TwistyTrader, your post violates forum decorum and Sherwood Forest Stock Market Board’s TOS. I have removed your post, and your account will remain on moderated status for fourteen days. All your posts and replies will have to be approved by a moderator before they appear on the site.
This is your fifth violation in the last three weeks. If you violate community standards again during this moderated period, we will terminate your account. Capiche?
Colleen finished typing in the direct-message box and stabbed the Enter button with her finger to send it.
A green bubble with her message appeared on her computer screen, and her shoulders sagged.
Disciplining forum members was the worst, the absolute worst. She silently screamed and shivered with the ickiness of it, but her apartment’s walls were too thin and it was too late at night for her to indulge in a real response.
She popped open a different window for the moderators’ group chat and typed, TwistyTrader was up to no good tonight. Had to put him on moderation. She uploaded screenshots of the data collection form he’d posted in their chat.
Puking emojis and gifs filled the chat window, followed by messages of support.
You get him, QueenMod. The Killer Whale King needs to be taken down a peg.
Heh heh. You said peg.
OMG stahp, @ModOMatic. You aren’t 13 yo anyho.
Heh heh. You said ho.
Laughing emojis and eyeroll gifs filled the chat.
A separate chat box leaped onto her computer screen.
PikachuMod typed, Good for you. Take that sucker down. How you are holding up?
Colleen smiled. Her fingers flew over her keyboard. Fine. Tired bc early day at work. I think I’ve been awake for 20 hours straight. How you?
The cursor blinked for a few seconds before PikachuMod, whose real name was Anjali, typed, Why you still up? Go to bed!
Didn’t mean to stay up this late. I just jumped on the boards bc gotta protect the n00bs. I swear TT and the other Killer Whales *wait* for us to all go to bed and then start scamming the tenderfeet. Why are you still up?
Crammin’ for exams, as always. Life of an Indian university student.
It’s summer! Colleen typed.
Taking a seminar over the 5-week semester. TG it’s the last week. Let’s go out Fri pm!
Colleen fast-forwarded her work schedule through her bleary mind. I get off work at 9 on Fri.
Perfectamundo. I’ll tell Sally and Rita to meet us. See you at Sharkeys.
Sharkeys had cheap beer and no cover for girls, so Colleen could probably afford one drink if she went out with her friends. Okay, sure.
You need a date, yah. You need a boyfriend. You need to get laid. Sharkeys is where you will meet someone and get a boyfriend.
Colleen rolled her eyes. I am perfectly happy how I am, and I certainly don’t need anyone setting me up with yous guys’ leftovers.
Not our leftovers. Some new and magnificent tall dark and handsome who will be the perfect nice guy after your string of losers.
They weren’t—
Colleen stopped typing before she hit send. No use lying to protect the egos of losers who weren’t even around. She backspaced over her words.
Instead, she wrote, I am just fine as I am. Statistically, unmarried women are the happiest people with the highest life satisfaction. Why would I want to trade that for some douche who would make me less happy, statistically speaking?
More words appeared in their chat bubble. No. Outlier bias. 50% of marriages end in divorce, and women initiate divorces 80% of the time. That means that 40% of married women are so unhappy that they are going to divorce.
She scoffed at Anjali’s words on her computer screen. You are not helping your case.
No, no, no, Colleen. What I mean is that those 40% are dragging the numbers down. The other 60% who stay married must be so incredibly happy that their statistics must be the very top. They must be very perfect numbers. You know what all the numbers mean. I don’t have to tell you.
Numbers flowed in Colleen’s head as waves of fluorescent points on a biphasic graph. She capitulated, Yeah, it does make sense that if there’s a subpopulation of very unhappy married women at the bottom of the graph, that the remainder must be farther up on the happiness scale to have the average come out like that.
Yes, that is right. That slimeball Chad broke up with you six months ago. That is why you need a boyfriend and a husband.
OH YE GODS ANJALI. No one said anything about husbands!
The words appearing on Colleen’s screen were so prim that she could hear the smug all the way from Anjali’s dorm room several miles away. I can get married any time I want to if I ask my aunties to arrange me, but I worry about you and our other friends who have no recourse if you don’t find a love match. It’s so insecure.
Giggles burbled up in Colleen’s chest as she read Anjali’s chat message. They’d had this debate a thousand times. I assure you that I’m absolutely fine. I don’t want a boyfriend, and I *really* don’t want a husband, maybe ever. I’m trying to get my life together, and I don’t want the distraction of guys right now.
