The Virgin Society Collection

43. Closet Romantic

43

CLOSET ROMANTIC

Nick

I’m not a superstitious guy, but on Friday night, I do everything the same as I did when I had my first date with Layla.

After I shower, I play her videos as I trim my beard, brush my teeth, and get dressed.

“And for those of you just getting into makeup, no, a highlighter is not what you use in a book to underline your favorite parts,” she says with the cheekiest of cheeky grins. “It’s what you use to highlight your favorite parts of your face.”

She blows a cherry-red kiss to the camera, and I growl in appreciation for my Layla, my Lola, and her private moment just for me.

I close out of her app, grab my wallet, head out of my building, and get into the town car waiting for me at the curb. After I tell the driver where to go, I raise the partition.

On the ride uptown, I catch up on work emails, but when the vehicle swings onto Central Park West, I tuck my phone away so I have a few minutes to get out of the work zone completely.

And get into the first-night-out zone.

I’m almost giddy at the prospect of taking her out with no secrets.

At Layla’s building, I tell the driver I’ll be right back. When I head into the lobby to pick her up at her apartment, the elevator doors whoosh open.

The breath is knocked out of my lungs at the sight of her.

The woman in blue.

A silky sapphire dress clings to her gorgeous frame, hugging her hips, showing off her legs, and proudly displaying her glorious ink.

Her signature.

Her presence.

Her life.

Gratitude washes over me, along with joy. I can’t stop looking at her. And I don’t have to. I don’t have to hide a goddamn thing anymore.

Confidently, with a wonderful kind of certainty, I walk over to her, curl a hand over the daisy on her left shoulder, then brush a kiss to her soft cheek as I rub my thumb along the petals. “You are maddeningly gorgeous and all mine.”

She leans into my hand, seeking me out. Like she always has. She’s been so bold all along, and I’m so damn grateful for who she is and how she is.

After a few seconds we separate, and she says, “I am yours, so take me out.”

“Always,” I say, then set a hand on her back and leave the building with her, like we did months ago in Miami, like we’ll do now here in New York.

I can picture it perfectly. And I wonder if all my theories about coincidence are wrong.

I take her to a new restaurant in the Village. Finn told me about The Standards on Christopher Street, but there’s nothing standard about the menu. The meal is sumptuous, a butternut squash ravioli with white wine sauce for her and Chilean sea bass for me.

Old standards play overhead. Yeah, I like them. Nobody has a thing on Frank and Ella, or Harry Connick Jr. for that matter.

As we dine and drink, our conversation meanders through friends and moments, then she tells me about her business partner, Geeta, how she met her in a thrift shop when they both reached for the same purple blouse.

“It’s odd because we don’t have the same taste. She’s more punk rock,” Layla explains, then runs a hand down her hair, her rings glinting in the soft candlelight as she goes. “She has this magenta streak in her hair, and a lip piercing.”

“What’s your style then?” I ask, eyeing her dress, her skull rings, her ink. She’s a lovely hodgepodge all her own.

Layla gives a coquettish shrug. “Sometimes I’m pinup, sometimes I’m nighttime, sometimes I’m super-casual girl. And sometimes I’m whatever I want.”

“You know yourself well,” I say.

“I guess I had to figure some things out,” she says, and that makes all the sense in the world.

“So, who got the top? The purple one?” I ask.

“She did,” Layla says with a smile. “I could tell she wanted it, so I told her to take it. I grabbed something else.”

And I fall a little harder. “That’s so you.”

“You’d think we’d have met someplace else. Business school, or through a friend, or a mentor. Or Raven, even. But it was random.”

I set my tumbler down. “Was it though?”

Her brow knits. “What do you mean?”

“Was it random? Or was it kismet? Do you believe in kismet?” I ask, though I doubt she does. Understandably.

“I don’t think so,” she says slowly, a little carefully, like she doesn’t want to rain on my parade. “Do you?”

I shrug both wanting to admit it and not.

“You don’t seem like a kismet kind of guy,” she adds. “You’re Mister Logic and Theories, and you study the world for patterns.”

That is true. “I am that guy,” I say, but as the music shifts to “It Had to Be You,” that kismet feeling from earlier sharpens. As I picture the next few days and weeks and months, I’m pretty sure I’m this guy too. I offer her a hand. “Dance with me.”

It’s an order, but she likes orders, so she’s up in no time, heading to the tiny corner of the restaurant with hardwood floors.

“Nick Adams, you dancer, you,” she says with a sexy and sweet smile that I want to kiss off, that I can kiss off.

So I do, savoring the chance to touch her in public, in private, wherever and whenever we want at last.

No more hiding. No more need for secret trysts on dead-end streets.

As I brush my lips to hers, she shudders in my arms, pressing against me. I want her even more when she does that, so I break the kiss. “Don’t want this to turn into an R-rated show,” I say as we sway the slightest bit, slow dancing to the swoony song.

“That’s for later.”

“Absolutely. But for now,” I say, running my fingers along her hair, returning to a thought that’s got a hold of me in this moment, “I asked about kismet because I was thinking about fate and meeting you in the first place in Miami. Then about moving to New York. Then running into you.”

