The Virgin Society Collection

4. Very Ungentlemanly

4

VERY UNGENTLEMANLY

Finn

I don’t want to think. I want to fuck her lush lips.

But I can’t let her kneel on the hard wood floor like that, ruining her costume, hurting her knees. The couch across the room, with the small rug in front of it, is just too far away.

Instead, I whisk off my jacket. “Use this,” I tell her, bending to arrange it on the floor right in front of her.

“Such a gentleman,” she says as she adjusts herself on the material.

“Sometimes, but not always,” I say.

She lifts her chin brazenly. “Show me the ungentlemanly side.”

A fire ignites in me, blazing nearly out of control as I unzip, take out my cock, and rub the head against her lips. “You’re dying for my cock, aren’t you?”

“I thought about your dick while you taught me ‘Für Elise,’” she says, then licks the tip like I’m a decadent piece of candy.

A hot burst of pleasure shoots down my spine. And if she wants ungentlemanly, she’ll get ungentlemanly. “Open wide. Need to fuck that pretty mouth.”

This masked beauty devours my dick with no hesitation, no toying around, just a purposeful awareness of a ticking clock.

She sucks the head, flicking her tongue then drawing me deep. Intense, powerful sucks. Then seductive, teasing licks, all while I indulge in the top-down view of those fantastic tits. “Yes, take it. All the way,” I urge.

She curls her hands around my hips, tugging me closer. Then, I’m holding her masked face in both hands, fucking her mouth, and giving her a warning. “Coming,” I mutter, ready to pull out if she wants that.

But her fingers tighten on my hips and she holds me in place, my pleasure in her hands and mouth, my release in her throat.

I squeeze my eyes shut, the world spiraling away as ecstasy throttles me in its wicked grip.

My legs shake. My hands rope through her hair.

I pant hard for several buzzy seconds, then open my eyes as she’s adjusting her hair and her gold mask. I must have knocked it off when I grabbed her face. But she’s got it back on now, covering her up, and I offer her a hand. She rises, then licks her lips, and smooths the material of her dress as it falls back down around to her ankles. I catch a glimpse of a silver anklet.

It’s almost familiar, like I’ve seen something like it somewhere.

Then, the fabric hides it and she comes in for a quick kiss, that heady scent of her perfume infiltrating my senses once again, and it’s chased by the smell of lilacs. Flowers and sex, and she’s scrambling my head again. “Bye.”

Wait. She’s leaving? Holy shit. Her break is already up. There’s so much I need to say to her.

In seconds, she’s racing to the door.

My mind’s a fog of lust, but I manage to call out a question. “What’s your perfume?”

It feels important. I don’t even know why, but it does.

“Summer Day,” she says, then slips out the door and snicks it shut behind her.

I don’t leave right away. I just stand here against the shelves, heart thumping, pulse racing.

Mind…floating.

That was completely unexpected, and the hottest night I’ve had in ages. I stare at the books across the room, the only witnesses to our stolen moment. They wink back at me. Cheeky fucking stories.

Yeah, I know, books. It’s been a while.

I run a hand across my scruff, trying to reactivate my brain. Figure out what’s next.

Need to get her name. Her number. Another night. One time with her is not enough. I want to undress her, spread her out on my bed, and devour her sweetness all night long.

When I look down to the floor, her gold clutch purse flickers on the wood next to my jacket.

My naughty Cinderella.

With the treasure in hand, I zip my pants, grab my jacket and head down the hall to the bathroom to straighten up. When I’ve pulled myself together, I return to the ballroom and the sound of “Que Sera, Sera.”

Whatever will be, will be.

Nope. Not leaving another encounter with her to fate. She’s the first woman I’ve kissed since my divorce. The first woman who’s ignited my senses in some time. I weave through the crowd, heading straight to the piano, but Tevin stops me with a firm hand on my arm.

Shit. Did he see us? Not that we did anything wrong, but as someone hired by the club, she was worried. I don’t want my piano player to get in trouble, especially since I promised her she wouldn’t.

“Are you having a good night?” Tevin asks.

“The best,” I say, without cracking a smile that’d give too much away.

“Will we see you again?”

“When’s the next one?”

He tells me, and I make a split-second decision. “Yeah. I’ll be there,” I say.

I take risks for a living. I run a venture fund with my brother, and my entire career has been built on the foundation of gambling big in business. No reason to play it safe in my personal life now that I finally, maybe, have one again.

He peels away, and I resume my path to the piano, setting her clutch on top of the baby grand. “You left your glass slipper,” I say as I drink in the sight of her one more time.

To anyone else, she wouldn’t look well fucked. But the absence of her lipstick thrills me. The few hairs out of place excite me.

She tries to hide a smile. “You found it,” she says, then darts her gaze around the room like she’s checking for prying eyes.

I don’t want to ruin a thing for her, and really, there’s no need to bother with names or numbers right now. I’ll get them next time. Because I fully intend for there to be another night like this. I bend closer, then whisper in her ear, “I want you to come again. On me. I want to do very ungentlemanly things to you. The next party is in two weeks. I’ll be here, waiting in the library for you to take your break.”

