Chapter 53: Blackmail or Ex?

Damon yanked his pants up so fast the zipper nearly became a hate crime.

He turned sideways, covered, trying very hard to look like a man who had not just been photographing his own dick in a dead philosophy classroom with a flashlight app and a prayer.

He was still fixing his belt while doing it.

Fear said Vespera.

He’d texted her this exact building so she could bring the ID over. He’d timed it and he was supposed to be done, dressed, corporate, leaning against a desk like a student who’d earned the right to be here.

The timing should have been perfect and he should have finished the pictures by the time she arrived and the woman in the doorway had said always, and only one person at this school got to use that word on him.

Then he actually looked at her and realized panic had apparently made him fucking blind that eh couldn’t tell the difference in their voices.

Itv was not Vespera.

The girl, whoever she was, she stood in the doorway waving her phone around like a trophy from a carnival nobody else had been invited to, looking like somebody enjoying the scenic route through his disaster simply because she had the time.

He didn’t move even if every animal instinct he owned was screaming at him to close the distance and take the phone out of her hand before she could so much as blink, and every surviving brain cell was screaming louder that touching her right now, at all, for any reason, was how a bad night became a headline.

Wrestling a girl for her phone while his pants were barely back on was probably how a dick-picture problem upgraded itself into campus security, lawyers, and a family meeting nobody survived emotionally.

So he stood there, buckling his belt with hands that were only shaking a normal, socially acceptable amount, and did his very best impression of nonchalant.

’This is fine. This is a completely normal way to meet someone. Everybody’s first impression involves a flashlight and hey, everybody meets new people with their dick out and cameras running eventually.’

He put his own phone away, casually, like that made him look innocent.

"Who are you?" his voice was natural, calm and absolutely not a man whose belt was one hook away from betraying him publicly a second time.

Somehow his voice had even come out almost normal, which was impressive considering the same belt had been about three seconds away from betraying him again.

She laughed, soft, and let her eyes drift around the little room the unhurried like a cat in a kitchen it already owned.

She saw the MacBook, and her whole face lit up.

Damon saw it happen in real time, the exact moment a bad situation became a catastrophic one, and his eyes went wide half a second too late.

He ran.

She was closer like she’d walked in already aiming for it, already knowing what she wanted before he’d finished panicking. Damon had spent those same precious seconds trying to restore diplomatic relations with his pants.

She got there first, and Damon arrived a half-step behind and slammed it shut so hard the whole room clicked like something breaking internally.

Completely useless:

She’d already seen enough.

They were standing very close now; same stale air, dust in the forgotten philosophy classroom that was supposed to be the one safe corner of this entire campus.

She grinned up at him... she came to about his collarbone and she had this with the specific delight of one who’d just watched a billionaire’s son commit violence against his own laptop and still lose.

Her height should have made the situation less threatening, except there was something deeply humiliating about being held hostage by a girl Damon could probably pick up with one arm.

She knew he wasn’t going to touch her; not with that phone loose in her fingers like a lit fuse.

She had the photo, the face, the room, and, if she’d glanced properly before he slammed the laptop, possibly the website too, she might have caught part of the website before he murdered the MacBook lid too.

’Pretty much enough.’

"Who the fuck are you," he snapped, low, "and who gave you the right to go through my things?"

"Now, now, Damon." She waved the phone, unbothered, like it had a trigger she was very comfortable resting her thumb on. "I didn’t go through anything. You’re the one who flashed it at my face."

Her eyes dropped to his pants and stayed there a full second longer than any polite person’s would have. Politeness had officially packed its bags.

"Fuck." A small pause. A small knife, twisted slow. "Now I understand why you were always so proud. With that? Which man wouldn’t be."

His face threatened to go red while somewhere beneath the panic one tiny useless part of Damon’s brain grabbed the compliment and hung it somewhere permanent.

’Terrible situation. Keeping the compliment.’

His brain deserved prison.

He took the step back inside his own skull first, then physically; remaining this close while she held photographic evidence of his dick felt like exactly the situation where his hands might eventually develop their own terrible ideas.

She knew him too well and that part was becoming painfully obvious.

One look at his face and she had probably already figured out he was scared, embarrassed, and rapidly approaching the stage where rich people started trying to solve emotional disasters with bank transfers and she also had a photo with his face and his cock in the same frame while her intentions were unclear, so rushing her now was how a private disaster became a public one.

So this was the part where he sat down inside his own head and pretended to be corporate.

Whoever she was, she clearly knew his name and his family.

Worst case, blackmail. Money.

$50K would hurt just enough to piss him off. $100K and he’d hate her. $500K and he’d probably hate himself too. If she somehow squeezed close to a million from one fucking dick picture, Damon was probably going to spend the next decade getting irrationally angry every time somebody mentioned photography.

Fine. Blackmail was survivable... and fine, he’d pay it, because a photo like that leaking online wasn’t a photo, it was a wrecking ball swung directly at the very Corvin Viremont name.

Lilith. Asmodea. His uncle, who barely tolerated him on a good day:

Lilith, Asmodea would see it while is uncle would somehow receive a copy.

The humiliation would outlive whatever check he wrote to make it disappear, someone would cut a sausage and suddenly cough. Somebody else would look at Damon. He would know. They would know he knew.

Then someday Damon would walk into a boardroom at thirty-five years old, see three men looking strangely polite, and spend the entire meeting wondering whether they’d Googled his dick first.

Fuck the money. That was the nightmare.

He could take the phone. Physically, he could.

But girls like this had backups, cloud drives or second phone in a bag somewhere, ready to go.

He didn’t have her password and he would need a full day to crack whatever she was running, and by then the charges would already be filed, campus security would already have a report with his name on it, and some lawyer his mother trusted would already be flying in from wherever lawyers came from to fix things they’d warned him not to need fixing.

Or she screamed, security showed up, the picture turned out to be uploaded somewhere already, and Lilith got a report explaining that her idiot son had wrestled a girl in an abandoned classroom while taking dick pictures for a secret website.

At that point, the dick picture somehow stopped being the worst part of the story.

’Yeah. That was stupid of me. Should’ve just done this in a locked bathroom like a normal, boring degenerate. Four walls and a working deadbolt. Basic human dignity. Concepts, apparently, that were above me this morning.’

Damon rubbed both hands over his face. Grabbing the phone would’ve been stupid too, and he was collecting stupid options today like achievement badges.

"Sorry, I should’ve done this in a locked bathroom like a normal, boring degenerate, before taking nude pictures for my girlfriend. Sorry for the weirdness, I meant no harm." he said.

His brain and mouth remained undefeated as he cooked up an excuse.

She rolled her eyes so hard her whole head went with it. "Oh my god, you don’t know me at all, do you?"

"Yeah. No shit."

"Because if you did know me," she was already talking over herself, words tripping over each other to get out, "you’d know I already know you don’t have a girlfriend, because I know everything, and also I saw your little website, barely even a glimpse, half a second, but do you have any idea how fast I read? No. You don’t. Nobody ever thinks I read fast."

She paused a beat, mildly offended by her own point. "It’s actually annoying."

Damon stared at her while she somehow changed subjects three times without visibly inhaling.

Well, he did now know how fast she was, after all, he’d just watched her beat him to a closed laptop in under two seconds, which was information enough.

’Considering that, the reading-speed claim is probably the least suspicious thing about her.’

"So who the fuck are you, that you think I’m supposed to already know all this about you?" She tilted her head and smiled while Damon stared back. "Yeah, sorry. So who the fuck are you?"

"Gee, Damon." She smiled with all her teeth this time, bright and a little too wide. "You forget all your exes?"