Page 43 of For Pleasure Or Worse

Working alone was taking its toll on me, but I was too proud to admit it. I had dug myself too deep into a hole to come back. Every time Natalia asked me if I hired a new assistant yet, I gave her the same spiel about the employment market being thin, and waiting for the right candidate to come around. Our Valentine’s content had taken a back burner, the live stream cut short by half an hour when I was late coming home, and though I knew she was unhappy with it, she didn’t press me too hard.

That was weeks ago.

I knew from my nightly recaps that Natalia was spending every waking minute she wasn’t working on planning thewedding. The catering was set, the room block was full, our photographer had been prepped, the suits were ready to be picked up by all the groomsmen at their earliest convenience, and our flights to Vegas were booked. I was grateful Tally had a handle on all of those things because I was silently losing my mind juggling the work of two at TechOps, and pretending having my parents as roommates wasn’t dramatically weighing on my mental resilience.

Plus, the anxiety was getting worse. That episode I'd had in the kitchen only set off a chain reaction and made me more panicked that things like that were going to become normal for me. I was worried about loud noises and tight spaces, too many people, tension. Things I was once so good at controlling. Being the point person was my literal job in the military, the reason I was "The Captain'' to all my brothers, and now I couldn’t even handle small pressures. Years of war and trauma were catching up to me quickly and the effects were leaking through and affecting my civilian life.

I needed to relearn myself again in some capacity. My brain was wired for Delta; those thoughts don't just dissipate. The need for control was valiant when I was in the service, but allowing myself off the hook now, even three years later, wasn't coming easy enough.

Bothering Natalia with it wasn’t an option either. I knew how stressed she was in her own life, with her own family. It would be selfish of me. At the end of the day, I was a grown man. I could deal with whatever mental shit I had going on myself. I could learn to stand up to my parents, and I could handle my business myself just like Tally was handling hers.

My phone lit up on cue with a text from Natalia, asking how the install was going and if she could expect me home soon. It was a Friday night, a live stream night. The loading bar on the desktop was only blinking halfway, which meant at the least Ihad another half hour sitting there waiting for it. There was no way I was making it home in time for the scheduled stream in ten minutes.

Instead of texting back, I hit the call button and pressed the phone to my ear.

“Let me guess,” she jeered. “You’re stuck at work again?”

A sigh rippled out of me. “I’m sorry. This law firm has several layers of security for file protection and I had to code and test every single one of them.”

"Our female audience has dropped off the face of the earth on Friday nights with you going into hiding. I did an analysis last week and the subscriber percentage was skewed by eighty-three percent in favor of both of us on camera together."

“You had a loyal following before me,” I reminded her.

“I work so much better with my partner, though.”

My teeth ground together and I leaned back in the computer chair, rubbing a guilty wrinkle from the space between my brows. “I promise I’ll be there next week for it. I’ll clear my schedule to make sure.”

“You could always hire someone to take a load off your shoulders,” she goaded.

I changed the subject quickly, pouring my attention into impatiently tapping the keyboard as if it might make the software load faster. “What are you wearing tonight?”

Sheets ruffled around in the background of the call. Tally was likely lying on our bed in a matching lingerie set waiting for the chat server to fill and the top of the hour to roll around. Without me physically there, she would be limited to using her fingers, or taking out a toy as a treat. “That’s privileged information,” she said.

“You act like I can’t hop on the stream as a viewer and see it for myself.”

She pulled in a breath but went otherwise quiet on the line. I struck a nerve. A glorious, exhibitionist nerve. My stomach tensed and a spark of intrigue jolted my cock against my zipper. There was an external CCTV security system on the outside of the building, but as far as I could tell from looking around the office space, there were no cameras on the inside. I slid my personal laptop out of my bag and opened it on the desk in front of me.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I said. “Knowing I was watching on the other end while you touched yourself.”

The hum of her voice crackled to life. “I thought you were working.”

“I have some time to kill.” I opened my browser and quickly found our page. I wasn’t home to play my part but that didn’t mean I couldn’t still do it from across town. My mind was already made up, and the pressure below my waist wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. “Don’t hang up the phone,” I told her.

“I have to go on in a minute,” she trilled, a gust of disappointment weaving through her words. “I can’t stay and talk.”

“I don’t want you to talk. I want you to listen,” I explained. “I want to hear all the breathy little noises you make in my ear while I tell you exactly the kind of thoughts I have about you while I’m working late, and I’m all alone.”

“Like what?” she asked quietly.

My palm slid down to readjust the growing bulge in my pants, but the contact only made the ache more prevalent. I kicked away from the desk, stretching my legs in the chair. “Put your earbuds in.”

Our mattress squeaked underneath her, and a bedside drawer opened and shut as she followed my direction. My pulse was hammering as I stared at the blank video screen, wondering what she looked like on the other end, wishing I could peelwhatever barely-there piece of lace she was wearing off by my teeth and make her choke on it while I slammed into her.

Fuck, I couldn’t be thinking things like that. I was at work, I needed to remain professional, and jerking off behind the reception desk to live porn on a job was the least professional thing I could think of. Besides, I would rather treat it like foreplay, and take the pent up frustration from this back home to Tally afterward.

Her voice returned to the line, clearer and softer. “Can you hear me?”

“Start the stream, Natalia.”

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