Chapter 4: One More Glimpse
The glow from the laptop screen was the only light in the room, painting Leah’s face in pallid blue. The thong had become a familiar ache, a constant reminder of the line she had crossed.She didn’t move to take it off. The comments were still streaming in, a live feed of depravity that she couldn’t look away from.
CinderBlockDaddy: FUCK.I’m at work. I had to go to the bathroom.You’re gonna make me lose my job, you perfect slut.
SirCumsAlot: That’s the money shot.Lace on asshole is my kryptonite. I just came so hard I saw stars.A thin, incredulous smile touched her lips. She traced the words with her eyes, letting them sink in.They were at work. They were losing control over a picture of her.Her. Leah, who sat in a pool of her own textbooks, whose fiancé had found her wanting.
She shifted, and the lace pulled in a way that made her suck in a sharp breath.It wasn’t pleasure, not exactly. It was a stark, physical awareness. The forum had become a mirror, but one that reflected back a version of herself she’d never seen: powerful, desired, enough. It was a vile, beautiful lie, and she was clinging to it with both hands.
It was a vile, beautiful lie, and she was clinging to it with both hands. The aching pressure of the lace, the chill of the room on her exposed skin, the frantic scroll of praise—it all coalesced into a single, throbbing point of focus. She loved the attention, as repulsive as it was.
Her own breathing sounded too loud in the quiet room. She stared at the latest comment from ‘DeeperThanUThink’, a detailed paragraph about the precise texture of her skin in the photo. Her thumb rubbed a slow circle on the trackpad. The hollow feeling Billy left was gone, filled with this electric, buzzing static.
“Okay,” she whispered to the glowing screen, her voice a stranger’s in the dark. “Just one more pic.”
She pushed the laptop further down the bed, angling the camera. She didn’t take the thong off. Instead, she knelt on the mattress, the worn fabric rough under her knees. She arched her back, the position feeling both absurd and ritualistic. She reached back with both hands, her fingers trembling slightly as they dug into the soft flesh of her own buttocks.
She spread her cheeks.
The cold air touched her more intimately now. The thin lace of the thong strained, offering a transparent veil over her exposed starfish. She held her breath, her body a frozen tableau of offering. One finger stretched to tap the keyboard, triggering the shutter.
The sound was a soft, digital click. It felt louder than a gunshot. In the preview, the image was shockingly graphic, a clinical yet lewd display. Her hands were the frame, her body the centerpiece. She typed the caption with numb fingers: ‘You asked nicely.’ She did not let herself think. She hit ‘Post’.
The page refreshed. For one second, two, there was only the silence of the internet connecting, sending her image out into the void. Then the notifications began. They weren’t the gentle chimes of before; they were a continuous, insistent ping-ping-ping that filled the room like frantic insect wings.
BootLicker420: YES. FUCK. THAT’S THE VIEW.
HungLikeaHorse88: I’d give my left nut to be that piece of lace.
SirCumsAlot: Look at that pretty little hole. It’s begging for it. I’d start with my tongue, make you scream.
Leah collapsed onto her side, pulling her knees to her chest. A violent shiver wracked her, but it wasn’t from cold. The heat in her core was a banked furnace now. She watched the comments pour in, each one a bucket of gasoline on that fire. They described acts so specific, so degrading, that her mind’s eye couldn’t help but render them. She saw it. She felt it. She felt every part of it.
The heat between her legs was a dull, urgent throb that echoed the frantic ping of notifications. She pressed her thighs together, the rough cotton of her shorts a friction she couldn't ignore. Her body was responding with a blunt, mechanical insistence that had nothing to do with love or tenderness.Billy had never made her feel like this. Their sex had been gentle, predictable, a quiet transaction of affection.This was something else entirely. This was a raw, shameful current that ripped through her, turning her veins to live wires.She was disgusted with herself. These faceless men with their crude, juvenile usernames were pulling reactions from her body that a years-long relationship had failed to touch.Her hand drifted down, fingers sliding under the waistband of her shorts. The touch was electric, a shock of sensation that made her gasp aloud in the silent room. She watched the forum update, her eyes glazing over the words.
AssMan77: I’d tear that lace with my teeth.
CinderBlockDaddy: You’re a good girl for showing us.Now be a good girl for yourself.Touch yourself.Think of us watching.
