Chapter 19
KYLEN
Tomas pulls the key on the purple string from the basket, and I enter his information into the tablet. He flashes me a smile before following Kole toward his room for the evening. All five rooms have their guys in them, so I stuff the basket with the rest of the keys onto the shelf.
When I see Kole walking back down the hall, I set the timer for ten minutes. She’s frowning at me when she stops at my side, dropping the key into the return basket now that she’s let the guy into the room. “There’s no cameraman in the hall.”
As if I need to see it for myself, I shift to take a look. The hall is lit up, so there’s no way to miss that it’s empty.
“Didn’t we check the schedule a couple hours ago?” I ask.
Kole already has her phone out, opening the app with all the frat schedules on it. “We did, and it was full. Now there’s an empty slot.” She flips her phone to face me.
Sure enough, one of the five spots is empty. I sigh in frustration. “So… we need a cameraman ASAP.”
“Call Nolan?”
I shake my head. “He’s out with Coach tonight. They were going to the lake or something.”
Kole’s face screws up. “It’s Wednesday.”
My shoulders rise as I scroll through my personal phone.
“I’d be happy to film men going down on each other, but they get weirded out with a girl filming them,” she says, amused. “I’ve offered to wear a strap on so they can see my bulge, but that didn’t change their opinions.”
I snort, shaking my head.
“What about Otis or Otto? Evan? They have a dry run class tonight, no?”
“They do. It begins in six minutes.”
“What do you want to do, boss?”
I chew the inside of my lip and glance at the clock. We have six minutes to begin letting in our second round. “Only let three in and get them set up. We might need to combine rooms.”
“Or suggest a groupie,” Kole says, waggling her eyebrows.
“We’ll call that plan C. I’m going to see who I can get a hold of.”
I’m not sure what Arek can do, but I call him first anyway. My cheeks flush as soon as I hear his voice. “Hello, little kit.”
My stomach flips, and my heart skips around at his voice. “Hey. Are you busy right now?”
“Just fulfilling my massive backlog of orders for replica dicks.”
I sigh in disappointment. “Right. I forgot. Sorry.”
“It’s alright. What’s wrong?”
“One of the scheduled cameramen dropped out at the last minute, and I already have five rooms filled with only four cameras to run. Nolan is with Coach. The twins have their own thing going on. Kole doesn’t have a dick.
I’ll probably just hide in a corner in horror if I try to run the camera—I tried at Confessions once.
It wasn’t pretty. I’m not sure who else to call. ”
“Have you checked with the pledges?”
“The pledges?”
“It’s literally their job to do our bidding until they’re sworn in,” Arek says.
“Oh… I’ll find the list. Thanks.”
“Let me see if Emric is busy. I’m not a prude by any means, but if I have to see that man wearing nipple tassels and a lacy thong again, I’m going to gouge my eyes out.”
I snort with laughter and cover my mouth to keep the uncouth sound in. “Oh, god.”
“Yes,” he deadpans. “The visual is burned into the back of my eyelids. Uncle Myro would roll over in his grave.”
“He’s dead?” I ask, eyebrows shooting up into my hairline.
“No. That’s how awful the sight is.”
More laughter bursts from me.
“I’ll call you back in a minute.”
“Thanks, Arek.”
“Of course.”
The call ends, and I turn to find Kole letting in one of the guys waiting outside. She offers him the basket to choose a key. I’m guessing she’ll pull the purple one from his hand if he chooses it. He doesn’t, and she logs his information into the tablet I set down before he’s led down the hall.
While she’s gone, I shuffle through the frat app until I locate the pledge information. There are seven pledges right now. I’m guessing I know all their faces, but the only name I recognize is Emric because he’s Arek’s cousin.
Just as Kole returns, my phone rings, making her pause and watch me as I answer. Arek’s name flashes on my screen, and I don’t try to fight the smile as I answer.
“Hi.”
“Emric’s on his way.”
My shoulders sag in relief. “Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”
“All good, Kylen. I’m glad I could help.”
“Me too. I’ll see you in a few hours.”
“Okay. Have fun.”
I grin. “You too.”
