Chapter Seven
Quinn
“HUH.”
Tara looked up. “What’s up? I don’t like that huh .”
“Account got hacked again,” I said, looking at the notification on the phone. “That’s the fourth time in six weeks in two different accounts. I’m going to have to dig into this a bit more, that’s weird.”
“That is weird,” Tara said, heading to the door. “Be careful. Do you have any place that’s not obvious to hold the funds?”
“I have some other places, but I don’t like holding offshore. Not when I don’t have a lot.”
“You spoiled yourself. You don’t have to do fancy shit, bro. Try looking local. Like a public credit union that’s super local. Like… I think there’s one called Kitsap.”
Staring at her, I cocked my head and considered her. “Damn it, I didn’t even think of that. Are you sure you’re not the economic genius?”
Her look would have speared a feral pig at 100 yards. “There are no economic geniuses in this house, brother dear. You have fought every step of the way. And calling yourself a genius belittles that.”
“Sister, darling, dearest, you are both so good and so terrible for my ego.” I walked over and hugged her. “Thank you. I will use the local credit union for the majority of my personal stuff.”
“You should do that today.” She ruffled my hair.
“Uh… I’ll have to go on Monday between classes.”
Another look to kill leveled at me, she just waited for me to answer the question I knew she had.
“We’re meeting at eleven to go to some function with his office.”
Tara shook her head. “Quinn. Dude. What are you doing?”
“What? He booked the date—”
“That’s my point, Quinn. He booked the date. He always books the date. But you’re not really keeping the distance that implies, are you?”
“Distance?”
She pulled out her phone and typed a message quickly, then looked at me. “This is going to take a minute and Meghan was waiting. I told her to park.”
“Take a…”
“This is a dating service, Quinn. And I know you’re going on other dates, but he’s booking you all the time. Twice, sometimes three times a week. And you get excited about it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being happy about getting to see someone you like.”
“No, there isn’t,” she agreed. “But there is when they are paying you to be there. You don’t get this happy about Tim or Eric, when they book. You like them, but you don’t get a thrill out of it.”
“They’re perfectly nice guys, but there’s something about Andrej… And anyway, we never do anything untoward while I’m on the clock.”
“This isn’t about Foxy’s rules.” She stopped and cocked her head.
“Or maybe it is. Maybe that’s exactly the problem.
You’ve been seeing him two and three times a week on the books.
And you don’t do anything on the clock. But you do things off the clock.
And you look forward to that part of the night. You’re allowing yourself to be bought.”
“But that’s the deal.”
“You like -like him, Quinn. There should be no money holding you back from acting on that. You should just be dating each other. What is going on?”
“This is my job, Tara.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Think about that, Quinn. Just think about that. I want you happy, and Andrej seems to be a part of that. But the money is in the way.” Pulling open the door, she walked out to where her friend’s car was parked.
Just like that she walked out after pulling the pin on a grenade I didn’t know I was holding. I stared at the closed door.
I really did like Andrej. It always made me happy when I saw him pop up on my schedule.
I enjoyed talking to him, going places, trying new foods—and the afterhours sex was a lot of fun.
We hadn’t gone further than trading handjob and blow jobs, but we still had a lot of fun.
More and more, I wanted to take it further.
But Tara had to go and put that in my brain.
My phone pinged again, and I pulled it out to see who had sent me a message.
The bank. Again. And this time, a bigger hit.
I dialed the bank immediately, and by the time I got off, I had already messaged Foxy and Andrej that I was going to be a bit late. I had to go deal with the bank and someone trying to steal my money.
***
The door swung open, and a smiling Andrej stood there. He took one look at my face and his smile slid off.
“Good lord, what’s wrong?”
“Someone is screwing with my bank accounts. I’m sorry I was late, I just had to deal with it.”
“No, that’s fine, I get it. You have to do what you have to do. And I know you’re more aware of your money than most people.”
“What?” That was an odd thing to say to me as I’d never told him how I’d lost my millions. I’d never even told him I’d had millions to lose.
“Well, you’re an economics master’s candidate, so you probably watch your money like a hawk. It doesn’t surprise me that you’d want to handle an issue immediately. Or that it would bother you.”
Ah, right. I had to take a down a notch.
