Dad Next Door (Crimson Club Book 5)

19. Tristan

Quinn’s bathroomwas like something you’d see in a luxury design magazine with a giant clawfoot tub, a massive open shower with multi-directional showerheads, a two-way fireplace, and heated floors.

I barely noticed any of the opulence as Quinn turned off the water and pulled a towel out of a warming cabinet next to the shower entrance.

I’d known having sex with Quinn would change things for me, but I’d fooled myself into thinking it wouldn’t be a big deal.

I’d never been able to separate sex and emotion, and after over a decade of either lukewarm or terrible sex, my emotions were all over the place.

“Tris?”

I blinked to clear the cobwebs. I’d zoned out there for a moment.

“Do you need to talk about it?” He wrapped a warm, fluffy towel around my shoulders and rubbed my arms.

I shook my head. My thoughts were a jumbled mess, and trying to sort them out now, when I was tired and still reeling from what we’d just shared, wouldn’t help me make sense of anything.

“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?” Worry clouded his features.

“I’m okay.” I smiled, but it was weak and wobbly and not at all convincing. “You didn’t hurt me. Just have a lot going through my head right now. None of it has anything to do with you. I promise.”

He smiled in relief. “Okay. I get it. And I’m here if talking will help.”

I pulled the towel more tightly around myself as he got another out of the cabinet and tied it around his waist.

“This bathroom is amazing.”

He glanced around. “Yeah, it is.” He let out a little laugh. “It’s crazy to think that six months ago, I didn’t even have a bathtub.”

“You didn’t have a bathtub?”

He shook his head and guided me out of the shower with a gentle hand on my back, the heated tiles warming my feet. “The bathroom in the unit I rented wasn’t big enough for a tub, so I only had a shower stall.”

“How long did you live there?”

“About eighteen months. Before that, I was in an apartment with a full bathroom but no stove.”

“How did you cook without a stove?”

“A toaster oven, a microwave, a slow cooker, and an air fryer.” He pulled a new toothbrush out of one of the many cabinets around the room. “That was a penthouse compared to what it was like in the city.”

“When you lived in New York?” I shifted the towel from my shoulders to my waist and tied it closed.

He handed me the open toothbrush. “The first year wasn’t bad. I shared a two-bedroom with three roommates. It wasn’t the greatest, but we had a kitchen and a bathroom.”

My brain got stuck on him saying four people shared a two-bedroom apartment. “Were you guys, like, two couples?”

He chuckled and handed me the toothpaste. “Nope. Just random roommates I found on Craigslist. By the time I left, I was living with six randoms in a three-bedroom hovel with no kitchen and no bathroom.”

“How the hell is that legal—or possible?”

“It’s legal because no one enforces the laws, and it’s possible because we had no other choice. There was a shared bathroom and kitchen for the floor, but a single toilet, shower, stove, and microwave split twelve ways wasn’t fun.”

“Where did you all sleep?”

“The three main tenants, the ones who paid the big bucks, got the bedrooms.” He made air quotes with one hand. “Which was just the bigger half of the rooms they split in two. I loved having to walk through someone else’s room just to get to mine, and the no doors or windows thing was just icing on the cake.”

I stared at him in the mirror as he brushed his teeth. “So all those exposé videos I’ve seen about single rooms being rented out for thousands of dollars a month and turning closets and crawlspaces into illegal bedrooms to cram as many renters into a space as possible aren’t a new thing? They were an issue back then too?”

He nodded but couldn’t answer because he was still brushing his teeth.

Grateful to have something else to think about, I focused on brushing my teeth too.

“That’s what happens when you turn basic human needs into a commodity. I know it’s hypocritical of me to say that, considering I build housing for people to sell at a profit, and I own this monstrosity, but I can’t get behind the idea that anyone in a country as rich as ours should be denied the right to a home just because they can’t pay whatever arbitrary number some suits pulled out of their ass and decided was the value.”

“You sound like me back in the day.”

He grinned and handed me a tub of some sort of cream. “Yeah? You were a rebel?”

“What’s this?” I took the cream.

“Skincare.” He smirked. “You might have a baby face now, but that’ll help you keep it forever.”

“I wasn’t a rebel, not really. My parents call me a socialist, and my brother says I’m a communist, but I’m more of an anti-capitalist.” I wiggled the cream at him. “How am I supposed to use this?”

He snickered. “I always make people define the word if they try to use communist, socialist, or Marxist in an argument. Any of the ‘ist’ words. Most of the time they have no idea what they’re complaining about and are just throwing buzzwords around. And you put that on your face.” He pointed to the tub I was still holding.

I rolled my eyes at him in the most exaggerated way possible. “I got that much. But that’s it? I just put it on, and I’ll look thirty forever?”

