Chapter 4
Toby’s couch was sticking to his legs. He wanted to get up but knew when he did, there’d be a wax strip situation. Maisy said to go leather but never mentioned the naked sweat thing. He supposed he could not sit naked on his couch, but what was the point of owning a white leather couch if you couldn’t sit naked on it?
He could hear Olive and Lily giggling in his bedroom and wished he could ask them to leave without seeming like a prick. Two years ago, he couldn’t have imagined having one girl suck your cock while another tongued your asshole was something you could get sick of, yet here he was.
He’d had a lot of experiences since Tabby, but tonight was the first time he’d had sex he couldn’t care less about. It showed, too. He couldn’t focus, couldn’t come. Eventually, he’d faked it. Thank fuck for condoms, or he’d have had some explaining to do.
Maybe he’d have done better if it was one-on-one, but Olive and Lily liked threesomes. Both were into power play, being bossed around and told to eat each other out. It was hot, but there was definitely some repressed bisexuality at play. Olive and Lily were petitioning to stay over most nights so they could 69 without their friends—or parents—thinking they might not end up married to News Corp shareholders.
His first real girlfriend had come out of the closet shortly after they’d broken up. Maybe he had a type. But he hadn’t felt much beyond platonic affection for his first girlfriend, and he didn’t feel anything for Olive and Lily.
His type appeared to be one singular woman—Tabby DaSilva.
Toby drained his glass of ice water and immediately felt it pour out of his forehead. He could put on the air conditioner, but he hadn’t yet outgrown the habit of cost-cutting. He’d never had more than two minutes of AC without his dad barrelling in to ask if he knew how expensive electricity was. Sweating through Melbourne summers was normal, and lately, he craved normal.
The talking in his bedroom stopped, and he wondered if the girls had fallen asleep. A second later, a low moan confirmed that no, sex had resumed. Toby raised his empty glass to his forehead and wondered if he’d be required to join Olive and Lily or if he could just stay in the lounge and be miserable.
He shouldn’t have invited them over, but they’d asked, and he wanted the release. A few hours ago, he’d been sitting at a table for one in Footscray, getting sympathetic looks from servers as he digested the fact Tabby stood him up—and had sent him across town in peak-hour traffic to do it.
It wasn’t that much of a surprise. He’d known Tabby was pissed at him when he saw her at the Village Belle, but her tattoo offer had seemed genuine. He’d hoped it was finally time to circle back, to show her he’d become someone worthy. Apparently, she didn’t feel the same.
He’d called her from Bar Josephine and, never one to back down from a fight, she’d answered on the second ring. “?Buenas noches?”
“You seem to be running a bit late, Tabitha.”
She’d burped into the phone. “Who’s this?”
Toby had had damp pits, gotten pity stares galore and blown seventy bucks on an Uber, and he still had to fight back the urge to laugh. “I take it you don’t want to tattoo me?”
“Toby, who?”
He forced himself to sigh. “Congratulations. You sent me on a wild goose chase and wasted my time. Now, can we?—”
“Oh, is it annoying when someone wastes your time? I wouldn’t know.”
The corners of Toby’s mouth had kicked up. His leaving had affected her. “I assume you’re not coming to Footscray?”
“No, I’m behind you! Look!”
He turned, then swore as Tabby cackled down the line. “You’re such a fucking virgin.”
“You, of all people, know that’s not the case.”
“Virginity’s a state of mind, Toberson. And no matter how much gash you dive into, you’ll always be a big old virgin to me.”
Toby had growled into his phone. She was trying to push him back into that old dynamic. The state of affairs where she had all the power and the experience. He’d spent almost two years and most of his conscience correcting that dynamic and he wouldn’t be put back into the ‘gawky friend’ box without a fight.
“Tabitha,” he’d snarled as though to a wayward intern. “Do you want to do my tattoo or not?”
“I’ve reconsidered in light of you being a useless ratfuck of a person.”
His heart sank. They could banter back and forth all day, but if he couldn’t stick this landing and get her to meet with him, all his work and sacrifices would be for nothing. “What if the price goes up to twelve thousand?”
