Chapter 1

• Nathan was in love with a camgirl.
• It’s not what you think.
• She was a college girl he randomly found online… and then also found in real life.
• It’s not how it sounds.
• He’s not one of those creepy guys that can’t tell the difference between flirting and a woman just being nice while doing her job. He didn’t go looking for her, he found her by accident. He didn’t Google her, stalk her, ask invasive questions, or backtrace her IP address. He didn’t use any of his technical skills or connections. It wasn’t intentional.
• Nathan didn’t even watch porn very much.
• Don’t get him wrong, he was a red-blooded, heterosexual, 31-year-old man with a strong sex drive, and didn’t begrudge himself pleasure. He liked sex the few times he had managed to participate, and he liked women. Liked them as more than sex objects. Beyond being attracted to them, Nathan genuinely enjoyed the company of most women. He had been raised around smart, tough, ambitious women. He had been friends with funny, talented, creative women.
• Dating had always been a bit of a minefield, thanks to his family, how he looked growing up, his awkwardness, and how people expected him to behave once he grew into his body, but he had done okay in college. Dated a few young women that were smart and attractive. The relationship ended naturally when personalities didn’t mesh, or in a few cases when they realized sex wasn’t possible. Once he launched his company, he could have done better than okay, but it was always obvious what those women wanted from him.
• Although he liked to spend money on people he cared about, Nathan wanted to be loved for more than the size of his bank account, so he didn’t pursue those relationships. He wasn’t interested in being with beautiful women that he didn’t like, and that would end up being one of those trophy relationships for which wealthy men were known. And with his company still growing, he would rather spend his time buried in his computer and didn’t have time or energy for building anything deeper.
• Maybe that was why he couldn’t usually get turned on by porn-because his mother raised him to respect women so he couldn’t unsee the rampant exploitation and objectification in traditional porn.
• So, when he discovered cam-girls, it became his one secret vice. His small private comfort in a life that could afford much more. He didn’t indulge often; it was rare he needed more than his imagination to jerk off and be satisfied. Camgirls were more real than traditional porn. Less scripted and predictable. Watching them didn’t make him feel creepy and abusive. He could see that they were not being abused and could ensure the money went to them.
• The videos and streams he liked had a similar style. They looked voluntary and amateur, so it was unlikely there were several men off-camera directing the young women. The girls seemed happy, healthy, and natural. Their surroundings looked safe and comfortable, usually with low lighting and soft blankets and pillows. They oversaw their pleasure, and it was their choice to give that control to their viewers.
• Of course, he didn’t know for sure that any of that was true, but he preferred to think it was.
• Even though he was paying to watch them take off their clothes and do very erotic and sexual things to themselves, he tried to be a respectful viewer. He was polite with requests, never asked for anything too outrageous, and his requests were always accompanied by a generous tip whether the girl agreed or not. He was never aggressive in the chats, never inappropriate… well, it was probably inappropriate in a day-to-day sense, asking a girl to do things on camera, but he was never insulting or lewd.
• So, when he was struggling with some code on a summer afternoon, his head aching and his brain feeling like oatmeal, he logged into a camgirl website he’d visited sometimes. None of his bookmarks were currently streaming, and none of their previous recordings interested him. He resigned himself to searching for someone who could help him relax, clear his head, and maybe give him some inspiration.
• “SunshineSunflower.”
• That was her online name. It was a far cry from the “BustyBazine”s and “Wetgirl286”s that populated the website, and it didn’t exactly roll off the tongue or type out easily.
• But something about it, and the dim and grainy thumbnail, made him click on her stream.
• For a long moment, he looked at the video, watching as a slim, long-limbed girl arranged herself on camera. She was… He scanned the stream to see how long she had been broadcasting… only fifteen minutes in and new at camming. The tension in her wasn’t from the pleasure of an impending orgasm, it was from nerves. Despite already being naked, except for a black lace mask that obscured half her face, her stream only had a few people in it, none of them tipping or interacting.
• His nose wrinkled in annoyance. He believed if you are going to watch, you should tip. Even though everyone watching had to buy access to the stream with a few sparkles, the currency of the site, and only worth about 25 cents each, he knew that for girls that were not very popular, without tips they were only earning a few dollars per stream.
• So, without hesitation, he dropped a 50$ tip and heard the stream give its usual chime of jingling change before he clicked on her profile link to open it in another window. He winced when he realized this was only her fourth live show.
• *Hi, there! I’ve never done this before so I’m not sure if I should try to be tempting and mysterious or sweet and innocent, but I don’t know how to do either of those things, so I hope you will forgive me for being kind of silly and honest.*
• Nathan swallowed, already feeling his neck get hot. This was probably a complete fabrication, designed to make viewers more interested in her. He wasn’t naïve enough to think all cam-girls were sweet innocents or all strippers were secretly working on their Ph.D., some probably were, but at the end of the day, they were trying to make money. Even though it didn’t seem to be working on anyone else based on the number of viewers in her stream, it was doing something to him.