Yes, well, if you come back to college, I can ask my aunties if they can arrange you if you want it. Indian husbands are very good, you know. They will not leave you. And if you finish your degree in finance and computer science, I feel sure we could get you a doctor or an engineer.
Colleen was laughing her head off, though silently because her neighbors and her neighbors’ kids must be asleep. Anjali, sweetie, you remember I’m not Indian, right? Wouldn’t your aunties balk at the fact I’m a quarter Scottish and some Lebanese and a little German and part Greek?
Pah, Anjali wrote, you could look Indian. Your hair is dark enough. Everyone looks different in India, anyway. We’ll just tell your suitors that you’re Kashmiri and put brown highlights in your hair like the Bollywood stars.
Ya don’t think it’s going to be a problem eventually? Colleen asked, bantering back because, even though this conversation was absurd, Anjali might not be kidding. She wasn’t the absurd-humor type.
Pah. I will teach you how to dum an aloo, and no one will even ask if you are really Kashmiri or not.
I would like to learn how to make Kashmiri dum aloo, Colleen wrote. Just the thought of the golden-fried baby potatoes baked in spicy cream sauce was making her mouth water.
In another chat window, the small dot indicating TwistyTrader’s attention fell below Colleen’s message.
Colleen typed to Anjali, Damn, TwistyTrader just saw my message. And so it begins.
You stand your ground, Anjali said. Any one of us would have kicked TT for putting up that form. We should have banhammered him months ago. You be firm with him. We have your back.
KK, thanks, she wrote and waited for TwistyTrader’s response while sipping from her water bottle, positive that it was going to be something infuriating. That jerk got away with more violations than anyone else on the Sherwood Forest forums.
She clicked out of her other chat windows so she could concentrate.
He wasn’t a bad guy. He was just . . . twisty.
In TwistyTrader’s chat box on her computer screen, a blue box blinked into view below her green one. Oh, come now, @QueenMod. It was just a hypothetical situation, and people were actively replying to it. No one was hurt. No dick pics were posted.
And there it was, just a suggestion of something lascivious that, for all Anjali’s denials, somehow made the other mods start simpering like a Korean boy band had strolled into the building.
Colleen took a deep breath and metaphorically girded her virtual loins. Look, TwistyTrader, we don’t allow short squeeze coordination or any other methods of manipulating the stock market. The Sherwood Forest forums are dedicated to educating individuals about how to trade stocks and other legal commodities, plus high-level discussions of trends and influences, but not scamming. Head over to the Warrior Forum if you want to scam people. We protect our members here.
She sent that DM with another harsh poke on the Enter key. Dang, this guy. Sherwood Forest had a few questionable traders that the mods kept an eye on. TwistyTrader was at the head of that list.
A green bubble with her message appeared.
And then her computer started ringing with a video call.
Oh, crap. He was video calling her.
She’d never had a forum member videocall her about being moderated before. Colleen stuck her tongue out and made a gagging sound as she reached behind her chair to flip on a bright backlight.
Turning on video calling for the mods had been a bad idea that she’d campaigned against, but efficiency had won. Stupid efficiency. Yelling at guys like TwistyTrader over a videocall was faster than typing out all the reasons why they were so very wrong, but Colleen would rather have typed it out.
Colleen dragged a semi-sheer length of rosy beige chiffon over her head and settled the golden jewelry-weight chains sewn under the fabric over her head and nose. The fake-gold chains kind of resembled the golden strands Anjali wore from her earrings to her nose piercing when she performed classical Indian dance, but Colleen’s face-necklace had additional delicate chains that formed metallic lace over her forehead and the lower half of her face. The veil was part of a Bene Gesserit cosplay costume from the science fiction convention DevilCon a few years ago, back when she’d had the money for cosplay costumes. Still, it would suffice to hide her face during this stupid videocall and preserve her anonymity.
Maybe she could sell the costume. It was a really good cosplay costume, and somebody might pay a hundred dollars or more for it.
Huh. An extra hundred bucks would relieve some of her financial pressure, at least for a month.
She combed the web of chains over her nose and mouth to disguise herself.
Sherwood Forest was an anonymous forum, and stiff rules about privacy kept the mods and traders from being doxed. No one wanted somebody who made a bad trade or got into a forum fight to take revenge by dumping a moderator’s personal information onto the internet, whether it was their social security number, accounts and passwords, or home address.
So the rules were clear and absolute.
No real names.
No identifying info.
No unmasked calls.
Zero tolerance on doxing, swindling, and dick pics. Instant ISP banhammer forever.
