Infuriating, p.7
Infuriating, page 7
“Do you know this guy?” Jackson asked, voice full of gravel, like he was trying to hold back something.
Day gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know any of them, not really. Some of them, like that guy, want to talk with me on Stripversity but he never has a picture. It’s just always a dark screen. I talk. I perform. He watches. He never talks. A couple of weeks ago, he sent me a lot of money for no reason. A lot. It freaked me out, so I didn’t touch it. I just left it in my cash app.”
Jackson pulled his phone from his pocket and punched in a number. “Webster. Jackson. I need you to backtrace an internet user on an app called OnlyFans.” Day wished he could quell the shaking of his insides, but it was impossible. It wasn’t even the word…it was the rage beneath it. He glanced up at Jackson as he said, “I don’t care how hard it is. I need you to track this guy. Now.” Jackson’s hand squeezed Day’s knee again for emphasis, and Day hated that he felt better just from Jackson’s touch. “If it's not life or death, drop it and work on this. No, there’s no case number. No, I don’t have to tell you what it's about. Call me when you have something.”
When Jackson ended the call, he looked at Day and gave him a reassuring smile, which he didn’t return. “You didn’t have to do that. I’m probably just being stupid,” Day muttered.
“You’re not being stupid. This kind of behavior could be nothing or it could be some kind of escalation. This is what I do for a living, and that kind of response is…abnormal.”
“I just mean I get messages like that from time to time,” Day said, not bothering to argue Jackson’s point about his intelligence, instinctively knowing that Jackson wouldn’t allow him to call himself stupid, even if it was true.
“Then why did this one, in particular, upset you?” Jackson asked, his voice that same soothing tone that somehow lowered Day’s pulse but doubled his craving to bury himself in his strong arms and just pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist.
“I don’t know. I guess because I wasn’t expecting it on my OnlyFans account. That sort of thing is usually for the guys who show up in my live shows and want something for nothing, never from my supporters.”
“Then it doesn’t hurt to take a closer look at him,” Jackson said. “Can you send me his info on CashApp and his screen name and what sites he follows you on?”
Day’s panic swelled within him. “I can’t right now,” he blurted. “I’ll have to look them up. I can get them to you later.”
At Day’s odd babbling, Jackson once more squeezed his thigh. “Webster’s a pro. Your client will never know we were looking at him. I promise.”
“Yeah, okay,” Day said, letting out a deep breath.
Jackson stood, offering Day his hand. “Come eat dinner with me, and then we can find something to watch on television before you have to start working.”
“Does it bother you?” Day said before snapping his mouth shut. Why would he ask that? They didn’t even know each other.
“Does what bother me?” Jackson asked.
Day scrambled to think of another logical question instead of the one he wanted to ask, but he froze, finally just asking what he really wanted to know. “What I do for a living. Does it bother you?”
Jackson’s mouth turned down at the corners. “Does it bother you?”
Day scoffed, folding his arms across his chest. “Don’t do that. Don’t do that thing that shrinks do where they just repeat shit back until they tie you up in knots.”
Jackson sat back down on the bed. “No. It doesn’t bother me. If this is how you choose to make a living, it’s your choice. I do wish you weren’t planning on auctioning off your virginity, though.”
Day gave him a smirk. “I thought you didn’t ‘do’ virgins.”
Jackson gave him an aborted smile. “I don’t. But I also think the first person you let enter your body should at least be somebody you can trust to take some care with you.”
Day rolled up onto his knees to kneel beside Jackson, cupping his face in his hands and kissing him long and slow. Then he pulled back. “Technically, you’re the first person to have ‘entered my body,’” Day reminded him, grabbing Jackson’s right hand and sucking on the two fingers that he’d fucked into him the night before.
Jackson’s response was immediate, his heated gaze melting Day’s core and hardening his cock until it tented his joggers.
Jackson pushed his two fingers in and out, watching them disappear into Day’s mouth. “Fuck, you are such a little tease,” Jackson growled.
