Eleven
DALTON
E ssie saying she wants to fuck brightens my mood immediately. Her eyebrows are elevated with anticipation while she waits, and the fact that she thinks I’d ever decline is disgustingly cute.
“Yeah?” I confirm, allowing a smile to break through. I’d been suppressing one since she called me “undiluted, concentrated chaos.”
Essie nods, head bobbing so her long hair swishes. “What do you think?”
“Yes.” My response is immediate.
A beaming grin spreads across her face. “Really?” She clasps her hands together and tucks them under her chin.
“You’re kidding, right? This is all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
Essie throws her arms around me. “Dalton, thank you ,” she breathes, speaking into my chest. “You have no idea how much this means to me.”
Wow. We’ve only fucked once, but she’s already thanking me for it, which is understandable. I slutted myself out for the better part of a decade, so I’m good at what I do. But I’ll be honest: Nobody has ever been this grateful for my dick.
Guess I really exceeded all her expectations last night.
I scoop her up and drop her onto Lander and Valeria’s couch.
“Wait—right now?”
“Hell yeah,” is my response while I stand over her and tug off my sweatshirt and shirt. Without breaking eye contact, I throw them to the side, not bothering to look where they land…
…until I hear a thud. Shit. I think I broke something.
“I’ll pay for that,” I assure her, clearing my throat. “Where were we?”
“You don’t want to wait until tonight?”
“Can’t.” I pause. “Do I need a condom?”
Essie pauses too. After a beat, she shakes her head. “I have an IUD.”
“No condom,” I murmur. “ No fucking condom .”
I undo my belt buckle before I lower to the ground and kneel on the floor between her legs, spreading them wider. I place my hands on her denim-clad thighs and slide them up, feeling the heat of her skin through the fabric.
Essie always looks perfect. Her hair, her makeup—even the delicate earrings she wears—everything matches. If she’s anything like me, she endured a sleepless night memorizing the marks on the ceiling in between pacing and rewatching our stream. Still, she looks perfect today.
It helps that Essie is so incomprehensibly beautiful.
When I met her, it was the first time I saw her unmasked, and I was legitimately blown away. Some people glow, but Essie Romero was iridescent. Her big brown eyes stared up at me through the awning of her long eyelashes, and I knew—I just knew—I was in so much trouble.
I texted Everett and Lander that night: Hey, I’m going to marry that one . They thought I was kidding.
I was not fucking kidding.
Over the following weeks, I set out to memorize the parts of her face that had been covered by her mask. I learned the precise shape of her pink apple cheeks and the swoop of her round nose that so elegantly flowed down from her full eyebrows. I contemplated the exact placement of the sparse freckles on her nose when her skin gets sun-kissed in the summer.
But my favorite part about Essie has always been her little grin. Her plump, rosy lips—heart-shaped when she’s not smiling—offset her smirk. For months, that smile graced my presence during late nights prepping her for banking interviews, sometimes until the early hours of the morning.
She’s smiling again today.
“You’re so handsome,” she murmurs, placing her hand on the side of my face against my jawline.
“Not interested in talking about me,” I reply, moving my hands higher. My fingertips sail over her flat stomach, skimming her abdomen when she breathes. When my fingers find and move a shoulder strap, she doesn’t stop me.
I turn my attention to the other side. Now, both straps dangle on her upper arms, exposing the top of her cleavage and teasing at what waits mere inches below the edge of the fabric. I tug the straps until her top slips over her breasts.
No bra.
In the gold morning light, Essie’s nipples have never looked more tempting: warm brown and pearled, surrounded by the speckles and bumps on her areolas.
“Ess,” I murmur, running my hand along the underside of her breast, watching as goosebumps emerge in the wake of my touch. “You have no idea how many times I jerked off to these tits.”
Her smile broadens, but her mien is outright lusty. “Here,” she murmurs, handing me her phone.
I take it, confused at first, but she dips her chin.
“Do it.”
Of course she knows I’m obsessed. I take a picture of those luscious tits and text it to myself before I put the phone on the couch. “Say it,” I instruct, putting my face close to hers.
Essie’s eyes bore into mine. “Say what?”
“Say the shit you were saying in the elevator,” I urge, rubbing my palm against my cock. It’s hard in my pants, swelling with blood with every passing second.
But she’s toying with me. Her hand goes to the small letter X tattooed on my pectoral, and she traces the diagonal lines with a shiny gold fingernail. “You got a new one,” she mentions. Then her fingertips move to my ribcage, caressing the flowers stretching from my abdomen to my back. “And you have one on your thigh. How many do you have now?”
“Four,” I reply hastily. “Now, say it. You made me repeat what I said the night I met you. Now, I want you to repeat what you said, Essie.”