Colleen tapped an app on her screen to record the call and then answered the ringing phone icon, making her voice brisk, businesslike, and a little lower for good measure. “TwistyTrader is calling QueenMod at,” she noted the date and time. “The audio and video of this call are being recorded for both our security. How can I help you today?”
TwistyTrader’s video window popped open on her computer. He was heavily backlit as well, just a silhouette with broad shoulders and slivers of light glimmering on the waves of his hair.
His voice was so deep that it sounded like the echoes of a cave that led to the underworld. “Hello, QueenMod. I called to discuss the moderation on my account.”
Jesus, Lord Almighty, TwistyTrader had a crisp English accent.
A tickle trailed up her spine like someone running their fingers over the skin on the back of her neck. The richness of his voice and British accent made her face warm behind the gauze of her veil, and she clutched her computer mouse more tightly. The grit in his voice rumbling deep in his throat was disconcertingly sexy, like he might growl in her ear.
This was ridiculous.
Colleen didn’t have a thing for guys with English accents. She didn’t. It was a fluke that ninety percent of the actors and musicians she liked were English, plus that one Welsh guy who had attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Whether it was the naughty little devil on TV with the charming British accent, a green-eyed Asgardian prince (sort of) full of mischief, the British superspy, or that guy who totally should have been cast as the British superspy but was robbed of the part, all those guys were just amazing actors and totally not part of a pattern. Random chance formed clusters that meant absolutely nothing but looked like they did, and that’s why she’d learned about p-values and other statistical methods in her computer science and finance classes. Her total simping over any man with an English accent meant absolutely nothing.
And yet, she leaned forward at the deep, rich timbre of his voice. “You can’t appeal being on moderation.”
“I’m not a noob,” he said. Every one of his vowels was dark and round in his mouth, and the cadence of his speech just seemed like an indolent nobleman looking a serving wench up and down before he took a sip of wine. “I’m a valuable forum member who participates and educates the less-experienced members. Delaying my posts is overkill.”
About half the people on the Sherwood Forest forums were professional stock traders working for hedge funds or financial services companies. The other half were squeakers playing roulette with their college tuition loan money or near-retirees rolling the dice to boost their 401Ks that last couple hundred grand so they could quit working.
But TwistyTrader was one of the pros.
She said, “I understand, but the ruling is final. Two other moderators agreed that your post constituted a solicitation to coordinate a short squeeze on GameShack stock, which is not allowed under our rules. The post has been deleted, and your account will be moderated for fourteen days.”
“It wasn’t a solicitation,” he drawled.
“It totally was.” The chainmail lace on the lower half of her face tickled her lips as she spoke like they were plumped up and oversensitive. “You asked people to fill out a form to contact them for off-site coordination. That also violates our anonymity rules.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it.” A smile lightened his voice. “I have a blue check. I’m a verified whale-level trader. I don’t need to scam small traders to make money.”
Sherwood Forest’s one concession to security over anonymity was the trader verification system, because otherwise, any maternal basement dweller and their snoring Rottweiler could’ve claimed to be trading on the Wall Street floor for Goldman Sachs. Whale-level status was the highest verified level. It also meant TwistyTrader was admitted to the secret Moby Room, where the income levels were best expressed with double-digit exponents. “Yeah, I know.”
“I’m not one of the killer whales, picking off the minnows and sea bass for my own amusement.”
Four of the whale-level traders on the forum had been nicknamed the killer whales by the mods. The killer whales were jerks who fleeced small-time traders, like dropping hints that a stock was about to rise when the company was going to declare bankruptcy the following week.
Some gullible forum members had lost thousands on their poison tips.
A few traders had made bank assuming everything the killer whales said was reverse psychology, including Colleen. She’d paid off half her student loans from her unfinished degree by assuming everything they said was in bad faith. “The killer whales bankrupt minnows for fun.”
TwistyTrader sighed, his shadowed shoulders that stretched beyond the sides of his office chair rising and falling as his breath whispered from her speakers and feathered her ears. “The killer whales are psychopaths and enjoy hurting people. They’re successful, yes, but I don’t know why the mods haven’t kicked them off the forum yet. I’ve met a lot of people like the killer whale group in the finance industry. I’m not a sadist, and I’m not scamming. I don’t want you to think I am.”
“I’m not taking you off moderated status, TwistyTrader.”
“Call me Twist.”
