“Just wanted to make sure her makeup didn’t have that I-just-licked-dick look.” Parker winks at me as he tosses a napkin onto the table. The white fabric is slightly stained with red lipstick.
Stevie doesn’t even cringe at the comment. She tucks a loose strand of brown hair behind her ear before giving me a grin, her lips now a dusty red color.
“Well, I hope you all had a lovely night. I know I did.” She gives a half-assed curtsey before spinning on her heels to walk away.
I stand up and grab her wrist, tugging her back to me. Her eyes flash with uncertainty, but when I bring my free hand to her chin, she leans into it, gaze softening. I search her honeyed eyes for answers.
“What’s your name?”
The corners of her lips curve up in a smirk and her body relaxes as she leans out of my touch, tilting back on her heels.
“Stevie.”
Brat. I know that.
“Stevie what?”
I wait for her to continue, but she just chuckles playfully. Tilting her head up, she places a small kiss on the cheek of my mask, hand grazing dangerously close to the bottom of my jaw. Her painted nails trail briefly down the length of my neck. I’m still lost in her whiskey eyes as she quickly twists on her heels and strides away.
“Well, that’s a new one.” Parker links his arms through mine and Jackson’s. “Come on, Syd texted that the car is waiting for us out front.”
I’m in a haze as we head out of the building, barely paying attention to what is going on around us. There are a couple of flashes of light as some of the remaining paparazzi get off last minute shots. It isn’t until I see our black Escalade, our driver Francis standing with the door open, that I start to come to. Jackson and Parker slide in first, and I’m about to follow behind when a small body jolts me to the side.
“Blade, hey, sorry!” I look down to see all five foot nothing of none other than Allison Lee, also known as LoveLee. I smile, even though she can’t see it, and lift my hand to ruffle her mass of black hair.
“Lee, what’s up?”
“I know you are probably going to say no, but…” I let out a groan, and she starts to wave her hands frantically in front of me. “But I wanted to see if I could convince you to come to the after-party.”
“How do you know I’m not already headed there?”
She purses her lips dramatically and frowns, the slit in her brow crinkling. “Because you never go.”
“Well, I can’t be breaking my streak then, can I?” She somehow purses her lips even further, and I sigh. “Look, why don’t we set up a time sometime next week, and we can all stream Frontline Doom: Zombies? I haven’t played Zombie mode in ages.”
“Lee! The car’s leaving, with or without ya!” some girl yells from far off.
“Shit, Deer will totally leave me behind. Okay, Zombies, deal.” She reaches around my waist to give me a quick hug before bouncing off.
I slip into the car with a laugh and close it behind me.
Allison Lee began streaming a few years after me and is the only person I have really brought under my wing. Her popularity blew up three years back, and with that came a lot of scrutiny. She has a solid circle of streamers and creators she is close with now, but it was rough back then. Trolls attacked her for being an upbeat, attractive girl playing video games. She spilled onto the scene with online multiplayer games, a beast at what she knew and a good sport at what she sucked at. When she played well, people accused her of cheating or being carried, and when she lost, they said it was obvious she was nothing more than a pair of tits—which was stupid given that she used to wear the same black anime sweatshirt in every stream. It was a lot for her to handle, a huge mental health toll, and I made a point of streaming with her frequently so that I could tell the shit-stirrers to fuck right off.
The trolls still exist, they always will, but I hooked her up with a solid moderator whom I trust for her streams and social media. Plus, she has grown a lot since then, come into her own, and developed her own style and branched out to different games—she has an entire cozy series with her best friend and wears whatever she wants. She’s like a little sister to me, and I’ll probably always be protective of her.
“You better hope none of the cameras caught wind of tonight.”
I stare at Jackson out of the corner of my eye.
“They were probably too focused on Decker throwing a hissy fit,” Parker chimes in. “He cracked off at this poor waitress when he came back out about the wrong olives being used in his martini.”
I snort and close my eyes, leaning my head back in the seat. “Whatever, it’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m going to be front-page news.”
That’s what I keep telling myself the entire ride home. But there is something in the back of my mind that has me worried.
SEVEN
* * *
STEVIE
What in the ever-loving whorehouse did I just do tonight?
I sink back against the closed door of my apartment, knees tucked against my chest, groaning. I palm my eyes until white spots appear in the blackness and it starts to hurt just a little.
I’m not ashamed that I got down and dirty with the dick of some guy I barely know—god knows I did that more than a few times in college—but the fact that I did it in such a public setting? Definitely not a norm for me. Plus, there were cameras everywhere. As discreet as I feel like I was…Ugh, whatever. It’s stupid to be worrying over it when I should be rejoicing over the Michelin-starred orgasm he gave me instead. My body feels more relaxed than it has in months. They say regular orgasms improve your health; what they don’t say is that getting those orgasms from someone other than yourself is exponentially better.
Chase and I had a lot of sex over the years. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other in the beginning, but his fuck-to-orgasm ratio always left much to be desired. Considering how hung he is, one would think he would know how to wield it better. But no. A waste of a good dick, if you ask me. A dick I no longer plan to see again. Blade’s on the other hand…
I smile to myself. The visibility was shit under the table, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, but I could tell with just my hands that he was more than enough. Not too thick that I couldn’t wrap my hands comfortably around it, and I’d been able to suck the tip as I swallowed him without bumping my head under the table. Would it be weird to call his dick perfectly proportioned? Probably. But it was.
I kick my legs out to unstrap my heels, shoving them to the side of my door before rolling my ankles a few times and standing up. Stretching, I pad across the hardwood floors and into my kitchen. While my apartment is technically old, my yiayia spent some money to modernize it a few years before she passed.
The walls are all white, but the crown molding is a deep forest green, which I decorated the rest of the apartment to match. Anyone who comes in here would think green is my favorite color with the way I’ve gone about accenting it. The living room doubles as a dining room, and you can see it from the kitchen, which has an open countertop. All the kitchen appliances were updated with the newest versions at the time, which is a godsend given how often I cook.
The apartment has two bedrooms, but I’ve converted the second one into my art space—it’s organized chaos in there. There are a few plants scattered around, mostly different types of succulents because I am awful at remembering whether I have watered them or not. Deanna bought me a spider plant a year ago, and I killed it in two weeks. She was appalled to say the least.