She looks my way, her eyes unreadable, her lips tight. She says nothing as she maybe weighs the request.

Fine, so this is another challenge. I’m up for it. “The theme is Speakeasy. I’ll wear navy suspenders. I bet you have a flapper dress that’ll drive me wild.”

Her breath catches. That hitch sounds like a yes.

“Wear it,” I tell her. Her subtle gasp says she likes orders. “Without anything under your skirt.” Her eyes widen, and I savor the look as I pause, then add, “And I’ll take care of you completely.”

Her answer comes in a shudder and then a question. “Will you finish what you started tonight?”

It’s a wonder I don’t haul her back into the library right now. “You have my filthy word.”

“Let me get this straight. You built a tree house? An entire tree house in one weekend?” I arch a playfully skeptical brow my son’s way as we walk through Gramercy Park on Sunday afternoon.

“No. We did it all in one day . And it has the best stuff in it. It has a game room, and a lookout tower, and a lab,” Zach says.

And, evidently, ample space for one seven-year-old’s very active imagination. I wonder how big this tree house actually is. I’m guessing it’s only one regular-size tree house room, but it becomes whatever he wants it to be. I wonder, too, how important building a tree house is to him. I’m still learning all these details. I relish learning them.

“And what did you do in it?”

“Well, first we did some experiments in the lab. We made a volcano and watched it explode,” he says, and that sounds fun. Way more fun than the Saturday I spent reviewing the terms of the upcoming acquisition.

Though maybe not more fun than my Friday night. But I am not going to think of my goddess while I’m with my kid. Zach spent the weekend with his maternal grandparents just outside the city. Normally, or what passes for normal after less than a year spent together, he spends time with them in Scarsdale a few nights a week. But he starts science camp tomorrow in the city, so he’ll be with me for the next seven days. Since it’s five in the evening, I suppose I should have settled him into our home— our, that’s another strange thought, but a good strange thought—but when Zach begged me to take him swimming at Uncle Nick’s, it didn’t take much arm twisting to get me to say yes.

Sometimes I’m a pushover. I hope that’s not bad.

When my brother’s Art Deco building comes into view, Zach’s little feet rev up and he darts ahead of me, but I grab his hand before he takes off running down the block, powered by copious seven-year-old energy.

“Stay with me, dude,” I say.

“Okay, Dad,” he says, but it’s not a grumble–it’s an acceptance. Just like he’s accepted me easily as his father. Well, not when I first met him eight months ago. But soon after that, we got into a groove, and he started calling me Dad instead of Mr. Adams. Thank fuck. Only my grumpy dad is Mr. Adams. “Anyway, did you know Grandpa has a whole tool shed, with hammers and everything? He’s super handy.”

Well, considering I barely know the grandparents who’d been raising him for the last two years, I had no idea. “That’s cool.”

But does that mean I need a tool shed? I have a toolbox. Isn’t that enough? I can fix things. As if my firefighter dad would have let me leave his house without knowing how to hang a bookcase, spackle a hole, or repair a leaky faucet. “You know, your dad is pretty handy as well,” I say.

And competitive too.

Zach shoots me a quizzical look. “Can you build a tree house?”

It’s a simple question, not a challenge, but I know tonight, I’ll be googling how to build a tree house in a tiny yard in the West Village. “I can,” I say. “But I can also make the best forts ever.”

His green eyes pop wide open. My eyes. The kid has my eyes. The first time I met him it was eerie to see the similarity. Now, it’s just…cool.

“Can we make one tonight?” he asks as we reach Nick’s building.

“Sure,” I say. I’m still bad at saying no.

We head inside and he picks up the pace. I shake my head. “Inside feet,” I say. At least I draw the line there.

Zach nods like a good little soldier and resists running across the marble floor. When we reach the elevator, his eyes light up with glee. “Can I press the button?”

Things I don’t understand about kids—the need to be the one to press the elevator buttons. “Were you helpful with your grandmother this weekend?”

“I set the table for dinner,” he says earnestly.

That’s good. “And were you polite with your grandfather?”

“I thanked him for the tree house,” he says.

Stroking my chin like I’m weighing his good deeds, I finally say, “You can press it then.”

“Sweet!” He stabs the penthouse button, and a minute later, we’re off and he’s rushing down the hall to my brother’s home. I should tell him to stop, but fuck it. I ran like a demon as a kid too. I don’t mind seeing his rocket-fueled feet.

He raps on the door three times, but Nick answers on the second one, holding a couple of pool noodles in each hand. “Look what I got,” he says, looking far too pleased.

Dammit. I wish I’d thought of noodles, but Nick’s been at this parenting thing a lot longer than I have.

“Noodles!” Zach shouts, a battle cry for fun. He asks if he can go change, and Nick points to the guest bathroom. Zach scurries off, and I shut the penthouse door behind us.

“Noodles are the way to a kid’s heart, I guess.” I make a mental note.

“Well, pools are too. Hell, your pool in Miami is still the way to my thirty-nine-year-old heart,” he says.

I do like that infinity pool in my second home. Could even see playing a pool guy scene there with my naughty piano player, pretending she owns the place, and I found her sunbathing with her top off, and she begged me to service her…

But I shake off those thoughts.

