Chapter 4: The Confrontation
The keys hit the laminate flooring with a sound like a dropped coin, a small innocent noise that seemed to detonate in the quiet room. Charli stood in the doorway, half in shadow, her hand still frozen in the air where her keys had been. Her eyes were fixed on the sofa, on Jamie's startled face, on the pale glow of the phone screen he was scrambling to dim.
He turned to her, his mouth opening and closing. The silence stretched, elastic and unbearable.
"Charli," he said, and his voice cracked on her name. "I didn't hear you. I was, I was just."
She stepped forward, letting the door fall shut behind her. The flat felt smaller than it had this morning, the walls pressing in, the air between them suddenly crowded with everything unsaid. She hugged her arms across her chest, a gesture that felt natural even as she knew she was performing. It wasn't hard to summon the confusion, the hurt. She was hurt, she realized. Not about the porn. Not about watching other girls, that part barely registered. It was the lying. The hiding. The way he'd kept a whole private world from her while she'd been keeping hers from him.
"I thought you were working on your CV," she said, her voice thin and flat.
"I was. I mean, I was going to. I just, I got distracted." He ran a hand through his sandy hair, a nervous gesture she knew intimately. "It's not what it looks like."
"Really, Jamie? Because it looks like you're watching other women on your phone while your girlfriend is out working two jobs to keep this roof over our heads."
The words came out sharper than she intended, and she watched them land, watched his face crumple with guilt. He looked small on the sofa, his narrow shoulders hunched, the phone now face down on the cushion beside him like a guilty secret.
"It's not, I'm not, it doesn't mean I don't love you," he said, tripping over himself. "It's just, you know, guys watch stuff. It's not a reflection on you. You're beautiful, Charli, you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. This is just, it's just a thing. A habit. It doesn't mean anything."
She let the silence hang, let him stew in it. She walked to the kitchenette and poured herself a glass of water she didn't want, buying time, composing her face in the dim reflection of the window.
"I don't understand why you couldn't just tell me," she said quietly, still not looking at him. "We've been together four years. I thought we were honest with each other."
"I didn't know how to tell you," he admitted. "I was embarrassed. It's not exactly something you bring up over dinner."
She turned to face him, leaning against the counter. "What is it, then? What were you watching?"
The question hung in the air. Jamie shifted on the sofa, his gaze dropping to his hands. "Just, you know. Stuff."
"Stuff," she repeated, deadpan. "Very helpful."
Hours crawled past in silence. Charli busied herself in the bedroom, folding laundry she'd already folded, straightening the dresser that was already straight. She could hear Jamie moving around the living room, the TV flickering on and off, the soft creak of the sofa springs as he shifted his weight. Neither of them spoke. The air between them was a wall, and she couldn't decide if she wanted to tear it down or hide behind it.
Finally, around eleven, the fridge door clicked open. Charli pulled out two bottles, a beer and a white wine. She twisted the caps off both and carried them into the living room. Jamie looked up at her, wariness and hope warring on his face. She sat down on the sofa, not touching him, and held out the beer.
"For peace offering," she said.
He took it, their fingers brushing. "I'm sorry, Charli. Really. I know I fucked up."
"You did." She took a sip of her wine, the cool liquid soothing her throat. "But you're not the only one who does stupid things sometimes." She left that hanging, an olive branch wrapped in truth she couldn't voice. Then she asked, quieter, "What were you watching? And I want the actual answer this time."
Jamie took a long drag of his beer, buying time, his eyes fixed on the label peeling at the edge. "It was just, you know, regular stuff. Amateur. Couples filming themselves."
"Regular stuff," Charli repeated, and she let the silence draw out until he squirmed. "That's funny, because when I was looking for a charger last week, while you were at your parents', your laptop was open. And it wasn't regular stuff."
The colour drained from Jamie's face. His grip tightened on the beer bottle, the glass slick with condensation. "You saw that?"
"I saw enough." She kept her voice level, careful not to let the tremor she felt inside leak through. "I saw the history. Pretty extensive, actually. You've been at this a while."
He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. The words seemed to stick in his throat like they were fighting to stay buried. "Charli, I can explain. It's not, I'm not, it doesn't mean I want to actually, it's just a fantasy, something I watch, it doesn't mean I'd ever, I love you so much, you have to know that."
She held up a hand, cutting him off. "Jamie. Breathe."
He breathed. The sound was shaky, ragged.
"I'm not angry," she said, and she was surprised to find it was true. The hurt was still there, tangled up with the guilt of her own secrets, but the anger had faded somewhere between the second beer and the wine. "I'm not going to pretend I'm not a bit thrown, because I am. But I'm more confused than anything. We've been together four years. You could have told me you were into something." She paused, then a small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "And honestly, at least your taste in men is good. I've seen him. I'd have picked him out too."
Jamie blinked. The fear in his eyes flickered, replaced by something uncertain, almost hopeful. "You're not kidding?"
"About him being attractive? No. I mean, look at him. That jawline should be illegal." She took a sip of her wine, letting the joke settle. "It's a bit funny though, I'll be honest. I've spent four years thinking you only had eyes for me, and it turns out you've had this whole side of yourself tucked away. I'm not sure whether to be flattered or offended that you thought I'd judge you."
"I was scared you'd think I was weird," he admitted quietly. "That you'd look at me differently. Like I was some kind of deviant."