“Fine, Twist, but it doesn’t matter what your motivation was. You can’t coordinate short squeezes on our forums. That’s market manipulation. It’s against the law. If the Securities and Exchange Commission starts sniffing around, we’ll go down in flames. People go to jail for stuff like that, and we moderators would probably be in the first wave of people they took down.”
Twist was leaning on one of the arms of his chair, and the silhouette of his head nodded. “It must be difficult, refereeing all these people who are out to make a quick buck any way they can.”
Colleen drew a breath, relieved that he understood. “I understand that people want to make money, but some of those strategies are illegal. I don’t want to go to jail because some jerk I’ve never met, and probably don’t even like, decided it would be fun to skirt the law. And this is a volunteer gig. I don’t even get paid to herd these cats.”
Twist was chuckling by the time she finished talking. “And yet you put so much time into it. From your posts, it’s obvious you have significant knowledge in the fields of both computer science and finance. From your voice, I’d guess you’re young. Midtwenties, perhaps?”
Twenty-three. “That’s personal information. It’s against forum rules to ask.”
“Right. You could be working for a major Wall Street firm or have your own clientele. But since you’re a Sherwood Forest moderator, you can’t be employed in the field. Sherwood’s neutrality rules forbid it.”
When he said forbid, his British accent seemed more pronounced. “Yeah, I’m not working in the field.”
“Are you still at university?”
At university. The crisp Briticisms peppering Twist’s speech drew her attention like flashes of light. “No, I’m not in college. Where are you from?”
Twist chuckled again, but his laugh sounded like she’d said something dirty. “Personal information.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It must be difficult, adhering to all the forum’s rules and keeping those naughty traders in line.”
The way he whispered naughty traders sounded dirty. “Yeah, naughty.”
“And yet a beautiful woman like yourself offers herself up as a volunteer for hours every day.”
Beautiful? She wasn’t, but he shouldn’t know whether she was or not. “You can’t see me.”
“That’s an interesting veil you’re wearing. The jewelry underneath suggests you participate in the lifestyle.”
The lifestyle? He must have recognized her Bene Gesserit witch costume from Frank Herbert’s science fiction book and the movie Dune, and the lifestyle must mean nerd culture, and she did participate. Colleen geeked out about science fiction at every opportunity. “Um, sure.”
“I can see the curve of your cheek through your veil from the backlight, and your voice is as sweet as caramel.”
“That’s not—I don’t think—that’s not really seeing me.”
Twist continued, “And I see what you write on the forum, kindly instructing people, keeping the newbies safe, helping people set up trading accounts, and warning them off taking advice from the killer whales.”
She squirmed in her chair at the unsolicited praise. “Anybody would do that.”
“Nobody else does. Your reverse-condor tutorial is literally impeccable. I think you’re beautiful.”
The way he said literally was perfectly British: LIT-trill-ee.
The American pronunciation, LITTER-uh-lee, would always be inferior in her head now.
LIT-trill-ee.
Maybe she could weave the word aluminum into the conversation.
Or Detective.
Light dawned inside her head. “Oh, you’re just saying that. I mean, thanks for the benefit of the doubt, I guess. But you’ve never seen me. And you can stop complimenting me. I can’t take the moderation off your account now that it’s on, no matter how much you butter me up.”
His low chuckle sounded like it could have come out of the dark in a bedroom. “I haven’t begun to ‘butter you up.’ Let’s stop talking about the account moderation. It doesn’t interest me anymore.”
“Well, I see you trying to save the starfish, too.” On the stock market forum, starfish were below minnows, bottom-dwelling creatures who sometimes got themselves stranded on the beach and had to be rescued, the opposite end of the income scale from the killer whales. “The other mods think you’re covering the killer whales’ butts by giving contrarian advice. They call you the Killer Whale King.”
He chuckled and then asked, “What do you think of me?”
Colleen sighed. “I think you’re usually on the side of the angels, but finance and stock trading are dirty business.”
“Yes,” he said. “So dirty.”
That drop in his voice sounded made it seem as though he liked the word dirty, and he spoke so slowly that he nearly paused between his words.
Colleen continued, “But no one knows for sure. I mean, your forum name is TwistyTrader. Everything you say seems to mean one thing but might mean something else. Everything you say might just be contrarian advice meant to invoke plausible deniability.”
He lifted one shoulder as he laughed softly again. “I suppose it could seem that way.”
“Like when you said dirty—”
Oops.
Twist’s silhouette lifted his head. “Yes?”
Oh, wow. His voice had made that low growl again. “It just seems like you could have meant anything by it.”
His head tilted to the side. “It could have seemed that way.”
