Chapter 3 Mavi
Mavi
My apartment looks like a mess. Canvases lean against every wall, some finished, some half-done, one I started last Tuesday during a meltdown and haven't touched since. Paint tubes are scattered across the coffee table, kitchen counter, and the bathroom sink.
A lace bralette hangs from the bedroom doorknob because walking six steps to the closet felt like too much work this morning.
Velvet is draped over the couch for a textile series I'm working on, and because I like how it looks.
The place reeks of honey, turpentine, and that vanilla candle I keep burning because I'm the type of person who'd risk a fire hazard for aesthetics.
I love this apartment. It's chaotic and warm and mine. Everything in it exists because I put it there, which sounds trivial until you've spent twenty years in rooms where nothing belonged to you and someone else controlled every detail.
Taking another sweep of the room, I move into the bedroom, the one with the large window facing my neighbor. It’s also the one with the best lighting and view from the street. My gaze falls to my ring light set up off to the side.
I check the angle, adjust it two degrees to the left, and check again.
The lighting matters. People think cam work is just showing up and taking your clothes off.
Idiots. The light has to be warm but not flat.
Directional enough to sculpt but soft enough to flatter.
I've spent more time learning to light myself than most photographers spend learning to light their subjects, and I'm better at it than half the professionals I've worked with on modeling gigs. Their problem, not mine.
My makeup is spread across the bathroom counter in what looks like chaos but is actually a system only I understand, primers on the left, color in the center, setting products on the right, brushes laid out in the order I'll use them, because I don't wear makeup to become someone else but to become more of myself.
The base makes my skin look lit from inside, the shadow deepens my eyes into something people get lost in and don't particularly want to find their way out of, and the gloss goes on my lower lip only, because the asymmetry draws the eye down and the eye going down is the whole point of this evening.
I put on the blush set tonight, pink silk that sits against my skin like a suggestion, the kind of fabric that does half the work for me.
I check my reflection and adjust the strap so it slips slightly off my left shoulder, because almost-falling is more interesting than fallen.
If it's already off, it's just nudity, but if it's about to fall, it's a story, and I know exactly how to make someone stare at a shoulder.
I look good, like a problem someone is going to enjoy having.
Taking one last look in the mirror, I blow a kiss to my reflection before switching on the camera and pressing play.
The energy kicks in the way it always does and I settle into it because this is the part I'm good at. My audience is here and I look at the camera instead of the count because that's what keeps it real.
"Hi, loves." I tilt my head and let my smile build slowly. "Did you miss me? I missed you. I've been thinking about tonight all day."
I haven't. I've been painting and arguing with a gallery owner over email and eating cold pasta out of the container.
But the feeling is real even if the facts aren't, which is what separates me from every other pretty face on this platform.
They sell their bodies, but I sell the experience of being wanted by me, and the wanting is real even when the specifics are fiction.
"I wore the blush set tonight." I run my fingers along the strap, letting the fabric pull against my thumb before snapping back to my skin. A small gasp falls from my lips, drawing another slew of comments. "Your favorite. Don't lie, I know it's your favorite, I see the tip history."
The chat moves faster as I read it with peripheral vision, pulling out the names I recognize without looking directly at the scroll.
My regulars are here and they behave themselves because I've trained them to, and the ones who don't get removed with the same speed and dispassion I'd use to block a telemarketer.
My room and my rules, which they know by now.
"Be patient." I let the strap slip off my shoulder before catching it with one finger like I just noticed it falling. "Good things take time and I'll get there when I feel like it and not a second before, so sit back and be good for me."
The teasing starts slow, my fingers tracing along the waistband of the blush set while I talk, letting my thighs fall open just enough that the camera catches the silk pulling tight between my legs.
The attention does something to me, it always does, a warmth spreading across my skin that isn't performed, my scent sweetening into something thicker as the tip counter climbs and the chat fills with people who want me.
This is where I live, in the wanting, in the weight of four hundred pairs of eyes on my body, and the arousal it generates is all mine.
Heat pools low in my belly as my hand drifts down my stomach, fingertips tracing the edge of the fabric where it meets my hip.
The chat responds with the usual desperation that I find flattering and a little sad, messages scrolling faster as I shift on the bed so the light catches the sheen on my inner thigh where the slick has just barely started to seep through the fabric, my body responding to the high of being watched the way it always responds.
"That's it, just like that." My hand traces down my chest again, over the silk. "I love when you watch me like this. Like you can't look away. Like I'm the only thing on your screen."
The blush set comes off in pieces because the removal is half the performance.
The straps first, sliding them down my arms while I roll my shoulders back and let the camera catch the line of my collarbones, then the top slipping down to my waist in a slow reveal that makes the chat ping with tips so fast the sound blurs together.
My skin prickles where the air hits it, nipples hardening under the ring light's warmth as I run my palms over my own chest slow enough that every pair of eyes on the other side of that screen can follow exactly where my hands are going.
My head falls back and a sound comes out of me that's half sigh and half invitation, my scent thickening further, honey going rich and heady the way it does when my body decides it's enjoying itself.
The slick between my thighs gathers, a slow wet heat that I can feel every time I shift my weight on the sheets.
I reach for the knotted dildo, the one that makes my regulars lose their minds, and hold it up to the camera with the kind of smile that has gotten me both tips and trouble.
"You want to watch me take this?" I drag the tip of it along my lower lip and let my lids half-close. "Tell me how badly you want it. I want to hear you beg."
I drag the toy through the slick coating my inner thighs before positioning myself on my knees, giving them a perfect side view. Slowly, I peel off the panties, damp with slick before working the head of the dildo inside me.
The stretch burns just the way I like, that first resistance giving way to fullness as my body opens around the silicone. The sound I make is real, a low groan that I feel in my chest as the widest part pushes past the tight ring of muscle and settles inside me.
"Fuck, that's good." I roll my hips, taking the knot to its widest point, and hold myself there trembling, thighs shaking, sweat gathering at my temples.
The camera catches all of it, the effort and the pleasure fighting for space on my face, the chat moving so fast I can't read individual names anymore.
"You wish this was you, don't you? You wish you could feel how wet I am right now, how tight I am around this, how good it feels when I just.. ."
The truth is I wish it was real too. Not theirs, but real in the way that silicone can never be, hot and thick and pulsing inside me, a knot that swells and locks and fills me so full I can't think.
Every Alpha I've ever let into my bed wanted to be the one holding me down, wanted to push my face into the pillow and knot me like I was something to be used, and not a single one of them understood that I didn’t want that.
I want to ride. I want to set the pace and control the depth and look down into an Alpha's face while he falls apart inside me, and I have never once found a man willing to let me have that.
An involuntary moan pulls from my throat as I sink the toy all the way inside of me, the knot pushing fully past the rim.
The needy whimper that tears out of my throat is not performed, just what happens when something that big seats itself as deep as it can go and my body clenches around it like it's trying to keep it there.
My cock is hard and leaking against my stomach, slick running down the insides of my thighs and soaking into the sheets, my scent gone so thick and sweet I can smell myself, honey and arousal and something almost desperate underneath that I don't let show on my face.
I ride the toy with a rhythm I control completely, speeding up when the tips spike, slowing down when I want to make them suffer, because the control is the point.
My hips roll in a slow grind that presses the knot against the spot inside me that makes my vision blur, and I let my head fall back and moan for the camera.
What they don’t know is that every sound is genuine, pulled from my body by the fullness and the friction and the fantasy I keep building in my head of an Alpha underneath me who wants to be there, who isn't fighting for the top, who looks up at me like I'm the only thing that matters and says please and means it.