"You are some kind of deviant." She nudged his shoulder with hers, a small peace offering. "But you're my deviant."
He cracked a smile at that, the first real one she'd seen since she'd dropped her keys. "I really am sorry I hid it. I should have trusted you."
"You should have." She swirled the wine in her glass, studying the pale gold liquid. "But we're here now, so I want to know. What is it about watching a woman with another man that gets you going? And I'm asking because I actually want to understand, not because I'm setting a trap."
Jamie set his beer down on the coffee table and laced his fingers together, a nervous habit she recognized. He was quiet for a long moment, gathering himself. "I don't know if I can explain it properly."
"Try."
Jamie picked at the label of his beer bottle, peeling a thin strip that curled like a ribbon. The silence between them was no longer hostile, but it was still heavy, still waiting for something.
"I don't know if I can explain it properly," he said again, and she could hear the fear threaded through his voice.
"Try," she said softly.
He took a breath, held it, let it out slow. "It's like, when I watch it, I'm not really watching the other guy. I mean, he's there, obviously, but he's not the point. He's like a prop, I guess. The point is her. The woman. And I imagine it's not some stranger, I imagine it's you." He glanced at her, then away, as if checking whether he'd said too much. "I imagine I'm watching you from the doorway, or from the chair in the corner, and I can see everything. The way you move, the way your back arches when something feels good. The way your mouth opens when you're about to come. I get to see you the way I never can, because when we're together I'm in it. I'm not watching, I'm feeling. And that's amazing, don't get me wrong. But sometimes I want to step back and just look at you. See you react, see how your body does what it does when you're completely lost in it."
Charli turned this over in her mind, tasting it. She'd always thought of his gaze as something that loved her, wanted her. She hadn't considered it might also be hungry for a view she couldn't give him from the inside.
"Okay," she said slowly. "So it's about seeing me. What about the guy?"
Jamie's fingers stilled on the bottle. "What do you mean?"
"The guy who's with her. The guy who's with me, in your head. What's he like? What's his role?"
He was quiet for a long moment, and she watched him wrestle with the words. "He's not anyone specific. He's just, he's the thing that does what I can't. Not because I can't physically, but because I can't be objective about you. I can't watch you when I'm inside you, I can only feel you. And you're so careful with me, Charli. You always have been. Like you're afraid you'll break me or something." He met her eyes, and there was something raw in his. "I want to see you not be careful. I want to see you let go completely. And I think, I don't know, I think I need someone else to be the one who makes you do that, because if you're with me, you'll always be thinking about me. About how I'm feeling. About whether it's good for me. I want to watch someone be completely focused on you, just for you, and see what you become."
Charli felt a warmth spread through her chest that wasn't just the wine. It was the strangest feeling, being seen so clearly in a way she'd never been seen before. She'd been so focused on her own lies, her own secrets, she'd almost forgotten the man sitting beside her was hiding something too. And his something wasn't about wanting to hurt her or replace her. It was about wanting to worship her from a distance he'd never have.
"So you'd pick the guy," she said, her voice a little thicker than she intended. "You'd pick someone who would satisfy me more than you can."
"It's not about more," he said quickly. "It's about different. It's about seeing you with someone who's bigger, or more experienced, or just, I don't know, someone who isn't walking on eggshells because he knows you're the best thing that ever happened to him and he's terrified of screwing it up. Someone who can just be there, in the moment, and give you what you need without all the baggage I carry around."
She took a sip of her wine, letting the words settle into her like stones dropping into still water. They'd been together four years. She'd thought she knew every corner of him, every quirk and fear and desire. But here he was, unfolding something new, something she'd never guessed at.
"What would he look like, then?" she asked, and she was surprised by how naturally the question came. "This ideal man you'd pick for me."
Jamie blushed. The red crept up his neck and into his cheeks, and he looked away, suddenly shy. "I don't know. I've never really thought about it like that."
"Yes you have," she said, and she nudged his knee with hers. "Come on. Four years of watching that stuff, you've definitely thought about it."
He laughed, a small embarrassed sound. "Okay. Fine. He'd be... bigger than me. Taller. Broad shoulders, I think. The kind of guy who takes up space in a room without trying." He glanced at her, checking her reaction, then continued. "He'd be confident. Not cocky, but comfortable in his own skin. The kind of guy who knows what he's doing, or at least acts like he does, and that confidence would let you relax because you wouldn't have to worry about his ego or his feelings."
"Good hair?"
Jamie snorted. "Yeah. Good hair. Dark, I think. Maybe a bit of stubble. And he'd be, you know, bigger than me there too." He gestured vaguely at his lap, his blush deepening.
Charli felt a shiver run through her, and she wasn't sure if it was the conversation or the wine or the way he was looking at her now, like he was asking permission to continue.
"Bigger," she repeated.
"Significantly," he admitted. "I've thought about it. What that would look like. What you'd sound like. How you'd move." He swallowed. "I've gotten off to the idea of you with someone like that, someone who could give you something I can't, and just, watching you take it. Watching you lose yourself completely."
The air between them was charged now. The TV was off, the only light the warm glow from the kitchen. Charli was acutely aware of her own body, of the thin fabric of her T-shirt, of the way her nipples had tightened against it.
"That's quite a fantasy," she said, and her voice came out lower than she'd intended.