The command, so blatant and depraved, should have felt like a violation. Instead, it felt like permission.Her fingers found the slick heat, and a sharp, ragged moan escaped her lips. It was an unfamiliar sound, desperate and raw. She thought of Greg from the warehouse, his eyes like sticky film on her skin, and a fresh wave of nausea washed over her. She was mortified.She was achingly, impossibly wet.
She moved her hand, the rhythm clumsy and frantic.The images weren't of Billy, or of some romantic fantasy. They were of the words themselves, the crude promises, the hunger. She imagined the collective gaze of fifty, a hundred strangers fixed solely on this act, on her.The power of it was dizzying. The shame was its own dark fuel.Her breathing hitched, coming in short, sharp bursts. The laptop screen blurred into a smudge of blue light.She was close.She was so close. A part of her mind, the rational pre-med student, screamed that this was pathological, a fracture in her psyche. The rest of her didn’t care.It felt too good.It felt like being seen.
A final, violent shudder racked her frame, her back arching off the bed as a soundless cry tore from her throat. The pleasure was intense, a white-hot detonation that left her trembling and hollow. It ebbed as quickly as it came, draining away into the quiet hum of the laptop fan.Silence flooded back in. The afterglow was not warmth, but a cold, creeping vacancy.She pulled her hand back, staring at her fingers in the dim light. The forum was still there, still pinging, a hungry beast she had just fed.
She felt utterly, profoundly empty.Worse than empty—soiled. She had given these grotesque men, these ‘CinderBlockDaddies’ and ‘AssMen’, a part of her even Billy never got. They had made her feel a climax more powerful than any she’d ever had. And now, lying in the sweat-damp tangle of her bedding, she had never hated herself more.
The cold, sticky shame on her skin was a film she couldn't peel off. The laptop’s glow was accusatory, a portal to a world that had just hollowed her out. She needed a real hand, a real body, something to tether her back to a life that made sense.
Her phone was buried in the blankets. She dug for it, the screen blazing to life with Billy’s unanswered pleas. Her thumbs moved stiffly. Come over, she typed. I need you to come over right now.
The three dots appeared instantly. Are you okay? he replied.
Just come, she sent back, and tossed the phone aside. She needed to feel something that wasn’t pixels and poisoned validation. It would be with Billy, her fiancé. It would be familiar, even if it was mediocre. It wouldn’t be the humid, greasy attention of Frank from receiving, or the crude fantasies of ‘DeeperThanUThink’. It would be real.
She pulled the lace thong off, the elastic snapping against her skin with a final sting, and shoved it under a pillow. She put on clean cotton underwear and her softest sweatpants, armor against the night. When the intercom buzzed, her heart was a flat, dull hammer against her ribs.
She buzzed him up without a word, listening to the slow, familiar creak of his steps in the hall. He looked rumpled when she opened the door, his jacket misbuttoned, his eyes wide with a hope that made her chest ache. “Leah? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said, stepping back to let him in. The apartment felt smaller with him in it, cluttered with the ghost of their old life. He moved to hug her, but she sidestepped, closing the door. The silence was thick, polluted by everything unsaid.
“I’m so glad you texted,” he started, his voice too loud. “I’ve been going crazy. We need to talk about Samantha, about everything. I was an idiot, a complete—”
“Billy,” she interrupted, her voice surprisingly steady. “I don’t want to talk.”
“Then… what?”
She looked at him, at his kind, confused face, the face of the man who thought she was ‘a little thick’. The hollow place inside her yawned wider. She needed it filled, bluntly, physically. “I need you to fuck me,” she said, the words clinical and sharp in the quiet room.
He blinked, recoiling as if she’d slapped him. “What?”
“You heard me.” She kept her gaze level, watching the confusion in his eyes warp into a flicker of something else—opportunistic arousal, tinged with shock. “Not make love. Just fuck me. Right now.”
“Leah, Jesus, are you—?”
“Yes or no, Billy.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. The part of him that had screwed Samantha in a drunken haze saw an opening. The part that loved her saw a minefield. He nodded, a slow, cautious dip of his chin. “Okay. Okay, if that’s what you need.”
It was nothing like the forum’s violent poetry. It was quiet, rushed, and profoundly awkward. He fumbled with the waistband of her sweatpants, his fingers clumsy. There was no preamble, no kiss that might suggest a bridge was being rebuilt. He pushed into her with a grunt, his weight familiar and somehow alien.
