Chapter 10 #2
Still, the simple fact that she was in Australia on a now-expired student visa was enough to pique my interest and my need for things to fit into tidy little boxes. I couldn’t put Irina Rusnac in a box.
Yes, that was why I couldn’t get her out of my head. I simply needed to figure out what her story was and I’d stop fixating. Once I could safely discount her having some sort of plot against me, I could get her off my mind.
I clicked through to her Tickle profile once more, and I did something that I had so far felt too morally superior to attempt. I started trawling through her subscriber-only posts.
The first one I came across was her, naked from the waist up, reclined on her bed, arms relaxed above her head. She gazed directly at the camera—directly at the viewer … directly at me.
The flowing, musical language that fell from her lips in sultry, breathy syllables, was familiar to me.
I recalled, when learning Italian for my high school exams, that Romanian and Italian shared a lexical similarity somewhere close to eighty percent, which meant that I could parse it and understand at least some of what she was saying.
And the rest? Well, I could run it through a translator.
“So … it seems a lot of you like my accent,” she breathed. “And you’re wondering if it’s real … well, is this real enough for you?”
She giggled provocatively, breasts bouncing. I found myself leaning closer, resting an elbow on the desk, eyes fixed on her face. Not on her other parts, as much as they were screaming for my attention. Her face was so achingly beautiful.
“This is fun! I could say anything I like to you right now, and none of you will have a clue what I’m talking about! I wonder …?”
She nibbled on her bottom lip. My elbow slid off the desk. I righted myself, gripping my knees, chewing on my gum with renewed vigour.
“Have you ever seen a twisted testicle?”
I almost choked on my gum. Grabbing a tissue, I quickly spat it out. Had I heard her correctly? Or was I misconstruing words that maybe didn’t quite translate between the two similar languages?
Her grin was wicked. “Well, I have … it was a very long time ago, but let me tell you, the image of it is still etched in my brain.”
So perhaps I had heard her right. She sat up, my eyes falling to her breasts as they dropped slightly with gravity. A vague thought flitted through my brain, an odd wondering at how they would feel cupped in my palms.
I scrubbed my hand over my face as she leaned towards the screen, whispering, “It looked like an overripe, overfull, very purple grape. It was hideous!”
She flopped back on her pillows, a sigh falling from her lips. The sound of it had me straightening. It didn’t seem to match with her cheeky teasing. It seemed forlorn. Almost lost … although I was not the best person to interpret these things.
And then the moment was over, and she was pulling a large toy from her drawer and murmuring in English, “Here’s a little reward for listening to my silly Romanian ramblings.”
Still, no view below the waist. Just her upper body and her facial expressions as she worked herself over, making eye contact with those intense blue eyes of hers. “Yes, that feels so good! Oh … yes! Right there. Ungh … don’t stop, big boy, just … keep … doing … exactly … o Doamne, I’m coming!”
I clicked out of the app and spun from the desk, breathing raggedly. Abernathy, all alert now, glared accusingly at me … at my tented trousers, while Trinket, who was very attuned to my moods, pawed worriedly at my leg.
“I’m not having an anxiety attack, Trink,” I assured her, reaching down to scratch her ears. “Possibly an existential crisis, though.”
Abernathy tilted his head dramatically—I assumed the best cat-impersonation of an eye roll—and flopped back onto the bed and her panties.
I stifled a groan, pinching the bridge of my nose.
I’d always prided myself on being able to separate the male hormonal urges when it came to sex with my work on Tickle.
Mostly because porn had never done much for me.
The gratuitous, performative nature of it always felt so fake, so hollow and shallow, that I could sit and review content for hours on end and walk away completely unmoved by it all.
But her? She moved me. Was it because she wasn’t just a face and a body on a screen? Because I knew a little about her? Because I wanted to know more?
Or was it because, when she stared directly at the camera, it felt like she was staring at me … talking to me … like I was the only person in the world who mattered to her in that moment?
I headed for my ensuite bathroom and ran myself a cold shower.
Over the next week, I found myself returning to her Tickle profile more often than I wanted to admit.
I steered clear of any posts where she was obviously engaging in solo play, and if a chatty post turned that way, I clicked off as fast as I could.
I did not need that sort of distraction while trying to puzzle her out.
Unfortunately, I was no closer to uncovering any motivations she might have had to be in my bedroom unsupervised, and certainly nothing to explain why she had remained in Australia past her visa expiry.
I had, however, become borderline obsessed—along with thousands of other viewers—with her latest content strategy; making sexy posts to reply to seedy comments left on her account.
