Page 21 of The Devil Wears Nada

"Then here's your reward," I burst as soon as I find my voice. "All three of you. Hands on. Now. And I want to hear every second of it."

And I do.

The sound hits me before anything else. Three men, three microphones, no more rules, and the room fills up. Beck first, working himself fast now that I've turned him loose, that big running mouth of his finally breaking down into groans and broken half words. Fuck, there she is, look at you, that's it, pretty fucking pussy, gonna make me. He doesn't finish a single sentence, and it's better than any of them.

Theo's breath goes harder, big punched-out sounds he can't hold back, a low fuck, yes dragged out of him that’s being pulled from somewhere deep.

And under all of it, the thing that really gets me is Elias. I hear his rough exhale, then a growl like it's being torn out of him, then the slick, steady drag of a man finishing himself off. It is the most unholy noise I have ever heard because it's the sound of a disciplined man losing his mind on purpose. For me.

I let go too.

I've got two fingers curled up inside myself and the heel of my hand grinding my clit, and I quit pacing it, quit performing it, and just chase it. My hips roll up off my heels. My thighs start to shake. It winds tighter and hotter, low and deep, my own strokes loud in the quiet between theirs, until it finally breaks and rolls up through me in long waves. I curl forward over my own hand and jam my other fist against my mouth hard enough to hurt. The only thing I can keep to myself is the sound of coming, the real one, the true one, and that’s all mine. Sorry not sorry. So I come quietly, shuddering, clenching around my fingers, while the guys lose their minds over a woman who’s not really me.

“Diablo,” Elias says. Like she’s the only woman in the world.

Then it's just four people breathing hard.

I should say something cool. Something Diablo. Something that puts the wall back up where it belongs.

But I can't. I'm shaking, and it isn't the cold, nor the money, and I finally understand that all this stopped being a game, a show, a performance a while back. I didn’t realize it until it was already done.

Nobody says anything for a long moment. Not one of the four of us.

Then Beck speaks up, because of course it's Beck, hoarse and delighted. "Your Highness, I have never in my life gotten my money's worth like that. I'm ruined. I'm going to sleep for a week." He pauses. "Same time tomorrow?"

I laugh, the fake laugh, always the fake laugh, and tell him he can't afford me twice. He says “Try me,” and signs off like he’s floating.

Theo goes next, and he does the Theo thing, the one that's going to be the death of me. "You okay?" Quiet. Real. "That was so hot, baby. Take good care of yourself.” And then, almost to himself, "Thank you." Like I gave him something instead of charging him a fortune for it. He's gone.

And then it's just me and the last handle glowing at the top of the board.

NoComment.

He doesn't sign off. He doesn't say anything for long enough that I start to think the connection dropped. I'm reaching to end it myself when the little chime sounds, not the cha-ching with the gold crowns, the other notification.

You kept the best part for yourself.

Huh?

You’ve got three men falling apart, but right at the end you put your hand over your mouth.

My heart is slamming. I don't type. I can't.

I don't know what it is, he writes. I'm not asking you to give it to me. I just wanted you to know somebody noticed. A pause, a full ten seconds of it. Good night, Diablo.

And he's gone.

I sit there in the lamplight for a long time.

I press my hand to my mouth and laugh. My real lauch. It's the only piece of Agnes that Diablo can't afford to reveal, because the laugh is the one thing about me that's genuinely mine, the thing that gets away from me before I can catch it. If I ever let it loose when I’m camming, I stop being a body with a fake name. I become a person. Possibly a person who can be recognized.

And a man I have supposedly never met, a man who is absolutely, one hundred percent Elias Thorne, the human glacier, the guy who drops clause four on my desk like litter, just told me he watched me do it.

Does he know? The question's been pecking at me since the second I heard their voices tonight. Not one of them hesitated to talk. And now this. He doesn't just watch me. He sees me. He found the seam between my two selves and pressed his finger right on it.

I tell myself no. I tell myself he's a rich man who watches everything too closely, that noticing a woman guarding herself is not remotely the same as knowing her name. I'm fucking freaking out, not to mention exhausted, and imagining all sorts of crazy shit because I just came harder than I ever have for three men I'm not allowed to want.

I made more money tonight than I make in a month, and I don't feel like a criminal mastermind. I feel like a woman who left a door open somewhere and can't remember which one.