"It's been years," he said. "I've never told anyone. I thought if you knew, you'd think I was asking for permission, or that I didn't want you enough. But it's the opposite. It's because I want you so much I can't even stand to be inside you without wanting to watch it happen from outside."
She set her wine glass down on the coffee table and turned to face him fully. "Jamie. I'm not going to pretend I understand all of this. But I'm also not going to pretend it doesn't do something to me, hearing you talk about it like that."
He looked at her, hope and fear warring in his eyes. "What does it do to you?"
She leaned in and kissed him, soft and slow, letting the taste of wine and beer mingle between them. When she pulled back, she was smiling.
"I think we might need another bottle of wine and a lot more conversation," she said. "Because I have questions. A lot of questions."
"Me too," he said, and for the first time that night, he looked like he wasn't afraid of the answer.
The kiss lingered, and when they finally broke apart, the night opened up around them like a door left ajar. They talked for hours, the wine draining bottle by bottle, words spilling out that had been dammed up for years. Eventually, Charli asked the question that had been circling her mind all night.
"Is this something you actually want, Jamie? Or is it just a fantasy?"
He was quiet for a long moment, turning the empty bottle in his hands. "I never thought it could happen. Not in a million years. But if the opportunity came up, I don't think I'd say no."
She nodded, feeling the weight of his honesty settle between them. "I've only ever wanted you," she said, and even as the words left her lips, she felt the flicker of something untrue behind them, a shadow she couldn't quite name. "But I'll bear it in mind."
Later, in the dark of their bedroom, they came together with a tenderness that felt like renewal. His hands traced her curves as if relearning them, and when she gasped his name into the pillow, it felt like a promise kept.
A few days slipped by like water through fingers, the apartment settling back into its familiar rhythms. Jamie found a part-time gig helping a friend's uncle with inventory, enough to take the edge off the bills. Charli came and went from her shifts at the club, texting Harry less now, the weight of that secret sitting differently on her shoulders after the night she'd learned Jamie had his own. Something had shifted between them, a door cracked open that neither of them wanted to close again.
It was a Tuesday night when it happened. They were in bed, limbs tangled in the soft glow of the bedside lamp, and Charli noticed Jamie's restlessness. He kept glancing at the laptop on the dresser, then away, his fingers tracing idle patterns on her hip as if working up to something.
"Penny for them," she said, propping herself up on one elbow.
He flushed, that adorable red creeping up his neck. "It's stupid."
"It's not stupid if it's got you looking at your laptop like it owes you money."
He laughed, a little embarrassed. "I was just thinking about what we talked about. The other night. What I said."
"About watching me with someone else?"
"Yeah. That." He bit his lip. "I know it's weird. I know it's not normal. I've just, I've never told anyone before, and now that you know, I can't stop thinking about it. About whether you'd ever actually want to do that, or if you just said all that to be nice."
Charli ran a hand through her hair, considering him in the lamplight. There was something vulnerable about him, laid open like this, and she felt a surge of affection that surprised her with its force. "You think I'd lie to you about something like that?"
"I think you'd do a lot to make me happy."
That landed harder than he probably intended. She thought about Harry's texts, about the velvet quiet of the club's back room, about all the ways she'd been making other people happy lately. The guilt was a familiar weight now, but it was quieter tonight.
"Okay," she said, reaching over him to grab the laptop. "Let's do something about it."
"What do you mean?"
She opened the laptop on her knees, the screen's glow washing over them both. "You watch your stuff on your own, Jamie. But I've never seen you get off to it. I want to know what you look like when you're in that headspace. And you said you imagine me with someone. So let's pick someone together."
His eyes widened. "You mean, like, now?"
"I mean right now." She was already opening the browser, his porn history appearing as a list of familiar sites. "Unless you don't want to."
"No, I do. I definitely do. I just, I didn't think you'd actually want to."
"Turns out I'm full of surprises." She gave him a look that was half joke, half promise. "Where do we start?"
He reached over and navigated to a site she recognized from his history, the one with the cuckold tag. The thumbnails popped up in a grid, a parade of women and men in various states of undress. Charli leaned in, letting her fingers drift across the trackpad, scrolling slowly.
"You want me to pick," she said.
"Uh huh."
"Anyone I want."
"Yeah."
She scrolled. There were the usual options, the muscled gym types, the bearded hipsters, the boy-next-door faces. She skipped past them all. She was looking for something specific, something that would make Jamie's favorite fantasy feel real. Her thumb hovered over a thumbnail and she clicked it, the video loading in full screen.
The man on screen was enormous. Not just tall, though he was that, towering over the woman he was with. He was thick through the chest and shoulders, with forearms like cables and a jaw that looked like it had been carved from stone. His hands spanned the woman's waist almost completely. And below, well. He was hung like a stallion, thick and long, the kind of proportions that seemed almost cartoonish until you saw how the woman reacted when he entered her.
"This one," Charli said, and she watched Jamie's face in the screen's glow.
His eyes were fixed on the monitor, lips slightly parted. A small hitch in his breathing told her everything she needed to know.
"Yeah?" he managed.
"Yeah." She settled back against the pillows, pulling him with her so they were both facing the screen. "Come here. I want to watch it with you."
The video played. Charli watched Jamie more than she watched the screen. She saw the way his breath quickened when the man lifted the woman like she weighed nothing, the way his hands tightened on the sheets when the camera angle gave them a full view of what was happening. He was utterly absorbed, lost in a fantasy she was suddenly a part of.
