Page 102 of Playing By Ear

Spent at last, Perry inched forward to ease the dildo out of himself, then collapsed onto the bed. Every muscle sighed as he stretched his limbs. He waited another minute, idly caressing himself. It was important to give his followers time to come—and then show their appreciation in tokens.

“Thanks, everyone,” he murmured finally. “Hope it was good for you, too.” He pretended to reach offscreen for his laptop. “See you next week.”

“And…show’s over,” Jamie said.

“Fuck.” Perry threw an arm over his eyes to block the studio lights, which were uncomfortably glaring, even with the sunglasses.

The door creaked open. “Sorry about the interruption.” Jamie switched on the bedside lamp and turned off the studio lights.

“S’okay.” Perry took off his sunglasses and tried to catch his breath enough for a full sentence. “I’m impressed you fixed it.”

“Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are on the same frequency, so I turned off the Wi-Fi on our devices and unplugged your microwave.”

“Microwave?”

“I wish I’d remembered before we started.” Jamie brushed a soft towel against Perry’s shoulder. “I’ll help you tidy up, and then I have very good news.”

“Seven hundred pounds?”

Standing shower-damp in his office doorway, Perry gaped at Jamie’s blurry form seated at his desk.

“Seven. Hundred. Pounds.” Jamie did a speedy spin in Perry’s office chair with each word. “£706.46, to be exact.”

“That can’t be right.” Surely Jamie had miscalculated the conversion. “How many tokens?”

“About 23,000.” Jamie stopped spinning. “They’re still worth about three pence each, aye?”

“Yes.” Perry put a hand to his own chest, his heart racing more now than it had during his session. “That’s twice as much as I’ve ever earned.” He went to stand behind the chair, peering at the laptop screen he couldn’t see. “All that from showing my face?”

“You showed a lot more than your face.” Jamie turned to him, slipping his ankles round Perry’s calves to hug his legs. “You were honest in a way I could never be with my best friend—if I had one of those—much less with a hundred strangers on the internet.”

“A hundred people were there?” Perry felt a bit dizzy. “Why? They couldn’t have known what I was planning.”

“You started with fifty viewers. Maybe each of them told a friend.” He mimed typing out a text on an invisible phone. “Like, ‘Remember that hot Scot cam boy I told you about? Turns out he’s gorgeous and blind, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, water-drops emoji.’”

“That’s incredible. I could never have done this without you.” He leaned over and kissed Jamie hard, pouring out all his swirling, conflicting emotions. Jamie returned the kiss with ardor, slipping both hands beneath the collar of Perry’s flannel dressing gown.

Suddenly the magnitude of what he’d done hit him, and Perry felt hollowed out with vulnerability. The very thing he thought would make him feel in control had done the opposite.

He had other ways, though.

Perry knelt between Jamie’s legs and reached for the zip of his jeans.

“Wait.” Jamie took hold of Perry’s wrist. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to. Don’t you want me to?”

“Aye, but—” Jamie paused. “If you were a barman and you’d just come off a long shift, I wouldn’t ask you to make me a cocktail.”

“What if I offered to make you a cocktail?”

“I’d think you were doing it to be nice.”

“Is it so bad to be nice?” Perry pulled his hand out of Jamie’s and reached to stroke him, finding the hardness he craved. “You deserve someone who’ll be good to you.”

“You’re good, full stop, and that’s why—” Jamie dragged in a shuddering breath before taking Perry’s hand off himself again. “I think it’s best we keep our sex life separate from your work life.”

“Ah.” Perry sat back on his heels, tugging his dressing gown tighter around himself. All of tonight’s verbal and monetary adulation meant nothing if Jamie rejected him. “You see me differently now.”