Chapter 31
Kas
One hundred thousand followers.
That’s the number of followers I’ve bypassed, and the same number of users currently waiting for me to select the little Live button on my screen. Mari did a poll asking people if they wanted a livestreamed Q it’s a question about whether or not I’m on a meal plan.
“Yes,” I reply and nod to the camera.
Mari snorts quietly from her room.
Mari: Read it out loud. We have no idea what question you have responded to.
My eyes latch onto another comment before it disappears into the online abyss. “ Pozdrowienia z polszy. Dzień dobry , Klaudia358,” I read out loud.
Mari: No idea what you said, but I’m assuming you read and answered the comment. Amazing.
I smile and continue to scour through the different questions.
“Do you think you’ll win?” I repeat the question out loud. “Have you not seen me fight before?” I reply.
Another message drops down.
Mari: Less hostility, please!
I try not to react to her message and instead, pick another comment which stands out because of an eggplant emoji attached to the end of it. Finally, someone’s asking me something about food.
“How big is it?” I say aloud.
Mari’s next message is a bunch of laughing emojis and another look toward her reveals that she’s silencing her laugh with a pillow.
I shake my head and remember Mari’s advice: repeat the question, less hostility, voice my thoughts.
“Sorry, what do you mean? How big is what?” I ask the comment section.
Laughing emojis identical to the ones Mari sent stream up the screen in fast succession. Not one of them explains the question.
I fucking hate social media.
Mari: They’re talking about your dick!
I should be embarrassed, but Mari typing out the word dick has me very distracted. So distracted, that I accidentally click something on the screen that places cat ears and whiskers on me.
“Fuck,” I mutter, trying to get the filter off. “I don’t know how the fuck this works.” I’m frustrated now. The only thing I manage to do when attempting to remove the cat filter is change it to another; I’ve ended up with a monocle and a mustache on my face. My patience is running so fucking thin. “How do I get this off? Do I click this?”
I select the cross at the corner of the screen and double down by selecting “End.” My face is no longer on the screen. Nothing is on the screen, and I can’t see anyone’s comments.
Mari jumps up from her bed and walks to the door. “Oh my god, you ended it.”
“I hated that,” I say.
“I know, that’s why it was funny. You didn’t even last five minutes.”
“Should I try again?”
“Please,” she pouts.
This time, the livestream lasts for the intended time of thirty minutes.
Much to my surprise, the questions and love from fans—paired with Mari’s texts—had me smiling the entire time. At one point, the word “fun” crossed my mind. For thirty minutes, I found social media fun .
I think Mari has infected me with a social media bug and I can’t seem to expel it from my system.
“I’m gonna send you one more fan edit before I turn off my light, okay?” Mari says.
She pokes her head up from her comforter and smiles at me from her room as she sends a short thirty-second video of one of the many fan edits that have come about as a result of my rapidly growing popularity.
We’ve figured out that if there’s footage of us uploaded online, it’ll be edited. That includes footage from the livestream I did a few hours ago.
“Do these people have jobs?”
Mari laughs and bathes us in darkness when she switches off her lamp. “They love you, alright? And you’re hot, so even people who aren’t into MMA are eating it up.”
I replay the video again. Some parts are me brushing my hair back in slow motion, nibbling my lip, and just general thoughtless movements that someone has clipped, slowed down, and paired with bass-heavy music.
“How have they made me look like I have crazy sex appeal? I didn’t know that scratching a mosquito bite on my tricep could be made to look sexy.”
Mari giggles. “You don’t think you have sex appeal?”
“I mean . .. I don’t know. You have sex appeal.”
“You have sex appeal too.” I can hear her smile as she speaks.
My cheeks heat at her compliment. “Are you flirting with me?”
“Am I?”
“I don’t know, you tell me.”
Mari doesn’t reply immediately, and I anxiously await her answer as if it’ll give me permission to say absolutely everything on my mind without fear of her reaction.
“Is this a safe space?” she asks.
There’s some distant thumping out in the hall and the familiar noises of excited Vegas tourists.