I meet Kole’s eyes when I end the call. She raises an eyebrow in question. “Arek called Emric to take the camera.”
“The cousin pledge?” she asks.
“Yep. I didn’t think about the pledges, but he reminded me that it’s literally their job to be at our beck and call.
I forgot that.” My mind wanders back to the months I was a pledge.
Thankfully, I only had to do door duty in skimpy clothes less than a handful of times. Otherwise, I cleaned the filming rooms.
I now know how to get jizz out of just about anything. That’s information you never forget.
“Huh,” Kole says as she heads back to the door. “I forget about them, too.”
“Because you weren’t a pledge. You bullied your way in.”
Kole flashes me a mischievous smile as she opens the door to greet the next man. I join them at the basket. He chooses orange, and I log his information as Kole leads him away.
The next man Kole brings in isn’t for the key party but to be our cameraman.
Emric looks just like Arek with dark hair and dark eyes, and confidence for days, but his skin is darker.
A beautiful shade of honey brown. His smile is both amused and teasing as he follows Kole toward me with his hands in his jeans pockets.
“Hi,” I greet.
“Hello,” he returns.
“Have you filmed before?” I ask and reach for the last camera sitting on the side. Opening the screen, I check that the battery is full before handing it over.
Emric looks at it and his amusement climbs. “Nope. I’ll figure it out.”
“The most important thing to note is to make sure it’s recording,” Kole says. Emric looks at her with laughter in his eyes. My sister frowns. “You think it’s funny, but it wouldn’t be the first time we didn’t have any footage because someone forgot to press record.”
“I hope you fired them,” Emric says.
Kole meets my eye. “They’re not allowed back at Hush after the third incident.”
I nod, shrugging one shoulder. “Arek will be glad you get to keep your clothes on tonight.”
Emric laughs. “I have to say, seeing Arek look at me in horror is something I’ll never forget. It’s so rare that you see anything on his face, so that has been burned into my memory forever.”
Grinning, I say, “He is very disturbed by it.”
“I’m going to get the next guy,” Kole says and walks away.
I give Emric a run-through of the basic operations of the camera. It’s nothing special. Just a mini camcorder, but they’re not all that common outside of things like this since everyone just uses their phones.
The next guy chooses the purple ribbon, and that’s Emric’s room, so he follows Kole and Freddy down the hall. I let in the last guy and then take a seat with my e-reader in hand to get through some of my class readings while we wait for the sexy games to end.
Kole joins me a few minutes later, her schoolbag over her shoulder. “That’s the fourth time this month that someone has dropped at the last minute,” she says.
Sighing, I sit back and look at her. “The more operations we run through DIK, the smaller our pool of employees gets,” I admit.
“We’ll have seven new members soon,” she says. “But yeah, you’re right.”
“I like doing five rooms two nights a week because then we’re not competing with any of the other businesses for employees. Rumor, yes, but not Confessions. I thought we’d be better off like this, and it wouldn’t compete for the same people to take hours.”
“You’re forgetting that the Lennon twins’ thing is now during our same hours,” Kole reminds me. “Otto, Otis, and Evan are three automatically removed from the mix, and while I think only the three of them are working through the dry runs right now, more will be needed when it goes live.”
I sigh. “So, what are my options? Do we cut down on rooms? Maybe drop to three in the evenings? But then I feel like we need to schedule more nights to build up our coffers for the off months, which means that’s not truly a fix.”
“I know that most of the guys don’t like to sign up for positions during the week. They try to keep those nights for schoolwork. Weekends are usually booked with these events because that’s when people are readily available.”
“It’s also when people are free from classes and can let loose,” I complain. “If I remove some of the Hush Anonymous slots for Hush, that means we’re lessening the number of available beds.”
“Maybe we’re thinking too ‘this or that’.
Maybe let’s think about a different combination.
We booked Hush on the evenings during the week because they only need a couple hours at most, right?
” I nod. “That means, allowing time to clean between shoots, we could probably book four slots in one weekend day, and the two HA slots we can add to weeknights instead. Maybe Tuesday and Wednesday. Really, just two of us need to sit here, right? That’s two people instead of seven. Maybe we do that once a month.”