“This isn’t a negotiation, dickhead.”
“Really? Because it seems like you need money.”
“I don’t need anything. Least of all from you.”
But the brightness in her voice had dimmed, and he knew he had his hooks in the right place. “I’m serious. Twelve grand.”
“Hmm… What is the price of a human soul these days?”
“Thirteen,” he countered. “Come to my place whenever you want, and I’ll pay cash.”
An older patron sitting nearby gave him a suspicious look. Toby was sure the old bastard thought he was hiring an escort.
Tabby made a low growling noise. “You’re fucking with me.”
“I’m not. I want your work. I want you.”
“Fine. I’ll think about it.”
“What’s there to think about? You called me last night, more than willing to use me for money.”
“Well, I guess I sobered up and realised you’re a terrible fucking person and that I wanted to mess with you more than I wanted to lick your taint for profit.”
His gut told him that was bullshit. His gut and the mental image she’d evoked of servicing him sexually. He decided to push. “And the way you looked at me at the Village Belle? Like you were dying to get me back inside you? That’s got nothing to do with it?”
She hung up.
Feeling slightly better and much worse, Toby had stayed at the bar for dinner—why make the cab fare a complete waste—researching tattoos while he ate, looking for something meaningful that suited Tabby’s art style. He’d already had an idea of what he wanted, and as he left the bar, he messaged her a few photos.
“Interesting,” she wrote back and sent her own attachment. “I was thinking something more like this?”
It was a picture of a man’s gaping asshole.
Four drinks in and spitting mad, he’d texted Olive back to say, “Yup, grab your ‘friend’ and come over again. Make this whole night a bad fucking memory.”
Yet as he sat, sweating into his fifteen-thousand-dollar couch, Toby knew better than to think it was over with Tabby. Months of casual dating had taught him that disinterest meant no response, not anger. Or pictures of hairy assholes. Tabby wasn’t done with him yet and he was far from done with her.
In hindsight, he understood their old dynamic better. When he’d met her, he’d been the weird kid from a Christian school who worked as a glorified receptionist and had never seen a boob in real life. And he never felt more like he’d never seen a boob in real life than he did around Tabitha DaSilva. Not only was she beautiful and talented, but she’d also been so self-assured. She had over three hundred thousand followers on social media, sponsorships from makeup brands and guys with big cars and even bigger muscles offering to fly her to the Sunshine Coast so she could ink them. He’d been infatuated, but he’d also been in awe of her, and he’d done the usual no-game thing—hanging around and trying to make her laugh and hoping she’d notice him. And then she had, and it had been the best morning, afternoon and night of his life.
… Until he’d realised that nothing, not even fucking him senseless, would ever make Tabby see him as her match. He’d known then that he had to go and become her match. And there was no way he could do it while he was still fucking around trying to be her friend.
Those first few months of starting a new job, hitting the gym, and trialling new clothes had been rocky. If Tabby had been there to witness it, she and everyone else at Silver Daughters would have given him no end of shit. Instead, he’d gone away and figured out the kind of man he wanted to be—and got some sexual experience under his belt while he did it.
She’d said she wanted a sugar daddy to take care of her, and he was that guy now. He just had to prove it to her.
Toby stood and walked naked to his fridge to collect a Heineken. Cracking open the beer, he pictured Tabby on her knees, her perfect tits casting shadows on her thighs as she begged him to come fuck her harder. He drank deeply, recalling the feel of her skin, the suck of her lips.
Now he had something to compare her to, he knew that one time hadn’t been a fluke. He and Tabby had been fucking incredible together. And back then, he didn’t know half as much about his preferences as he did now. Or how much women tended to like them. He’d had his share of vanilla sex, but more often than not, the answer to ‘You gonna do what you’re told?’ was ‘Yes. Fucking. Sir.’
He pictured Tabby in a custom cage, hot pink bars and white fur lining the bottom.
He imagined her pushing her body against the steel and sticking her tongue out. He’d shove his cock in her mouth and make her suck him as she whimpered. She’d be all dressed up in stockings and pink lingerie, her bra shoved down to expose her tits.
