Three days into Mike’s new, abstinent existence, he was already starting to itch.

He hadn’t realized how much he’d come to rely on having regular access to sex. He hadn’t thought of porn as being in the same genre as sex. It was work. A perfunctory task he performed along with things like going to the grocery store and getting his tires rotated. It was analogous to how a waiter who spent all day on their feet might not consider that a workout.

But by the fourth day, his itch had developed into a full-blown rash. It’d gotten to the point where he’d started being hyperaware of how much sex was in advertisements. Every time he saw a billboard with a naked torso on it, he twitched. Plus, without work to fill his schedule, he was left with more free time than he’d had since his college days.

He did a decent job of occupying himself at first. He got reacquainted with his apartment complex’s pool. Tanning wasn’t an option, due to his freckled complexion, but it was good to get some vitamin D. He tried new protein shake recipes, and he meal-prepped enough chicken and brown rice to feed him for a week. He even delved into the depths of his Murmur Inc. email account and got to some long-overdue responses. But when all that was finished, he was still left with far too much time to sit around with his own thoughts.

This had led him to an uncomfortable realization: over the course of the past three years, his life had come to center around Murmur Inc. When he wasn’t working, he was thinking about work. He’d previously spent his free time going to the gym to keep his body in peak form and marketing himself online. He had every kind of social media there was, and he interacted with his fan base daily.

His handful of friends were also in sex work, and while they were sympathetic when they heard news of his quarantine—the sex industry’s rumor mill was one of the greatest in the world—none of them volunteered to pop by with chicken soup.

He couldn’t blame them. The last time he’d shown up for a night out, Rio had been hosting the World Cup. He detested clubbing, and that seemed to be all anyone in this town wanted to do.

Still, he needed to do something, or he was going to get cabin fever in his own apartment. He was so restless, he almost considered calling his parents. That was the definition of “desperate times.” They’d never even been to his place. He could imagine his dad’s snide remarks about how Mike had forgotten his trailer-trash roots and was too fancy for them now.

I’ll take a rain check on that particular conversation.

That wasn’t the worst result of his sabbatical, though. The more time he had to think, the more he realized how often he thought about Josh. It’d made sense before, when they were working together, or when Mike was concocting a tactful way to deliver bad news to him, but now it was getting ridiculous. He thought about him when he was cooking, and he wondered what sort of food Josh liked. He thought about him when he was getting dressed, and he remembered Josh’s terrible Christmas sweater with odd fondness. And most alarmingly, Mike thought about him before he fell asleep at night.

His musings were split into two camps. Part of him was still racked with guilt every time he thought about the situation he’d put Josh in. There was a chance Josh was never going to speak to him again after this, supported by the fact that he’d hung up on him the other day. Mike knew Josh must’ve been in shock, but he still thought it was further proof that Josh was a grade-A brat.

Another part of him, however, wanted to see Josh again so badly he ached. And not just because Josh was the last person he’d slept with before he’d been condemned to celibacy. Though that certainly played a role in it. Josh might not ever get a chance to star in one of Murmur Inc.’s blockbusters, but he’d had a starring role in Mike’s fantasies every night.

Whenever Mike closed his eyes, Josh was there. Spread out over a mattress, naked and panting and flushed. Sometimes he was on his back with his cock jutting straight up from his body, quivering and leaking. Sometimes he was on his stomach with his legs spread wide enough for Mike to kneel between them, whimpering while Mike fingered him into a quivering mess. But most of the time, Mike’s fantasies took advantage of Josh’s light build and had Josh straddling him, riding Mike’s cock while his thighs flexed and his back arched, moaning and crying out and shaking when he—

Mike, who had been in the process of scrubbing his already-pristine kitchen counters, dropped the sponge with an exasperated sigh. He was wearing sweatpants, thank God, because for the third time that day alone, he was hard. Fuck. If he kept masturbating at this rate, he was going to give himself a friction burn.

He took a deep breath, picked the sponge back up, and willed his erection to go away. It worked. For one whole minute. Then Josh sprang back into his thoughts, and the cycle began anew.

“What is it about him?” he asked his empty apartment.