Day scrapped his teeth along Jackson’s knuckles before pulling free and licking the palm of his hand. “Who’s teasing, Daddy?”
“You’ll do anything to keep from having to have a real conversation with me,” Jackson mused.
Day stopped short, his expression growing stormy. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Using sex so I don’t have to try to tax my brain by having an intelligent conversation with an adult?”
“Day—”
“Fuck you, Jackson.”
Day rolled off the bed and strode into the bathroom, slamming the door shut like a sullen teenager, locking it behind him as if Jackson might follow. Day looked at himself in the mirror. Way to fucking overreact, stupid. Now, he’s going to think we’re insane.
He was insane. There was literally no reason for him to have flipped out on Jackson like that. He barely knew the guy and Jackson had been nothing but nice to Day for the whole whopping two days they’d known each other. It was Day who was crazy. Day, who’d decided to invite Jackson into his bed and into his job. Day, who’d just turned a conversation about his safety into one about feelings and his virginity. Christ, he was fucking unstable. This was what came from locking himself away for the last three years, only associating with the outside world via computer.
There was a light knock on the door. “Day, I’m sorry I upset you, but you don’t have to hide in the bathroom.” Tears sprang to Day’s eyes, and he wiped at them, his eyes instantly going bloodshot to match his red face. “I made pasta. If you don’t want to eat with me, you can come get it and bring it to your room, or I’ll just leave it in the microwave for you for later.”
Day didn’t answer, just leaned against the wall, shaking his head. He needed to fucking pull it together. It was day two in Jackson’s home, and Day was already embarrassing himself by acting like a moody, clingy boyfriend.
Day removed his glasses and splashed some cold water on his face. When he opened the door to apologize, Jackson was gone. He peeked down over the living room to see Jackson on the sofa with his feet propped up on the coffee table, watching something sporty on the television. Day’s bowl of pasta sat on the table, a respectable distance from Jackson’s bare feet.
Day sighed, padding down the stairs barefoot and plopping down beside Jackson. He didn’t acknowledge Day, other than flipping the channel to something that didn’t involve watching somebody throwing or catching a ball. Day could have been offended by Jackson’s assumption that Day didn’t like sports, but he fucking hated sports and didn’t want to sit through a game to try to prove that he could like makeup and football when he just didn’t.
Jackson clicked onto a movie, and Day waved his hand, trying to swallow his pasta. “Go back. Go back. That’s the best movie ever.”
Jackson frowned, going back two channels, and laughed. “This movie? You want to watch Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead?”
“You disagree?” Day asked, leveling a stare at Jackson, daring him to disagree.
Jackson’s gaze softened, and Day realized that Jackson could see his blotchy face and red eyes. “It was okay, I guess,” he teased. “Can we at least start it over from the beginning?”
“Yes, please,” Day said, bouncing a bit in his seat as he stuffed another fork full of pasta into his mouth.
When nothing happened, Day turned to find Jackson just looking at him with a strange look on his face. “Whah?” he asked, his mouth still full of bowtie pasta.
Jackson just shook his head with a smile. “Nothing.”
A few presses of the remote’s buttons and the movie was starting over again. Once they finished eating, Day couldn’t help but notice how Jackson moved closer until they were almost touching. Day wanted nothing more than to close the distance between them and just wrap himself around Jackson’s arm and rest his head on his shoulder. Somehow, Day knew Jackson would let him, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. This was all a weird illusion, a false intimacy that came with being forced to play house together. Still, he glanced up at Jackson anyway.
When Jackson’s gaze strayed to Day and he saw him staring, he asked, “What? What’s wrong?”
“Sorry,” Day said, forcing the word past the lump in his throat.
Jackson frowned. “For what?”
“For flipping out on you upstairs. I’m just…I don’t know…overwhelmed.”
Jackson shrugged. “Don’t even worry about it. I have three sisters, an entire team of bodyguards who are bigger divas than the people they’re hired to guard, and a slew of friends who make what happened up there seem like a walk in the park.”