His cock, which had refused to focus an hour ago, sprung to life, throbbing with an urgency that made his head spin. He drank more beer, swallowing fast. Maybe that was part of Tabby’s appeal—all that rebellion begging to be tamed. He’d grown up in a hyper-controlled environment. For better or worse, he knew how to exert that control over others, and he’d craved the dynamic with girls even before he’d really understood what sex was.
Tabby seemed to want the same thing. He’d been a complete amateur in bed with her, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself from flexing the dominant muscles, straining to break free. And far from getting annoyed, she’d encouraged it. When he’d held her down, she’d moaned.
Reluctant to return to the couch or his bedroom, where Olive and Lily’s squeaking said they were still very much at it, he wandered over to his window to watch the ocean roiling, black as the night above it. The house was a solid investment, a three-storey, five-bedroom beachfront property with great resale value.
But it was too big.
And it was too quiet.
And he spent most of his time padding around like a kid lost in a shopping centre.
Life wasn’t supposed to go this way. He’d always had a head for numbers, but even he was surprised by how good he was at reading stock portfolios and picking winners. At work, they called him the King. It was a reference to King Midas and meant as a compliment. Only Toby had looked up the story of King Midas, and the moron had turned his wife into a solid gold statue and wound up all alone.
The day he’d left Tabby’s bed, he finally put his parents’ house on the market. It was falling down but on a decent bit of land, and he thought a property developer might buy it. Instead, everyone was outbid by a non-profit that built affordable townhouses for low-income families.
“You’re welcome,” Chase Hansen from Housing For All told him after the auction. “Don’t spend it all at once.”
“It’s all going to the Philippines,” Toby had said, but he was wrong.
Instead of demanding the money to give over to their… religious organisation… his parents had told him to keep it. Maybe they felt guilty for abandoning their only son. Maybe they wanted Mopsy to be provided for in her old age. Either way, he suddenly had more money than he could have earned in a decade.
The old Toby Tennant would have bought a two-bedroom apartment in Coburg. The new Toby Tennant quit his job working under Scott Sanderson and spent thirteen sleepless nights researching cryptocurrency. At 1 a.m. on a Tuesday, he’d stumbled onto a Reddit thread about ZenithCoinX—a token created by finance grifter Max Maven. All signs pointed to Maven preparing to artificially inflate the coin via his influencer friends and their collective millions of followers, but there were no safe bets in finance. Sweating bullets, Toby had put every dollar he had into Zenith, buying almost two hundred thousand coins for three dollars each via multiple anonymous crypto wallets.
A month later, Zenith’s value rose to almost fifteen hundred per coin. He stayed awake for four days and three nights, constantly refreshing CoinCodex, his guts knotted tighter than Mick Jagger’s pants. The second ZenithCoinX dipped half a percentage, he liquidated his original investment for two hundred and sixty-two million dollars.
It was the slimiest thing he’d ever done, essentially propping up a pump-and-dump scheme, but it was legal in the near lawless world of cryptocurrency, and when ZenithCoinX tanked a week later, Max Maven was the hardest hit, losing all the money he’d hoped to withdraw to an unknown CryptoTitan from Australia. Reddit was shocked, TikTok was stunned, and Toby Tennant from Hoppers Crossing was a multimillionaire.
There were no safe bets in finance.
Quietly terrified and unable to see the money as anything but numbers on a screen, he’d quickly divested, buying the St Kilda house and an investment property in Japan, creating a defensive stock portfolio, and donating ten million to a financial aid charity. It eased his conscience—and offset some of the capital gains tax he rightfully had coming his way.
That still left him with a hundred million dollars in liquidity.
He wanted to travel the world, to swim on the beaches of Sri Lanka, walk the Great Wall, and ski the French Alps. But he wanted to do all that with Tabby, and he knew he wasn’t ready to return to her yet.
