her under her knee, pushing her legs apart to fit, and finally drove myself deep inside of her. She gasped out in shock with wide eyes, but I didn’t let her catch her breath. I broke into a rhythm of hard, plunging strokes, feeling it down every single inch of me while touching the most intimate parts of her. I had to close my eyes to focus on containing myself.
She kissed up my neck to my ear where her face was hidden from the camera. “Are you okay?”
“Just trying not to blow my load prematurely for hundreds of people to see, but you are so fucking hot I can’t fight it.”
“Let me get on top.”
“That might be worse,” I confessed quietly.
Tally nipped my ear and pushed out from underneath me, repositioning us so I was on the bed and she was straddling my hips. My cock was pulsing at the sheer loss of her tight heat around it, and the edging torture of being so close to finishing and having that ripped away was the most brutal pleasure I’d ever known.
The computer chimed in a steady succession and Tally’s lips parted into a surprised, excited smile.
“What’s happening?”
“People are joining. New subscribers. Dozens of them.”
A weight in my chest alleviated at the sight of her pure joy. It wasn’t just her doing this, it was us , together. People were here for Tally and me and the magic we were making as a team. She lost herself just enough, distracted by the screen, and I went for it. Needing her so badly, I slammed her down onto my cock without warning and we both cried out in ecstasy.
Her mouth dropped open and every sinful sound from her throat slipped right out and hit me somewhere deep and hungry. I palmed her tits and she bucked on top of me, riding me so fucking good my eyes rolled into the back of my skull and I saw nothing but black for a long, long moment.
Desperate to come, I sat up and wrapped my forearm around her waist, using the leverage of my other hand to bring her down onto me over and over again at my own pace. My muscles strained; her body heat against mine made the entire room collapse in on me in a fog and like she could feel me inside her swelling against her walls, she threw her head back.
“I’m going to come,” she swooned. “Please, don’t stop.”
My lungs seized and she buried her face in my neck, slowing her hips to sit with me fully inside her as she made a noise so foreign that it shocked me. I’d had sex with Natalia and made her finish in several ways beyond it, but gone was that sweet, sexy moan of elation I was so fond of. Natalia faked an orgasm like she was expelling a demon. As soon as I realized it was her making good on our deal I hid a fit of laughter in a long kiss.
My erection slipped out of her and I rose to my feet, bringing Natalia to the end of the bed on her knees as I stroked myself. Her makeup was ruined, the blush on her cheeks was completely natural, and there was a twinkle of eager anticipation in her eyes gazing up at me. When she stuck her tongue out, waiting for it, it was over.
Ropes of semen splashed across her mouth and her cheeks, painting her hair. It dripped in beads down her chin and dotted her chest and mesmerized me. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. “Fuck, you look so goddamn pretty covered in my cum.”
I couldn’t tear my eyes away. She was the only thing in my entire orbit, the only thing that mattered. I forgot where we were, what we were meant to be doing, that there were potentially thousands of people watching this happen in real time, and I cupped her face in my hands and kissed the fucking hell out of her.
“Thanks, everyone,” she said offhandedly. “See you soon. Hopefully Mat can join us again.” She hopped from the bed and rushed to the computer, ending the stream, returning to me and running her hands down my arms and chest like she was looking for wounds. “How are you feeling? Are you okay?”
There was something frantic about it, like she was worried I was going to completely break down, but it was the exact opposite. I felt like I was on a high. I was still overtaken with adrenaline and all I wanted was to be there in that moment with her for as long as possible. A smile crested my lips as I tucked a sticky strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m perfect.” I had never been more perfect.
With the stream closed, I steered her back to the bed and sat her right at the edge of it, dropping to my knees and hooking both of her thighs over my shoulders. “Need to take care of this pussy,” I mumbled, flicking my tongue over her clit softly. Natalia’s head fell backward as I slid a finger through her core, coating it with her own arousal before pushing it inside of her. The sweetest sound poured out of her parted lips. So sweet I added another finger and did it again, and again, until it was like a symphony I was orchestrating. I closed my mouth around her clit and circled that cluster of nerves until her elbows went weak, back bowed, and her cunt fluttered around me. “You did so good, sweetheart. Such a fucking good girl. Come for me, I know you want to.”
I was insatiable, sucking and nibbling. Her thighs tightened around my head from the intensity and I wrenched them back open with my free hand.
“Matty, God , yes. I’m—” she tapered off as her orgasm rocked through her body and her pussy went from gripping to soft and pliant around my soaked fingers. Every muscle in her lower half constricted, there was a moment of dead silence, then a rush of shaking and writhing as she reached her peak and her moans filled the room.
Natalia collapsed backward, chest heaving and eyes closed, exhausted, satisfied, and absolutely glowing in the low light. I crawled up her body, peppering kisses all over her skin and stared at her until my own eyes threatened to close too. It could have been hours later when I lifted her into my arms and carried her across the hall into the small bathroom. The shower ran while I washed her face and body with a warm cloth, and then she let me bathe her slowly and thoroughly before she did the same to me.
Natalia made sure I was taken care of. She cared for me. The kind of care that you didn’t extend to a friend. It was a care that challenged fondness, begging it to cross the threshold into something more permanent.
It was when the sheets were changed, and her room was put back in its usual chaotic order, and she was tucked into my side and fast asleep, that I realized something I’d been coming to terms with for weeks. I wasn’t fond of Natalia Russo. There was another four-letter word for it. This woman wasn’t passing through my life; she was there for good.
And I wasn’t letting go no matter what.