13. Chase

"Something's up. Spill," I said to Adam the moment the front door closed. The rest of the crew had just packed up and left for the day. Adam was in his dining room, breaking down a couple of the pink pastry boxes that I'd brought in this morning.

He looked back at me as I leaned on the archway that led into the dining area, giving me a doe-eyed, innocent look.

"What do you mean?"

I lifted my brows. "You know exactly what I mean."

I watched as he swallowed, slowly looking like he'd been caught in the act of something awful. "I'm sorry for what happened the other night. If you're worried about me wanting more from you, you don't have to. I can control myself, and I'm not going to expect anything from you just because I jerked off in front of you."

He said it all like he'd rehearsed it. I held up my hands. "Wait a second," I said. "Okay. Maybe you don't know what I meant, actually."

"Did I do something else?"

The poor, poor, beautiful man. How could he think he had done anything wrong when in reality the only thing I'd wanted to do all day was finally get him alone?

"All day today you've been avoiding my eyes," I told him. "I thought I was going to be the one who needed to apologize about the other night. To tell you there's no pressure on you to do more."

Since he'd left my house that morning, I'd wondered if I'd taken things too far. I knew I had nothing to offer Adam that he truly wanted—I wasn't in the market for a relationship, and he clearly wanted that.

I wanted him, really fucking badly. But I wasn't going to lead him on.

Adam started to float around the dining area, cleaning up boxes and wiping at the table even though it seemed perfectly clean.

"You were busy today," he said. "I didn't want to interrupt what you had going on with Emmett, and I know you two hung out yesterday. It's okay, Chase."

"Oh my God," I said, realization dawning on me like a bolt from the sky. "You thought I might want to hook up with Emmett?"

He furrowed his brow. "That's not a weird thing to assume. You hook up with whoever you want to."

I turned my head to one side. "True. But I only talked to Emmett yesterday because I happened to stop by the Fixer Brothers offices when he was there for a general meeting with them. They were all sitting in the conference room, and they finished up when I came by, and Emmett got talking with me about cameras, and it turns out he really likes to collect old ones."

"He likes to collect old clocks, too," Adam said. "He was talking with me about it this morning."

I waggled my eyebrows. "So you have something going with him, too, apparently," I teased him.

Adam rolled his eyes. "Not my type. Nice guy, though."

"Not my type either," I said, watching with some sort of devious delight as I realized I was seeing Adam jealous for the first time. "I'm sure Emmett would be a lot of guys' dream catch. Rich as hell, gay, and genuinely nice. But there's no spark there for me."

Adam nodded slowly. "I see."

"Holy shit," I said, unable to keep a smile off my face. "You totally got jealous. All day long. You wanted to paw at me like a possessive animal, didn't you?"

The blush appeared on Adam's cheeks and that devious feeling inside me only deepened, going straight to my cock. God, he looked good like that.

"Jealous isn't the right word," he said. "I just figured because you're so charming, why wouldn't you get something going with a single, available guy?"

I clicked my tongue. "Because, to be perfectly honest, my dick is kind of laser-focused on one guy lately," I admitted.

It was exactly the type of thing I shouldn't have been saying.

I bit the inside of my cheek as tension bloomed throughout me. I didn't want to lead him on, but I also couldn't lie to him. There was nobody else I was sexually interested in right now, because Adam was like a bright, shining star at the center of all of my fantasies. I couldn't stop thinking about him, even though I knew it was dangerous.

Adam gave me a gentle smile that made me think of the other night, when he'd given me the same look on my balcony.

"You don't have to butter me up just because I was stupid today," Adam said.

"Not buttering you up," I told him. "It's the truth. And I still want to know what you think about that text I sent you."

His eyes met mine, something flaring behind them. "You really want to film me again?"

My cock jumped. "I really do," I said. "I should be the one paying you to let me film you."

"You're crazy."

"It really turns me on." I shrugged.

I'd long since given up having any shame in the things that got me off—I liked a lot of different things, and I didn't think there was anything wrong with that.

"And you promise you don't feel strange about it?" he asked, searching my face like he was working out a math equation.

"Strange about it? I feel like it's the most fun I've had in years," I said. "That night was fun, Adam."

He let out a breath, rubbing at the back of his neck. "You can't imagine how glad I am to hear you say that," he told me.

"It doesn't have to be weird," I said, shifting on my feet. "You like uploading videos of yourself. I love filming them. No one knows it's us. To be honest, we can kind of do whatever the hell we want."

"That's something I need more of in my life."

I nodded. "Then let's fucking do it," I said. "Nothing to lose. All in."

"All in," he repeated.

I looked him up and down. All I could think about was seeing him completely naked again. If we were filming things, it was all okay.

It didn't have to mean something.

I didn't have to worry about things being too serious, or worry about being… too much, for him.

