“Mmm, we’ll have to pencil that in soon, I think,” I said with a finger to my chin. “In the meantime, though, I think we should do our good-night video.”
His eyes almost popped out of his head. “Now?”
“Um. Aren’t we going to bed?” I turned around and called Nacho since he was making low whimpering sounds from the other room. He bolted up and took a flying leap onto the bed. I curled my body over Nine’s so we didn’t get scratched by Nacho’s nails.
“We just had sex,” he said. “What if they can tell?”
“They’ll think we’re together. Like… y’know… boyfriends or something.” I lifted an eyebrow at him.
He sighed. “Fine, but you have to do the talking. If I do it, I’ll probably blurt out something horrible like blow job.”
I climbed off him and got a towel to clean us up a little before moving to slide under the covers. Nine stared at me. “Are you… are we, um, sleeping naked?”
For such a big, gruff guy, he really was a sweetheart in a lot of ways. This part of him made me want to take care of him, put him in my pocket and keep him safe.
I stopped with one knee on the bed. “Well, we don’t have to. I can put back on—”
“No! No, that’s good. I mean… if… if it’s good for you.”
I paused for a beat to make sure that’s how he really felt. He smiled, his beard widening in that way that made me want to nuzzle into it. “I kind of like looking at you naked. So I might peek under the covers later.”
My laughter was still filling the room when I started the video.
Another week passed and we were starting to see progress in several measures. Nine was proud of the plain-ass plywood floors we’d finished in the cabin even though I thought bragging about not having rotten holes in the floor was setting a particularly low bar.
But the subscriber rates had suddenly shot up as well. The video we’d done the night of the first blow job—because of course there had been more since then—had gone viral which didn’t really make sense to me even now, a week later. The video hadn’t been anything special. We’d just been joking around about stupid stuff. I’d mentioned making different kinds of flavored water mixes and using Nine as my taste-tester, and then he’d jumped in and started teasing me about it. Then he told our viewers about all the things I’d cooked for him so far, and he’d surprised me by raving about everything one by one.
The comments had been all mushy about how cute we were together and how Nine had “puppy dog eyes” for me when he talked about my cooking. The number of female subscribers was way up which Stallion loved since women made many of the household purchasing decisions.
After that, the flirting came naturally, and our impromptu videos didn’t seem to make Nine nearly as stressed as before. He still didn’t talk much unless something I said triggered his ability to chime in without fear, so I kept bringing up light things that I thought would keep him comfortable in front of the camera. In one of the videos, I told the story of his pet chicken, and we both started laughing so hard, we had to take two more videos just to get the full story out through the tears.
Besides one visit from a lumber delivery guy, we hadn’t seen another human in over two weeks. We were running low on food and needed to head into town to stock back up on essentials. I was hoping that trip included a meal at a restaurant because I needed a break from cooking. Sure, Nine had pitched in and made several meals, but it was obvious cooking wasn’t his special skill.
“Hey,” I called, walking back toward the cabin from throwing some wood scraps in the dumpster. “I was thinking we could stop early and head into town for some food.”
Nine stepped around the side of the house to answer me, and my jaw dropped. He stood there in nothing but his boxer briefs and work boots. His tanned skin glimmered with sweat, and his muscles bulged like something out of my fantasies.
“Dear god,” I said under my breath. “And I’m getting paid for this.”
“What’d you say?” he asked, tossing his hammer down into his toolbox.
“Dinner, groceries, town,” I repeated, walking closer. “You and me. And pants.”
His white teeth appeared in a grin. “I was hot.”
“That’s an incredible understatement.”
“And since no one’s here but us, I figured I could—”
I didn’t let him finish. I stepped into his personal space and plastered my body against his, wrapping my arms around his broad back and tasting his salty lips. Up to now, we’d done a pretty good job of keeping working hours for work and saving our personal explorations for bed time, but there was no way I was missing out on this opportunity.