He handed me a bottle from the little organizer on his counter. “You’ll have to add this if you want to freeze time at thirty.”

“Retinol?” I read the label. “Do you use this every day?”

“Just at night. I know everyone has their own methods and products they swear by, but I like to keep it simple. Cleanse, moisturize, and sunscreen in the mornings, then cleanse, retinol, and moisturize at night. Anything beyond that seems excessive to me.”

“Lydia revamped her skincare routine when we turned thirty-five and gifted me, like, twelve bottles of products and a list of steps that were more complicated than some of my chemistry experiments in college.” I pulled off dropper out of the retinol bottle and sniffed it. “And most of the stuff she gave me smelled like a perfume factory exploded in the bottle. This one is nice. It doesn’t really smell like anything.”

“I don’t use products with fragrance in them. I like them on other people, but I don’t need my face to smell like an ocean breeze or a vanilla candle when I work outside all day.” He held out his hand for the bottle. “Would you like a demonstration?”

I gave it to him. “I might need one. I always use way too much of this kind of stuff and end up wasting it or looking like I just dipped my face in a deep fryer.”

He snickered and pulled the stopper out of the top, the cylinder half full of the serum. “Do you mind if I put it on you? That way you can see for yourself how it’s done?”

I nodded, my heart fluttering in my chest.

We’d just had sex and showered together, but my stomach was going all gooey, and my fanciful brain was getting excited about him putting a skincare serum on me?

Jesus, I needed to get a grip.

“This is how I do things.” He held the tip of the dropper over my forehead and let a drop fall on me. “I’m sure if I made a TikTok or an Insta reel of my routine, my comments would be filled with people telling me everything I’m doing wrong.” He did the same on each of my cheekbones. “But it works for me, and I can’t find any science that says it’s harmful, so I’m sticking with it.” He added a tiny drop to my chin and closed the bottle.

I stood stock-still as he put the bottle down, then lifted his hands like he was showing them to me.

“Do you want me to use a roller? I know my mitts are a bit rough.”

“It’s fine.” I let out a choked laugh that sounded more like a cough. “I don’t mind rough.”

He smirked. “That’s what he said.”

My laugh was cut short when he gently smoothed his fingers over the dots of serum on my face, softly working it into my skin.

Our eyes locked, and this time I didn’t doubt the heat I saw in them.

He cleared his throat and dropped his hands. “Now the cream.”

Gingerly, I touched my cheek. The serum had completely absorbed, and my skin felt soft and a bit dewy, not wet or oily.

“So, less is more?” I asked, needing to break the tension.

“Yup. Especially with retinol. Too much can irritate your skin.” He unscrewed the tub of cream. “Same with this stuff. I know people who cake it onto their face like those old cold creams from back in the day, but I prefer to not feel my skincare after I put it on.”

He scooped some of the cream up with his fingers and stepped closer.

My breath caught as he dotted the cream over the same places he’d put the serum.

“Then you just rub it in.” He smoothed his hands over my cheeks and forehead, his voice barely above a whisper.

His hands stilled and we both froze, caught in some sort of feedback loop or shared daze.

Quinn cleared his throat and stepped back. “Guess I have to add skincare to my list of things I didn’t realize could be sexy.” He waved at the huge bulge under his towel.

“You should post that. It’s a work of art.”

He froze, then the corner of his mouth curled up in his trademark smirk-smile. “Yeah? You wouldn’t mind?”

“Why would I mind?”

“It’s hang out with my boyfriend before bed time, not make thirst trapsin the bathroom time.”

“No reason those can’t overlap.” Reaching out, I stroked my hand over his length.

He groaned and pressed into my touch.

“Besides, it’s a massive ego boost to know you’re posting a stiffy inspired by yours truly while your fans drool over you from afar. They wish this was for them. I know it’s because of me.”

“You really are the chillest person ever.” He shifted his hips and dragged his cock against my hand. “I was ready to quit if you wanted me to.”

“I’ll never ask more from you than I’m willing to do myself,” I said seriously, pulling my hand from his dick to emphasize the point. “Your job has nothing to do with me, or us. Asking you to stop something you’ve been doing for six years isn’t enforcing a boundary. It’s controlling.”

He stared at me, so many emotions flashing in his eyes that it was impossible to figure out what he was thinking.

“I already told you I don’t subscribe to the same ideals as most people. I don’t care that a bunch of randoms know what you look like naked. I don’t care that they know how Stone has sex or if they have dirty thoughts about you. The only thing I care about is you, Quinn. I want you to be happy, healthy, and successful. That’s it.”

He blinked a few times, his eyes a bit glassy.

“And if I’m being honest, I kinda love how all those assholes thirst over you and pay your bills, but I’m the one in your bathroom using your skincare products after getting the dicking of a lifetime.”

He let out a bark of laughter that echoed like thunder. “The dicking of a lifetime?”

