Chapter 6 - SexyNattyWithAMask

Chapter 6: Chapter 6 - SexyNattyWithAMask

Jesse had stumbled onto Natalia’s secret two months ago, completely by chance.

It started with Nolan.

Nolan rented the unit on the second floor of Jesse’s house. He was a remote tech bro who worked odd hours, paid rent on time, and spent every minute he wasn’t coding consuming adult content. He wasn’t shy about it either. He was a proud, card-carrying gooner.

He and Jesse were close, maybe closer than Jesse was with anyone else at that point, close enough that Nolan regularly gave him unsolicited rundowns of his favorite creators like he was reviewing restaurants.

That particular day, Nolan had cornered him by the mailboxes.

"Bro. Bro, listen to me. There’s this girl on Lustre. Never shows her face, wears this little cat mask the whole time. But her body, Jesse." Nolan held his hands out in front of his chest, cupped wide, then wider. "Huge. Perfectly round. They don’t even look real but they move like they’re real. You know what I’m saying?"

"I really don’t need to know what you’re saying, Nolan."

But Nolan described them in such vivid, loving detail, for so long, that by the end of it Jesse was curious despite himself.

That night, he looked her up.

@SexyNattyWithAMask.

He meant to watch thirty seconds, just enough to see what the fuss was about. Instead he sat on the edge of his bed for twenty minutes, frowning at his screen.

Something about her was familiar. The way she tilted her head when she read comments. The way she laughed. Even with the mask on, Jesse couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen this woman before.

For three days straight, it gnawed at him.

On the third night, he pulled up one of her older videos and paused it at a frame where she was stretched out on her bed. He zoomed in.

On her left thigh, just above the knee, was a birthmark about the size of a fist.

Jesse’s heart nearly stopped.

He knew that birthmark.

Before his father’s downfall, Jesse had practically lived at the Meadows residence. He and Natalia had been inseparable as kids, swimming in her family’s pool, hiding in the pantry during dinner parties, sharing secrets nobody else was allowed to hear. The adults used to joke that the two of them would end up married one day.

Jesse had seen that birthmark a hundred times, peeking out from under her swimsuit every summer.

Then he unmuted the video and heard her voice. Breathy. Slightly raspy. The same voice that ceases every opportunity to call him a filthy low-life.

’No way. There’s no fucking way.’

But a birthmark and a voice weren’t proof. Jesse had spent his whole life watching people hand down verdicts on him without evidence. He wasn’t going to do the same thing, not even to her.

So when Standard & Silk needed a delivery of fabric samples sent to the Meadows residence for an engagement event, Jesse volunteered before anyone else could open their mouth.

The staff let him in through the service entrance. While they argued about where to put the rolls, he slipped away, climbed the back staircase he still remembered from childhood, and walked straight into Natalia’s bedroom.

He stopped in the doorway.

The cream headboard. The sheer curtains. The ring light folded in the corner. The framed abstract painting hanging slightly crooked above the bed.

He’d seen every single one of them in her videos.

Jesse took a few pictures with his phone, hands steady, and left before anyone noticed he’d been gone.

He’d sat on that information for two months, never quite knowing what to do with it.

Now he knew.

---

Jesse tapped on her profile.

The red LIVE badge blinked in the corner.

Of course she was live. It was the middle of the night, and her audience was mostly men like Nolan who didn’t sleep.

He joined the stream.

Natalia sat cross-legged on that same cream bed, wearing nothing but a lace bralette, matching panties and that ridiculous cat mask. She was reading comments aloud in her breathy, teasing voice, thanking viewers by their usernames whenever they tipped.

"Thank you, BigDaddyDan, for the ten dollars. You’re so sweet."

Ten dollars. She thanked him like he’d bought her a car.

Jesse stared at her on the screen and felt something complicated twist in his chest.

This was the girl who used to play with his hair while they watched cartoons. The girl who cried when his family left their old neighborhood for a house in the Hamptons. The girl who, the moment his father became the most hated man in New York, looked straight through him like he’d never existed.

He’d had a crush on her for as long as he could remember. Some stupid, stubborn part of him still did.

’The system rewards spending on women I find attractive,’ Jesse thought. ’Does she count?’

[She counts, host.]

Jesse nearly laughed out loud. ’Glad we’re on the same page.’

He opened the gift menu and typed in $2,000. His thumb hovered over the send button.

Two grand had been his whole life twelve hours ago. Some lizard part of his brain was still screaming at him to hold onto it.

Then he looked at Natalia again, laughing at something in the chat, and thought about every time she’d walked past him at Standard & Silk like he was a smudge on the window.

’Fuck it.’

He deleted the two and typed in a new number.

$20,000.

Every cent he had.

He hit send.

The screen exploded with animation. A golden crown spun across the stream, followed by fireworks and a banner that took up half her face.

[User Anonymous12 sent a Royal Crown gift worth $20,000!]

Natalia froze mid-sentence.

The chat went insane.

"YOOO WHAT"

"20K??? WHO IS THIS"

"bro just paid her rent for a year"

Natalia leaned toward the camera, her mouth falling open beneath the mask. For a second she didn’t say anything at all. Then she pressed a hand to her chest.

"Anonymous12." Her voice cracked a little. "Oh my God. Thank you. I don’t even... thank you so much. Whoever you are, you have no idea what this means to me."

Jesse had a pretty good idea.

The Meadows family still threw parties and showed up at galas, but he’d heard the rumors at work, how they’d been bleeding money for years, ever since a certain Wall Street fraudster ran off with most of their fortune.

He wondered if she knew whose money she was thanking right now. He wondered what her face would look like if she did.

[Ding!]

[You spent $20,000. 10X Critical Hit! Earned $200,000! The money has been transferred to account XXX-XXX-XXX.]

His phone buzzed. Jesse opened the alert with trembling fingers.

[Credit Alert: $200,000.00]

Two hundred thousand dollars.

Jesse pressed the phone against his chest and stared at the ceiling tiles, grinning so hard his split lip opened again. He didn’t care.

[Ding!]

[Congratulations, host! Harem Feature Unlocked!]

[Harem Members: 2]

[1. Natalia Meadows]

[2. Carrie Morton]

Jesse’s grin faded.

’Natalia, I get. But who the hell is Carrie Morton?’