Page 4

Chapter 4

Elijah Grant

The bar was packed. It was a small spot in Hell’s Kitchen with killer drink specials and some of the nicest bartenders in the entire city. Tonight was Latin night, which meant my favorite kind of music was guaranteed to be playing on repeat. I leaned against the bar and sipped on my Moscow mule, glancing toward the bathroom and wondering why my date was taking so long.

I’d had this night planned since the beginning of the week. I’d been looking forward to it, too. I already hooked up with this guy a couple of times, and we had some solid chemistry, so the next natural step in the gay dating ritual was to go grab drinks (after we had already jerked each other off, of course). He was a stand-up comedian and actually funny, which was a plus. I liked guys who could make me laugh.

Something new I figured out today was that I also liked men who happened to work as detectives…

Benji.

He’d made a mark on me in a very short amount of time. Maybe it was a savior complex that was beginning to brew inside me, but I couldn’t help it. The man was not only handsome in a broody, intriguing kind of way, but he was also intelligent and kind. Stepping into his office instantly made me feel comforted. It was weird to explain but undeniable.

Kevin, my date, appeared from the bathroom, wiping his hands on the side of his jeans.

Interesting.

“Sorry about that,” he said, sitting on the stool next to me.

“No worries. I was going to order you something but didn’t know what to get.”

“I usually go with vodka pineapple.” He leaned over the bar and grabbed the attention of the closest bartender so he could order, and then he leaned back to me. “You know what they say about drinking pineapples.”

“No, I don’t,” I said, playing dumb.

“That it makes semen taste sweet.”

“Oh, hah, right.” I held down my internal cringe at his use of the word semen . Was this a date or a bio lecture? “So how was your day?” I asked. It was weird. I’d been to this guy’s apartment three times now, and yet I’d never really seen him wearing clothes. He looked good, but for some reason, he also looked a little frumpy. His long-sleeved shirt was wrinkled, and there was what appeared to be a small coffee stain on his light-washed jeans.

Also, they were skinny jeans, which… not great.

“It was alright. Had an argument at work, but things got resolved. I think. I don’t know. My manager hates my guts.”

“What do you do?”

“I work at a bookstore. I’m trying to be an author, so I thought this would be a good way to kind of work in that same world.”

“Is it?”

Kevin scoffed. “Fuck no. It’s just made me more jaded. I actually think I hate books now.” He shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. A slight whiff of musky body odor drifted in my direction. While I was sometimes into a nice musk, I wasn’t exactly expecting it from a man I was supposed to be on a first date with. “How about you? What do you do?”

Annnd there it was. The question I always dreaded. A question that had derailed quite a few first dates already.

Not everyone was against my chosen profession, although I had a sneaking suspicion that almost everyone was at least a little judgy about it. But there were a good number of men who were fine with how I made my money. Some were even more into me after they found out I was a cam model.

Others… not so much. I’d had guys just stand up and walk out, I’d had guys laugh at me, I’d had guys try and preach to me.

Which kind of guy was Kevin? I figured I was about to find out.

“I’m a freelancer,” I said. It helped soften the blow. Kevin cocked his head and must have assumed there was something else by my suggestive smirk.

“You own a photography business? An artist?”

“A cam boy,” I said. “I stream sexual content for money. And I’ve got a subscription site, too. Diversify and all that.”

Kevin blinked a couple of times. He smiled, taking a quick chug. Judging by how clear his drink was and the small head shake he did, it leaned more toward vodka than pineapple. “That’s, huh, that’s interesting.”

I couldn’t get a read on him. Did he seem uncomfortable? He shifted on the barstool so his leg moved farther away from mine.

Subtle.

Disappointing.

This wasn’t going well.

“Is that okay?” I asked.

Kevin gave a curt nod but kept his gaze focused directly ahead at the mirrored wall of liquor bottles. “I wasn’t expecting it. You seem so, I don’t know, put together. Respectable.”

