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They're already waiting. Of course they are. My three Knights with their three handles, and a number glowing at the top with dollar signs that I refuse to look at just yet.

I speak first. That's the entire point. Tonight, I go first.

"Evening, boys." Low. Sweet. Mine. "You paid for the good version, so here's rule one. Nobody touches anything until I say."

And then, for the first time in two weeks, one of them talks back. Out loud. In a real, live, human voice.

"Wouldn't dream of it, Your Highness."

And the floor drops out of my stomach, because I know that voice. I have known that voice for fourteen months. I've heard it charm clients and boss around caterers and sling morning, gorgeous at an espresso machine on its way past my desk. It's Beck. Obviously it's Beck. I've known for two weeks HouseMoney was Beck, but knowing it and hearing it purr Your Highness into my bedroom at midnight are two very different things.

The second one nearly puts me on the floor.

I don't let it show, something I’ve had a lot of practice with lately. "Good to know, HouseMoney,” I say. "You can be taught."

Then, the softer, careful KindRegards, "How you doing tonight, Diablo? All good there?"

The sweet, decent, wrecking-me-by-the-inch Theo, checking on the woman he's paying a small fortune to watch, in the exact warm voice he uses on the FedEx guy and the intern and, now, me. Something in my stomach jumps, and I realize I want to bottle that voice. I also want to throw something, because he doles his kind words out to anyone and everyone, which means I’m nothing special. I’m not supposed to want to hear him the way I do.

"I'm great," I tell him, and I mean it more than he will ever know. "Stay concerned, KindRegards. I love that on you."

And then there's the third knight.

The quiet one. The one who has never typed a word, never made a sound, just paid and watched from the top of my board like a shadow with a big, fat bank account. He answered my invitation with two typed words and then went right back to silence. I wonder if he’ll stay silent even now. Even here.

Then NoComment speaks. "Do we get names?"

There it is. The first sound Elias Thorne has ever made on his side of the cam site. Quiet but also intimidating as hell, that precise voice that drops clause four, you transposed the dates on my desk like he’s all put out or something. Hearing that voice ask me a question, Elias Thorne, of all the frozen men on this earth, actually cracks and speaks.

Go figure.

I make myself laugh. The performing one. Never the real one. That laugh is the single thing that would give me away, and I will die before I hand it to them in here.

"No names," I say. "That's the whole point, isn't it? You don't get mine, I don't get yours. Nobody in this room is anybody tonight." I let it hang. "You're just three men who do what I tell you. Think you can manage?"

A beat. Then Beck, delighted and easy. "Yes, ma'am."

Then Theo. "Yup."

And last, after a silence that lasts exactly long enough to scare me into wondering if I’d fucked up, is Elias. "Sure."

Three answers in three voices I would know in a blackout, in my sleep, at the bottom of the sea.

And what pecks me on the shoulder until I have to pay attention to it is that they didn't hesitate to talk. Not one of them thought for a second that I might know their voices. Either they're too arrogant to think a camgirl would ever place them, or they don't care if I do. I don't love either answer.

I push that thought aside because it’s time to work. I already own this room.

"Great, we’re all on the same page, then," I say, reaching for the strap of my slip, the way I do that quiets my viewers.

"Then here's how tonight goes. You don't touch yourselves until I say so. You don't make a sound unless I ask for one. And when I finally let you "—I slide it off my shoulder and I hear one of them, I can't tell which, stop breathing—"you're going to tell me exactly what you're doing. Every filthy word of it. That's what we’re doing tonight."

"Understood?"

"Understood," Beck says, and I can hear the grin in it.

"Sounds good," says Theo.

Elias doesn't answer with a word. He just exhales, and somehow that's the loudest yes in the room.