When it ended, the room felt heavy with something unspoken. Charli closed the laptop and set it aside, turning to face him.
"Okay," she said, her voice a little rough. "So. How would you actually find someone like that?"
Jamie blinked, coming back to himself. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, your fantasy. Me with someone bigger than you, someone who could give me what you can't. If you actually wanted to make it happen, you said you wouldn't say no. So how would you find him?"
He was quiet for a long moment, and she watched a dozen emotions cross his face. Embarrassment, hesitation, then something like resignation.
"There's, um." He swallowed. "There's a subreddit. Rate my girlfriend. People post pictures of their partners and other people rate them, and sometimes, sometimes people offer."
Charli sat up a little straighter. "Offer what?"
"To be the third. To meet up. Some of the threads are just for ratings, but a lot of them are basically, you know, looking for arrangements." He was blushing furiously now. "I posted some pictures of you. From that beach trip last summer. The one with the red bikini."
"You posted pictures of me on Reddit?"
The confession hung in the air like smoke. Jamie's face went pale, his mouth opening and closing as he realized what he'd just admitted to. For a moment, the flat was silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of traffic.
"You what?" Charli's voice was quiet, which somehow made it worse. Her body went still on the bed, the pillows suddenly feeling too soft, too pliant. "You posted pictures of me. On the internet. Without asking me."
"I didn't, I mean, I didn't think, it was just, the subreddit is for ratings, and you looked so good in that bikini, and I thought, I thought you'd be flattered, I was going to tell you, I was, I just got carried away, I'm sorry, Charli, I'm so sorry." The words tumbled out of him in a rush, tripping over each other like broken glass.
"Show me."
"What?"
"The pictures. Show me which ones you posted."
Jamie stared at her for a long moment, his hands trembling slightly as he reached for his phone. The screen glowed in the dark as he navigated to the subreddit, his thumb shaking as he scrolled. He turned the phone toward her, and she took it, her fingers cold against the glass.
The first photo was from their beach trip last summer. She was standing on the sand, her hand shading her eyes, the red bikini bright against her olive skin. The shot was candid, taken from a distance, the kind of photo that captured a moment rather than a pose. Her body was natural, relaxed, her hair windblown and tangled. It was tame, almost innocent.
The second photo made her breath catch. She was on Jamie's friend Lucas's boat, the one they'd taken out for his birthday. She was leaning against the railing, looking over her shoulder at the camera, and the angle of the shot caught her in a way she hadn't realized at the time. The sun was behind her, making the white bikini she wore nearly transparent, the curves of her body outlined in light. She remembered that day, remembered Jamie telling her to turn around, remembered the click of his phone. She'd thought nothing of it. She'd been comfortable, happy, letting him take her picture the way he always did.
"You posted this one," she said, and it wasn't a question. "This is the one you told me to post when I felt like it was too much."
Jamie's face was ashen. "I didn't, I don't, what do you mean?"
"You said, when I was in the store changing room, you said, 'That one's for later, for when you really want to show off.' You meant this. You meant people seeing me like this."
The silence that followed was thick enough to cut. Jamie's hands were clasped so tight in his lap that his knuckles had gone white. "I just thought, you looked so good, and I wanted people to see you, see what I get to come home to. I didn't think about it being wrong. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
"You posted my body on the internet for strangers to rate," she said, her voice rising despite herself. "You put me out there like I'm some kind of product and you didn't even ask. You didn't give me a choice. You just took the pictures I trusted you with and you gave them to the world."
"I know, I know, I fucked up, I should have asked, I should have told you, I'm sorry." He was crying now, tears tracking down his cheeks. "I was so proud of you, Charli. I wanted people to know what I had. I wanted them to see that this beautiful woman chose me. I didn't think about how it would make you feel. I was selfish."
She sat with that for a long moment, the anger slowly draining out of her like water from a cracked cup. She was furious, yes, but she also understood something she hadn't before: Jamie's insecurity, his need for validation, the way he measured himself against other men. And she couldn't deny the complicated truth threading through her anger, the knowledge that she'd been doing things far worse, things he had no idea about, things she would never tell him.
"Okay," she said finally, her voice flat. "Show me the comments."
"What?"
"The comments. On the post. If you're going to share my body with the world, the least you can do is show me what I'm being rated for."
Jamie hesitated, then turned the phone back toward her. The screen showed the post, and she scrolled slowly, reading the comments as they passed beneath her thumb.
"9/10, would climb her like a tree."
"Red bikini is doing a lot of work but the face carries it. Solid 8."
"Need those hips in my hands."
"DM me if you're ever in the city, I'd treat her right."
"Thick where it counts. Tell your boy he's lucky."
"Rate my girlfriend, they said. More like rate my fantasy. She's unreal."
There were more. A few were crude, a few were complimentary, a few were outright graphic in ways that made her cheeks heat. One user had written a paragraph about what he'd do if he had her alone, describing her body in explicit detail, and she read it twice before scrolling past, her throat tight.
She handed the phone back to him, her hands steady but her heart pounding. "You really did this," she said quietly. "You put me out there for strangers to fantasize about."
"You didn't deserve that," Jamie said, his voice cracking. "I'm going to delete it right now. I'm going to delete the whole account. I'm so sorry."