She stared at a water stain on the ceiling, her body a passive receptacle. He panted, his rhythm a rushed, frantic jog toward his own finish. She felt the rub of it, the mechanical friction. She thought of the comments, the detailed, worshipful filth. I’d start with my tongue. Billy’s breath hitched. Make you scream. He shuddered, collapsing onto her with a choked-off moan.
It was over in two minutes.
He lay heavily on top of her, his sweat cooling on her skin. “Wow,” he breathed into her neck, a note of triumph in his voice. “That was… intense.”
Leah didn’t move. The hollow feeling hadn’t been filled; it had been excavated, made roomier. A profound, aching dissatisfaction settled into her bones, colder than the shame from before. She felt his softening weight inside her, and all she could think was Is this it? This was the real, sanctioned thing. This was what she was supposed to want.
It was worse than mediocre. It was nothing.
He rolled off, already reaching for her hand. “See?” he said, his voice soft now, reconciling. “We can fix this. We just needed to connect, you know? Physically.”
She pulled her hand away and sat up, the sheets tangling around her waist. The glow from the forgotten laptop peeked from under a rumpled blanket, a sly, knowing eye. Billy’s touch felt like a violation. The memory of a thousand strangers’ eyes felt like power.
The memory of a thousand strangers’ eyes felt like power. Billy’s touch felt like damp lint. He was still talking, his voice a soft, hopeful buzz in her ear about fresh starts and stupid mistakes. Leah stared at the water stain on her ceiling, its shape morphing into a crude mouth, laughing.
She could still feel him, slick and softening inside her. A biological transaction, completed. His weight shifted on the mattress, the springs complaining. “Leah?” he ventured. “Talk to me. Please.”
The forum was a silent scream in the next room. Her body still hummed with the ghost of its earlier, solitary climax, a stark contrast to this numb detachment. She needed him to leave. She needed him to stay so she could prove something, to herself or to the silent, judging screen.
“Just give me a second,” she murmured, sliding out from under him. The cool air hit her sweat-damp skin. She padded to the bathroom without turning on the light, closing the door until only a sliver of yellow fell across the tiles. In the dark, she leaned against the sink, her own breath loud in the hollow silence.
Her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror was a pale smudge. She splashed cold water on her face, the shock a feeble anchor. The face that looked back was a stranger’s, its eyes too dark, its expression carefully blank. She practiced a smile. It looked like a grimace.
When she came out, Billy had pulled on his boxers and was sitting on the edge of the bed, head in his hands. The pathetic slump of his shoulders sparked a dull irritation. He looked up, his eyes wide and wet. “I don’t know what that was,” he said, his voice cracking. “But it wasn’t us. That wasn’t how we fix things.”
This was her cue. This was where the performance began. She crossed the room and sat beside him, the mattress dipping. She took his hand, her skin cool from the water. She made her voice soft, a gentle mimicry of the girlfriend she used to be. “Hey,” she said, squeezing his fingers. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” he whispered, clinging to her hand. “I ruined us. I know I did.”
She looked at their intertwined hands, his familiar knuckles, the short, clean nails. She thought of the usernames, the crude, anonymous hands they symbolized. Her stomach turned. She made herself lean her head on his shoulder, inhaling the faint scent of his laundry detergent, a scent that once meant home. It meant nothing now. It was just a smell.
“We can totally fix this,” she heard herself say, the words smooth and practiced as a recitation. She forced a lightness into her tone, a believable warmth. “That was amazing.”
He went still beside her. “What?”
She pulled back to look at him, manufacturing a shy, satiated smile. It felt like stretching a rubber band across her teeth. “Connecting like that. It was… intense. It cut through all the crap, you know?” She ran a finger down his arm, a gesture she’d done a thousand times. It felt like moving a prosthetic limb. “Maybe that’s what we needed. To stop talking and just feel.”
Billy stared at her, confusion and a dawning, desperate hope warring on his face. “You mean that? You’re not just saying it?”
“I mean it,” she lied, the words tasting of ash and lace. She kissed his shoulder, a quick, feathery touch. “It was a reset. A really physical, really good reset.”
He exhaled, a shuddering release of breath, and pulled her into a hug. His relief was a palpable, humid thing. “God, Leah. I thought… I thought I’d lost you for good.”