“What—um—what did you mean by it?”
“I just meant that the trading world, like the lifestyle, can be—dirty.”
Oh, God. That growl. Colleen could barely breathe.
He continued, “Forums can be dirty. And texting can be dirty. Even phone calls can be . . . dirty.”
The descending timbre of his voice sent shivers over her shoulders and down her arms.
Colleen leaned forward and rested her arms on her desk, still silhouetted by the lamp and tented with the flowing tan gauze. “How dirty?”
On her monitor, the glimmers of light on Twist’s hair moved on her dark screen. His haloed outline faced the camera. His voice was lower, quieter, and deliberate. “You can turn off the video recording if you want to, or you can leave it on.”
Colleen scrambled and clicked off the red button on the recording app. “It’s off.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“Are you recording this?” she asked.
“No. Do you want me to?”
“No.”
“Then I won’t.”
“How do I know you’re not?”
A hint of smiling lilted in his deep voice. “You’ll have to trust me.”
Oh, this was a spectacularly bad idea.
He continued, “It must be difficult, herding cats at the forum and having to be in charge all the time.”
“Yes.” Her voice was a little breathless.
Twist asked, “Wouldn’t it be nice if someone else were in charge for a few minutes, and you could just do as you were told?” This time, she was sure he growled deep in his throat. “Wouldn’t you like to be a good little girl and do everything I tell you to?”
Yes. Yes, she would. “I’m not a little girl.”
He paused. The tone in his voice was harder, more biting. “How old are you?”
Yeah, on the internet, anyone could be anything. “What, are you worried that I’m really forty?”
“There’s nothing wrong with forty. I’m worried you’re fourteen.”
“I’m twenty-three.”
“My lower limit is usually twenty-five, but the Bloody Mary I had with breakfast is telling me to make an exception. But prove it.”
“Prove what?”
“That you’re at least twenty-three years old. Whilst I might make an exception for a twenty-three-year-old, I won’t for someone not of the US legal drinking age.”
Whilst. He’d said whilst. Wow, that was so British.
“Now, my dear QueenMod, how old are you?”
“Forum privacy rules, dude, and I don’t even know what we’re talking about here.”
His voice drifted, becoming quieter, but the bar indicating Twist’s microphone volume increased on her computer screen. His sultry whisper vibrated in the air around her. “Be a good girl and prove to me that you’re twenty-three. I’ll tell you exactly what I want you to do and make you feel so good.”
Colleen’s phone sitting beside her keyboard showed that it was just after two o’clock in the morning. Darkness filled the rest of her tiny apartment, save for the lamp aiming warm light at the back of her head and the glow from the massive monitor on her desk. Sitting in her office chair, her back ached from opening the store at ten that morning and carrying boxes full of gaming equipment and paraphernalia for hours while doing inventory.
Her eyes were swimming with exhaustion.
Talking with Anjali had reminded her that it had been months since she’d had a boyfriend in her life.
And she’d had a glass of wine for supper when she’d gotten back to her apartment to calm herself down before sitting down to moderate the Sherwood Forest forum. Most nights, that one glass of cheap wine was all that stood between the killer whales and her banhammer.
So, yeah. Colleen was exhausted and overwhelmed and a little tipsy at two o’clock in the dark morning.
That’s what she would tell herself later, that she’d not been in her usual frame of mind, that she’d been smashed.
Colleen said, “I’ll get my driver’s license.”
She clicked off her video camera because she didn’t want to take a chance that Twist would screencap a glimpse of her license in her hand, blow it up, and be able to see her address or something. She dragged the veil off her head, the chain lace ruffling her hair. With some scissors and a few Post-it Notes, she fashioned tiny pink bars and pressed them on her license over her real name except for the C at the beginning, her birthday except for the year, other identifying info, and her home address.
The red heart signifying that she was an organ donor was still visible, as was the name of her state at the top, part of the identifying number, and her height and weight and stuff. The weight was more of a goal, anyway, as everyone knew. The bar covering the address didn’t cover her zip code, but that was the zip for Southwestern State University. Fifty thousand students and sundry drop-outs like herself lived in the dorms and off-campus apartments in that zip code.
After a second of deliberation, she also pasted a pink box over the two codes that said Bro, indicating that her hair and eyes were brown. This wasn’t Tinder. Twist didn’t need to know anything more about Colleen than her age.
Finally, she pasted a pink bar over her eyes like she was on a true-crime TV show, and that scrap of paper would preserve her anonymity.
Hey, it was worth a shot.
