Strong Signal (Cyberlove #1) (7 page)

I pictured Kai with his nose scrunched up in an adorable mad-face, and smiled.

My mouth tightened, and I leaned closer to the screen even though he couldn’t see me.

There was a long pause.

Why was I making this weird?

The smile stretching across my face was almost painful.

I logged out of Gchat and pushed away from the desk with a slow exhale.

Getting attached, and depending on these conversations to uplift my sucky days, had definitely not been part of the plan. Then again, I was making this up as I went along. It seemed like we both were.

Kai

I paced my room and drew random doodles on my wall. I wrote Garrett’s name just because…I wanted to see it. I wanted to touch it, to assure myself he was real.

He thought I was brave. Sure, I didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought about me being gay, but brave? I hadn’t even left my apartment in ages.

What would Garrett think if he realized I was just some crazy hermit? He probably thought I went out, got laid, ate fancy meals, rode in Pride parade floats or what the fuck ever. The truth was so far from that, I didn’t even know where to start.

He’d given me so much during our chats, particularly this one, and I hadn’t given him anything in return. Sure, I’d offered conversation and sympathy and an ear to listen, but I hadn’t actually said anything about myself.

I really needed to, but the last thing I wanted was to worry him. He’d been concerned about me when we were strangers, so I was sure he’d be mega worried now that we were friends. Worst—what if he didn’t understand and pitied me? Even so, he deserved more from me than jokes. I
wanted
to give him more.

My heart ached at the possibility of him never having been touched by someone who cared. I’d never had that either, but Garrett was honest and loyal. He was a fucking hero. How had no other man noticed that about him? It was my choice to hide from the world and be alone. Garrett shouldn’t be forced into the same situation.

I sat at my computer again and opened up Gmail. Email was easier. I could write everything and look it over and make sure I’d said exactly what I wanted to say.

Was that dumb to ask? Was it so bad that I wanted to know if he’d seen me jerk off on camera?

This wasn’t even close to the whole story but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him everything. About how I’d retreated so far into my online identity that I barely had a real world one anymore.

Holy crap, I was really word vomiting. Time to end this.

Did that sound defensive? Garrett hadn’t once brought up the fact that I was a cam boy. Or used to be.

I read over it. Once. Twice. I thought about changing and deleting but in the end, I sent it as is.

With my own words still floating in my mind, I took a shower, paced restlessly, and returned to my room when a reoccurring thought wouldn’t go the hell away.

I hadn’t recorded a video in a long time. Originally it hadn’t even been about the money. It had been about doing something that turned me on, and the little bursts of excitement I’d gotten from…showing my bodies to others but purely on my own terms.

Would Garrett like them? Would it make him hard? I pictured him in his bed on the base with a computer nearby as he watched me work myself over for the camera. Would his dog tags clink as he slipped his hands under the waistband of his briefs? Would he bite his full lower lip as he watched me come, and say my name as he joined me?

I turned on the webcam and set it up at the end of the bed. Just the sight of the red light thickened my cock. I hadn’t bothered to dress after my shower, so I dropped the towel on the floor before crawling into bed. I lay on my back and gripped the headboard.

In the past, I’d imagined someone watching me, but they’d always been faceless. As I stroked myself, the image in my head was anything but faceless. It was Garrett.

The image I had of him was 2D and made up of pixels, but my imagination knew no bounds. As I spit into my hand and stroked harder, his image went 3D. In my head, Garrett was a living, breathing, human being in my bedroom. I could smell his sweat and feel the heat of his gaze.

He turned to me, his eyelids lowering as he caught me naked on my bed. His chest heaved, his big hands fisted as his sides as he resisted touching me. He put a knee to the mattress and planted his hands at my feet. “Spread your legs more,” he said. “Let me see everything.”

I did on a moan, my heels slipping on my sheets. I worked my hand harder, faster, when usually I drew this out, worked myself slow and played to the camera.

Not today, not while Garrett’s gaze were all over me, seeping into my skin and melting me to the core. I gasped as my balls drew up, as I arched my back on the bed, ignoring the ache in my wrist.

“Let me see you shoot, Kai. I wanna see that fucking cum all over you. Gonna use it to slick up my cock when I fuck you.”

That was all I needed, Garrett’s dirty mouth, the heat of his body as he gripped my knees, gaze searing into me. I came with a hoarse gasp, doing just what he’d told me to do, coating my stomach with my release.

