Chapter 52: Taking Pictures or Someone Took a Picture

After the whole orientation circus finally died, Damon had what he’d been waiting for: an exit.

He’d even scored himself a lady on the way out:

’A mature, beautiful lady, add that!’

Charlotte Ainsley with knight fantasies, princess treatment, the specific pleasure of watching her humiliate the idiot in the wrong in front of forty witnesses.

One of the things that turned her off happened to be one of the things Damon stood for, professionally speaking. Discretion. Secrets. The quiet Service Path he’d been building in the back of an auditorium while a dean talked about family to four hundred strangers who would never speak to each other again.

’Next-two-days problem. And meanwhile do not fall in love with a woman who hates secrets when your whole business model is secrets. Genius. Truly.’

For now he had a website to finish and a campus to get off of before somebody assigned him another speech about stewardship.

He carried his bag to the far end of the smallest building on campus.

He’d checked the others like a criminal doing homework; some lecture halls were still coughing up leftover freshmen, libraries with cameras that loved a scandal, a student complex that sounded like a mall having a breakdown.

This one was the winner:

It was a philosophy classroom barely used, shoved at the back like the university had forgotten it believed in thinking and the dust on the desks was thick enough to write his name in.

He almost did then he remembered he was trying not to leave a confession.

He wiped a chair clean and he set the bag down but he kept the lights off.

Even the air felt unused like the room had been holding its breath for him specifically, which was a stupid thought and he had it anyway because his brain had clocked out of respectable thinking around five in the morning and never clocked back in.

’This would’ve been better at home. Obviously. My room has a door with locks, a bed, and lighting that doesn’t look like a true-crime documentary thumbnail. But no. You had to be efficient. You had to multitask. You had to turn a forgotten philosophy classroom into a studio because waiting six hours felt like a personal defeat.’

’Great. Fantastic life choices. Be a professional pervert. That’s an actual career path you’re forging right now, in a dead classroom, with dust on your knees.’

He sat for a few minutes and finished what was left of the site. Name. Landing page. Application. The blank box that was going to print money at midnight. The privacy skeleton. A list titled, with real optimism, HOW NOT TO GET SUED OR ARRESTED.

Photos would’ve been better at home, obviously — mirror, real lighting, something that didn’t scream freshman with a death wish — but he had space and time, and he’d already planned to launch today.

Patience had limits.

He stood and walked paces into the corner like the corner had specifically asked for privacy, and lowered his pants and boxers slowly, like the room itself might object.

The thing was breathtaking even asleep. Huge in the dark, veins running like roots that had given up entirely on being tidy, heavy enough that it settled against his thigh with actual weight. The new mass of the Primordial Rod sitting there like it had opinions about the launch, and every single one of them was filthy.

’My women are going to love this, won’t they?’

He took his phone out, thumbed the flashlight of the camera on so he wouldn’t have to hit the classroom lights and announce himself to God and every security camera on the eastern seaboard, and clicked.

One.

’Angle’s bad. Try again. You have a twelve-inch problem and the composition of a man who learned photography from panic.’

Another.

’Better. Still bad. Is this what photographers feel? Constant disappointment? I should have stayed a virgin with dignity. Too late. Dignity left with the elevator.’

Another, from lower, one knee actually touching the dusty floor now, because apparently there was no indignity Damon wouldn’t personally commit in service of good lighting.

’A billionaire’s son is kneeling in a philosophy classroom taking pictures of his own dick. Somewhere Asmodea Corvin Viremont just felt a disturbance in whatever force tracks family dignity, and she doesn’t even know why yet. If she ever finds out, I am moving to a country without extradition and changing my name to Greg.’

Not bad, though. Genuinely not bad. Photoshop can handle the dust, crop out the desk legs, and nobody ever has to know that a Corvin Viremont took nudes on his knees in an abandoned classroom like a criminal doing homework for a class he wasn’t even enrolled in. Professional.

’Very professional. I should put that on the site. Discretion guaranteed. Also kneeling.’

He was mid-shift, dick starting to thicken again from the sheer thought of what the next few days were shaping up to look like — and he thought Camilla in that jumpsuit to make himself hard, Charlotte’s body softness and her whole knight-shaped problem, the site going live, some lonely woman opening that blank box at eleven thirty at night with a husband snoring downstairs — when another flashlight cut across the dark.

Another camera click; straight at him.

Damon froze so much his soul was about to check out first and the body stays behind purely as evidence.

His dick, which had been getting harder by the second like it had a whole future planned, dropped so fast it was almost funny.

Nothing about this was funny yet.

His brain, in the single most useless display of processing power in recorded history, began generating a ranked list of suspects while his body remained frozen with his pants at half-mast and his dignity somewhere behind him on the floor.

Janitor. Fine. Embarrassing, survivable, he could probably pay a janitor into silence with what he had in his wallet right now and a Christmas card.

Security. Worse. Security wrote reports. Reports had file numbers.

Bradley. Somehow. For revenge. Statistically unlikely but emotionally the most satisfying option to be furious about.

A random freshman with a phone and no impulse control, who would have this on four group chats before Damon even got his belt buckled. He would have to leave the country. He would have to become Greg.

God, conducting a surprise audit specifically on him, personally, today, of all days.

His luck had a sense of humor and it was cruel.

All of them were bad.

One of them was worse, and Damon’s stomach had already started doing the specific plummeting thing that meant some deep animal part of him had recognized the footfall pattern before his brain caught up, and was currently screaming at full volume with absolutely nowhere to go.

Footsteps moved past the window before the door opened and the lights slammed on, white and merciless and doing absolutely nothing kind for the current geography of the room.

The person stood in the doorway like they had every right to be there—

"I always thought you were weird," she said... it was woman. "But this is something else, Damon, eh?"

Who else at this school would say always.

Who else would know the exact shape of his name spoken into a dark room like she’d said it a thousand times before.