We would be there with one goal in mind, and that was to put up great content for his viewers. There was nothing wrong with that, right?

"When do you usually like to record your videos?" I asked him.

"I think you already know the answer to that," he told me. "Mr. ChillyIcyBlue."

I hummed, feeling way too turned on by him acknowledging my secret online name. "Well, from the looks of the shadows and light in most of the shots, I'd say you film most of them in late afternoon and around sunset," I said. "So… right about now."

He palmed his cock through his jeans, nodding once at me. "I'm really hard, Chase. We could film one upstairs?"

Fuck.

If I thought it went straight to my cock when he blushed, this was a whole new level.

"I have one of my personal cameras in the bag with me," I said. "You sure you're ready?"

"I really need to come, to be honest," he told me, and I swore I needed a leather strap to bite or something, because the man was going to make me lose my mind with desire.

I met his eyes again. "You need to, huh?"

"I haven't come since… well, since you last saw me do it."

"Okay, you're the crazy one," I said. "That was two nights ago."

He nodded. "I was a little bit caught up in shame, the past couple of days."

"Shame?" I protested. "When I'm feeling ashamed, that's when I want to jerk off the most."

This earned a deep, genuine laugh from him. His smile went all the way up to his eyes. "That gets you going?"

"What doesn't get me going, Adam?" I admitted. "If I'm ashamed, I want to go get off about it. If I'm feeling hot, I want to go get off about it. If I'm feeling too tired, too awake, too stressed…"

He licked his lips. "I see."

"Sorry. Now I'm the one making it weird," I said as I went to the living room, pulling out my smaller, personal camera.

"No. It's hot," Adam said. "I appreciate it. You're keeping me hard for when we film."

Good Lord, the man had no idea how hot half of the things he said were.

"I will take pride in my cameraman duties," I said, "including keeping your cock nice and hard for the shoots."

He showed me upstairs, and I felt like I was entering some sort of forbidden promised land. I saw the simple rice paper setup he was using near the window to diffuse the natural light.

I bent down near the paned glass on his balcony doors, looking outside.

"These get such beautiful light in the late afternoon. This could be perfect for a full-body shot, if you wanted to lie down on the floor in front of it—"

I turned to look at him and saw that he'd tossed off his jeans and shirt. He was in light grey boxer-briefs, and I saw a spot of precum at the front of them.

He reached for the waistband, and I held out a hand, stopping him.

"Wait. Leave those on," I said.

"Huh?" he asked. "I always strip naked before filming. I figure people are there for the action."

I nodded. "But that spot of precum is so fucking hot. The way the outline of your cock forms that deep curve, with the obvious little wet spot? Trust me, leave them on just for the beginning. You can pull them off the moment we start filming, I promise."

I loved that he was so eager to get naked on camera. I moved his light diffuser to the side a little, trying to frame the shot perfectly.

"You're already much more of a professional than me," he said. "I like it."

"It is my job, after all," I said, squinting at some reflected light on the floor. "Do you happen to have a cozy blanket we could throw on the floor? Or, hell, even a towel, for a loose, beachy vibe."

"Let me see what I can find," he said, dipping into his bathroom.

"Oh, and squeeze your cock for me," I called out. "Just a little, through the fabric. You need to stay hard."

I bit my lip, reaching down to rearrange my own aching dick. On one hand, I was a professional at this—I really did want to set up the best shot, get some good color balance and composition, and make Adam's skin the focus of the video.

But commanding him to stay hard made me want to reach down and wrap my fist around my own cock, too.

He returned a moment later. In one hand, he had a blue towel, and in the other, he was squeezing the outline of his cock like I'd told him to.

"Is this good?" he asked.

"Perfect."

I put the towel on the ground, purposely ruffling up a couple of sections of it to make it look amateur in a good kind of way.

"I like watching you work," he said as he looked down at me.

"I like watching you come. Here, lie down."

He did as I said, lying back on the towel in front of the sun. The golden light shined in through the panes, covering his skin. The gentle curves of his muscles popped with the diffuse shadows, and it made him look like a sculpture. The deep V-shape right above his hips was like a work of art.

"Is this good?"

"Christ, it's obscene," I said, shaking my head. "Do you have any idea how good your body is?"

"I mean, it does the job," he said. "I never thought it was anything out of the ordinary."

I fired up the camera, looking at the test image that lit up on the back monitor panel. "It's so good," I murmured. "Holy fuck, you are perfect."

I could see him smile gently on the camera screen, absentmindedly running one of his palms along his chest as he kept the other still gripped gently around his cock.

"I still think you're crazy," he said, looking down. "But you make me feel really good about myself, Chase."

Fuck. Now he was going straight to my heart at the same time as my cock. I tried to focus on the task at hand, snapping back into professional mode.

"Good. You should feel amazing about yourself," I said. "Now, are you ready to come for me?"