“And you think meeting me in Miami was kismet?” she asks, her lips curving up in obvious delight as well as curiosity.

“At first I thought it was a coincidence, but I think maybe meeting you was meant to be after all.”

“Yeah?” Her smile deepens, and that’s a sign to keep going.

“I do,” I say, and I feel uncorked. Completely free. It’s a fantastic feeling, so I give in to it completely.

“Why now?”

“Because here we are. Like this. First Miami, then New York,” I say, even more caught up in her. “I don’t mean I believe in kismet for everything. But I believe it now…for you.”

Her smile is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Because it’s all for me. “Are you a closet romantic?”

“Have I hidden it before?”

She lets go of my shoulder, holds up her hand to show a smidge of space between her thumb and forefinger. “You’ve never struck me that way.”

I lift my face to the ceiling where the music and lyrics drift from the speakers. I wandered around, and I finally found…the somebody who…could make me be true. “I took you to a romantic restaurant. I’m slow dancing with you. I’m telling you I believe you and I aren’t a coincidence, and you think I’m not romantic?”

“Okay, maybe a little romantic,” she says, teasing me again.

“Good,” I say, then I inch back, wanting to look her in the eyes. Wanting her to see all of me as I say the next thing. “Because I love you, Layla. I just do. Maybe it’s soon, maybe it’s madness, maybe that makes me a total romantic?—”

She shuts me up with a kiss, and it’s the most emotional kiss in the whole entire world. I can feel her love in the way she kisses, can hear it in her soft breath, can sense it in her hands on my face.

It’s there whether she says it or not.

But when she breaks the kiss, she says, “It’s not too soon. I love you too.”

I don’t kiss her again. Instead, I say, “Let me show you how much.”

In the backseat of the car, with the partition up, she’s a goddess, arching against me, grabbing my shirt, and parting her lips as she shatters next to me.

Yes, fucking yes.

I slow the stroke of my fingers as she comes down from her high then turns to me, eyes starry, cheeks glowing.

I lick her off my fingers. Then, my greedy girl comes in for a naughty kiss.

“Mmm. I taste good on your mouth,” she says when she pulls back.

“I should make sure though,” I say darkly.

When we reach my home, I don’t even bother to unzip her dress. I set her on the couch, kneel between her thighs, and push up the fabric.

A few minutes later, she’s making my favorite sounds against my mouth. Then panting, gasping. “You’re relentless, Nick,” she murmurs.

I brush my beard against her thigh. “You demanded orgasms the night I met you. Did I misunderstand you?”

She laughs, then sits up and leans forward, sliding one hand down my chest and gripping my cock through the fabric of my pants.

I moan as she squeezes. “Play with my dick, sweetheart,” I tell her then stand and help her along, unzipping my pants, pushing down my boxer briefs, and offering her my cock. Eagerly, she dips her face to my dick, rubbing the head against her lush red lips.

She reapplied her lipstick in the elevator of my building, and I intend to remove it very, very soon.

I nudge her lips open wider with my cock. Beautifully, she obeys. She licks the head reverently, like she’s indulging in me. Hot sparks of pleasure shoot down my spine.

She swirls her tongue over me then lets go to lick a deliriously sexy stripe down my shaft.

I can’t think anymore, it feels so good.

I breathe out hard, curling a hand around her head. “More,” I urge.

She looks up at me, wicked and powerful as she says, “Patience, handsome.”

I shake my head. “I can’t be patient. God, I want you so much.”

That seems to light her up since in no time, she’s grabbed my hips and has dragged me deep into her throat. She’s on my dick like it’s her next meal, and I can barely stand how erotic this moment is.

My beautiful woman is devouring my cock in my penthouse, her red lips stretched and full of me, all of New York beyond us. But I don’t think she’s focused on the natural art views since she’s so damn focused on my dick. She’s sucking hard and purposefully, but it’s too good. My thighs shake. My balls tingle.

I stop, ease out of her mouth.

She pouts. “But I like your dick.”

“Then spend some time with it in my bed.”

In my bedroom, I strip off my clothes the rest of the way as she tugs off her dress. But I stop and stare when the dress pools on the floor.

She’s breathtaking in black lingerie. My throat goes dry as I point stupidly at the fabric hugging her breasts. “That’s what was in your photo?”

“I bought it for our first New York date,” she says, then runs her fingers down a black satin corset that nearly makes me lose my mind.

“Leave it on and get on my dick now,” I tell her, then I grab a condom from the nightstand.

But once I’m in bed and she’s climbing over me, she takes the condom and tosses it behind her.

That’s interesting, and I hope it means everything I think it does. “Something you want to tell me?”

She leans closer, her hair swishing over her shoulders. “I started the pill recently. It’s working now. And I’m safe.”

I get to have her bare. My body is a furnace. “I’m safe too.”

I offer her my cock, and she takes it.

My woman sinks down on my shaft, moaning as I fill her. A dirty smile spreads as she wriggles around on my dick, like she’s never been happier.

Well, that makes two of us.

I am the luckiest man in the world as I fuck the woman I love.

Maybe it’s kismet. Maybe it’s coincidence. Or maybe it’s making a choice and then doing everything in your power to own it.