Page 30 of For Pleasure Or Worse

Luckily, the weekend had arrived, so I wasn’t going to be alone to mediate that while Matty was at work all day. Although if they were anything like my parents, this would all blow over in a long sleep. “I thought you said your brother was totally blasé about it?”

“He’s not the one who has to tell my nonna, or my aunts and uncles. That’s the problem. Everyone expected Angelo so it makes the family look bad that it isn’t.”

“I didn’t realize so many other people would care.” Although I understood it to a degree.

Mateo rolled over on his side toward me, flinging his forearm over my lap between my stomach and the keyboard. “Working?”

“We’re way behind.” Our list of neglected cam requests was piling up. Not only had we thrown what was already scheduled on the back burner to adjust to our new house guests, our regular content had slowed down and subscribers were getting antsy. Our overall creator ranking had plummeted an entire percent in just five days.

After my sisters let it slip that I was “working at the bank” in front of Anna, I had to find a place to be three days a week during normal business hours as an alibi. Those few days away from my equipment and editing software set me back substantially. I couldn’t post content that wasn’t edited, and I couldn’t edit content that wasn’t filmed. There was always our emergency bank of scrap porn from chopped-up footage that I could salvage into something, but I saved that for true emergencies.

“We missed theme night,” I said.

“That’s all right, we haven’t missed one of those in months. What was the theme anyway?”

“Blue alien anal.”

Mateo’s head lifted off the pillow. “That won the vote again?”

“By seventy-four percent.”

“Huh,” he hummed, resting his head again. “Yeah, that’ll upset some people.”

“But it’s okay,” I assured him, moving my cursor around again and reorganizing a few cells in the spreadsheet. “Because we can just move the Scottish virgin roleplay to your solo slot onWednesday and combine the brother’s best friend request with our bondage demonstration on Saturday.”

“Lucinda is going to give you grief about pulling my Wednesday.”

I tapped the keys aggressively. “Lucinda can spend a day scrolling your greatest hits playlist, because seriously, who would you rather answer to? The monster fucker community or one lady in Bumfuck, Ohio?”

“Fine,” he complied, tugging me closer to him. “But that blue paint better wash off this time, Tally. I can’t go into work like that again.”

“Speaking of work…” I slammed my laptop closed and put it on the nightstand. “This whole thing is making me think I’d be better off with a regular, normal, report-to-the-office job again. I wouldn’t have to case our house like there’s an intruder every time I need to sit down and film, and my parents would get off my case about the bank.”

“I know you’re joking.” He rested his head on my stomach again, this time nibbling on the strings of my sweatpants. “It was really adorable though.”

“I am not.” My fingers dipped into his hair. “Think of how much easier life would be if we were a normal suburban couple.” Normal like Frankie and O, or Mateo’s parents. Never having to worry about subsidizing our time into film windows or keeping a questionable closet of costumes at the ready all the time. At least that was easy enough to talk our way out of.

Mateo’s nose crinkled. “You’re spoiled, and hate authority, and you deleted the alarm clock on your phone because you think time is an illusion.”

“I didn’t delete it,” I argued. “I banished it to the app graveyard, right next to GarageBand, Compass, and Fitness.”

“Regardless, you’re not switching up your day job because it would beeasier, Tal. You work so hard at the content, andit shows in the following. We’ve made a name here. There’s no going back now.”

Mat and Nat was my crown jewel. He was right; if all of a sudden we just fell off the face of the earth, people would definitely notice. Not to mention the wedding we were planning in all of its overwhelming extravagance was reliant on the money we pooled in monthly from our subscribers. Mateo’s salary paid for the house, the truck, the taxes, insurance. It was a perfect, legitimate front, but my sisters were right to question where all this extra cash was coming from.

“Did you ever think it would get to this point?” I asked. “When you first decided to film with me, the audience was a quarter of the size it is now. I wasn’t prepared for it to grow like this, and you never really got a choice. You just got pushed in blind.”

Mateo’s five o’clock shadow tickled my stomach and he squeezed my hips tightly. “I do wonder how many strangers on the internet have seen my junk, and sometimes I worry about being recognized, but it’s different. It’s not like I can get fired. The only woman I care about impressing is underneath me, and I would have done anything you asked me to do if it meant you were mine, Tally Duran.”

Tally Duran. God I love that fucking name.

“I’m not your wife yet, lover boy.”

Mateo’s head tilted thoughtfully and he climbed up my body, settling over me and brushing his nose against mine. Our eyes met beneath thick lashes, and the sweet smell of his skin caressed my senses. It ignited a very distinct memory of our first meeting and how he smelled like heaven even from two feet away. “Every part of you belongs to me. Right?”

My chest expanded but got stuck beneath his heavy body and our hearts thudded against each other. “Of course.”

“So it doesn’t matter whether we’re ink on paper or I carve my name into your pretty little ass.” Mateo lifted my left hand and I wiggled my fingers, the low light catching on the engagement ring there. “Mine,” he said definitively. “Mine in every timeline. Every universe. I’ve already married you in another life, and I’ll do it again in six months, so I’ll call you wife because that’s the truth.”

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