What these cretins would never know was that she was trolling them in Romanian.
My favourite had been when one user—who, in the grand tradition of bogan boomer men, had a profile picture showing a red-faced, flabby man, baring his yellowed teeth in some semblance of a grin, with a can of beer in his hand—had commented, ‘How many filters r on that face of urs doll? Im in the market 4 a Russian mail-order bride but if ur catfshing me I am out’.
Her video reply, wearing lacy knickers and a bra with cups so tiny her pert breasts spilled out the top while she filed her nails, still had me chuckling when I thought about it …
“Firstly, you uneducated swine,” she began, her Romanian delivered in the sweetest tone.
“I am Romanian, not Russian. It’s a whole other country, we don’t even speak the same language.
Not that I would expect you to be able to tell the difference, you can barely speak English.
Secondly, I do not come in the mail. The male comes in me.
If he’s lucky. Which you never will be.”
She’d blown a kiss at the camera and murmured sexily, “Futu-te-en nara ta, nenoroticule. Pula ta este suficient de mic? pentru a ?nc?pea.” The video had ended with her leaning into the camera, reaching for the end-record button, and giving me— and every other viewer—a close-up of her marvellous cleavage.
I’d barked out a shocked laugh, scrolling back enough to run her voice through a translator to confirm my suspicions. I’d been sure that she’d just told him to …
“She did!” I’d chuckled, leaning back to admire the words on my screen.
“Fuck your nostril, motherfucker. Your dick’s small enough to fit.”
I smirked at the memory, almost tempted to log in just to relive that odd sense of satisfaction … of pride … in the way she kept herself accessible, personable, while utterly destroying that pervert who’d crept into her content …
“What’s got you smiling like a fool?” Atlas asked, kicking his legs up on my desk. I snapped back to the present.
“I … I saw something amusing on a creator’s page.”
Atlas chortled. “Well, well. Is Mr ‘I’m Immune to Porn’ getting corrupted by his own app?”
I shook my head. “You do realise that not everything on Tickle is hardcore pornography, don’t you?”
Atlas rolled his eyes, tilting his chair back onto two legs. “The stuff worth watching is.”
“Speaking of hardcore porn, what happened with Ilya Ivanov when you two left the yacht together?”
Atlas’s face turned a strange, mottled purple. “Fuck that bitch.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I’m guessing it wasn’t entirely what you expected?”
“You gonna tell me what you and that Ru Snack chick got up to below deck? Fair’s fair—you want the details of my sordid one-nighter, I get the inside scoop on yours.”
“She played with my cats and we talked.” I reached for my gum, popping a piece into my mouth. “It was the most pleasant part of the evening. By a wide margin.”
“You are so fucking boring, Chewy,” Atlas scoffed. “You had a smoking hot chick all to yourself, one who likes fucking a lot, and the only pussy that got fondled was fucking Trinket?”
“It was Abernathy, actually,” I replied, somewhat smugly. “He took quite a shining to her.”
Atlas’s brows lifted before he dropped his head into his hands. “You are a lost cause, my friend. When was the last time you got fucked?”
I swallowed, refusing to answer.
But Atlas knew me too well. “It was Cadence, wasn’t it? Mate. That was six years ago! Are you still hung up on her? Because you know she’d take you back in a heartbeat now that you’re richer than fucking Jesus.”
I fixed my gaze out the office window. “I think the saying is, ‘richer than Croesus’ … and no. I am well and truly over Cadence. I just …” I rubbed my legs under the desk, finding my knees and squeezing. “Sex is not something I want … not with someone I barely even know.”
“You are so fucking weird, dude.” Atlas shook his head. “Sex with strangers is some of the hottest sex you can ever have!”
“Said like someone who has never made love to a woman he adores,” I muttered, fingers digging into my kneecaps. “You’ve finished your lunch, and I have work to do, so how about you go back to your office now.”
Atlas blew out a frustrated breath, but he got to his feet, his chair clattering back onto all fours. “Later, mate.”
I grunted in reply, and he let himself out of my office. Closing my eyes, I leaned back in my chair. I was getting no work done, not after the tangent that conversation had taken.
I grabbed my phone and wallet, heading for the door.
“Lucian,” I snapped as I left, finding him leaning against Liv’s desk, arms folded over his chest, staring at the wall. “I’m heading out.”
“Where?” he asked, straightening. His eyes flicked to Liv, who was mumbling into her Bluetooth headset, and then back to me. “Need me to tag along?”
I shook my head. “I need to swim.”