He reached for the phone, but Charli's hand closed over his. "Wait."
He looked at her, confusion and hope fighting for space on his face.
"Show me the ones who asked for your DMs," she said.
She watched his thumb hover over the Messages icon, the little red bubble of unread count glowing in the corner. He opened it, and the screen filled with a list of names, usernames with pixelated avatars and subject lines that made her stomach flip.
"You actually talked to these people," she said, and it wasn't a question.
"Some of them," he admitted, his voice small. "After the post got traction, I had a few DMs. I didn't think it would go anywhere. I just, I liked the attention. The validation. People telling me you were hot, that I was lucky."
"Show me the conversations."
He scrolled to the first one, a user called ThickThighTracker. The thread opened on a series of messages that made Charli's eyebrows rise. Jamie had been descriptive. More than descriptive. He'd told this stranger about her favorite position, the way she liked to be held down, the sounds she made when she came. He'd described the black lace underwear she wore on their anniversary, the way it rode up when she bent over, the mole on her inner thigh he'd kissed a thousand times.
"You told this person my bra size," she said, her voice flat. "You told them how I take my coffee."
"I know. I know it's insane. I don't know why I did it. It was like, once I started, I couldn't stop. The way they talked about you, the things they said they'd do to you, it got me off. Hard. I'm sorry, Charli. I'm so sorry."
She scrolled past that one, past a user called MidwestMuscle who had asked a dozen questions about her sex life, past one who had offered to fly them both out to Vegas. Then she reached the thread that made her fingers pause.
The conversation was a series of images. Not all of them were sent by the stranger. Some were sent by Jamie. Close-ups of her in the shower, the glass fogged, her silhouette barely visible. A photo of her asleep in their bed, the sheet pooling at her waist, her bare back to the camera. A shot of her in the red bikini, the one from the boat, the one he'd taken without her knowing how it would be used.
"These," she said, her throat tight. "You sent these."
"I thought, if I sent them, I'd get better ones back. The guys who sent pictures got more girls' pictures in return. It was like a trade. I wanted to see what was out there." He swallowed. "It was wrong. I know it was wrong."
She didn't respond. She kept scrolling. The images she'd sent were interspersed with replies, men sending pictures of themselves in return. A few were torso shots, gym selfies, artfully angled. A few were explicit, eager, thrusting into the frame. She scrolled past all of them with a clinical detachment that surprised her, cataloging each one like data in a lab report.
Then she reached the last thread.
This one was different. The user was called BigGameHunter, and his profile picture was a black silhouette against a sunset. The conversation was sparse, only a handful of messages from Jamie's side, but the one image the stranger had sent made her breath catch.
He was enormous. Not just large, but genuinely, almost absurdly well-endowed, thick and long with a slight curve that made her thighs press together involuntarily. The photo was lit properly, staged, as if he knew exactly what he was showing off. The length of him filled the frame lengthwise, and the girth of him seemed to strain against his own hand as he held it.
Charli's eyes widened, and she let out a low whistle before she could stop herself. "Jesus."
Jamie's head snapped toward her, his face a mixture of shock and something hungrier than she'd ever seen in his eyes. "What did you say?"
"That's a horse, not a man." She was still looking at the screen, her thumb frozen over the image. "That would rearrange internal organs."
"You think that's, like, a good thing?"
"I think that's a thing that would split a girl in half if she wasn't careful." She turned to face him, her expression unreadable. "Is this what you imagined? When you thought about watching me with someone bigger?"
He couldn't meet her eyes. "Sometimes. Not always. But yeah. Sometimes."
Sometimes. Not always. But yeah. Sometimes.
Charli held his gaze for a long moment, the phone still warm in her hand, the image of BigGameHunter's profile still glowing on the screen. The confession hung between them, raw and unguarded, and she felt a strange stillness settle over her. Not anger, not fear. Something closer to clarity.
She locked the phone and set it down on the bed between them.
"Okay," she said, and her voice came out steadier than she felt. "I'm not sleeping with anyone from Reddit. And you're going to delete all these chats. Every single one."
Jamie blinked, relief and confusion warring on his face. "I am. I'll do it right now, I promise, I'll delete the whole account if you want."
"Not the whole account." She picked the phone up again, navigated back to the messages, and scrolled to the thread with BigGameHunter. She held it up so Jamie could see the screen. "This one stays."
"What? Why?"
"Because if you're going to keep him around, I want to know who he is." She tilted her head, studying her boyfriend's face in the pale light. "Maybe he'd be useful. For making your heart race."
Jamie's throat worked. "You're messing with me."
"I'm not messing with you." She set the phone down again, her fingers finding his, lacing through them. "I'm telling you the truth. For the first time in a while, I'm actually telling you the truth."
He searched her face, looking for the catch, the joke, the trap. "What truth?"
Charli took a breath. The words had been sitting in her chest for weeks, coiled like a spring, and she'd never once imagined saying them out loud in this room, to this man, in this bed. But here she was, and the night had already cracked everything open, so she let them out.
"I'm not tutoring on Thursday nights," she said. "I haven't been for a while."
Jamie's brow furrowed. "What do you mean? You said, the shifts, the extra money for the rent, I thought Miss Chen's daughter needed help with calculus."