I collapsed, panting, and when I blinked open my eyes, there was no Garrett. Instead of his hands on my legs, there was only the cold air of my drafty apartment. Instead of his brown eyes, all that glared at me was the red light from the camera.

A wave of heaviness washed over me, pushing me into the mattress, and I knew it was loneliness. Sure I watched porn and got off regularly, but this was…the sexiest I’d felt in ages. The most wanted. The most fucking excited. And it had all been because I’d been picturing a guy who was on the other side of the world.

A guy I’d never meet because I was such a mess.

Garrett

The message fired off before my shift in the vehicle bay. For the next several hours, I was hung up on Kai’s potential response as I rotated tires, did some engine maintenance, and refueled the vehicles for the convoy. I barely tasted any of the food I shoveled in my face in the mess hall, didn’t feel the tepid water of my shower, and nearly busted my ass trying to hurry to my tent once the day was over.

I’d told some of the other guys I’d play a basketball game with them in the evening, but I couldn’t stop fixating on the email long enough to actually make it to the makeshift court. Did Kai want me to watch his videos? I wanted him to say yes even though me seeing him get off was weirdly one-sided. But what if he’d said yes, and I’d been AWOL for hours, and now he thought I was avoiding him?

That was the kind of shit that went through my mind all day likely because I was insecure, and it would have been my reaction.

Kai’s response was brief:
Sure, I’m not ashamed. Here’s the link to one you might like that I never uploaded for my subscribers. Password is RedPandasRule.

My fingers dashed against the keyboard so fast XXXTube’s URL seemed to have materialized in the address bar by magic.

Breath catching and heart stuttering, I logged into my account and found Kai’s second Internet persona. Gaymer Twink.

Mouth dry, I scrolled through and saw videos dating back for a couple of years but they were all solo videos. No second party. No one else touching Kai. Except for the video he’d just uploaded, his latest was from a year ago.

My relief was another in a long line of red flags.

With my dick already half-hard and adrenaline raging on a level usually reserved for patrols and exploring unfamiliar terrain, I clicked on the password-protected video.

I stared with my mouth ajar and my erection throbbing, but I didn’t touch it. I didn’t move an inch. I just watched as he clutched the headboard behind him, thrusting into his tightly gripping hand, and went from stoic to caught in the throes of an obvious fantasy.

What was he thinking about? It had to be good for his eyes to close that tight, his brows to bunch up, and his lower lip to get caught up in his gritting teeth. At one point he spread his legs wider and leaned back, and I could see everything. Those smooth leanly muscled thighs, his balls, and the thick erection that was damp from pre-cum.

“Jesus.” I undid my cargo pants. “Fuck yeah, Kai.”

I couldn’t focus on any one point on his body, so I replayed the video over and over while clutching my cock. Watching his agonized expression, desperately trying to hear the hitches in his breathing, the aborted little moans, and watching as his stomach sank in as he inhaled sharply and released a load all over his body.

How would it feel to touch that sticky skin? To lick him clean? Or slick my own dick with his cum? Press the head of my cock to his hole and come all over his ass. Or press inside and feel his muscles clamping around me. Milking me. Jesus. I’d fuck him so hard. Shove his thighs apart and give him every inch of my dick, and every ounce of my sexual frustration, because it’d been almost two years since I’d been inside someone, and I needed it. Needed him.

My brain short-circuited when I came. Lights exploded in front of my eyes. I was pretty sure I would never be a functional human being again.

Just to make that one hundred percent—I drank some water, paced the tiny box I lived in, and watched again twenty minutes later.

I set my laptop on the edge of my narrow bed, reenabled the webcam function, and rucked my pants down to mid-thigh. With the volume jacked up, Kai’s breathy moans and gasps boomed in my room: the soundtrack of Garrett Reid recording himself fucking his hand while watching Kai from beneath nearly closed eyelashes.

I found myself whispering instructions I knew he wouldn’t follow through on, but I wanted him to show me his hole, to finger himself, and to say
my
name when he finished.

By the time I’d rubbed myself raw and put myself into a mini coma, it was time for Kai to get up and my Gchat chimed loud enough to wake me.

Shit. I’d spent three hours milking myself dry and hadn’t even had the decency to give the poor guy a reply. I was a fucking animal.