Chapter 27
D-Day. Drop Day.
The day after Christmas, at every spare opportunity, Libby and Dan had been posting and engaging with their community on social media, whipping up as much excitement as they could, right up to the minute when their first video dropped.
It was now ten p.m., Karim was fast asleep, and Part One was live. But instead of being at her laptop—monitoring, analyzing, and reacting—what was Libby doing?
Coming down from another intense orgasm, that’s what. Dan had been waiting for her release again, and now she squeezed his tight butt as he let himself go.
“Man…” she hissed, soaking up the tremors his climax had triggered inside her.
“Woman,” he gasped.
“No, I meant—man, what are we doing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
A thousand percent it was, but they had work to do, and again she’d been sidetracked by sex. She smacked his butt. “We need to get back to it, Cranky.” He shifted off her, and she reached for her T-shirt, which had somehow ended up over the lamp on his nightstand.
“Admit that my idea worked,” he said smugly.
“Huh.” His idea—sex—had happened when nerves had gotten the better of her and she’d had a mini freak out after their video had gone live.
“What if everyone hates it?” she’d said. “What if we get attacked by trolls? What if this only brings us the wrong kind of attention?”
“Hey, leave the doom and gloom to me, Miss Sunshine.”
“Aren’t you nervous?”
“Of course, I am, but for the first time in months, I feel good. Really good.”
And that’s when he’d tipped her chin and kissed her, murmuring against her lips about knowing something that would take her mind off things…
“As you’re well aware, I’m all for sex,” she said now, slipping her T-shirt over her head. “And I’ll admit it was a pleasant ten-minute distraction.”
“Twenty. It was at least twenty minutes. And more than just pleasant.”
She sucked in a smile. Regardless of how long, he’d pleasured her good and proper. “It’s time to get back to work, Cranky.”
She jumped into the shower. A few minutes later, he joined her with a slow gaze that was firmly on her dripping wet breasts. “Haven’t you had enough?” she asked.
“Nope.” Dipping his head, he kissed her under the spray. The cubicle was tiny. More so when Dan was in it. Cool tiles touched her back, and she yelped. Dan switched positions with her, then soaped up her breasts.
She shot him a look. “You’re insatiable.”
“What?” he said innocently. “I’m just being helpful.” He kissed her neck.
“We need to get back to work.” But when he became hard again against her thigh, Libby couldn’t resist wrapping her hand around him. Slowly, she pumped him, enjoying how his breathing turned ragged.
“I very much like your idea of getting back to work,” he said, and slipped his fingers, hot and wet, between her legs. “Let me watch you come again.”
Oh, god, yes.
“If you insist.”
“I insist.”
She let him play, his every stroke and swirl taking her closer and closer to that healthily addictive place of ecstasy and release she loved so much.
When her orgasm ripped through her, she gripped him harder.
With a groan, Dan removed his hand and splayed them both above her head against the cubicle door, rocking into her clenched fist. Water dripped from his jaw.
She licked at the droplets, tracing them down his neck with her tongue as she worked him—hot, hard, and slick in her palm—until he came with a long, guttural, “Unnnhhhh.”
For several moments, they stayed under the water without speaking, without moving, as if neither were sure that the world beneath them was steady enough to walk on again.
“That’s definitely what I call a stress buster,” Dan said on a deep exhale.
He shifted his hands to cup her face and kissed her, then he reached for the bar of soap, this time only rubbing it on his own skin.
“Now that we know what relaxes you, we’ll have to keep doing it, because there’s no need to be nervous.
You’re great at what you do, Libby. And you know I’m not just talking about sex. ”
Insanely touched, she hugged him. “And you know that I love…that I love how you’ve gotten yourself together. That you’re finally getting back out there.”
“I owe you for that.”
“We owe each other.” Patting his butt—because she found it irresistible—she added, “We really do need to get back to work now, though.” As she stepped out of the shower, she grabbed a towel.
“I’ll go see what’s evolved while we’ve been…
de-stressing.” Then she winked at him over her shoulder. “A lot can happen in ten minutes.”
“It was twenty!”
She was still sniggering when she sat back at her laptop and clicked on their post.
Holy cow!
The views on their Part One video had already surpassed two million!
“Hey,” she said when Dan came out and stood behind her.
“Look at this.” She tapped the screen at the views, which were continuing to tick up.