"She does. But I don't see her on Thursdays. I see her on Saturdays, and that's just a few hours." She felt the words coming out in a rush now, unstoppable. "The real money, the money that's been covering our bills, it comes from a place in the city. A club called the Velvet."
He stared at her, uncomprehending. "A club? Like a bar?"
"Like a strip club." She said it plainly, watching his face. "I work there. I wear outfits that would make my mother cry and I serve drinks to men who tip me a hundred dollars just for smiling at them. Sometimes I sit on their laps. Sometimes I let them buy me champagne. That's where the money comes from, Jamie. That's how we've been keeping this roof over our heads."
The silence that followed was so complete she could hear the blood rushing in her ears. Jamie's face had gone through a dozen micro-expressions in the space of a second: shock, disbelief, confusion, and then something she hadn't expected. A flicker of heat that was there and gone before she could name it.
"You work at a strip club," he repeated, the words slow and careful, like he was tasting them.
"Yes."
"In a sheer top. And a tiny skirt. That I've seen you buy."
"Yes."
"And men, they, you sit on their laps?"
"Sometimes. It's part of the job." She watched him carefully, gauging his reaction. "I've made more in one night at the Velvet than I made in a month of tutoring. It's not something I'm proud of, but it's something I'm doing. For us."
Jamie was quiet for a long moment. His hand, still laced through hers, had gone slack. She could see the gears turning behind his eyes, processing, recalibrating, and she braced herself for the anger, the accusation, the hurt.
Instead, he asked, "What do you wear?"
The question caught her off guard. "What?"
"When you work there. What do you wear?" His voice had gone low, almost reverent. "You said outfits. What kind of outfits?"
Charli stared at him. This wasn't the reaction she'd expected. In her head, she'd pictured him yelling, crying, packing a bag. She hadn't pictured him leaning forward, his eyes dark, asking for details.
"The sheer mesh top," she said slowly. "The one I bought at the boutique. And a white skirt that barely covers anything. I have a few others now. One's a black lace bodysuit, completely see-through. Another's a pair of shorts that are more like underwear, with a collar I wear around my neck."
"What do the men do? When they see you?"
"They look." She let the word hang, watching him. "They stare. They tip me to come closer. Sometimes they put money in my hand and don't let go right away, just to keep me near them."
Jamie swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. In the dim light, she could see the faint flush spreading across his chest. "Do you dance? For them?"
"A little. There's a pole in the main room, but I'm not a dancer, not really. I'm one of the girls who works the floor, who keeps the drinks moving and the regulars happy. It's not dirty, Jamie. It's just, transactional. They want to be near a pretty girl, and I need the money."
"You said you sit on laps."
"I did once. A group of NBA players came in, the other week." She kept her voice light, casual, as if this were an ordinary detail. "One of them, Marcus, he asked me to sit with him for a while. His friend DeAndre was there too. They tipped me a thousand dollars for twenty minutes of conversation."
Jamie's eyes had gone wide, but not with horror. The flush had spread to his neck, and there was a hungry quality to his focus that she recognized. It was the same look he got when he watched those videos, when the woman on screen was being thoroughly admired.
"A thousand dollars," he repeated.
"Just for sitting on his lap and letting him hold my waist while we talked about basketball." She shrugged, a gesture that felt lighter than the weight of the admission. "It's easy money. And honestly, Jamie, after the night we've had, it seems like we both have secrets we've been keeping."
He was quiet for a long moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was rough. "I don't know how to feel about this."
"Tell me how you feel, then."
"I feel like you're telling me something that should make me angry." He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous gesture she knew intimately. "I feel like I should be upset that you've been doing this without telling me. But I'm not. I'm, I'm not upset at all."
She raised an eyebrow. "What are you, then?"
"I'm trying not to think about it." He laughed, a short, disbelieving sound. "Because if I start thinking about it, about you in that outfit, about those men looking at you, I'm going to get hard, and I don't know if that's appropriate."
A warmth spread through Charli's chest, something between relief and a thrill she hadn't expected. "It's okay to feel what you feel."
"Is it? Because I'm feeling a lot of things right now, and most of them are not things a good boyfriend should feel when he finds out his girlfriend has been working at a strip club."
She reached out and took his hand, felt the slight tremble in his fingers. "You're a good boyfriend, Jamie. You're the best boyfriend I've ever had. And you're allowed to find this, to find me, exciting. Even if it's not what you expected."
He looked at her, his eyes searching hers. "Marcus and DeAndre. Were they the only ones? The only ones who, who got your attention like that?"
"At the club? Yes. They were generous tippers. They followed me on Instagram after. I accepted." She paused, weighing how much to give him. "That's all, Jamie. I haven't met anyone outside the club. I haven't slept with anyone. It's just work. It's not, it's not what you're imagining."
"But you could," he said, and the words seemed to escape him before he could stop them. "You could, if you wanted to. At the club, the men who come in, they're, they're not like Reddit. They're real. They're in front of you."
Charli felt the shift in the room, a new current passing between them. She looked at him levelly, letting him see the truth in her eyes.
"If anything were to happen," she said slowly, emphasizing the if, "the Velvet would be a better place to scout than Reddit. The men there, they've already shown they're willing to spend money. They're not hiding behind a screen. They're there, in the flesh, and they know what they want."
Jamie's breathing had quickened. "That's not, you're not saying you want to, you're not saying you'd actually consider it."
