Page 13 of The Devil Wears Nada

Which, I guess, is the whole attraction.

I don't click away.

She calls herself Diablo. It's a great name, and it suits her.

Everything below that mouth is fair game, and by God, she knows what she's doing. The red lips. The long line of her throat when she tips her head back. She’s got skin the lighting makes the most of, pale and smooth, and she’s close enough that I could count the freckles scattered across her collarbone.

But it isn't the skin that keeps me. It's the way she runs the room, like a woman dealing cards. She knows exactly when to give and exactly when to make them wait, making a couple dozen strangers hold their breath and then pay for the exhale. I have sat across the table from men who negotiate for a living and watched them lose the thread of a deal. She never once loses the thread of this. She is, without question, the smartest person in a room full of men who are certain they're the ones in charge. Dumbasses.

And she needs the money. I'd know that anywhere. Reading that shit is what I do all day. It's in the details, the cheap slip she wears, the single lamp instead of the proper lighting setup other camgirls have, the way she counts a tip with her eyes before she thanks you for it. Whatever this is, she isn't doing it for the thrill of it. She's doing it because something is looking over her shoulder with its hand out, the way something is always looking over mine. It's the first thing about her that feels familiar.

She peels the slip down slow, inch by inch, and I stop pretending I'm not hard the second her breasts come free, high and pale, nipples drawn up tight in the cold air of whatever apartment she's broadcasting from. She drags her own hand up her ribs like she's got all the time in the world, and mine is already moving before I've decided anything, pressing down hard over the front of my slacks, gripping like that will keep me quiet.

It doesn't. Nothing about her keeps me quiet. I’ve got my aching cock in hand and don’t dare type a word, because if I started, I wouldn't stop, and the first thing I'd say would be exactly what I'd do to her if she were kneeling in front of me instead of a camera.

She turns, unhurried, and gives the room the long line of her bare back, the faint ridge of her spine, and I want, so fucking badly, to run my thumb up every one of those small sensitive bumps and feel her go still under my hand.

Watching is as close as I get. And the strangest part that makes me set my drink down and lean in, is that for the first time ever, I'm wanting someone who has no idea who I am or what I’m worth. She doesn't know my name. She isn't angling for the thing behind me. To her, I'm nobody special. No name, no net worth, no reason to be careful with me. Nobody's been normal with me in years, and God, I've missed it.

So I reach for my wallet. I've decided, apparently, to pay this woman real money, and I'm a man who never leaves things unfinished.

And then she laughs.

Not the performing laugh. A real one, quick, surprised, the kind that gets away from a person before they can catch it and put it back.

I freeze.

I know that laugh.

I’ve got a credit card in my hand and my heart doing something strange, because I have heard this laugh before. Not on a camgirl site. Not from a stranger. But somewhere close. Somewhere I stand every single day.

It takes me one more second to place it.

When I do, I put my credit card down like it's burning my flesh.

It's Agnes.

Fucking Agnes.

The woman at the reception desk at the goddamn company I co-own, the woman I've spent fourteen months not looking at, the one who says good morning, Mr. Thorne to the back of my head every morning while I make damn sure I'm through my door before she finishes. I've heard that laugh at the office a couple times, both times by accident, both times meant for someone else. Both times, I turned it over in my head in a way that gave me a headache. I've said maybe nine words to her in fourteen months. And I could pick her laugh out of a stadium.

There she was on my laptop screen at one in the morning, taking her clothes off for anyone with a card on file.

I should have shut it. I should have shut the laptop and never opened it again and gone on believing she was forgettable. Instead, I sat there until the screen went dark on its own. I didn't spend a dollar. I didn't sleep, either.

The shit that’s killing me isn't the part I'd expect. An hour before, kneeling on that bed, she'd been the one person from my day who didn't know my name and didn't want anything from me. That was the whole reason I couldn't look away. It wasn't the perfect skin or anything else about her, but the safety of her, something I didn't even know I was looking for. And now that she's got a real name that's not Diablo, and works at my front desk, I realized I was already lying to her just by watching.

I should have stopped there. Another man would have stopped there.

That was two weeks ago.

I'm not a cold man. I'm a controlled one. The difference between the two is measured in effort, and for two weeks now, every ounce of mine has gone into forgetting that Agnes is Diablo, and Diablo is Agnes.

I know her laugh. I know her hands. I know the flat way she says no when some fool in her chat gets rude, and the small private smile she gives half a second before she says the thing that puts him back in his place.

I know she's not doing this for fun. I doubt anybody kneels on a cheap mattress at midnight for a room full of strangers if they don't have to. What I don't know is what's chasing her, but it's bad enough that she'd rather take her clothes off for money than ask for help, if there even is anybody to ask. I know this because I'm the same animal. I can always spot the ones who'd rather bleed to death than put a hand out for some assistance.

And I know she's certain, completely certain, that the silent man at the top of her dashboard named NoComment is a stranger she'll never meet.