• *You’ve probably seen this a thousand times, but I’m the cliché college girl trying to pay for some books and have fun doing it. I’m studying to be a data analyst, which is weirdly expensive. Anyway, I hope to see you in my streams soon!*
• Nathan blinked. He didn’t know what he was expecting her to study, but data analyst wasn’t it.
• He glanced at his second monitor, where she was playing with her breasts.
• She was young. He had a hunch that she couldn’t be more than twenty five. He hated that he noticed. He hated that despite the reality intruding on his guilt-free pleasure, he could feel himself becoming aroused by her.
• She was beautiful, even thru her subpar camera. Dark brunette hair, soft nipples, her skin golden and gleaming from the mix of low lighting and lotion she was rubbing all over herself.
• His cock thumped the underside of his desk, and he knew he wasn’t going to leave her at the mercy of the internet. So he went back to her active window, dragging her stream to his main monitor, and using the built-in menu that the site provided to its performers, began donating and stroking himself while he pretended, she was doing this just for him.
• Before SunshineSunflower, Nathan had only visited the cam-girl website once every couple of months. After that first stream, he had resisted checking on her for a week. But then the strange need for her got the better of him, and he checked her schedule for when she would be live.
• She didn’t have a schedule.
• He wanted to tell her that if she set an online schedule, it would be more likely to get some regulars. But he also wanted to keep her for himself. So, he built a website and coded it to text him a notification if she went live. He liked that he was one of the only people watching her, and he got to control the direction of her shows. He would have had to compete on more popular streams to make his tips direct the action. Not that he minded a little competition, he thrived on it in many parts of his life.
• What was once a rare occurrence, became a once-a-week indulgence, making a rule that he could only attend half of her shows. He resisted for another month before he broke down and began attending both her weekly shows. She was becoming a bit of an obsession.
• Maybe he was one of those awful guys…
• What if she thought his attention was creepy, but because he was the only one consistently attending her shows, the only one consistently tipping and donating, she couldn’t say anything because she needed the money? The thought made him skip one of her streams, and when he paid to watch the recording later, she looked a little bit disappointed, like she was waiting for something.
• Maybe it was okay to pretend she liked him, even if they had never spoken beyond him typing requests in chat. They knew nothing about each other, and their only interaction was him sending her money while asking her to look over her shoulder at the camera, or if she would mind licking her fingers and playing with her nipple, or if could she wear red next stream. Maybe just this once, Nathan Markham could imagine she was his, and lose himself in the casual dominance of the situation. Lose himself in a woman without worrying about hurting or impressing her, or any other shit that went along with his real life.
• That’s what he told himself for 5 and a half months.
• His world was ruined that fall. October. He usually worked from home. After all, it was his company, and it was all online anyway. But in the middle of October, he had a meeting with some of his team to go over next year's goals, changes, and the overall vision of expanding to different markets. He stopped at a coffee shop because he hated office brew. It wasn’t so much the quality, but the fact that most pots cooked the grounds too hot and made it bitter instead of rich and robust. And then it sat on a hot plate turning into coffee sludge. That would turn even excellent grounds into terrible coffee.
• He was regretting the stop as he waited for his drink, scrolling through emails on his phone. The shop was full of college students since the campus was only a few blocks away, smelled like burnt nutmeg, and was already playing Christmas music. Christmas music in October. What kind of monsters did that? He had just taken a swallow of his coffee, large, black when she walked in.
• He promptly choked, hot coffee spraying out of his mouth, snorting into his sinuses, and dripping onto his shirt.
• He had never seen the top half of her face until now, and yet he knew it was her. He knew the tilt of her mouth as she smiled at one of the baristas and slid an apron around her waist. The line of her neck was intimately familiar to him, and the curve of her waist as the apron strings cinched tight.
• She spoke. She had a British accent. A cute accent with a feminine and husky voice, and he could feel his lungs trying to throw themselves up his throat and out of his body, while his cock tried to punch out of his slacks to get to her. All these months watching her stream and she had never spoken on camera. It was only moaning and panting and occasionally typing out responses and nodding.
• Luckily, she didn’t notice him and his body’s attempt to betray him. The people around him on the other hand were horrified and inching away as he tried to subtly use napkins to mop up the coffee mess, he had made on himself and the long bar-style table.
• He went to his meeting in a daze and promised he would never return to that coffee shop.
• Nathan broke that promise in under a week. By the beginning of November, he had a regular table and spent time there a few afternoons a week, coding and testing while drinking way too much coffee.
• Nathan did not want to be that guy, but he had no idea how to stop.