She flipped the chiffon veil back over her face, straightened the slim chains, and turned her computer’s camera back on, holding the little card beside her veiled face and then zooming it closer to the camera so Twist could see.
On her darkened screen, Twist leaned in, and the light from his computer screen drew pale-blue lines over the hard slashes of his cheekbones and jaw. The dim streaks looked like a comic book sketch of a superhero, maybe Superman or Batman.
Or Iron Man. Colleen was more of a Marvel girl than a DC stan.
Twist said, “That is acceptable. Now—”
“Your turn,” Colleen said.
He paused. “I beg your pardon?”
“Pony up, buddy. You need to prove to me that you’re of age, too. I don’t know you. You might be a sixteen-year-old with a super testosterone burst during puberty that gave you a deep voice. I need to know that you’re at least twenty-one, too.”
Twist chuckled. “I haven’t been carded for donkey’s, but turnabout is fair play.”
In the faint light of wherever he was, Twist swiveled in his office chair and reached for something in the dark.
As Twist extended his arm, he reached through a beam of sunlight streaming through the air behind him that Colleen hadn’t even noticed.
Vibrant green, blue, and black tattoo ink coated his skin, and a full-sleeve tattoo from his pale wrist to the hem of his blue tee-shirt wrapped tightly around the striated bulges of his arm.
And what an arm Twist had, too. Thick, round biceps opposed heavy triceps above his elbow, while his lower arm was so defined that he must be into rock climbing. When his hand closed around something, those muscles contracted, rounding under his skin.
Whoa.
Anjali would have declared Twist to have arm porn and giggled hysterically in his presence.
“Just a moment,” Twist said. Scissors snipped through the computer speakers.
As Colleen waited in the dark, she tried to keep her wits about her but failed.
She’d kind of thought that the King of the Killer Whales who had his trader-certified blue check would be a stuffy dude who wore baggy suits and was pasty from staring at computer screens in the dark all day. Maybe he would have a weedy mustache or be mostly shiny-white bald. His hobbies were probably ham radio and origami.
Twist’s muscular, tattooed arm blew all those preconceptions out of her head.
Odd images assailed her. The kaleidoscopic ink on his arm flowing up and over a strong shoulder and down what must be a massive chest and deltoid muscles of his back. That arm twining around her waist, and him pulling her against his naked torso that was covered in that ink.
Her bra felt tight, and warmth rose in her face and settled lower in her body.
“There.” Twist held a small booklet open in front of the camera. Colleen fought to pay attention.
He held a passport sideways, and the letters USA flashed in iridescent ink on the paper. Ripped scraps of blue paper covered his eyes, his name except for an initial T, and his birthday except for the year, which was five years before the birthdate on Colleen’s driver’s license.
So he was twenty-eight, and there was also an M listed in the spot under the word Sex, though Colleen probably would have guessed that. M stood for Mmmmmmm, evidently. Or Mmmm-hmmmmm.
She fought to say something that wasn’t stupid. “Your passport is going to expire next year.”
And she’d failed. Awesome.
“Yes, thanks.” His dry tone sounded more amused than annoyed.
“You’re American? Your passport is American. But you don’t sound American.” Oh, hey. Now she was babbling like a dumbass and asking all sorts of forbidden questions. Neat.
“It’s a long story,” he said, “but yes, I travel under a US passport.”
That didn’t mean he was an American, and he sounded spot-on British like Henry Cavill was talking to the Queen at Wimbledon while drinking a cup of tea. “That makes it sound like you’re James Bond or something. Are you a spy?”
He chuckled. “No, but wouldn’t your ‘forum decorum’ cover this?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—forum rules. I didn’t mean to violate the forum’s rules,” she stammered out, and her babbling trailed off to an awkward silence.
Thankfully, Twist broke the silence. “And now that we’ve established we’re both adults,” his tone became low and intense, “take off your clothes.”
“But I can’t.” She touched the gossamer beige veil over her face. “The forum’s anonymity policies.”
“Valid. Take off everything except the veil. And from now on, you’ll answer everything I say with yes, please.”
It wasn’t like Twist could force Colleen to do something she didn’t want to because he was talking to her over a computer. If she didn’t like something he said, she could hang up on him. And if he didn’t like that, she could block and banhammer him from the Sherwood Forest forum.
So she said, “Yes, please.”
In a low, gravelly voice, Twist said, “Good girl.”
That dumb little throwaway phrase burst over her skin and crackled through her veins, heating her face. Then, for just a second, something inside her relaxed and blossomed with the knowledge that everything was okay.
