It feels oddly restrained, he types slow as molasses, and I never warm to his brand of romance, but it is long. And long means money and distraction.

At the end, once the typing stops and there is a long moment of silence, I switch the cam to an overhead feed and lie back on the bed, my breath slowing, the exertion of faking it more intensive than you might expect. I breathe and stare at the blank screen. Wait for him to say something. It’s compliment time, the bits of space when words gush onto the screen, should the client wait around that long. Most have their finger poised over the “End Chat” button, wanting to jab it as soon as their orgasm starts, anxious not to spend a penny over what is physically required by their bodies. But freebird71 hasn’t been cheap so far, so I wait and look pretty. Let him think he has sated my voracious sexual appetite.

freebird71: I’d like to do that in person. Where do you live?

Ha. Right. I reach out quickly, hitting the “End Chat” button for him, setting the stage early for this newbie. If he really wants to know, he can piece together the false clues that Mike has sprinkled so creatively around. The University of Iowa sweatshirt that hangs over my desk chair. The Facebook account that is third on Google results when you search for Jess Reilly. The area code of my cell phone, my address which is forwarded here. We have worked hard at the illusion. Backed it up with social media accounts, fake friends, user profiles, and campus registrations. When clients dig, there is a slew of information for them to find. Easily. So easily that there is no need to dig any further. They find what they want and no more questions are needed. The system is set up specifically for this type of client, the kind that makes my skin crawl and who doesn’t seem quite right.

------RETURN TO FREE CHAT?

I pull on my tank top and underwear and reenter free chat.

CHAPTER 19

------END CHAT: JessReilly19 HAS LEFT THE ROOM.

------RETURN TO FREE CHAT?

MARCUS STARES AT the screen. That was it? The chat’s over? He moves the mouse, presses “YES”; the screen returning to the home page, a grid of moving bodies framed in usernames and prices. His cock softens against his hand, and he pulls back his sweatpants’ waist and stuffs it inside. He glances at the upper-left-hand corner of the screen, where his balance, which had previously lit bright green with the figure of three hundred dollars—now had yellow font. $76.32. Hmm. Not bad. Cheapest orgasm he’d had in two years. Cheapest female orgasm. The prison ones had all come from his hand or from men, the explosion slightly sour in its delivery. It was hard to come while staring at a male mouth wrapped around his cock. Even if they did suck better, did understand where to focus their attention and where to ignore. Josh had been his favorite. A young kid, twenty years old with a flop of hair that almost covered his green eyes. He had been taken early, Marcus shoving down on the boy’s shoulders while explaining clearly the way that the power structure in this prison worked. Better treatment. Full canteen balance. Protection from the thugs that roamed those halls. All in exchange for fifteen minutes of his mouth. The boy had complied, his eyes tightly squeezed shut, a skinny stream of liquid weakness running down his cheek as he had gagged on Marcus’s cock. But that was the first time. Eight months later, Josh had a taste for it. Was sucking off half of C block, and living the life of a king.

In there, with nothing but masculinity surrounding him for almost two years, the female guards worse than the men, Marcus had almost felt himself slip into fag territory. Had jacked off to the thought of a cock once or twice instead of a pussy. So it was good to know, well worth two hundred bucks, that pussy still turned him on. That girl, Jess Reilly, had more than done the trick. The high-def camera had told him exactly what he was missing, had made him feel like a man again, and he wanted more of it. To know how she breathed, to feel the pant of her around his cock, how tight her ass was and if it got hot when it was fucked.

But she had ended it, her expression changing slightly, becoming more guarded when he had asked the simple question of her location. She was a whore; surely it’d be good for business to leave the camera behind and really have the client. Money would convince her. It always did. He’d throw a few thousand on the table the next time, and she’d sing a different tune. They all fell for the allure of cash, whether it be physical bills or diamond earrings. Sluts are sluts, and when they’ve been fucked enough, giving it up one more time means nothing.

He spins in his chair, turning away from the computer, and stares out the large window that comprises the back wall of his office, at the far-off twinkle of city lights. The dark break between them hiding the fruit trees. Half a grove of Florida’s finest, fifty of the most valuable acres in the state displayed before him in a dark sea of green. The hours of the night stretch before him, empty hours with nothing but time to think. It is always the empty hours in which the devil lies. He had raped his first girl during empty hours—an eighteen-hour bus trip, the maddening minutes stacking upon each other, each stop bringing aboard fresh trash and making him only more aware of the teenager beside him. He’d spent the first six hours fighting it. The seventh hour devising a plan. The eighth, ninth, and tenth hours gaining her trust. The twelfth hour muffling her screams as he took her virginity in the fifteen minutes of a stop. He’d left her, bloody and crying, on the ground behind the convenience store and had boarded the bus with barely a minute to spare. Had relaxed with the success of his endeavor as the bus jerked its way back to the interstate.