"I'm saying we've both been keeping secrets, and tonight we've started telling each other the truth." She squeezed his hand. "The club is where I work. If you ever wanted to, I don't know, meet some of the regulars, see for yourself what I do, I could arrange it. I'm not saying anything would happen. I'm just saying the possibility exists. In a way it never could on Reddit."
He stared at her for a long moment, his face unreadable. Then, slowly, a smile crept across it, hesitant at first, then real.
"You're something else, Charli Coles."
"So are you." She leaned in and kissed him, soft and slow, and when she pulled back, the night felt different. Lighter. As if a weight she'd been carrying for weeks had finally been set down between them.
A soft glow flickered from the bedside table, and Charli's eyes caught it before her mind registered what she was seeing. Harry's name, bright against the dark screen. A message waiting. She felt her pulse jump, a small spike of adrenaline that she forced down.
She looked at Jamie. He was still watching her, his question about Marcus and DeAndre hanging in the air between them, waiting for an answer she wasn't ready to give. She leaned over and picked up her phone, face down, and set it beside her thigh without looking at it.
"I'll tell you about them another time," she said, her voice easy. "Right now I want to know what you and BigGameHunter actually talked about. What did he say?"
Jamie blinked, the shift in conversation catching him off guard. "Uh. He was pretty straightforward. Said he was in the city for work, traveling a lot, and he liked the pictures you had up. Asked if there were more."
"And you said?"
"I said there could be. If he was serious." He rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. "He asked what you were like in bed. I told him."
Charli raised an eyebrow. "Told him what, exactly?"
Jamie's blush deepened, creeping up his ears. "Everything. I mean, not everything, but a lot. How you like it, the sounds you make, the way you move. I described what you look like when you're about to come. The way your thighs tighten." He swallowed. "I told him about the black lace underwear you wear on anniversaries. The one with the little bow at the front. The way it looks when you're on your knees."
It was Charli's turn to feel heat rise up her neck. She hadn't expected the detail, the sheer intimacy of what he'd shared. "You told him about the bow."
"Yeah. And the way you always insist on leaving the bedside lamp on, because you want to see my face. He liked that. Said you sounded like a woman who knew what she wanted."
She picked up the phone again, unlocked it, and navigated to the thread with BigGameHunter. The conversation was longer than she'd realized, a back-and-forth spanning several days. She scrolled past the first few exchanges, Jamie's initial embarrassment fading into something more eager as the stranger asked pointed questions.
Scrolling further, she found the part where Jamie had described her in bed, and she had to admit he was good with words. He'd captured things she hadn't realized he'd noticed, the way her breathing changed when she was close, the particular way she gasped his name. The stranger had responded with a series of questions that made her cheeks burn, and Jamie had answered each one with increasing detail.
Then she reached the image. It was a photo of her underwear drawer, neatly folded, her lace sets arranged in rows. Jamie had taken it, apparently, without her knowing.
"You took a picture of my underwear drawer," she said, her voice flat.
"I know. I'm sorry. He asked what you wore, and I thought the drawer would be, I don't know, more authentic than just describing it."
"And did it work?"
"He said it was the best thing he'd seen on that sub. Asked for more."
The last message in the thread, sent three days ago, was from BigGameHunter: She's stunning. I want to see her in one of those sets. Preferable on her. Send me something fresh and I'll make it worth your while.
Charli read it twice, the weight of it settling into her. The timestamp was three days ago. Jamie hadn't replied.
"Why didn't you send him anything?" she asked.
"Because I didn't have anything fresh. I'd used everything I had. The bikini shots, the shower one, the asleep one. I didn't have anything new, and I wasn't about to take photos of you without you knowing, not after, not like that."
"At least you drew the line somewhere." She set the phone down and looked at him, a strange calm settling over her. "What would you have sent him, if you could?"
Jamie's throat worked. "I don't know. Something from the club, maybe. One of those outfits you wear."
"Like the sheer top and the white skirt?"
He nodded, his eyes fixed on her. She felt the shift in the air again, that new current passing between them.
She reached down and pulled the hem of her T-shirt up, just to her ribs. "What about this? Is this the kind of thing you'd want to send?"
Jamie's breath caught. "Charli."
"What? You said you wanted fresh material. I'm offering to provide it." She held his gaze, letting the moment stretch. "Unless you'd rather I delete the whole thread and pretend this never happened."
His hand came up, tentative, and rested on her hip. His fingers were warm through the thin fabric. "You're really serious about this."
"I'm serious about you," she said. "I'm serious about us. And I think, after everything we've told each other tonight, we might as well see where this goes."
Charli held the hem of her T-shirt, the fabric bunched between her fingers just below her ribs. The lamp on the bedside table cast a warm glow across the flat of her stomach, and she watched Jamie's eyes follow the line of it down.
"Take the picture," she said. "Before I change my mind."
He fumbled for his phone, the screen already open to the thread with BigGameHunter. His hands shook slightly as he lifted it, and she saw him trying to steady his breathing in the way he always did when he was nervous.
"Higher," he said, his voice rough. "Or lower. One of the two."
She pulled the shirt up another inch, exposing the soft curve of her belly, the faint shadow of her navel. just at the edge of the frame, the black lace of her thong peeked out above the shot
"Like this?"
"Yeah." He swallowed hard. "Yeah, that's, that's good."