Finally, Essie bites her lip and says, “I’m offering it to you,” and it takes everything I have not to mouth the words along with her. “My body. Use it however you want.” And she pushes her top to her waist, giving me more of her skin.
“Yes,” I mutter, undoing the button on her jeans with a flick of my thumb. “Say the last part.”
“ Pick a hole, Dalton .”
She’s not even done speaking when I dive forward and attach my mouth to one of her nipples, finally getting the taste I wanted.
I’m fucking ruined.
I switch to the other one, and the swollen nub presses against my lips. Her nipples are outrageous. The tips are entirely suckable—and that’s the thing about Essie: Her body legitimately looks like it was made for fucking.
“I’ve been dreaming about tasting these nipples for two years,” I groan. “You don’t know how many times I wanted to hook my finger in those little tops you wear.”
Essie lets out a smooth moan and parts her legs even wider. “How do they taste?”
“Delicious,” I reply, lapping at the tip. “Tell me how it’s possible they’re actually sweet .”
Her response is breathy. “I put cocoa butter on them—wait, slow down.”
“Please don’t make me,” I nearly whine. The pause is agony—literal agony.
“Hold on. I’ll set up my phone.”
“What for?” I ask while I play with the nipple I’m not allowed to suck right now—rude.
“For filming,” she replies.
And my stomach plummets—and I mean plummets. It’s a skydive without a parachute. It’s a satellite crashing to Earth.
It’s typical.
This one time when I was thirteen, I was pretty sure my dad was going to surprise me with tickets to the Super Bowl for my birthday. I hadn’t been subtle about wanting to go—at all. In fact, I’d basically wandered down to breakfast one day, nudged the newspaper he was reading so I could see his face, and said, “ Hey, can we go to the Super Bowl ?” To which my father had said, “ Football ?” At which point, Mom chimed in and said, “ Of course, my darling. Of course we can .”
And then my birthday rolled around, and instead of tickets to the Super Bowl, Frank informed me we were having lunch with Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
…Which, yes, in retrospect was, like, the third best day I’ve ever had, but at the time was really fucked up.
My reaction to Essie’s declaration is as bad as the Super Bowl/RBG switch.
“You were asking me to film,” I realize aloud before I rise to my feet. “Shit.”
“I thought you said—”
“You want me to stream with you?” I question. “ Essie, you want me to fucking stream with you? Like, you want me to be an actual camboy or something?”
“More like a guest star,” she clarifies before she uses the throw pillow next to her to cover her chest. “And I don’t want you to stream. I want to…record you and upload it to my profile behind a paywall.”
I got this wrong. I got this so unbelievably wrong—but how was I so off?
She said I exceeded her expectations. She said I was unbelievable.
…No, that’s wrong. Last night exceeded her expectations. It was unbelievable. Not me.
I cross my arms over my chest. “How much did we make?” I finally ask. “I know you. You live and die by numbers. So tell me: How much did we make streaming?”
Without a word, Essie picks up her phone, swipes, and passes it to me. Her camming app is open, and there’s a five-digit number on the screen that makes my eyebrow rise like it’s trying to start a coup for control of my face.
“This was from last night?”
The way she grins in confirmation is the single sexiest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do with their face. “The site takes a percentage,” she caveats. “Annoying, but it is what it is.”
“Yeah,” I say, forcing myself to relax. “Yeah, this is good. Is this a lot more than you usually make?”
“Triple,” is her response. She takes her phone back and smiles at it—beaming. “Another big night, and I’m set for a year.”
She’s good—and she knows she’s good too. She knows I would die to make this girl happy. I would die and reincarnate myself so I could die again to make her happy.
That fact is the heart of our problem.
“I can’t cam with you,” I respond flatly, turning down her request before she can make it again.
“Why not? Is it about our parents? The bank? Our friendship?”
“It’s because I’m in love with you,” I answer. “There. I’ve said it twice now.”
She starts shaking her head. “You’re not in love with me.”
“I’m not? Okay, sick. So, I just lay awake at night thinking about you and changed all my passwords to your name with an exclamation point instead of an I for no reason. Got it.”
Finally, she pulls up her top, covering her breasts. “You can’t be. You don’t even know me.”
I almost scoff. “How can you say I don’t know you?”
“Because you don’t,” she insists, frowning now. “If you don’t want to film, say it. But dangling love in front of me is a dick move.”
My brow tightens. “I would never extort you into saying you love me. But I do love you, and that’s why I can’t.”
She raises her shoulder like it’s nothing. “Just call it a deal. That’s what you’re good at.”
But I don’t want a deal; I want her to want to be with me.
“I’ll see you at work on Monday, Essie,” I say before I turn and walk away for a second time.
It’s worse this time.