The day she’d made him a man, he’d known she saw him as nothing more than a friend. He’d vowed to become worthy of her respect—an equal to her beauty, intelligence, and experience. Showing up at Silver Daughters, essentially unchanged but with a bunch of money he’d made on Reddit, would have made her piss herself laughing at him. Probably on her way to fuck some douchebag performance artist.
He’d gotten rich, but he was still a fucking dork. He needed to start construction on becoming the kind of man she couldn’t deny.
So, bored of thinking about his bank balance, he’d gone to Prestige Asset Management in South Yarra and asked for an advisor role. Eight minutes into a meeting with the chief investment officer, he was offered a corner office and introduced to Maisy Collins. She was the second woman to completely change his life, though entirely different from the way Tabby DaSilva had.
A hardass, triple divorced, Jennifer Coolidge-style blonde, Maisy was fifty-two with lips full of filler and walk-in closets full of Vuitton. She loved champagne and designer handbags, called everyone ‘dahling’ and didn’t give a single fuck about people thinking she was a cliché.
In his first week, she took him out for dinner, which became karaoke and bottomless negronis, and he ended up telling her everything about everything: Tabby, the crypto, even his parents’ move to the Philippines. It had been reckless, spilling his guts like that, let alone to someone he worked with. But whether it was luck or fate guiding his stupid drunk tongue, it had set him on exactly the right path.
“I wanna call my parents,” he drooled at the night’s end. “They might… they might wanna see me.”
“Fuck your parents, dahling,” Maisy had said, steering him toward a black taxi. “We’ll do brunch tomorrow, okay?”
Brunch turned into a Collins Street shopping spree in which Maisy got him measured for three eye-wateringly expensive bespoke suits.
“I’ve already got one,” he said as the tailor stabbed pins dangerously close to his dick. “A nice one. Armani.”
“Off the rack Armani,” Maisy sniffed. “Why don’t you just go to Mensland and buy one of those hideous check pattern shirts with the droopy collars and be done with it?”
At her insistence, he’d given her a tour of his new St Kilda home, which Maisy described as “More barren than my uterus. You think you’d have bought plates from Tarjay or something.”
Maisy volunteered, no, demanded, to decorate his house, picked out all the art and appliances and ordered furniture with price tags that would have made his mother slap him. Even his scarlet Lamborghini was her idea. He’d told her he wanted a sports car but was worried about what everyone would think. Maisy had looked at him like he was crazy. “Everyone will think you’re an arsehole, dahling. That’s entirely the point.”
Over and over again, he offered to pay her for her time, and she waved him away as she waved away all brown liquor and gluten.
“I’ve always wanted to be a fairy godmother, dahling, and while I’d prefer a sad little girl with glasses, you’ll do. And as it’s wine o’clock, should we go to Rufio for nibbles?”
There was never a question of romance between them. Maisy saw him as a kind of overgrown labradoodle, adorable but not remotely sexual, which didn’t stop her from coaching him with women. At first, he’d been humiliated by the fact Maisy remembered every drunken word he’d said about Tabitha DaSilva and his all-too-recent virginity. But she’d assisted him in the same frank, ‘isn’t it obvious, dahling?’ way as she’d organised his potted plants.
“You need experience and a lot of it,” she’d told him over oysters. “Good, bad, ugly. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do. And it would be best if you could stop squirming whenever a girl looks at you as though you’ve got an ant’s nest in your underwear. Very unsettling. When we’re done with mains, we’ll make you a profile on whatever dating apps girls are flocking to these days and take it from there.”
“But I love Tabby,” he reminded her. “I want us to be together.”
“And you will be. But not before you’ve learned to hold your own. Right now, you’re raw; you must cultivate your power. Hone your skills, as it were.”
“What skills? I don’t have skills.”
Maisy eyed him beadily over her oyster fork. “You swiped millions of dollars from under a man’s nose. You’re holding your own beautifully at the office. You’re a killer, Toby. You just need more confidence. And to stop wriggling.”
