Chapter 12 Billie
Billie
The charity stream has been running for two hours and twenty minutes and my kill count is sitting at eighty-seven, which is good, and my chat is in the kind of collective flow state where they're not even arguing with each other, which is rare, and I am in the zone in the way that only happens when everything else goes quiet and it's just me and the game and four thousand people watching me be competent at something.
I am, objectively, having a great stream.
My phone lights up on the desk.
I always keep it face-up during streams in case my dad calls. He has a whole thing about emergencies and I've never fully convinced him that I can check messages between rounds. I catch Declan's name on the screen and I glance at it without meaning to and I miss a shot I had in the bag.
First miss in forty minutes.
My chat notices immediately. BILLIE NO. BILLIE WHAT WAS THAT. she's been bodying everyone for an hour and then THIS. did she get a text. billie got a text. WHO TEXTED BILLIE.
I pick up the phone.
You're better when you stop thinking.
I look at it.
He's watching the stream right now. He's been watching and he saw the exact moment my focus slipped before I slipped it, and he knows why I play better when I'm not in my own head, which means he's watched me enough to know my patterns, which means he can read my gameplay the way other people read body language.
I set the phone down.
"I'm fine," I tell my chat. "Temporary equipment malfunction. The equipment being my brain."
My chat loses their minds. THE EQUIPMENT BEING HER brAIN. BILLIE. billie has a boyfriend. she's blushing. IS SHE BLUSHING.
I am not blushing. I am a professional.
Then the donation notification rolls across the bottom of my screen.
Declan M. — $200.
Not DarkWatcher. Not an anonymous handle. His name. His real name, sitting in my donation feed where four thousand people can see it, and my hands tremble on the controller for two full seconds.
Declan M. In my stream. Where my chat can screenshot it, where anyone curious enough could look him up.
Where the donation sits in the public record alongside every other donor and there is nothing anonymous about it.
He has put his real name in my stream the way a man carves initials into a tree, except the tree is public and the initials are visible to anyone who bothers to look.
I pick up the next round and I run it clean. Eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety-two. I do not look at my phone again for the rest of the stream.
When it ends two hours later I sit in the ring light glow and I call him before I've taken the filter off.
He picks up on the second ring.
"You put your name where everyone could see it," I say.
"Yeah."
"Why?"
A pause. The kind of pause that on anyone else would be hesitation and on Declan is just the space before something lands.
"Because you're mine," he says. "And I'm done pretending I don't know it."
I close my eyes. Open them. My reflection in the dark monitor, still in the ring light, still in the filter, and his voice in my ear saying you're mine like it's weather.
"That's the most romantic thing you've ever done," I say. My whole body starts to warm.
He doesn't answer. He doesn't need to. We both know he doesn't.
"Come over," he says.
***
He's at the door when I get there.
I get through the door and he cups my face in both hands and kisses me and the drive over and the call and the donation and the text all compress into this one point of contact, his mouth on mine, and I kiss him back with the energy of a woman who has been thinking about this for two hours while pretending to be a professional gamer.
We make it to his bedroom. Barely. His hands pulling my jacket off in the hallway, my shirt somewhere near the door, and then we're in and I do something I haven't done before.
I push him.
Both hands flat on his chest, and he goes back, surprised. He lands on the edge of the bed and I follow him. I climb on top of him, knees on either side of his hips, and I take his face in my hands and I kiss him and he makes a sound against my mouth that I feel in my whole body.
This is new. I've been reactive, responsive, the one being directed. Tonight I want to direct. Tonight I want to see what he looks like from above with his dark eyes looking up at me.
I pull my bra off. I reach down between us and get my hand on his cock through his pants and he's hard, completely hard, and the sound he makes when I grip him is gratifying enough that I file it permanently.
I get his pants off. Mine. I'm straddling him in nothing and he's looking up at me and his hands come to my hips and I feel his cock against me, the length of it pressed between us, and I rock my hips forward once, sliding my wetness along the underside of his shaft, and watch his jaw clench.
"Billie."
"My turn," I say.
I reach between us. Get him positioned. Sink down onto his cock in one slow slide and the sound I make is not subtle and I don't care. He fills me completely and the angle is different from on top, deeper somehow, and I grip his shoulders and start to move.
This is what I wanted. Him beneath me, his hands on my hips, his face tipped up toward mine.
The silver at his temples in the lamplight where I can see it.