“You don’t have to ask if this is a safe space before you overshare. Being with me will always be safe.”
Mari’s silent for a moment. “I honestly haven’t been able to stop thinking about the kiss. I’ll be living my life and all of a sudden, the memory of it flashes before my eyes.”
She speaks so fast it takes me a moment to absorb what she’s said. I lock my phone and toss it aside so I can press the hand that was holding it against my chest. My heart is beating so hard that it thrums in my throat.
“Thanks for finally admitting it,” I breathe.
“Hey!”
My arousal swamps me, and I grow harder by the goddamn second. “I haven’t stopped thinking about it either,” I confess. “You tasted so fucking good. Your lips were sticky with your lip stuff and tasted sweet.”
“Like what?”
“Just sweet, a little alcoholic.” Rum and Coke, exactly like the drink she ordered.
“What type of sweet?”
I hesitate to answer. “Are you trying to make me sound pathetic?” I finally say.
“You feel pathetic when you admit how good I taste?”
A laugh escapes me in a hoarse exhale. “I feel pathetic because you make me soft.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” she whispers.
I’m not just soft for Mari, I’m pliable. She could ball me up like putty and I’d mold into the perfect shape for her.
“The kiss fucked me up. I liked the taste of you, the feel of you. I liked that you almost got off on my thigh and that you moved against me like it was the most natural thing in the world. I liked all of it, and I’d do it again.” I swallow, taking my pride down with it. “Even talking about it now turns me on.”
Mari laughs gently, like she’s uncomfortably amused. “It turns me on too,” she says. “This feeling is impossible to ignore.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Mari.”
She doesn’t respond for a good thirty seconds, so I stare into the dark and lace my fingers behind my head.
“What happens now?” she asks. There’s some hesitance in her tone, which is ironic given how she’s telling me about my lips turning her on.
I drag my hand over my face. “I don’t know, I honestly don’t know.”
The AC whirs and does nothing to fill the silence that hangs thick between our rooms.
“Come to the door,” she says. “I want to try something.”
Any doubt I had disappears and in its place is unrelenting arousal as I step tentatively to the door. My hands feel for the doorframe, and I can only just tell that Mari is in front of me because of her breath warming my chest. There’s such little light in both of our rooms that the darkness seems to consume everything within; it gives me no other option but to relish in the only person I deem present.
“What are you playing at, Mari?” I whisper into the darkness.
“I want to touch you.”
I suck in a sharp breath when her lips graze my chest.
Holy shit.
“Touch me then.” My voice is so guttural, I’m sure my words have become a low hum.
The warmth of her mouth radiates against my chin and she’s so annoyingly close to my lips that I have no choice but to connect them with mine. Mari jumps with a moan of surprise, unable to anticipate my mouth in the dark. The tenderness of our kiss soon shifts to light nips on each other’s bottom lip, and each time she bites a little bit harder, I moan into her mouth.
“Harder,” I whisper.
I think I want Mari to destroy me.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispers.
“What if I want you to?”
Mari freezes, and the tips of my fingers that have caressed their way to the front of her neck feel the exact moment she swallows.
She skims her fingers up my naked torso, her nails dipping into the ridges where my skin molds itself around my abdominal muscles. She’s going to kill me if she keeps teasing.
“More,” I spur.
Mari ignores my command. She continues brushing over my pecs and up toward my shoulders at a pace so slow, it makes me shudder beneath her. She’s showering me in nothing but her touch and I am drowning in it. I’m so swept up in everything Mari that her reaching for the band of my boxers pulls me back to earth so abruptly, I have to steady myself with a firm grasp on the topmost part of the doorframe.
Her phone lights up from inside of her bedroom and for a few seconds, I see more than just the outline of her body. I see Mari looking up at me with a smile of satisfaction and eyes of pure want.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I beg, clutching the doorframe when she smiles and glides her palm over the front of me.
“Like what?”
“Like you want me.”
Her phone times out again, blanketing us in another wave of darkness. I moan violently when she reaches beneath my boxers and grips me.
“What do you want?” she asks.