“Oh yeah. How do you kids say it? All facts, no printer?”

“I’ve never heard anyone say that.” He stepped into my space and loosely held my waist. “Thanks. I know you’ve said all that before, but I worry that my job will come between us somehow. Not because of you,” he added quickly. “But just in general. Like, what if I get recognized? It’s only happened a few times outside of appearances, but what if you, me, and Leo are out together and someone says something in front of him? What if the neighbors figure out what I do? They already hate me because they think I make my money as a contractor. They’d probably try to tar and feather me in the middle of the street if they knew I was a sex worker.”

“Quinn, hun.” I rubbed the hard planes of his sides. “Those are valid fears, but even if they did happen, they wouldn’t change anything. I don’t give a flying fuck what our neighbors think about anything. And if any of those assholes even think about coming after you in any way because of your job, I will end each and every one of them.” My voice was dark with anger. “I know a lot of lawyers and have spent the last twelve years collecting information and secrets on everyone in case I needed it. I know enough to destroy the ones you’d have to worry about.”

“Okay, add that to my list.” Quinn licked his bottom lip. “Hearing my boyfriend threaten assholes is also a kink of mine.”

“Going all caveman kinda gave me the tingles, not gonna lie.” I smiled and rubbed his sides.

“But what if Leo finds out what I do?” he asked softly.

“I told him you’re a model and an influencer, so he knows as much as he needs to right now. And he’ll learn about your jobs eventually. There’s only so long I can keep him off the internet and monitor what he sees. We’ll figure out a way to tell him the truth in a way that’s age appropriate when that time comes.”

“I just don’t want to mess up your life.”

“You don’t. Being with you makes my life better.” I pressed a soft kiss against his lips.

Quinn was one of the most outwardly confident and secure people I’d ever met, but that was the mask he showed the world. He needed reassurance and validation and someone to remind him he was special and perfect just the way he was. That his past or his jobs didn’t define him and they were only one part of the amazing man he was.

I wanted to be that person. Not just right now, but forever.

“What if Simon finds out what I do and uses it against you?” he whispered. “What if he tries to take Leo away from you because of me?”

“He can try, but he won’t.”

“What?” He gaped at me.

“Stripping is legal. So is making spicy content. You have a lock on your studio door, you don’t include anyone else in your content or have them in your workspace, and you haven’t filmed a porn scene in over three years. There are no legal or even moral reasons your jobs would be detrimental to a child because you’ve done everything possible to separate them from your home life. And if he wants to throw a hissy fit and try to take me to court, that’s fine. He’ll get to see the file I’ve been compiling for the past two years documenting his bullying and neglect. I’m done letting him have any say or control over my life.”

He blew out a shaky breath.

“Any other worries in there?” I asked.

Quinn smiled, the last of the tension falling from his face. “Tons, but none that have to do with this.”

“How about I give you a facial, then we’ll go to bed?”

Quinn’s lips folded inward, and his eyes shimmered with laughter.

“Yeah, that didn’t come out the way I meant.” Chuckling, I gave him another kiss. “Not this time, at least.”

Quinn’s expression shifted to one of confusion.

“I’m always down for a facial. All you gotta do is ask.”

“You’re trying to get me hard again, aren’t you?” He pecked a kiss against my lips, then stepped back and shot me one of those smirk-smiles that would get my dick hard if it wasn’t down for the night.

“I’m not not trying.” I held out my hand for the retinol. “Facial?”

He slapped the bottle into my hand. “Now, let’s see if getting my skincare done is as much of a kink as doing yours was.”

“And if it is?” I unscrewed the dropper and squeezed the excess into the bottle.

“Then I’m going to take some dick pics, post them, then go to bed and cuddle the fuck out of you.”

“Sounds like a plan. Only I think we need to add a blow job in there.” Mimicking his earlier method, I applied a few drops to his skin.

“You want a blow job?” He quirked one eyebrow suggestively. “I’m always down for that.”

“Nope, not me. I didn’t get a chance to play earlier.” I handed him the closed bottle. “I want a turn to make your eyes roll back in your head.”

“I have no idea if it’s the skincare or the talking,” he said as I smoothed the retinol over his skin. “But both are getting added to my kink list.”

“I have a feeling we’ll be adding lots of things to our lists.”

“I have a feeling you’re correct, Doc.” He handed me the cream. “I see a lot of experimenting in our future. All for science, of course.”

“Of course,” I said solemnly. “I am, after all, a scientist.”

We locked eyes, but a moment later, we both burst into laughter.

One thing about being with Quinn I’d never get enough of was how we could flip between serious and silly in the same conversation. How we could laugh and joke around during sex or intimate moments.

He wasn’t just my best friend. He was the man I was falling for.

The man I could love if I let myself take that final step.