I’d solved all the problems with the credit union, and I was now leaving the card locked in the app unless I was using, and I was going to use a pass-through account to pay my bills from then on. It wasn’t something I really wanted to do, but it was the fastest, easiest solution.
“Come in,” Andrej said. “My parents are in Antigua, and my sister is back at school in New York.”
I walked in and I could see the understated money in the house.
It was a modern style, very angular but open.
The walls were white with tons of décor and color pops everywhere, as well as an understated chandelier.
The entry way went straight back to a wide deck that looked out at Lake Washington and the skyline of Seattle.
“Holy moly,” I whispered. “This is so nice.”
He grinned. “Dad loved the view, mom loves minimalization of corners to be dusted.”
“Your mom dusts?” I teased.
He poked my arm. “Well, yes, she did. This house was quite the stretch when they bought it, but they loved it. Dad got a fat raise about three years after we moved in, and mom immediately hired a house cleaning service. We all pitched in, but she was happy to get a cleaning service. And I totally agree with her.”
I stared out at the patio, and the sparkling lake. Andrej caught my arm, and led me through the doors, down the hall and out to the fresh air. There was a table set with a meal, and he smiled at me.
“I knew you’d like to sit out here and watch the lake.”
“You know me well.”
“I’d like to think so.” He motioned to the table for me to take seat. “I also know that it’s going to get wicked cool out here later, once that wind kicks up after dark. So, since we’re skating the edge of fall and the patio becoming unusable, I figured we’d use it.”
“Summer is almost over,” I said. The air had a crispness to it lately and I was looking forward to the fall. I was looking forward to some apple picking and pumpkin picking and…
Tara’s words from earlier echoed through my head again, and I took everything down a notch.
“We’ll close all this off and winterize the first weekend in October,” Andrej said. “Usually by then the rain and clouds have come back and the skyline will disappear for weeks at a time.”
“What happens to the Tahitian Moon for the winter?”
“It doesn’t often ice over, but we’ll pull her out mid-October an get any repairs and cleaning done. She gets barnacle-y.”
“So, it’s our private love palace for a few more weeks?”
He choked on the sip of water that he took. “Oh, my God. Why would you say that?”
I leaned in, grinning. “Because we’ve been sexing that thing up from stem to stern for weeks.”
Immediately, he blushed. I knew that blush went all the way down to his nipples, and I liked knowing that.
Shit.
I was in so deep here. We were on a paid date, and I absolutely knew too much about someone who was paying me to keep his company. This didn’t feel right anymore, and I wanted to hate Tara for saying anything about it.
Still, I didn’t say anything. I just enjoyed our banter, the food, the view, the weather. We weren’t going to have this much longer, on possibly more than one level.
We wound up at the boat.
I knew we would. I didn’t think he was going to offer up his bedroom in his house for our tryst. That felt wrong to me, as well.
We went to the pub after enjoying a glass—or two—of some wine from some family vineyard that his family knew up in Ancient Lakes and had won some small awards for their Reisling.
It was really good Reisling.
We giggled and bumped into each other on the way to the dock, and up into the boat. I could feel the movements of the water as we staggered into the galley and down the bed.
A trail of clothes followed our path to the bed, and we fell into it, hands everywhere, lips locked, dicks rubbing against each other.
I tossed him down on the bed, ass up so I could do some one-on-one time with my hands on his back.
He was immediately melting into the bed, relaxing as I massaged him and soaked up the smoothness of his skin.
“You really like this.” His words were smothered by the bedding he’d dropped his head into.
“I do, and I don’t think you hate it, either.”
“No complaints.”
I lightly tapped his smooth, perfect ass. He let out a little gasp and groan and I was immediately inspired. I hadn’t tried this with him yet, and I had the feeling he was really going to like it.
Sliding down on the bed, I pushed his legs wide and settled between them, nipping, lightly kissing and massaging his ass. He giggled and looked back at me.
“Whatcha doing?”
“Enjoying myself,” I answered.
Slowly, I massaged his cheeks apart and held them there to find his little hole winking at me.
“Oh,” Andrej gasped. “Oh, wait, please wait.”
“For?”
He looked at me over his shoulder. “Please let me clean?”
“I’m okay with—”
“I’m not, please. Don’t move. I’ll be back in an instant.”