It was a question that had plagued him from pretty much the moment they’d met. The more he interacted with Josh, the more he thought he was zeroing in on an answer. Ever since the HIV scare, Mike had learned something new about the blond-haired center of his attention. He’d learned Josh was steady in a crisis—or at least, as steady as could be expected—and that he was not above brushing Mike off.

There had been a part of Mike that had hoped they’d bond over their mutual worries in the time between now and when they got tested, but he hadn’t heard a peep from Josh since their phone call. He could only pray the very experience that he’d hoped would bring them together wasn’t about to drive them further apart.

That might be another part of why he couldn’t get Josh out of his head. It’d been a long time since Mike had gotten rejected. Not since he started working out in high school and got the confidence to match his new body. Plus, he’d never been rejected by someone who’d seen his dick. Josh was full of surprises.

“You’re acting like a lovesick puppy,” he muttered to himself as he washed off his hands and dried them on a kitchen towel.

Something had to give. All this pining with no action behind it wasn’t his style. If he were certain Josh wasn’t pissed at him, he’d call him up and ask him out again. But the ball was in Josh’s court, and so Mike was stranded on Lovewreck Island until Josh made a move.

Doesn’t mean you gotta stay home and sit by the phone. You still have your pride, Harwood. You’re not gonna wait around for some guy. Get off your ass and find a good use for your time.

With a sigh, he finished up in the kitchen and climbed the spiral staircase leading up to the loft. There, his little home office awaited him. He sunk into his squishy office chair, fired up his desktop, and opened a multi-tab browser window that had all his usual sites ready and waiting.

Mike had majored in marketing in college, before he’d ever given porn a shot. Once upon a time, he’d had dreams of going into advertising. Now, he used his social-media savvy to ensure his new head shots got at least a thousand likes on Instagram.

It’s funny how life works out.

Mike had already hit his marketing goals for the day, but he burned an hour going through new Facebook likes and comments. He had some threads going on Murmur Inc.’s Facebook, but there was also his personal page to peruse.

When that was finished, he moved on to the task he’d been dreading: checking his voice mail. He’d gotten several phone calls from people he’d performed with pre-Nickiegate. He was willing to bet Colette had delivered the news to them, and they weren’t taking it as well as Josh had. What happened to good old-fashioned killing the messenger? Why’d they have to blame him?

Sure enough, three of the voice mails were from Aaron Cooper, a gay-for-pay straight guy that Mike had done a barebacking scene with. And he was not happy. Mike hadn’t heard that many gay slurs since the last time he’d been in a locker room.

Mike deleted the voice mail halfway through, listened to the rest, and did the same. Then he moved on with his life. There was nothing else he could do. If an edge of guilt still gnawed at him, it was overshadowed by how many of his own worries he had to deal with.

When he’d checked everything he could check, he navigated to Murmur Inc.’s website. He wanted to see what new faces Colette had gotten to fill in while a chunk of her usual roster was out of commission.

Sure enough, when the homepage loaded, there was a big flash banner at the top announcing the arrival of Murmur Inc.’s newest stars. Several of them were faces Mike recognized from the most recent orientations. Others must have been bandage hires, because he’d never seen them around and their head shots weren’t up to Colette’s usual quality standards.

Mike scanned the list twice, looking for one face in particular, and frowned. Josh was absent from the lineup.

Did he already quit? I remember he talked about it, but I didn’t think he’d just . . . disappear.

Mike’s stomach sank. Even if Josh had quit, his videos should still be up. Colette would never throw out good footage, and porn stars quit all the time. Had Josh asked that she take them down? If he’d made a piteous enough case, she might have taken the loss. Mike knew of a couple of occasions where a shooting star had begged for their footage to never hit the internet, and Colette had obliged. Her frozen CEO heart was capable of bleeding.

Why would Josh do that, though? Mike supposed it was none of his business. If that was the decision Josh had made, it was his own. There was something unsettling, however, about having every trace of their time together erased. Mike had planned on watching their videos. For research, of course.

Liar.