I set my own pace for the first time and it's faster than he'd choose, harder, and his fingers dig into my hips but he lets me have it. For about thirty seconds.
Then something changes.
I'm riding him and I'm getting close and I lean down and say against his ear, "I think about you every time I'm on stream now, every time the donation feed scrolls, I think about, ah!"
His hand comes up and wraps around my throat.
Not squeezing. Not hurting. Just there. His palm against the front of my throat, his thumb on my pulse, and the pressure is nothing, barely a touch, but the intent of it stops me mid-sentence.
His eyes on mine are dark and flat and totally focused and there is nothing in them that looks like the patient, controlled man I've been sleeping with for the past week.
"Stop," he says.
I stop moving. My heart is hammering under his thumb.
He sits up with me still on his cock, one arm around my waist, his hand still on my throat, and he brings his face close to mine. I can see every line around his eyes. The gray in his stubble. The absolute stillness of a man who is about to say something he means.
"You don't think about me on stream," he says. Low. Quiet. "You don't think about anyone on stream. When you're live, you're BrattyBaby. You perform for them. You give them the version."
His thumb moves against my pulse. I can feel my own heartbeat against it.
"But this." His hips shift underneath me and I gasp.
"This is not the version. This is not for them.
" He holds my gaze. "Nobody else gets to see what you look like right now.
Nobody else gets to hear the sounds you make when I'm inside you.
Nobody else gets to know what your face does when you come. That's mine."
Every nerve I have is awake. His hand on my throat and his cock inside me and his voice telling me I belong to him in terms that are frankly possessive enough to qualify as a red flag in any other context and my only coherent thought is yes, more of that, please don't stop talking.
"The four thousand people watching your stream," he says. "They get BrattyBaby. They get the filter, the angle, the performance." His hand tightens fractionally on my throat. I feel my pulse jump against his palm. "They don't get this. Say it."
"They don't get this," I say, and my voice comes out wrecked, which is what happens when a man has his hand around your throat and is looking at you like you are the only thing in the world that matters and is also inside you.
"Say who does."
"You do."
"Say my name."
"Declan." It comes out like a sound, not a word. "Only you."
Foe one second I see the full scope of what this man feels about me and it is vast and total and slightly terrifying and I want every inch of it.
He takes his hand off my throat and puts both hands on my hips and flips me.
My back hits the mattress and he's over me and inside me in one motion and the pace he sets is nothing like the controlled, deliberate rhythm I've gotten used to.
This is fast and deep and relentless and his hands pin my wrists above my head and he drives into me like he's proving something, like the words weren't enough and he needs me to feel it in my body.
I feel it in my body.
I feel it everywhere. Every stroke hits deep and hard and his cock fills me completely and the angle is devastating, his weight on me and his hands on my wrists and his mouth at my ear and I am so wet I can hear it, the obscene sound of his cock driving into me, and I stop trying to be anything other than wrecked.
What would your chat say.
The thought arrives mid-stroke. Uninvited. My dad's best friend. Twenty-seven years between us. His hand was just on my throat and I asked for more. Four thousand people who think they know BrattyBaby would lose their entire minds.
"More," I say. "Harder. Don't stop."
He gives me harder.
His mouth at my ear: "Nobody else."
"Nobody else."
"You come home to me. You come here after the stream and you take off the filter and you're mine. Say it."
"I'm yours. I come home to you."
"Good girl."
Those two words hit different tonight. Not the gentle praise from the first time, not the reward for following direction. This good girl is claiming. He says it into my neck while he drives into me and I come so hard I can't see.
It crashes through me in waves, clenching around his cock, pulsing, my wrists straining against his hands and my back arching off the mattress and the sound I make fills the room.
He doesn't stop. He drives through my orgasm, his pace unbroken, relentless, and the overstimulation turns into a second wave and I cry out and he says “That's mine, that sound is mine,” and I come again, or still, I can't tell where one ends and the next begins.
I feel the exact moment his control breaks: his rhythm goes ragged, and he buries himself deep and holds there.
“Fuck, baby girl.”
I feel him pulse inside me. I feel every second of it. His forehead against my collarbone. His breathing ragged. His hands slowly, slowly releasing my wrists.
I lie there. Breathing. My wrists tingling where he held them.
That was, says my brain, which has been running on emergency power for the last ten minutes, a lot. That was a lot of things. Several of which we should probably think about.
Later. Much later.