Chapter Eight
SAMMIE: …
Sammie: What should I wear
Kieran: Don’t overthink it.
Kieran: Just something comfortable.
Sammie: Do I need to bring anything?
Kieran: Nope. I’ll take care of everything.
Kieran was nervous.
Kieran didn’t usually get nervous. Not when it came to recording explicit content that would be posted online for anyone to see.
He was used to it at this point, after years of settling into himself and who he was online. That’s why he couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that his stomach was doing somersaults and his hands felt clammy. Sammie was set to arrive any minute, and Kieran was nervous.
Maybe it was because he hadn’t worked with a partner in so long? That alone was outside of his norm. It wasn’t the fact that it was Sammie, just that another person was involved at all this time.
The realization did nothing to calm him.
A knock at the door echoed through his quiet apartment.
Kieran’s socked feet padded softly across the faux wood floors. It was quiet, so quiet. Should he have turned on music? Would that have made this weirder than it already felt?
Pulling a deep breath in, letting it expand his lungs, his chest, Kieran hesitated for only a moment before swinging the door open.
Sammie was there, waiting, a tote bag slung over her shoulder.
She was dressed casual, comfortable, just as Kieran had instructed.
A cropped white band t-shirt, several sizes too big.
Gray sweatpants, rolled down on her hips, showing off a sliver of her soft belly that he could already imagine his fingers gripping, indenting the skin there.
Dark hair pulled back into two french braids.
“Hi.” She smiled at him, but it was strained. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the straps of her bag.
“Hi.” Kieran stepped aside, waving her in. He could smell that same strawberry scent as she passed him. “Come on. I’ll show you the setup.” He figured this was another rip the bandaid off moment, might as well get it over with.
Sammie followed him through his small apartment. It was so strange, leading her to his bedroom. And for the life of him, Kieran still couldn’t figure out what made it so different from leading anyone else there. He stepped into the room first, Sammie right behind him.
“Oh.” She froze in the doorway, eyes wide, glued to the tripod set up across from the end of his bed.
The room itself was nothing special. Kieran preferred neutral tones.
His bedroom furniture—consisting of a queen size bed, a single nightstand, a small bookcase, and a dresser—were all matte black.
He’d been feeling adventurous when he’d picked out his comforter set after moving back from Seattle, opting for a gray that was almost blue.
A stormy blue, that he suddenly realized he’d seen recently.
Sammie’s storm cloud eyes turned toward him.
“This is it then?”
Kieran didn’t have an elaborate setup. A tripod for his phone, which recorded in high enough quality for his needs. A cushy, gray chair in the corner, because in the past he’d… had a thing for watching.
And a mirror, behind the tripod and directly across from the foot of the bed, that Sammie’s gaze was now glued to.
“I’m not fancy.” He shrugged. He could see the question forming before her lips parted to ask. “The mirror helps me know how I—we—will look in frame.” And, well, he really liked to watch.
“Oh. Of course.” Sammie nodded. Her eyes scanned the room once more, snagging on the bookcase. She crossed over to it, scanning the books neatly lining its shelves.
“You only read… romance novels?”
The tension in the air seemed to lift as Sammie snatched up a small, tattered paperback. Its cover featured a woman in a flowing red gown, her cleavage on full display. Sammie was grinning as she flipped through the pages.
“That one’s great.” Kieran moved across the room, stopping beside her. “You can borrow it if you want.”
“I mean, yeah, I definitely want to.” Her grin spread wider as she looked at him. “Kieran McCullough, one of the top players in the men’s national volleyball league, poster child for boring white men everywhere, reads romance novels.”
Kieran frowned. “You think I’m boring?”
Sammie laughed, gesturing with the small book. “This means you are decidedly not boring.”
He reached past her, grabbing another one with soft shades of blue, white, and pink staining the edges, two men cuddled together on the cover.
“Take this one too.” It had been a recommendation from one of his cousins, Kellan, who had come out as trans four years earlier and had recently told Kieran he needed to read more diversely.
He’d always had great taste in books. Kieran shoved the book into Sammie’s hands.
Scanning the shelf, he snatched up another.
If he remembered right, Sammie liked fantasy novels best, so he added a romantasy favorite to her stack as well.