He gave himself a small shake, trying to dispel the ennui that had crept over him. If Josh’s videos were gone, and he’d quit Murmur Inc., there was nothing left tying them together. Josh could ghost him, and that would be the end of that. It’d be like they’d never met at all. The disappointment that seeped into Mike was so cold it burned.

Jesus. When had he gotten so damn maudlin?

He forced himself to move on, checking the announcements on the front page and the new releases. Several big summer blowouts were available, including a few Mike wanted to see: Lesbian Vampire Strippers, My Best Friend’s Boyfriend, and Heat Wave. All of them promised to be huge hits.

There were a couple of his own new releases on the site as well. He watched the teasers for them with mild interest. Most people who worked in film claimed that it was always an experience to see themselves how the camera saw them, but that wasn’t the case for Mike. When he filmed a scene, the majority of his mannerisms were affected. He did whatever looked good on camera, and after three years, he had it down to a science.

He checked the time. He’d only managed to kill two hours. With a sigh, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and placed it on the desk next to his wireless keyboard. If anyone else called him to throw a fit, he might answer out of sheer boredom.

There were plenty of parts of Murmur Inc.’s site that he never ventured on. He could take a tour while he had time to kill. He clicked on the Live Cam portion of the website first. Despite some obvious resemblances, porn and cam acting were so different, Mike avoided the live streams. Didn’t want to pick up on any bad habits. It’d be like asking a mime to teach him to juggle—similar, but not the same thing. Though he supposed it couldn’t hurt this once.

In fact, it might do him some good to see how his fellow sex workers earned their keep. A handful of the channels had free general chats where prospective clients could talk with the stars before deciding to buy a private show.

When the page loaded, the most popular cam girls popped up front and center. Their channels featured photos of them in obscene poses with brief biographies. Mike recognized a few of the big names in the industry, but he’d never worked with any of them.

He spent a minute or two scrolling through the available women’s channels before toggling over to the other gender options. He selected men and then checked his phone while the new page loaded. He had a handful of Facebook notifications and a Snapchat from another male porn star. Nothing of real interest.

The site loaded, and Mike glanced at it. For a second, he didn’t process what he was seeing. Then understanding crystalized in his brain.

There were three new male webcam models, and one of them looked decidedly familiar.

Mike stared open-mouthed at a memorable photo of a clean-cut blond man standing next to a horse. And not just because it was an unusual choice for a cam model’s cover photo. Josh would have stood out in the sea of shirtless, ripped men even if Mike hadn’t recognized him.

Colette must not have had time to take head shots of him, or maybe she’d decided to roll with the wholesome, shined-shoes Americana thing he had going on. Now that Mike was looking at the photo again, he remembered it was what had first attracted him to Josh. There was something so pure about it, so guileless. If that was Colette’s marketing angle, it wasn’t a bad one. Plenty of people went for that whole boy-next-door thing.

Yeah, people like you.

This answered some of Mike’s questions. If Josh had chosen to go into cam work instead of porn, then his absence from the main website made sense. A newbie couldn’t try to corner both the porn and cam markets at the same time. It split their focus, and clients didn’t tend to cross from one to the other, so his fan base would get split as well.

It raised some questions too, though. Cam stars didn’t work from location like porn stars did, or from the office like the phone sex operators. They could work from anywhere. Josh might be the only one on Murmur Inc.’s page who was from LA, which made it strange that Mike could see him at all. Cam stars had the ability to block viewers by geographic location. The smart ones blocked their entire home cities so no one they knew would stumble upon them by accident.

Why then was Josh—

Mike didn’t finish that thought. “Fucking newbie.”

He scrubbed a hand down his face. Of course, Josh was too green to block the city where he lived. He might not even know that was an option. Colette would have explained it to him, or at least given him some info packets describing how to use the feature, but Mike would bet money Josh hadn’t thought it was necessary. Of all the irresponsible, reckless—

He took a breath.

He forced his eyes away from the photo to the name of Josh’s channel. It said it starred Bret Monty. So, Dick Reams had gotten the ax. Thank God. Mike suspected that was Colette’s handiwork. She’d done it at the right time too. If Josh had gone public with his other name, he would have been stuck with it. Since he was new, he could still do things like switch names and mediums without losing all brand recognition.