“I don’t know if that makes me feel any better,” Day said.
Jackson grinned and slapped a kiss on Day’s forehead. “As long as it doesn’t make you feel worse.”
“I got nothing.”
“Since when is ‘I got nothing’ an acceptable answer?” Jackson asked, pinching the bridge of his nose as he glanced over to where Day stood on the balcony, phone in the air, making peace signs and smiling into the camera.
“Okay,” Webster said. “Will you accept ‘I have nothing useful’?”
Jackson sighed. “Then tell me what you found that isn’t useful.”
Sometimes, it felt as if the people working for him deliberately tried to goad him into losing his shit. That’s just not who he was as a person. It never had been. Anger never helped a situation. Ever. It only added fuel to the fire. Years of watching his father and mother argue had taught him that. They had both been stubborn and foul tempered and neither was ever willing to admit fault, at least to each other. Luckily, his parents hadn’t taken the same approach with their children.
“I traced the username back to a sockpuppet account and a stolen credit card. They’ve been using it for months, but the person it belongs to seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, which I’m guessing is a bad sign and also why they haven’t reported their card stolen.”
Jackson’s gaze pulled back to Day, unease tugging at his insides. Would this anonymous stranger be willing to kill to get to Day? Did the district attorney’s death even have anything to do with his job, or could this person be trying to take out anybody he perceived as competition? It could explain his fury over Day’s video. Or not. It was all just supposition at this point.
“Jack? You still there?” Webster called, his voice taking on a singsong tone.
“Yeah. Listen, I need you to do a deep dive into Day’s followers. Cross reference his accounts and make a list of his most active users. Find out which ones live close by. Also, this user sent Day six thousand dollars that’s sitting in his CashApp account. See if you can trace it to a bank or credit company and see if it matches our sockpuppet. Also, keep this between us. I don’t want Day finding out.”
Webster snorted. “Now what will we talk about while we paint each other’s nails?” he snarked before adding, “You know I’ve never even laid eyes on this guy, right? Okay, well, I’ve definitely laid my eyes on him. All of him.” Jackson growled at the thought of Webster laying anything on Day. “Hey, I’m kidding. You and this kid tight or something? I’m just saying, why would I say anything to him?”
“Not him. I’ll talk to him. Anybody else. Elite has more leaks than the Titanic. You tell Linc and he’ll tell Wyatt, and then Wyatt and Charlie will somehow weasel their way into Day’s DMs, and my life will become a shit show.”
Webster snickered. “I never thought you’d be afraid of the twink and the dink. What do you think they’ll do? Trick you into falling in love with your little shutterbug?”
“Shutterbug?” Jackson asked, deliberately ignoring Webster’s baiting.
“Yeah. He’s having a field day snapping photos of himself on your balcony. Hashtag beautiful day, hashtag smile, hashtag hello sunshine, hashtag hustle,” Webster said around a laugh.
Jackson smiled as he looked out on the balcony once more, but his smile died as he noted that Day wasn’t smiling at all. He was now lying on one of Jackson’s lounge chairs, knees tucked under his chin as he gazed out over the railing, looking like the weight of the world rested on his narrow shoulders. How much of Day’s online life was just theatre? Was he ever really happy? Did he love camming as much as he said he did? “Just get it done, and let me know the second you have anything that could help me.”
Webster’s joking tone disappeared. “You’re the boss.”
Once Jackson disconnected, he watched Day in profile. He leaned his head back, teeth clamped down on his bottom lip, and gazed out at the clear blue sky. Day had gone upstairs after they’d watched their movie the night before, Jackson following closely behind, reaching the top step only to hear Day’s bedroom door lock click into place. Jackson hadn’t been surprised, but he had been more than a little disappointed. More than anything, he wanted a chance to catch Day just being himself, not the caricature of himself he played for the audience, even if that Day was surly and argumentative and mercurial. Jackson wanted it. But Day was slippery. Just when Jackson thought Day might be warming up to him, the claws came out.