The mild praise shouldn’t affect her, she told herself sternly.
But it did.
Twist said, “Take your clothes off, but leave the veil.”
Yeah, he had a distinctive tone in his voice that he’d been hiding when they’d been arguing about her putting his account on moderation. His deliberate, enunciated timbre made her listen, and it made her want to do what he told her to so that he would once again growl, good girl.
Colleen pushed her rolling chair back from her desk, the wheels snagging on the worn carpeting. She was careful not to catch the veil with her fingertips as she unfastened her jeans and slipped them and her panties over her hips.
“Slower.”
Yeah, she should have known he was going to say that.
She answered, “Yes, please.”
He said, “Good girl.”
His voice shivered over her skin, and she slowly peeled her denim jeans down her legs and used her toes to push them over her bare feet.
Luckily, she was still wearing her blue button-down shirt from work rather than a tee that went over her head, so she worked the buttons through the buttonholes and shrugged it off behind her.
“The bra,” he said. “Off.”
Colleen wrenched her arms behind her back and unhooked her utilitarian beige bra, sliding it down her arms. Her shoulders and lungs relaxed without the tight band around her ribcage.
“Show them to me.”
She glanced up at the monitor where pale-blue lines traced Twist’s cheekbones and knuckles where his hands rested on the arms of his chair. She asked, “Aren’t you going to undress?”
“No, and that was not the correct response. Show me your breasts, and pinch your nipple hard, like I would to punish you for not saying yes, please.”
These commands were all uncharted territory for Colleen. Heck, she’d never even done it with the lights on before.
Hesitantly, she cupped her breasts and lifted them toward the camera, where Twist sat immobile.
“Pinch yourself. The left one. Hard.”
She did.
If someone had told her that she would be in this situation, standing in front of a computer with her boobs hanging out and doing what some guy she’d never met told her to, including pinching her own boob so hard it hurt, she’d have told that person they were crazy.
But she took her nipple between her fingertips and watched the monitor for some sign from Twist that she was doing it right or that she had done enough.
She pinched.
At first, it felt weird and it hurt, and then her fingertips sliding on the tip of her nipple sent shivers through her skin.
Her teeth parted, and she sucked in the slightest of gasps. Her eyes felt a little too big on her face under the jewelry and veil.
He said, “Good girl.”
The shiver passed over her again.
Colleen still held her boobs in her hands. “Yes, please.”
“Stroke and toy with them like my tongue and teeth are teasing you.”
She had a feeling he would be a lot better at it than she was, so she did her best to do what a man like Twist would do to her, stroking the undersides and thumbing the peaks as she watched him watch her touch herself.
“Move one hand up to your throat and squeeze,” he growled.
She did, feeling the compression in her larynx as her hand wrapped around her throat.
“Now pinch your other breast.”
She did it. She did everything immediately and without question, and she whispered, “Yes, please.”
“Keep playing with your breasts, and sit back on the chair and open your legs so I can look at you.”
She sat back down on her chair, bobbling as it rolled backward, and she spread her knees open and leaned back for the tiny green light of the camera on the top of her monitor.
“More. Hook your knees over the arms of the chair.”
Colleen did, though she had to haul one of her thighs over it. She wasn’t a gymnast. Dang, that was awkward.
He flipped on a desk lamp and shined it directly into his camera, and her screen became a glowing square of white light that illuminated her body. Her Bene Gesserit veil still covered her face and shoulders though.
Twist said, “Good girl. How pretty you are with your pussy spread open like that. If I were there, I would rub my thumb over your clit and slide my fingers inside you until you begged me to let you come.”
This was so different from the few fumblings in the dark that her friends had assured her counted as doing it. Her heart fluttered inside her ribs, and her chest rose and fell under her hands as she panted in her dark apartment in the middle of the night for the man on the computer.
He said, “Take one finger, wet it in your mouth, and rub your clit.”
When her lips closed around her finger, she could almost imagine it was his finger, or his mouth, or something else she was sucking on, something that her friends had joked about and she’d laughed along with but wasn’t sure that was how you did it.
A growl grated from the blinding computer screen, and she slowly pulled her finger out of her mouth.
“Good girl.”
And the shivering part of her body responded to the praise with a lurch.
A tiny part of her brain was freaking out that she wasn’t a good girl, that she was doing something stupid and wrong and needed to stop, but Colleen had walked away from that kind of thinking three years ago. Walking away had cost her a lot. That part of her brain needed to shut up and go away because she had already paid for not listening to it.