So, the moral of the story here is Josh is still with Murmur Inc. He’s become a cam star.

Mike’s eyes drifted to the green “live” light next to Josh’s channel, indicating that he was online right now. If Mike wanted to, he could see him again without having to leave his home.

The mouse was in Mike’s hand before he could think about it. His computer had the room up and loaded in seconds, but it felt like a lifetime. A screen popped up, displaying the camera feed and the chat box where clients could chat with the star and each other.

Sure enough, that was Josh.

He was smiling—bright, white, and wide—and for a moment, the sight of his unguarded expression stunned Mike. Josh’s mouth moved, and Mike realized his sound was off. He scrambled to turn up his speakers just in time to hear Josh say something.

“Yeah, I’m from LA. I’ve never lived anywhere else.”

He must have been responding to a client’s question. Mike checked the chat box. There were thirteen users in the channel, and several of them were shooting rapid-fire questions at Josh—or Bret. Personal ones.

“Damn it, Josh,” Mike muttered. “You’re not supposed to give away information about yourself.”

Mike typed that into the comment box and hit Send. Josh was oscillating between reading the messages and looking into the camera. Mike watched his eyes dart down to the chat, and a little frown worked its way onto his brow.

Did he read my message?

“Oops,” Josh said. “Sorry guys, I just remembered I can’t answer certain questions about myself. You can ask me other things, though.”

That confirmed it. Man, it felt good to talk to Josh again, even if it was anonymous.

Of course, the predators in the channel were none-too-thrilled by Mike’s interference. Comments poured in.

Let Bret tell us what he wants.

What are you, his mom?

Spoil sport. :P

“Fucking creeps.” Mike sat back and ran a hand through his hair. Speaking of creeps, what the hell was he doing?

You’re looking out for him. And good thing too. Knowing Josh, he probably would have told these guys his social security number, if they asked.

It still felt weird. Here he was, watching Josh same as the rest of the clients. Or potential clients, as it were. None of them had paid for a private show from Josh yet, or he’d have gone offline. Josh would have to entice them into it. Most of the cam stars put on mini-shows, like stripteases or small sex acts. The thought made Mike go from irritated to turned on in a flash.

Watching Josh on the cam, he understood why Colette had chosen such an organic cover photo for him. He was sitting there, relaxed and natural, in a tiny room that was probably his bedroom. He hadn’t even put on sexy clothes. Just jeans and a T-shirt that somehow looked flawless on him. Hell, his hair was wet, like he’d recently gotten out of the shower.

A hard-core porn consumer would think Josh was a genius. He had not-trying-too-hard nailed to the wall. But that was the funny thing. Mike knew he genuinely wasn’t trying. This wasn’t Josh putting on a brilliant show of being natural. This was him having no clue what he was doing. And it worked. It especially worked on Mike, who was watching a bead of water slide down his temple like it was rapturous.

Judging by the comments, the other people in the channel were eating it up too.

ur so hott

Did u just get out of the shower?

tell us more baby

Mike watched the comments stream by for a moment, half listening to Josh’s responses, before peering at what he could see of the room behind Josh. There was a TWENTY ØNE PILØTS poster by Josh’s head, a pile of dirty laundry on the floor, and peeling paint on the walls. Mike could also see the corner of a stack of books that looked like textbooks. Josh had never mentioned school, but he was twenty-one. It was possible he was enrolled in college, or he’d at least completed some of it.

A lot of cam stars had separate spaces that they used for work. Josh wasn’t slick enough for something like that, but he could be in a friend or roommate’s room. Though the room felt like him, somehow. The things in it—the bands and the books and the laundry—seemed like things he would own. If this was his room, and these were his belongings, then Mike had gotten his first inside peek at Josh’s home life. Mike had a sudden, burning desire to know for sure.

His fingers were on the keyboard in an instant.

Is this your bedroom, Bret?

To everyone in the chat room, including Josh, it would sound like another suggestive message. And indeed, that was precisely how it was received.

“Yeah.” Josh grinned. “In all its glory. Pardon the mess.”