The shutter clicked. He looked at the photo, his thumb hovering over the send button, and she could see the war playing out on his face. Guilt, excitement, fear, hunger, all of it tangled together.
"Send it," she said.
He pressed send.
The reply came in under five minutes. The screen lit up with a message that made Charli's breath catch when she read it.
Christ. That stomach. I'd feel myself in her from the front, pressing against the inside of her belly while I'm buried to the hilt. She'd feel every inch of me moving in her. Tell me you have the underwear picture yet.
Charli read it twice, her cheeks heating. The bluntness of it, the casual way this stranger described being inside her, the way Jamie's breathing had gone shallow beside her as he read it too. The thread felt alive now, charging the air between them.
"He wants the underwear picture," Jamie said, his voice barely above a whisper.
"I know what he wants." She met his eyes. "I want to see what he looks like first."
Jamie blinked. "What?"
"You've been talking to him for days. You've sent him pictures of me, of my underwear drawer, descriptions of what I'm like in bed. You've never once asked what he looks like?" She reached over and took the phone from his hands, scrolling up through the thread. "You don't even know if he's a serial killer."
"He's not, I mean, I didn't think, he seemed normal. He's traveled a lot for work, he, he said he hunts in spare time."
"Hunters come in all shapes and sizes." She typed a message, her thumbs moving deliberately. We want to see you. Send a picture.
The three dots appeared almost immediately. Then a pause. Then they disappeared. Then they appeared again.
Jamie leaned in, his shoulder pressing against hers. "What did you just say?"
"I asked him to show himself. Fair's fair." She watched the screen, her heart thumping a steady rhythm against her ribs. "If he wants fresh material from me, he can show me what he's working with."
The dots vanished. A moment passed. Then the photo loaded.
Charli's thumb went still on the screen.
The man in the mirror was enormous. Not tall the way Marcus was tall, with a basketball player's wiry grace. This was a different kind of big, a wall of a man, the kind of build she associated with offensive linemen or lumberjacks. He stood at least six foot eight, perhaps taller, his shoulders so broad they seemed to strain the edges of the frame. His chest was a barrel of muscle, thick and defined, with a dark pelt of hair that spread across his pecs and tapered down his stomach. His arms hung at his sides and they were the size of her thighs, corded with veins, the kind of arms that could lift her like she weighed nothing.
He was completely naked. The mirror shot caught all of him, and the sight of it made her throat go dry.
What hung between his legs was soft, but it was still the biggest thing she'd ever seen. Genuinely eight inches, maybe more, thick as a Coke can, resting against his thigh with a weight that seemed almost impossible. Even flaccid, it dwarfed the dildo Harry had sent her. It made the men in Jamie's videos look modest.
Charli stared at the screen, her mind blank.
Beside her, Jamie made a small sound, something between a gasp and a whimper.
"Holy shit," she breathed.
"Yeah." Jamie's voice was strangled. "Yeah, that's, that's what I thought."
She zoomed in on the photo, her thumb moving before she could stop herself. The detail was obscene. The veins running along the shaft, the heavy swell of the head, the way the whole thing seemed to pulse with a life of its own. She felt heat rush through her, a visceral reaction she couldn't control, her thighs pressing together.
"He's huge," she said. "I mean, genuinely, actually huge. That's not a fake."
"How can you tell?"
"Because fake ones don't hang like that." She handed the phone back to him, her hand steady even though her heart was racing. "He's real. And he's, Jamie, he's the biggest man I've ever seen."
Jamie took the phone, scrolling up to the photo again, his eyes fixed on it. "He's like a giant."
"He's like two of you."
The words came out before she could stop them, and she winced at her own bluntness. But Jamie didn't flinch. He just nodded, his gaze still locked on the screen.
"Yeah. He is."
She could see it in his face, the same hunger she'd seen when he watched those videos, the same desperate wanting. He was imagining it. Imagining her with this man, this giant, this wall of muscle and flesh. Imagining himself watching from the sidelines while this stranger took her apart.
"You actually like this," she said. "Seeing him. Seeing how much bigger he is than you."
"I don't know if I like it." His voice cracked. "I just, I can't look away."
Charli took the phone back and read the message that had accompanied the photo. It was short, almost casual.
Better?
She typed back, her thumb moving without hesitation. Much better.
The reply came fast. Good. Now send me the underwear picture. The black lace with the bow.
She looked at Jamie. His eyes were wide, a dozen questions battling on his face. She could feel the shift in the room, the new weight settling between them, and she knew they were both standing on the edge of something neither of them fully understood.
"The underwear," she said slowly, "is in the dresser. Top drawer. Left side."
Jamie didn't move for a long moment. Then he got up, crossed the room, and pulled open the drawer.
The dresser drawer slid open with a soft wooden sound, and Jamie stood there a moment, his hand hovering over the neat rows of lace and silk. His fingers found the black set on the left side, the one with the little bow at the front, and he lifted it out like it was made of glass.
He carried it back to the bed and held it out to her. The lace was almost sheer, a constellation of tiny holes against his palm, and Charli took it from him with a steadiness she didn't feel. She stood, turned her back to him, and let her T-shirt pool on the floor. She heard his breathing change behind her as she stepped into the underwear, the lace cool against her skin, the bow sitting just at the top of her hip. She adjusted the straps, settled the cups, and turned to face him.
Chapter excerpt truncated at the edge.