He’d been dubious, but he shouldn’t have been. Maisy helped him set up a Tinder account and then sent him on dates, three or four a week. At first, he’d been so nervous he sweat right through his shirts, convinced he talked too much, drank too much, and looked like an idiot. Maisy refused to relent. She rehearsed small talk with him, chose dark bars and restaurants to go on dates and even—the memories still made him blush—made him practise flirting with her friends, a rowdy collection of equally divorced, equally hard-drinking interior decorators and luxury good consultants.
“None of you gargoyles get ideas,” Maisy snapped as he stumbled through compliments and asked after grandchildren. “Toby’s finding his feet, not auditioning as a toyboy.”
Eventually, he’d become friends with all of them: Suzannah, Mary-Lynn, Jessica B, Jessica A and Victoria. He had no idea why people were so down on middle-aged women; they were fucking hilarious, charming and uncensored. Maisy’s monthly group dinners were some of the most fun he’d ever had.
His self-elected fairy godmother kept him dating like it was a part-time job, and to his surprise, after a while, everything started to click. He could do the whole routine: drinks, chat, first kisses without a flicker of nerves. And sex. What started awkward soon became easy as breathing. No one set him on fire like Tabby, but hooking up with girls he once would have struggled to even look at was an ego boost.
Then they started pursuing him: girls at work, his co-workers’ friends, and sisters. He quit Tinder and started hooking up with women from his social circle or ones he met in bars.
“You’re a fucking assassin,” Brennan, his podcast co-host, grumbled during one recording session. “Save some for the rest of us, asshole.”
Toby had laughed mostly primarily because he’d realised Maisy had pulled it off. He had a reputation as a finance guru, as a ladykiller, as someone with confidence who important people took seriously. The kind of reputation he’d never believed possible before he met her. She was a fairy godmother, if one the Brothers Grimm never had the balls to imagine.
It was her idea to start the finance podcast, too. She told him he had a great voice and it would help him speak with more confidence. He’d been doubtful, but once he pulled Brennan and Tom into the fold, he found he liked talking shop and trying to educate reckless retail investors. The podcast had quickly found an audience, and his DMs had been inundated with even more women wanting to meet up with him. Limitless adventure, his for the taking.
And now he was here, sweating his ass off in his luxury home, horny and bored and longing for the same thing he couldn’t have back when he was broke. Tabby.
Climbing the hedonic ladder, he’d felt like he had something to aim for. Now, it didn’t feel like much at all.
He pressed his forehead to the glass, staring into darkness. Why did he want Tabitha DaSilva so badly? But there was no real point questioning it. He just did. He’d known from the second he’d first seen her that they’d be fucking great together. And now that Maisy had helped him build an empire, it was time to win over his empress.
For months, he’d been working out with the intent of developing muscle. He had wanted to ask Tabby to do a sleeve tattoo without seeming like he was overcompensating for lack of definition, something all the artists at Silver Daughters had made fun of. He’d hit his goals, and then some, but something had held him back. He’d been waiting for a sign that the timing was right, that Tabby was ready. That he was ready.
And then she’d appeared out of nowhere at the Village Belle while he was with Olive and Lily and fucked the plan to high hell.
A twisted part of him had been gratified by her shock at finding him entangled with two women. For the first time since they’d met, he’d been in the power position, drunk at a bar with two hot girls vying for his dick. And as far as showing her he’d gotten some since leaving her bed, he couldn’t have asked for better.
Still, he’d have gone apeshit if he’d walked in on her sucking face with some dude, let alone two, and the way she’d looked at him, Olive and Lily licking his neck and pawing at his chest hadn’t brought him any pleasure. Jealousy was one thing, but she’d seemed… distraught.
She hadn’t looked like her old self. She was still heartbreakingly beautiful but drowning in her dark clothes, her hair limp around her shoulders. A shadow of the electric fairy he’d once known. The sparkling lightness that had seemed as much part of her as her blue eyes and tattoos was gone. When their eyes met, it was like a thundercloud rolling into the bar.
A high-pitched moan rang out from his bedroom.
“Tobyyyy,” Olive pleaded. “Please come back? We need you.”