There’s a time and place for those, and it is not when I’m about to pull on swim trunks.

Since there’s no downtime with a busy seven-year-old, the three of us head to the indoor pool a few minutes later. Nick’s building has one and the price tag reflects it.

Works for me.

Zach jumps in first, all limbs and elbows as he splashes. I’m right behind him, making a bigger splash.

Things I’ve learned in the last few months of trial-by-fire parenting—you can’t walk into a pool with a kid. You must make an epic entrance.

He surfaces, laughing at the big waves, then turns to my brother on the ledge. “Do a cannonball, Uncle Nick!”

Like anyone needs to ask my brother twice. He heads to the deep end and complies, making a tsunami across the chlorinated water. Zach paddles to the edge, grabs his goggles, and yanks in one noodle.

“Takes after me,” Nick says, and he sounds as proud as I am, even though he’s got a kid of his own. But Nick was a swimmer in high school and college, and like me, he’s enjoying finding the similarities between us and this new addition to the Adams family. “It’s still wild to see you with a kid.”

“Yeah, it is to me too,” I say, with fondness for this new life, but some sadness, too, over how it happened.

Last summer, my wife of six years left me. We’d spent years in therapy, so the demise of our marriage was a surprise to no one, including me. The big surprise in life came a few months later.

I was running on the High Line with my buddy Tate when my phone rang with a Westchester County number. I answered it in case it was one of our portfolio clients for the venture firm, but the voice on the line was a stranger.

“This is Candace Irving. Any chance you were in Rome in September eight years ago?”

Startled, I stopped running. The surreal question belonged in the opening scene of a page-turning thriller. The kind where someone’s identity is stolen, his life hacked, his world upended.

I sat on a bench, my heart racing faster. Tate joined me while this woman I didn’t know shared more details, beginning with the fact that she was Nina Irving’s mother.

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I hadn’t known her last name. Nina was simply the captivating free spirit of a woman I met one night in Rome way back when. I was thirty-two, traveling for business. I met her in a piazza, and we spent one glorious night together. I knew very little about her except that she was an American working in Europe as a wedding and boudoir photographer, but she’d impulsively taken the weekend off to go to Rome with friends. By the end of the evening, she’d been in my hotel room.

In the morning, she was gone, catching her flight to Amsterdam where she had work for the week.

One hot night. Only first names. Nothing more.

Except, it wasn’t just that.

As I learned from Candace, Nina wound up pregnant. She tried to find me, but not very hard, they said. With only a first name, she had no success, though she knew I worked in venture capital and lived in New York. But the free spirit in her believed everything was meant to be, that she was destined to be a single mother. Her parents believed otherwise, and when Nina died of a brain aneurysm when Zach was five, they became his guardians and took on the mission of tracking me down, eventually finding a news article online about a deal my company had inked in Rome right around the time when I’d have met Nina.

“We want him to know his father,” Candace said simply.

The skeptical part of me figured they wanted his father’s money too. That since they knew who I was, they’d want a payoff.

But they never asked. They wanted Zach to know his father and to be raised by him in tandem with them. One paternity test later, and I was sharing custody with the retired bankers in Connecticut.

Life is weird. I’m forty and a new dad to a seven-year-old. This is everything I’d wanted during my marriage—and it came after .

Zach tosses me a noodle and issues an order. “Chase me on my seahorse. Both of you,” he says.

Well, then.

Nick and I comply, motoring after him until Nick’s fiancée strides into the pool area. Nick pops off and swims to the edge of the pool. He parks his elbows on it, a stupidly swoony look on his face—which is how he looks every time he sees Layla. “You off to the store?” he asks her.

“I have a quick sesh,” she says, then gives him a playful pout. She runs several makeup shops and does in-store makeup tutorials. “Then, it’s poker night.”

“Be sure to win big, sweetheart. Come home with the whole pot,” he says to her.

“I’ll take my girls for everything.”

Nick wags a finger. “And don’t let Jules beat you this time.”

She heaves a sigh. “Hey! It’s not my fault. She has the best poker face in the group.”

“No, you do, beautiful. You do.”

With his pep talk done, she stands and waves to me. “Have fun swimming,” she calls out.

“Good luck with the card sharking,” I say. “And taking your friends’ money.”

“I’ll do my best,” she says, then leaves. When I spin around, Nick’s back on a noodle, paddling toward Zach.

Ah, hell.

I can’t resist.

I catch up to him quickly, then mouth to Zach, watch this.

I drop my hand on Nick’s head and dunk my little brother—younger by a year. Zach cracks up, and the sound is wholly gratifying.

When Nick resurfaces, he narrows his eyes. “You’ll pay for that.”

“Still worth it.” I horse around with my kid and my brother, focusing on family and not on after-dark fêtes that take my mind off all the things I haven’t had these last few years.

All the things I’ve missed.

When we return to his penthouse an hour later, my clothes are missing.

Fucking little brothers.

Well, this swimsuit is dry enough. I call a Lyft and head home with Zach, wearing only my swim trunks.

Zach laughs the whole way.