“That’s potentially more money than I’ve earned in the past six months.
Your revenue is likely to be high too. Your agent will be spitting nails not to be getting her fifteen percent. ”
“She can spit all she likes,” Dan said. “You want coffee?”
He walked off to the kitchen. Still no elaboration on what he planned to do about his agent, but Libby reminded herself that that was his business. She believed his promise to keep working with her, and that was all she should be concerned about.
“Tomorrow, we’ll upload Part Two.” She glanced at the figures again. Would all their videos get this many views? God, she hoped so. The income would see her and Karim well into next year. Would she and Dan still be friends then? Would they still be helping each other out?
“Tomorrow is also your mom’s last day on the island,” Libby said. “She invited Karim and me to dinner.”
“I know. You’re coming?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll be sad to say goodbye.”
“You’ll keep in touch.” Dan placed a cup of coffee next to her laptop, but he didn’t say You’ll see my mom again when you visit me in England like she’d hoped he would.
“Check this comment out,” he said instead, turning his phone to her. “This guy says, ‘I knew the Lightning Strike would rise like a phoenix out of the ashes.’”
Libby put aside her hazy future with Dan. “We’ll have to use that line in our promos.”
Dan sat on the couch to work from his phone, and Libby went back to her laptop.
She checked Isabella’s social media. For all Libby knew, Dan might be doing the same.
She couldn’t see his screen, and he couldn’t see hers.
Not that it mattered to Libby either way.
It was Dan who refused to ever mention his ex.
Libby turned back to her screen. There was a whole bunch of positive stuff about Dan on all of Isabella’s platforms, and Isabella had seemingly increased her support for him by adding a load of photos of them together—in happier times.
Most Libby had already seen elsewhere, but some were new private and candid moments. Just the two of them.
Seeing Dan in his past with Isabella was more than a little weird, especially considering what he and Libby had just done in bed and in the shower.
Friends who help each other out.
But they were more than that now, weren’t they? Or was intimacy between them just in her imagination?
“Dan?” In the shower, Libby had almost let slip how she felt about him, but now she needed him to know.
But when Dan looked up, the words only hovered on her lips.
Could she really ask him if he wanted to be more than friends?
What if he rejected her like Elliot had?
That would ruin everything between them and bring on a whole world of pain and awkwardness.
Especially as her finances were also now thrown into the mix. There was so much at risk.
“What is it, Libby?”
“Oh, nothing.” Just then, an email pinged through. Grateful for the distraction, she turned back to her screen. “I just wondered if you were going to bed yet,” she said.
“I will in a minute. Shall I wait for you?”
“No, it’s okay. You go. I’ll finish up here and check on Karim.” She was a coward, but being brave wasn’t always the best course of action. She’d been brave with Elliot. Begging him. Sending him a photo of Karim. It was entirely possible that she’d read Dan just as wrong as she’d read Elliot.
As Dan took their coffee cups to the kitchen, Libby clicked away from Isabella’s social media and opened her inbox to read the email that she’d just received.
A name from her past glared back at her.
Juliana Cortez.
“Don’t work too hard, Libby,” Dan called out softly.
Libby tried to breathe. What did Juliana want? Why would she be emailing now after all this time?
“Libby?”
“Uh?”
“I’ll see you later?”
“Oh, yeah, I won’t be long.” She somehow found a smile then turned back to her screen to open Juliana’s email.
So you’re now BFFs with Daniel Jones? What’s the story with his ex? Rumor has it that she’s fucking Xavier Hunter. Remember we pay for intel. $$$$
Libby remembered, all right.
All night long, she’d tossed and turned in her bed next to Karim, remembering a lot of things.
Like how much Dan hated gossip journalists. What would he say when he found out she used to be one?
And he would find out because she’d tell him.
But how would she do that?
Eventually, she fell asleep. But when Karim stirred next to her, waking her just a few short hours later, she still hadn’t come up with an answer. There was no good way to tell Dan. She simply had to rip off the Band-Aid to minimize the pain.
“At least I’ll always have you, sweet cheeks.” Snuggling with Karim gave her some perspective. She made him breakfast, and only after he’d settled to play on the floor with a pack of cards did she log on to her laptop again.
The views on their Part One video had doubled overnight, but the joy was quickly overshadowed by another email from Juliana tainting her inbox.