That might as well have been a slap across the face. I arched a brow, setting my drink down before I was overcome with an urge to toss it on him. “I’m sorry, but what I do is respectable. I’m comfortable enough with my body to share it with others, and I do it in a way that people enjoy enough to pay me for. It’s a service. One I happily provide.”

“You’re an online hooker.”

“Seriously?” I rolled my eyes. “I’m a businessman, I’m a good fucking guy. I’m not an online hooker.”

“You sell your body online for all these rando neckbeards to jerk off to. You get paid, but for how long is that really going to last? There’s probably dozens of photos of your dick out online. How can I ever bring you around my family without thinking that they can do the same? What you do is not respectable. It’s fucked-up.”

Heat flared in my cheeks, flushing through my chest. The crammed bar began to feel even more uncomfortably packed. A lovey-dovey couple danced reggaeton right behind my stool, bumping their hips into me.

For a flash of a second, I pictured myself pushing Kevin off his stool and making him break his fall on that flat ass of his. He made an unreasonably hot swell of anger rise inside me.

I could be confrontational. My temper sometimes boiled over and got me into trouble. I wasn’t a stranger to a fistfight.

But this guy? He wasn’t worth it.

“Thank you,” I said, taking out my wallet and pulling out a twenty. I lifted my drink, finished it off in two long gulps, and set the copper mug on top of the money. “For showing me your ass and not wasting my time.”

“Sorry, I’m just being honest.”

“No, you’re being a fucking dickhead. And guess what? At the rate things are going, I can retire by the time I’m thirty-three. Which, if you even took a second longer to actually get to know me, you’d know I wouldn’t even want to do. I have goals that go beyond making a shit-ton of money online. So go fuck yourself. Because I’m not doing it for you.”

Kevin’s jaw dropped. Good.

I snaked my way through the dense crowd. Fuck this.

I decided to go home and jerk off for some cash.

At least then I could guarantee myself a happy ending. Because Kevin sure as fuck wasn’t giving it to me.

* * *

I got back to my place feeling like shit. That conversation with Kevin had left a sour taste in my mouth. Confidence was never really an issue for me. I had plenty of it, and when I didn’t, then I’d fake it. Usually, that worked.

But something about this guy’s reaction knocked the wind out of me.

Maybe it was because I’d actually been into him, and I certainly wasn’t expecting the stabbing words or intense judgment. A lot of guys tended to hide their distaste for my career before they ghosted me altogether.

I wasn’t sure which one I preferred.

“Hello?” I called as I opened the front door to my apartment.

I lived in a nice building close to the Financial District. It was rent stabilized, clean, safe, and—most importantly—was a block away from one of my favorite bodegas.

“Anyone home?”

No answer.

Francesca—or Fran the Gran as she liked to be called—didn’t appear to be around, her bedroom door left wide open, the lights off. She was my new roommate and a pretty interesting character. My last roommate had to break his lease and move suddenly after a death in the family. I considered breaking my own lease and just finding a place now that my income had hit a comfortable range, but the landlord begged me to stay for the last few months. He said they’d find someone to replace my old roommate, and Fran appeared a couple of days later.

She was generally pretty quiet and stuck to herself. She enjoyed watching Jeopardy! and often invited me to sit on the couch and watch with her. I told her that I worked from home but didn’t go into too much detail. My bedroom was surprisingly soundproof for a New York apartment, helped by the sound-absorbing panels I’d ordered and attached to the walls. I often played music during my streams to cover any sounds that might make it to the living room.

I kicked off my shoes by the door and grabbed a cold beer from the fridge. Fuck it. It was Friday, and I wasn’t about to let my entire night get ruined by a douchebag.

No matter how much his words secretly bothered me.

My bedroom was already set up to be camera ready. My bed was made, color-changing lights giving the black headboard a purple glow. There was a thriving fig tree potted next to the window that looked out onto the traffic-packed street. I closed the sheer white drapes and turned on my ring light. I had a special camera attached to my laptop that helped me stand out from the other streamers using their potato-quality webcams.

