“Good.” I kept stroking her hair, listening to her little comfortable hums. “You make me feel… confused.”
She didn’t reply again, now peacefully asleep in my bed.
Probably for the better. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know how she’d respond once I admitted that I was getting jealous of other men, that I was looking forward to every minute with her, that I felt protective of her in a way I had no right to be.
I contemplated taking a shower, or at least brushing my teeth, but I didn’t want Esra to wake up alone and half-naked in a bed she didn’t recognize. So I just shucked off my jeans and boots, pulled her up on the mattress and tucked her against me.
The next night, my door creaked open just after midnight and Esra tiptoed to my bed. She peppered little kisses along the underside of my jaw and slipped her cold feet between my legs.
At least I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t keep my distance.
I stayed in her room one night, but that dissolved quickly the next morning when I started picking up the most basic laundry around her room. I earned myself a pair of socks against the head before she kicked me out the door for playing housekeeper.
Austin had walked past me standing in the hallway with my arms full of women’s socks, had merely shaken his head and started typing on his phone. If someone in his group chat had bet on me developing a foot fetish, they’d owe me a goddamn drink.
After that, Esra slipped into my room exclusively at night. I was too aware of the betting pool though. If people were already watching us, I didn’t need them listening to us, too. As fucking hot as it was, Esra wasn’t quiet when she climaxed, and I didn’t need Sanny to hear about us sleeping together because Austin had fifty bucks riding on it or something.
So I let her hands slip under my shirt and I wrapped mine around her back and I made her tell me about her daily meet and greets. It was supposed to be a distraction. But it turned out that, now that we were posting more videos with Lucas, some park guests had started asking her uncomfortable questions and filming her reactions. They usually revolved around the Kit/Annie/Ace triangle. Talking it out seemed to help her unwind.
“I promise it will die down if you don’t acknowledge it,” I whispered against the top of her head after she detailed a group of teens that her meet and greet assistants had struggled to keep under control. They were eventuallykicked out of the park for some of the lewd gestures they made.
“Yeah, easy for you to say. You just get women swooning over you.” Her hands balled into fists over my stomach.
“People get bored, trust me. When I first started posting online, I had people come to the meet and greet just to tell me their detailed fantasies about being kidnapped and tied up by Ace Ryder.”
In retrospect, maybe that had fucked me in the head, considering how much easier it had been for me to believe Esra wanted the fantasy, not the reality. I didn’t want this to leave a similar mark on her.
She tilted her head back, her nose sporting a dangerous rosy sheen. Fuck. Was she about to cry? What did I do? What did you do with a crying girl? Chocolate? There was an emergency stash of peanut butter cups in my nightstand as of three days ago, when I’d learned the definition of hangry.
“Don’t cry,” I pleaded and smoothed some hair back from her forehead.
“I’m not,” she rasped, voice dangerously clogged. “It was just worse because it was teenagers. Teens are scary, man. I didn’t even get them when Iwasa teenager.”
“As someone who did a lot of fucked-up shit as a teenager, I can promise you that none of that was about you today.”
“You? Fucked up? Like, you ate your dessert before the main course?” She snickered.
“Hmm…” I brushed my lips over hers. “I stole a cow once.”
“A cow? Like, from a farm?”
“No, that’s what made it so funny. Mr. Wilkens had herin his backyard. She was some pageant cow. Had won prizes for the shiniest coat or something. But she was stuck all alone in his tiny backyard, so I got her out of there and set her free to roam in the high school’s football field. She frolicked around the whole weekend before anyone noticed.”
“Are you making this up to make me feel better?”
“They couldn’t calm her down enough to herd her out of there. By the time they got someone down from the cattle ranch, she’d completely ruined the grass. I cost the school a whole season of football games.”
“How did you get her in the stadium in the first place?”
“Put a rope around her neck one night and walked by her side from Mr. Wilkens’ to the school. No problem. She clearly knew that I was leading her to greener grass.”
Esra let out a quiet little giggle, more breath than sound against my collar bone. “If that wasn’t about the cow or Mr. Wilkens, why did you do it?”
“Because I could. My mother was dying and my father was on a bender, and everyone knew. They let me get away with anything. I just wanted someone to give a shit.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m just telling you because teenagers aren’t scary. They do dumb things to deal with their own issues.”