“Oh my god.” Sammie’s eyes were wide, her expression one of shock and deep amusement. “This is the best thing I’ve ever learned about you.”
“I was visiting my cousin”—Kenna, Kellan’s older sister, because for some reason their parents had wanted them to all have confusing K names—“in Louisville a couple years ago. She took me to a local bookstore, they only sold romance novels and I’m easy to peer pressure.
Now,” he paused, waving a hand at the shelf. “I can’t seem to stop reading them.”
Sammie looked delighted by this information, and Kieran’s stomach swooped at the open and happy expression that melted across her features.
“So.” Despite the fact that Kieran was already making a list of more books he wanted her to borrow, they were here together in his bedroom for a reason. “Do you have your lists?”
Sammie nodded, hefting her new stack of reading material. “Actually, can we not do this part in the sex room? This feels more like a kitchen kind of conversation.”
And just like that, the bubble of mortification popped. Sammie was chuckling at herself, and Kieran felt a smile of his own tugging at the corners of his mouth. Acknowledging what they were about to do out loud, even as a joke, zapped away most of the tension that had been holding Kieran tight.
Most of it, anyway.
“Do you want to read them out loud or…” Sammie sat her bag on his counter, pulling out two sheets of lined paper, the edges torn as though she’d ripped them hastily from a notebook.
Kieran leaned back against the cabinets across from her, trying to look casual even as butterflies still flitted around in his gut.
“Mine are right there, you can read them.” He nodded toward a stack of papers next to her, reaching out for the ones she held in her hand. Sammie handed them over, picking up his, only for her attention to snag on the packet beneath his rules and content ideas.
“Is this your contract with the Cats?”
While it wasn’t his favorite topic of conversation at the moment, it didn’t agitate the butterflies, so Kieran nodded.
“Kieran.” Sammie turned to him, her smile genuine, bright and big.
“They want to keep you, that’s amazing!” It was never a guaranteed thing, being offered to re-up on his contract when the previous one ran out.
Professional sports were cutthroat, and every team only wanted the best players.
Kieran’s season had been solid, better than solid, but receiving the new contract had settled something in him that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding back, afraid that he wouldn’t get an offer from the same team that he now felt so at home with.
He’d just seen his friend, Ori, traded away on a whim at the start of the season.
But now he had the contract, he’d had it for weeks, and still it lay on his kitchen counter. Untouched, unsigned.
“This is a good thing, right?”
Sammie’s question pulled him out of the tired, persistent whirlpool of his thoughts.
“It is,” he said slowly, unsure how much he wanted to talk about this now. “I’m waiting for a few things to shake out before I sign it.”
She didn’t respond at first, instead watching him, reading more on his face than he thought could be there.
When she finally nodded, a slow, small movement, something shuttered in her expression, closing off.
“Of course, makes sense.” Sammie cleared her throat, looking down at the other papers that Kieran had typed up.
He took the opportunity to look down at hers as well.
On top was the list of things she was interested in trying.
To his satisfaction, many of their likes and dislikes aligned.
That would make this significantly easier.
A few items that she’d listed took him by surprise.
Her round, flowing handwriting seemed such a contrast to the words it spelled out.
Multiple partners.
Pegging.
Kieran had been with multiple partners in the past. Those videos always did well, but it had been ages since he’d even recorded anything with even one partner. He wasn’t sure just how far Sammie wanted to take that particular fantasy, but they could cross that bridge when they got to it.
Pegging though… Well, he’d never done it before, but he wasn’t exactly opposed. The idea would need to roll around in his head for a while; he’d need to look at it from every angle and truly make sure he was okay with it.
But he wasn’t not okay with it.
“The mirror makes more sense now. And the chair.” Sammie’s cheeks were red, her eyes still glued to the page she was reading. Kieran remembered what he had written, and voyeurism was at the very top.
“We can make most of this work.” He shuffled that page to the back, taking a look at the second page. “Our rules are more important for now.”
His eyes scanned the page, taking in the few things she had written.
“No kissing while the camera is on.” Kieran read her first rule out loud. She looked up at him, their gazes locking.
“We can change that one… if you want to. I just… it feels like…”
This wouldn’t work if she didn’t feel comfortable telling him what she needed.