That inspired a slew of comments that even Mike found obscene about what sorts of messes Josh made in his room. A strange emotion swirled in his stomach as he watched all the anonymous people clamoring for Josh’s attention.

For a horrifying second, he thought it was jealousy, but the more he probed at it, the more he realized it was deeper than that. He didn’t care that other men were talking to Josh. Josh was working, same as Mike did. They all had bills to pay, and if these chat room guys wanted to pay them, so be it.

It was more . . . the way Josh looked. So serene and laid-back. His inexperience couldn’t be more obvious, but he still seemed a hundred percent comfortable. Way more comfortable than he’d ever seemed when he was filming porn. With Mike.

That was it. Understanding settled on Mike like cold sweat. That was what was bothering him. When they’d filmed together, Josh had been a jittery mess. He’d never been at ease, even when they were fucking. Mike had made a lot of mistakes with Josh. He’d recognized that almost immediately, and he’d done his best to atone for it. But the biggest one he’d made was thinking Josh wasn’t cut out for this business. He was. He just wasn’t cut out for porn.

It seemed Mike’s time would have been better spent not mentoring him on how to be a porn star, but how to be in this business in general. And how to block your own damn city from getting your channel.

There was also a special irony to the fact that Mike had schooled Josh on professionalism and separating business from pleasure, when here he was, in Josh’s channel, being decidedly unprofessional.

It was becoming harder and harder to tell himself that he didn’t have it bad for this guy.

His phone found its way into his hand before his brain registered the movement. He found Josh’s name in his contacts and stared at it as a plan solidified in his head.

Before he let himself like Josh—for real like him, no denying it or acting like he was doing his job—he had to know if Josh shared so much as an inkling of his feelings.

It was a long shot, but he had an idea that might allow him to find out.

Josh had hung up on him the last time they’d spoken. If Mike called him right now, even Josh wasn’t inexperienced enough to answer the phone during a session. But what if Mike texted him? If Josh’s phone was near him, Mike might get to see, in real time, how Josh reacted to getting an unexpected text from him. The thought made him salivate.

This is beyond creepy, Michael Harwood.

I know, he answered his own mental voice, but I have to know.

He composed a simple text message, asking how Josh was doing. He seldom used emojis, but Josh seemed like the sort of person who would like them, and so he tagged a winking face onto the end and hit Send.

Not three seconds later, Josh paused after answering a question and reached into his pocket. His hand reappeared with his phone clutched between long fingers.

Mike held his breath. He leaned forward in his chair and watched as Josh’s green eyes roved over the single line of text. And then, like a golden dawn sweeping over a grassy knoll, Josh’s face broke out into a smile.

Not just any smile either. Possibly the most beautiful smile Mike had ever seen. Soft and damn near radiant. Mike wasn’t the poetic sort, but he could write a verse or two about the look on Josh’s face. It . . .

Well, fuck. If Mike didn’t know any better, he’d say it looked a little bit like love.

It was gone in an instant, a candle flame flickering out. Josh put his phone back in his pocket without answering. Mike experienced a brief twinge of rejection, but it wasn’t as if Josh could respond while he was working. The clients in the chat room were already commenting about him checking his phone at all. Mike would have to be patient and see if he responded to him later.

It occurred to Mike that in all this time, no one had paid for a private show with Josh. That wasn’t unheard of, but Josh was also doing nothing to draw them in. Cam channels weren’t meant to be like interviews. The clients had only been entertained this far because Josh was new, and they wanted to know about him. When Josh failed to do anything more interesting than sit there, they’d get bored and move on.

Mike knew from his handful of friends who did cam work that Murmur Inc. gave cam stars a base pay, but it was a pittance. If Josh was going to make any money, he’d need to learn the ropes. And he needed to make money to keep Colette from firing him. All her employees had goals and metrics they were held accountable to. She wouldn’t keep paying Josh to run a free channel that never landed any clients.

Mike was done being a pseudo-mentor to Josh, but there was one surefire way he could still help him. He could get him off the ground and keep Colette off his back. At least, until Josh figured things out for himself. Which he was sure to do, judging by what a natural he seemed to be.

Mike pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and took out his credit card. If he was going to be a creep, he was going to do it thoroughly.