“You haven’t,” she murmured into his neck, her eyes wide open, staring at the blank wall. She held him, tracing circles on his back, playing the part of the forgiving, re-energized fiancée. Inside, she was calculating the minutes until he would leave. She needed him to believe the ruse was real. She needed him placated, comfortable, and gone.
Because the real connection, the electric current that had actually made her feel something tonight, was still glowing on her laptop in the next room. Waiting.
The word hung in the silent room after he left.Waiting. It was the only true thing she’d felt all night. She listened to the echo of his footsteps fade down the hall, then the distant groan of the building’s front door. A car engine started outside, headlights painting a swift arc across her ceiling before receding.
She didn’t move until the sound was completely gone.Then she let the fabricated smile dissolve from her face. Her cheeks ached from the effort. She was surprised at herself, at how easy the lies had slid out, smooth and convincing as oil.He’d swallowed every word. His final kiss had been grateful, warm, a seal on the false peace she’d manufactured. She’d kissed him back, a dry press of lips, and watched him walk away believing he was forgiven.
The moment the door clicked shut, a different energy took over.It was a cold, humming urgency. She walked back to the bedroom, her movements deliberate.The room still held his scent, a mix of cheap body wash and faint sweat. It felt invasive now.She peeled off the sweatpants and her cotton underwear. The fabric was damp. She felt the slow, trickling sensation between her legs, a physical reminder of the hollow transaction.She didn’t wipe it away.She left it. She pushed the soiled clothes under the bed with her foot, a secret stashed away.
The laptop was where she’d left it, a dark rectangle on the rumpled sheets. The screen lit up at her touch, revealing the frozen chaos of the forum. The last comment she’d seen still glowed there: ‘You’re a good girl for showing us.’ The notification counter now read ‘112’.
She climbed onto the bed, the sheets cool against her bare skin. She sat cross-legged, pulling the computer into her lap.A tremor ran through her hands as she navigated back to the main page. The sensation between her legs was a constant, slow leak.It felt obscene.It felt powerful. He was gone, but a part of him was still here, being erased by her choice.
She clicked ‘Refresh’.The page updated with a violence that made her jump. New comments piled onto the thread, a cascading waterfall of desire.CinderBlockDaddy: WHERE DID YOU GO?! Don’t leave us hanging, baby.I’m throbbing here.
SirCumsAlot: She’s probably touching herself thinking of us.Be a good slut and tell us.
BootLicker420: Come back 😭 I need more of that perfect ass.
Leah read them, a slow breath escaping her. The hollow feeling Billy left was still there, but this digital noise crowded its edges, a buzzing insulation against the quiet. She felt the sticky wetness on her inner thigh.She didn’t clean it.Instead, she positioned the laptop. She leaned back on her hands, angling her hips towards the camera. The glow of the screen was the only light, etching sharp shadows.She took a picture. It wasn’t a pose from any porn site; it was just her, looking down at her own body, the evidence glistening in the dim blue light.Her fingers flew over the keys, the caption blunt and true.‘Got distracted. Someone came over.’
She hit post.The response was instantaneous. It was like throwing raw meat into a kennel.HungLikeaHorse88: HOLY FUCK. IS THAT WHAT I THINK IT IS???AssMan77: SOMEONE CAME OVER?? AND YOU CAME HERE AFTER???YOU DIRTY FUCKING ANGEL.
DeeperThanUThink: You let someone else finish in you and then you come to us? That’s the hottest thing I’ve ever read.You belong to us now.
SirCumsAlot: I want to add to it.I want to fill you up right after him.
The comments scrolled, a frenzied celebration of her degradation.They weren’t repulsed.They were ravenous. They saw his claim on her body as a challenge, a provocation.They wanted to overwrite him. The trickle between her legs felt less like Billy’s residue and more like a badge. A testament to her own, new ruthlessness.
Leah watched the words pour in, her heart hammering against her ribs.She felt a terrifying sense of ownership.This was hers. This reaction, this heat, this desperate hunger—it was all directed at her choices, her body, her secret. She owned it.She lay back, the laptop beside her, screen still pulsing with notifications. She stared at the ceiling, feeling the cool air on her exposed skin, the slow, drying trail on her thigh.The forum was no longer just a reflection. It was the place where she was real.Where she was enough.Where she was in control.The empty apartment held its breath around her. The only movement was the frantic crawl of text on the screen, and the slow, final seep of Billy, disappearing from her body.