“Maybe we alternate Saturday and Sunday once a month,” I say, nodding. “Yeah. Let’s think about that a little more. Maybe run it by Nolan since he always seems to think of things we miss.”
Kole snorts. “He does. That bitch.”
I grin.
We’re silent for a minute. The idea that Kole proposed feels like a good solution. Something we could try, at least. Kole’s attention on me has me looking up. She’s scrutinizing me, and I sigh. “What?”
“You called Arek for help, didn’t you?” I can hear the accusation in her tone, but she also tries to keep the question neutral.
“I didn’t realize you hated him,” I counter.
“I don’t.”
“Oh, no?”
“Kylen, you can’t tell me it’s not suspicious that the night that you have a date—in which Arek looked out of his mind furious as he stared at the guy—he ends up bloodied and bruised… Like… you can’t tell me you’re not concerned.”
I shrug. “Neither of them claims Arek was involved. You insist that he is. No one else.”
“Kylen—”
“He’s really great, Kole. The way he treats me and talks to me.”
Kole leans over the chair and takes my hand in both of hers. “Please don’t take this as condescending or anything, but Ky, he’s the first guy you’ve been with. The first guy you’ve dated. You have nothing to compare him to. Maybe you just can’t see all the red flags.”
“Do you know why he wanted me to tie him up the night we did the class?” Kole stares at me.
She barely shakes her head. “Because he knows he’s my first everything, and he wanted to hand me complete control.
Even when I told him I didn’t think I was very dominant, he said that I might surprise myself because I don’t know that until I try.
He knows I’m new to everything, so he creates situations like that where I can explore different things without feeling pressured. ”
Kole sighs and releases my hand, leaning back in the chair she’s sitting in across from me. “Well… that’s good, I guess.”
“Why don’t you like him?”
Her inhale is deep and loud when she releases it.
“Honestly? I don’t know. I didn’t not like him before you started showing up with bruises all over, and then I find out it’s him leaving them there?
I hear what you’re saying—that you like it.
Fine. Yes. But combined with his cold, threatening exterior?
” She shakes her head. “I just don’t like that kind of person for you, I guess. ”
“You’d rather see me with someone like Harold.”
Kole smirks. “No. Not him. I knew as soon as he sat beside you that he was not your type. He’d never make you happy or comfortable.”
“Arek does, though,” I offer.
She stares at me again. I’m glad I don’t see anger or hostility in her expression anymore as we talk about Arek. She’s not a fan. That’s clear. But at least she’s not ready to start yelling at me or saying nasty shit.
“I’m glad he does,” Kole says after a few minutes have passed. “I am. I think, more than anything, it’s your bruises that bother me.” Her eyes drop to my neck, where it’s almost always ringed with bruises and bite marks. “I hear what you’re saying about them. I do. But it still bothers me.”
“Why? You don’t think I can be into manhandling because I’m shy and quiet?”
Kole snorts. “No. Because I’ve spent my entire life trying to protect you from people who would leave bruises on you, Kylen. It’s stupidly difficult to accept that you’re welcoming them.”
My shoulders sag. “These aren’t the kinds of bruises you were protecting me from,” I say quietly. “And if he ever leaves those kinds of bruises, you’ll know. He wouldn’t, though. But if someone does, you’ll know.”
“When you’re already covered in bruises? It’s like you’re trying to desensitize me to your injuries.” Her eyes narrow.
I laugh. “Not because they’ll look different from the ones I already wear, but because you know me. You’ll know.”
Kole finally softens, and a smile touches her lips. “Yeah. I’ll know.”
I kick her gently with my foot, and she returns the gesture. Then a mischievous smile dances across her mouth.
“So… you like to be manhandled, huh?”
My face flames hotly, and I look down. “We’re not talking about my sex life.”
“The fact that you have one now is wild, and I need to know details.”
“Eh, no. Thanks.”
Her eyes drop, and her smile stretches wider. “Maybe you’re advertising your details already.”
My eyes follow her gaze, and I remember that I’m wearing Arek’s hoodie. ‘Feeling cute. Might bottom later.’
“Oh my god,” I mutter and cross my arms over my chest to hide the words. Kole laughs.