Jackson wandered to the sliding glass doors and pulled them open. Day looked up, eyes going wide, before he wiggled his fingers at Jackson in a hello. Day wore shorts that barely covered his ass and an old t-shirt with no sleeves that were cut down the sides. He looked sexy as hell, and the coy look and sly smile he gave Jackson told him Day knew it, too.
Jackson took the chair beside him. “Everything go okay online last night?” Did he sound jealous? “No problems with any of your…clients?”
Day’s smile disappeared, and he went back to looking out over the city once more. “No. It was slow last night. I only made fifty bucks. None of my regulars were there.”
“Maybe you should take some time off?” Jackson regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. The last thing they needed was Day taking time off, especially if he was the intended target, but Jackson hated the idea of putting a bullseye on his back.
Day scowled. “I can’t afford to take time off. Do you have any idea how much my piece of shit apartment costs in rent?”
The offer to pay Day’s bills was on the tip of Jackson’s tongue, but he knew Day would be furious at such a suggestion. The idea of taking Jackson’s money would definitely push him over the edge.
“Do you think your client could have had anything to do with that DA’s murder?” Jackson asked, trying to make his tone as casual as possible.
Day’s head whipped to Jackson, his pale face turning ghost white. “Is…is that what they think? They think this is my fault?”
Jackson’s brows knitted together. “None of this is your fault. This isn’t about fault. It’s about finding out who’s responsible before somebody else gets hurt. Somebody like you.”
“Tell me the truth. Do they think this guy killed Jay because of me?” Day asked, breathless.
Jackson shook his head. “No. They still think it has something to do with his caseload. I’m just trying to run down every possible lead, and your client was very unhappy about seeing me in your video.”
Once more, Day’s face morphed into his sex kitten expression, lids heavy and lips wet, as he uncurled himself from the chair and made himself at home in Jackson’s lap, straddling his thighs. His hands came around Day without thought, gripping his ass and dragging him close, flexing his hips upward so Day could feel him harden against him.
Day traced Jackson’s lips with his finger. “You’re so fucking hot.”
Jackson grinned. “Oh, yeah?”
“Mm,” Day murmured, lips finding Jackson’s, his tongue briefly slipping inside before darting back out. “Is anybody stopping by today?”
Jackson shook his head.
Day slipped from Jackson’s lap onto his knees, pushing a few buttons on his phone before handing it to Jackson. “Start recording,” Day said, his hands unbuttoning and unzipping Jackson’s jeans. “Up,” he demanded.
Jackson chuckled but shifted to let Day drag his underwear and jeans to his ankles. He shifted, slouching in the chair to give Day more access. He hummed his approval, his hand closing around Jackson’s shaft, stroking him slowly as he kitten-licked over the head, gathering the fluid there onto his tongue and showing it to the camera.
Jackson groaned as Day played, dragging his lips and tongue up one side of Jackson’s cock and down the other, Day’s hand massaging his balls. “Fuck. Stop teasing and suck me.”
Day dragged his shirt over his head and tossed it aside, looking up at Jackson. “Yes, Daddy.”
Day could give a masterclass on blowjobs. The only thing hotter than his cock disappearing down Day’s throat was watching it happen through the camera lens. Day was so beautiful on his knees, taking Jackson’s dick deeper with each pass until he was buried in Day’s mouth, his throat spasming around Jackson in a way that made him crazy. His hand went to the back of Day’s head, fingers twisting in his hair as he rocked his cock even deeper. “That’s it. Swallow my cock. So fucking good.”
Day’s fingers flexed, letting Jackson know he needed air. When Day pulled off, his eyes were tearing but he had a smile that showed he was pleased with himself. “Can I touch myself, Daddy?”
“I don’t know. You’ve been kind of a brat. Do you think you deserve to touch yourself?” Day nodded but his expression said something else. “I don’t know. Maybe I should just jerk myself off while you suck my balls?”
Day pouted, his tongue circling the crown of Jackson’s cock, sucking it until it was slick with his saliva. “Please, Daddy? I’ll be good.”