He scrunched his forehead. The adult virgin in him said, ‘Why not?’ but everything else protested. An hour ago, Olive had been riding him hell for leather while Lily ate her pussy, and all he could think about was Tabby. It was like a bad joke. ‘Hey, either of you girls thought about dyeing your hair blue? No? How ’bout a wig?’
He only wanted Tabby. Could think about nothing but Tabby.
“Not right now,” he called back. “You girls go on without me.”
“Mmmf! Okay…”
Toby sat back on his couch, his bare ass sliding on the sweat spot. He grabbed his phone and blinked, not sure if he was seeing the screen right. He had a message from Tabby and not another picture of a naked man.
You up?
His downbeat mood shot into the stratosphere. He’d been right. Tabby wasn’t done with him. He crept to his bedroom door and quietly closed it on Olive and Lily’s squeals. Heading for the stairs, he went to the second floor and sat in a red velvet armchair Maisy had described as ‘the very thing, dahling.’ Then he called Tabby for the second time in two days.
“Greetings, shitbag.”
She’d been smoking weed. He could hear it in the velvety purr of her voice. The sound was like lips sliding down his cock.
“Hello, Tabitha.” He loved saying her name and how his tongue flicked up at the end like he was tasting her. Tabby loved getting eaten out. She’d loved kissing, too. Light kisses. Deep kisses. Between her legs and across her neck. They’d almost drowned in each other’s mouths when they’d hooked up, making out except when he had his tongue on her clit, or when it made fucking her from behind impossible. But unlike him, Tabby didn’t seem to be wallowing in those perfect memories.
She burped into the receiver again.
“Nice, Tabitha.”
“Keep my name out of your mouth, class traitor.”
Despite her aggressive words, she was almost whispering, and Toby could hear crickets chirping in the background. He guessed she was on the reserve behind the DaSilva property, keeping her voice low so her sisters wouldn’t hear. He didn’t understand why she was being so cloak and dagger about the tattoo, but she was clearly trying to keep Sam and Nicole out of the picture.
“I’m not a class traitor,” he said. “I made some money and I’m trying not to be an asshole about it.”
“Yeah, you can really tell from your car. And podcast. And cunt hairdo.”
Toby grinned, the sensation so unfamiliar it must have been ages since he’d last done it. “How’d you know about my Lambo? Been Insta-stalking me?”
A loud gagging sound. “Did you just unironically use the word ‘Lambo?’”
“Yes.”
Another gagging sound. “You’re such a fucking ballbag. How do you even live with yourself?”
“One day at a time, like everyone else.” Toby sat back in his chair. “Did you get in contact just to insult me, Tabitha, or do you have some new long-distance location you want to send me to?”
“Yeah, you’re gonna love it. It’s called hell.”
“Good one.”
“Cheers.”
There was a pause, and Toby let the seconds unspool like he didn’t give a fuck. Thank Christ, Tabby couldn’t hear his pulse…
“So, like… I want… I would consider doing your tat,” Tabby muttered. She sounded like a kid in the school nurse’s office, confessing she’d had ‘an accident.’
Toby thrust a silent fist into the air. “Cool. When?”
“Hang fire. I want more money like you promised. Thirteen thousand. Cash.”
“Sure.”
“Just like that?”
His smile grew wider. “Just like that.”
Worried Tabby would talk herself out of following through, he cut to the chase. “Do the design over the next couple of days, and I’ll text you my address. I’ll give you five grand in cash when you get here, the rest when we finish. Deal?”
“Deal, but?—”
He hung up, his heart hammering. This was it, the moment he’d been waiting for. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep, he stood and headed for his downstairs gym. He’d let Olive and Lily fuck it out, and tomorrow, he’d get them breakfast and end things.
He was done pretending. Done getting experience. It was time to progress the mission to its final stage. He was going to fuck Tabitha DaSilva senseless, give her everything her little sugar baby heart had ever dreamed of, and by the end of the year, she’d have a one-carat diamond permanently parked on her ring finger.
Mrs. Tabitha Tennant.
The thought sent adrenaline coursing through Toby’s blood. It was time to show Tabby he was the man of her dreams and then some.