“You’re gripping my dick and you want to know what I want?”
I harden even more, something I didn’t know was possible. Mari must think the same because she gasps.
“Yes, what do you want, Kas? Me? My body?” Her voice is shaky, unrestrained.
“You.” One syllable is all I can utter.
She traces the pad of her thumb over the head of my cock, and it twitches eagerly in her palm. “My mouth?”
Pleasure rolls through me at the sound of her voice and I thrust into her hand. “Anything. Everything.”
The angle of her grip changes and her breath skims my inner thigh when she peels my boxers down.
There’s no way this is happening. I grip the doorframe until the wood bites painfully into my palms. If this isn’t real, now is the time for me to wake the fuck up.
“Mari ...” I warn when she uses her tongue to caress the length of me, suckling gently on the head of my cock.
“Just tap the back of my head when you’re about to come.”
Commanding and efficient in her communication, even in intimacy. A choked moan escapes me when Mari takes me into her mouth. I restrain from thrusting so I don’t catch her off guard, or worse, hurt her.
She continues down until the head of my cock touches the back of her throat, gagging lightly before withdrawing. Mari repeats the motion until she gets used to my size, drawing me into her mouth up to the depth she’s willing to take me.
“You’re doing so well,” I whisper, brushing my hand over her curls and lacing my fingers within to massage her scalp.
She relaxes a little more at my caress, and her comfort encourages the jutting of my hips. Mari begins to suck and pulls me into the blanketing, wet warmth of her throat. With my left hand tasked with massaging her scalp, the other slides along the doorframe.
“Oh, fuck,” I breathe when Mari uses a hand to grip the base of me and moves it up and down in tandem with her mouth. “Fuck, that feels so good,” I praise.
She becomes more ardent, meeting my thrusts with her mouth. I don’t silence my moans because vocalizing my pleasure seems to embolden her. It’s sloppy, animalistic, and turns me into a live wire.
She takes things up a notch by gently grasping my balls. My eyes roll back into my head, and my increasing pleasure crests embarrassingly fast.
I tap my hand against Mari’s curls. “Where?” My teeth chatter and one muscle at the top of my right thigh spasms. “Where do you want me to—” I tap the back of her head again. Urgency filters into my being, and I reach a point of no return. “Fucking where, Mari?” I grit.
She takes me as deep as she can, and I release into her throat as she contracts around me. Mari swallows everything I give her.
“Mari,” I moan on a ragged breath until the waves of my pleasure come to a gradual halt.
With a hum of approval, Mari slides me out of her mouth and leaves me a panting mess at the door. The only thing keeping me from giving into my buckling knees is my weak grip on the doorframe.
“What the fuck was that?” I hiss.
Mari rubs against my front when she stands, and it feels like I’ve stepped out of a confessional booth and come face-to-face with a priest after telling them how much I’ve sinned. A notification briefly lights up her phone and I see the cheesy grin on her face before she starts making her way to the device.
“I really should start silencing my—”
I reach out, grasp her elbow, and pull her into me to plant my lips on hers. I manipulate her tongue with mine and taste myself on her until the saltiness subsides and all that’s left is Mari. I don’t know if it would be too forward to ask her to sit on my face so I can make her feel the same way.
“Kas,” she says between kisses. I loop one arm around her waist and a hand behind her neck. She moans once and pulls away with a giggle. “I think it’s best if we don’t do anything like this again.”
“Excuse me?” I grit against her lips and nip at them in warning.
“This will get us out of each other’s systems . . . right?” She sounds unsure.
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
I try to search her face in the darkness, hoping that if I stare at her long enough, she will hit me with a “gotcha!” There’s nothing. She genuinely thinks that giving me the best head of my life will allow me to function like a normal human being.
She shuffles away and I remain at the door.
“It doesn’t feel like you’re out of my system,” I blurt.
She takes a moment to reply. “Honestly? Me neither. Good night, Kas.”
I bite my tongue.
Fucking good night .
I’ve never felt so impotent because right now, the only power I have in this dynamic is choosing whether or not I say it back.