I took off my shorts, left my shirt and cap on, and got into bed, sitting back on the plush white pillow. I grabbed my laptop and opened up the website, taking a moment to check through my DMs.

Most of them were really hot. I had a lot of attractive followers; that wasn’t up for debate. Many messaged me with pictures of the messes I made them make or how hard or wet I got them. It was hot. I couldn’t reply to all of them but tried to get most, working myself up in the process.

My dark blue briefs strained to hold down my bulge as I exited out of my messages and activated the live stream.

Followers were notified, and barely seconds later, my viewer number began to inch up. It started at five, grew to twenty, up to fifty, ballooning to two hundred.

“Hey, everyone, welcome in, welcome in.”

I rubbed myself through my briefs, spread my legs wider. Comments started to fill the small box in the corner of the screen. There were some usernames I recognized, others I didn’t.

None of them belonged to Nomad, so that was a plus.

“Hope everyone’s having a good night so far. I had a shit-ass date just now, so I figured I’d hop on since you all know how to make me feel good.”

GAPEACH89: Yes, we can make you feel good.

TRUCKERDUDE3: Looks like you’re already starting to feel good.

ANONYMOUS982: Take thos off!

“No requests unless you tip,” I reminded the watchers. Tips began to ding onto the screen. I’d become conditioned to get hard at the sound. Like Pavlov’s dog, except instead of hearing a bell and drooling, I heard a chime and started leaking.

“Thank you,” I said as I changed the goal meter. “If I get a thousand tokens, then these come off.”

I lowered my briefs just enough to show my dark tuft of pubic hair. More tips filled the screen. I smiled, rubbing my length, reading the comments, getting off on these random strangers getting off.

NIGHTOWL: You look so good. You’ve got me so fucking hard.

“Thanks, Night. I’m getting hard for you, too.”

I made my cock throb against the briefs. I knew NightOwl enjoyed seeing my bulge pulse. I’d chatted with him quite a bit. If there was one person who I considered myself close to in this sometimes sketchy online world, it was Night. He was a great tipper, sure, but he also was great at conversation. He’d paid for a few private shows that would end with us talking about some recent world event or a favorite book or a terrible movie. Random shit.

It was nice. Felt like he was a friend.

So much so that I had opened up to him about my problems with the Nomad account. He’d been the one who referred me to Stonewall Investigations, saying that he’d gone to one of their branches for help and really liked working with them.

After meeting Benji, I felt the same way.

I had to remember to thank him when I got the chance.

“We’re almost to the goal,” I said, slowly pulling my briefs down, holding the head of my cock but showing inches of shaft. The chat started to get more feral.

TRUCKERDUDE3: Oh fuck yeah.

NIGHTOWL: Damn, so sexy.

ANONYMOUS428: Yummy.

NOMAD21: You made a mistake.

The hairs on the back of my neck rose as a sudden chill slithered down my spine. I immediately blocked and reported this new account, deleting the message.

I made a mistake?

What did that mean… made a mistake how? By logging on?

Or were they referencing something else? My thoughts swirled, my dick deflated. It was vague enough to be incredibly ominous. Were they referencing something I did today? Meeting and walking out on Kevin? Going to Stonewall?

No… it had to be them just trying to act tough. There was no way they were that aware of my actions.

The mood had been shot. Even though there were over a thousand people in my stream and plenty of tips still rolling in, I felt like I just had to log off.

“Alright, guys, I’m going to?—”

A notification appeared across my screen.

NIGHTOWL Is Requesting a Private Show.

Huh.

Private shows were almost always worth it. It cost a pretty hefty amount to reserve my time and attention for just one person. But it wasn’t even the money that I focused on.

It was the fact that it’d be with Night. I could give him a show worth the money he spent and then chill and talk to him. Maybe even get some advice or just turn my brain off for a little bit.

I clicked Accept and leaned back.

“Hey, Night.”