He said, “Take that wet, slippery finger and caress your clit.”
Her finger slowly drifted downward, the air cool on her wet fingertip, and ventured down between her legs. Stupid thoughts rose, thoughts from before, and she shoved them all away and concentrated on the glaring white screen and the man’s voice telling her what to do.
The first touch of her fingertip on the nub between her legs was too much, and the shock reverberated up her spine. Her body contracted like she’d been shocked, her knees pinching in and her back arching.
“Gently, like my tongue slowly licking you.”
She tried it again, a slower press instead of a jab, and pleasure tightened in her body.
“Are you wet? Rub lower and tell me if you’re wet.”
Her fingertips slipped on her slick center. “Yes.”
“Good girl.” His ferocious growl was lower than before. “Rub slowly in circles. Don’t stop.”
He told her what to do, each stroke, each dip of her fingers inside herself, and he seemed to know where her nerves were better than she had ever figured out. A slow rub on the roof of her channel with her thumb pressing on her clit produced sensations that shot through her whole body, and his exhortation that she plunge her fingers into herself harder and pinch the live wire of her clit brought her off the chair with a muffled shriek as the sensation coursed from her core up her spine and throbbed in her head.
As she drifted down, her slippery fingers resting on her naked stomach, Twist snarled, “Good girl. Very good girl.”
Colleen braced her hands on the arms of her gaming chair and pressed herself upward, still shocked as hell at what she’d done. She grabbed her clothes and held them against her naked body. “I don’t think we can call me a good girl anymore.”
His dark chuckle echoed in her room as the blinding white light on her monitor clicked off. On her screen, he was a sketch of a person, composed of a few glimmering lines on the slashes of his cheekbones and along the base of the right angle of his jaw. “On the contrary, you are a very good girl.”
Colleen hugged her laundry to her chest, trying to cover herself. “Yeah, all right.”
“Are you seeing someone?” he asked.
“Um, no.”
“Would you like to?”
Oh, whatever. “Obviously, we’re not in the same time zone, and I don’t think I can do a long-distance relationship with a guy I’ve never met in real life. I’m sorry. That’s just not in the cards for me.”
“I want to meet you.”
“Sherwood Forest forum decorum, Twist. You’d know who I am, or at least what I look like.”
“Costumes. Masks. Make sure you’re properly disguised, and I’ll do the same. We can make it work.”
“I don’t see how, and it’s weird to meet someone in real life that you met on the internet.” Unless it was on Tinder. Or Grindr. Or Uber. Or BuddiRyde. Maybe it wasn’t so weird. “And you don’t even know where I live.”
“You didn’t cover your state on the top of your driver’s license, and I recognized that zip code. There’s a club in Tempe that I think you might like. I want you to meet me there Saturday night.”
Colleen couldn’t afford the cover charge of any club that a certified blue-check whale stock trader might think was fun. A guy like that would probably want to go to Martini’s at the Scottsdale Princess Resort that charged fifty bucks to get into, even for girls. “It’s after two in the morning here. I saw sunlight behind you earlier, and you mentioned you’d had a Bloody Mary with breakfast a little while ago. You’re not anywhere near me. We can’t meet.”
Some shuffling of papers whispered through the computer’s speakers. “I’ll be arriving in the States for business tomorrow for a few weeks. I can drop by where you are for a few days. I’ll text you the address and put you on the VIP List to get in. See you at the Devilhouse.”
Her screen went dark.
After a few moments of stunned breathing about all that had actually happened, Colleen shut down her computer for the night and dragged herself into the studio apartment’s tiny bathroom—just a sink, a toilet, and a minuscule shower stall in the corner with a cheap plastic shower curtain—to wash her hands and brush her teeth.
For three years, a metaphorical charcoal-gray fog had shrouded her. Peering through it to talk to other people took so much effort, and it drained the color from everything around her. Talking to people over the computer was easier. The glaring screen cut through it, at least a little, and the notification pings seemed like a bright flash in the otherwise dull drone of her gray life.
Colleen poured herself a glass of water in the corner of her room that was outfitted as a kitchenette, which consisted of a half-size fridge, two-burner stove, a sink, and a microwave. She dry-swallowed two melatonin tablets before she laid down on the twin-size mattress on the floor in the other corner of the room.
She pulled her comforter over her and wished for a cat as she rigorously forced her mind to be quiet and relaxed her face until she slipped into a fitful sleep.
Colleen didn’t cry. She hadn’t cried for three years.