Mavi
My nest is a disaster and I love it. Velvet throws piled on top of silk pillowcases piled on top of the heated blanket Noemi got me last winter that I refuse to put away even in June. All of it surrounds the newest addition, a dusty rose linen pillow from the Cecconi set I've been staring at online for three weeks that showed up at my door this morning with a note that saidstop looking and start nesting, bitch.
Noemi knows me too well. The pillow is already tucked against my hip where it belongs, and the whole nest smells like me, honey, warmth, and the faint ghost of turpentine that never fully washes out of anything I own.
I'm curled up in the middle of it with my laptop balanced on a pile of fabric and Noemi on speaker, her voice filling the bedroom while I scroll through the analytics of the last few days.
"Okay so walk me through it again," she says, and I can hear her settling in on her end, probably with wine, probably on her couch, always vicariously living through me. "Your mystery man."
"He logged on eight minutes before I went live," I tell her, scrolling through the dashboard. "Stayed until the last second. Didn't comment, didn't tip, didn't interact at all. Just watched."
"That's either romantic or a crime."
"It's been five weeks, Noe. Every single stream, start to finish, never leaves early. Most viewers drop in and out but this one arrives before I go live and stays until I sign off, and the consistency of it would be creepy if it weren't so obviously compulsive." I pull up his account and spread the data across my screen. "It’s like he can't stop watching. There's a difference and I can read it in the data."
"You sound like you're profiling a serial killer."
"Serial killers don't pay for the highest subscription tier." I click through to the replay data because the replays are the tell, the thing someone comes back to when they're alone, honest, when pretending not to want has worn too thin to keep up. "Here's the interesting part. The explicit content, the loud filthy stuff where I'm putting on a show, he watches once and moves on, maybe twice. But the blush set content, the videos where I'm in the pink lingerie with the softer lighting, the ones where I'm barely performing, those get four, five, six replays."
Noemi is quiet for a second. "He likes the real you."
"He likes the version thatlookslike the real me, which is a slightly different thing, but yes." The video with the highest replay count has nine views from a man who watches my filthiest content exactly once. "This one, Noe. I recorded it on a Thursday two weeks ago. I was exhausted, didn't have the energy for the usual routine, so I just talked. It was the lavender set I bought with the gift card you gave me, remember? I just sat there and told the camera about my painting and my sore shoulders. Nothing explicit.Velvetrequires us to put out at least 6 videos a week to stay on the platform so it was just to make sure I could make rent."
"And he watched it nine times."
"Nine times. While my dirtiest videos collect dust at one view each."
"Mavi." Her voice shifts from entertained to genuinely curious. "What kind of Alpha watches soft content on repeat?"
That's the question I've been sitting with since I pulled up the data. I think about the man next door, the height of him, the seriousness, the way his face is all sharp angles and the way he walks past my door every morning projecting authority so hard it's practically audible. Everything about him says control, power, Alpha in capital letters, the kind who takes what he wants without asking.
And he watches me being soft on repeat. The mismatch keeps nagging at me in a way I enjoy more than I should.
"The kind who's tired of being in charge," I say.
"Jesus, Mavi."
"I know."
"So what are you going to do about it?"
I close the laptop and stretch out in the nest, pulling the heated blanket over my legs and letting my scent settle around me. An idea is forming, the details clicking into place as I start thinking about the next video I need to record.
"I have an idea."
"Oh no."
"I'm going to make something just for him, something soft, something that asks him a question he can't answer through a screen."
Noemi lets out a breath that's half laugh and half warning. "Don't tease the man too hard or he might actually come over."
I smile at the ceiling, pulling the pillow tighter against my hip. "That's what I'm hoping for."
After Noemi hangs up, I climb out of the nest and stand in front of my closet and pull out the blush set. It’s a newer version of the one he seems to like, a bralette attached to the panties by thin lace across my stomach. The panties come up much higher than the other ones, up over my hip bones, showing off the full expanse of my legs and leaving little to the imagination.
The question is whether making something this targeted for a man I've never spoken to crosses a line I should care about, and the answer is that I don't care, so the question is irrelevant.
I gently drag the lace on, my breathing kicking up a little as I anticipate him finding the notification of a new video and stopping his day to watch me. This isn’t part of my usual routine, so he probably won’t find it until tomorrow.
