Chapter Three
Three
Maximo “Max” Martinez Williams did not want to be out tonight.
For starters, it was Valentine’s Day. Max wasn’t anti–V Day like some other single people, but that didn’t mean he wanted to spend his evening—a work night, no less—dodging happy couples fawning all over each other on the streets of New York.
And he certainly did not want to spend the night in a sex club.
Unfortunately, as was the case his entire life, he could not figure out how to say no to his younger brother, Miles.
When Miles had appeared at Max’s office a few hours earlier, Max should’ve known trouble was afoot.
Max had been in the middle of signing off on a new project one of his teams at AIX, his artificial intelligence company, wanted to launch.
It was all about expanding the capabilities of voice recognition to understand multiple languages without having to change the settings, making them more ideal for bilingual households.
Max, who’d been born and raised in the Dominican Republic for the first seven years of his life before being adopted by white parents who didn’t know Spanish, thought the idea was brilliant.
Not only would it make communicating with their technology more seamless, but it could also help multilingual families communicate with each other.
He couldn’t wait to see the project take form.
Max had been so lost in looking over the proposal, it had taken him a minute to realize Miles was leaning against his doorway.
“How long have you been standing there?”
Miles pushed off the doorframe with a grin and bounded over to Max’s desk, shifting some papers so he could sit on top of it even though there were two available chairs. Max rolled his eyes.
In looks, Max and Miles were almost twins. They had the same dark brown skin, hazel eyes, and over-six-feet height that had practically forced them both onto the basketball team in school. (Miles stuck with it through college; Max didn’t even make the junior varsity team.)
They both kept their hair short and buzzed to a nice fade, but whereas Max was broad and big-boned, as his mother liked to say, Miles was on the lankier side, always in the gym trying to build muscle mass even though his body continued to resist.
Where they most differed, however, were their personalities.
Whether nature or nurture was to blame, Max was always the responsible elder sibling who preferred tinkering with code rather than going to parties, and Miles was the younger brother who constantly broke the rules and somehow always got away with it.
Despite this, ever since Max had returned home to New York to build his company rather than go to San Francisco, where most of his competitors were based, Max made time to see Miles and at least attempt to keep him out of trouble, something Miles didn’t always appreciate.
Still, Max loved his little brother, and no one knew him better than Miles.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, bro!”
Miles held out a fist, which Max simply stared at for a moment before bumping his own fist against it.
“I didn’t realize this was a holiday you celebrated,” Max said, focusing his attention back on the proposal.
“Love is love, my brother,” Miles said. “Isn’t that what your people say?”
By your people, Miles meant the LGBTQIA+ community. Max came out as bisexual to his family years ago, yet in moments like this, he wondered if perhaps staying in the closet wasn’t the better option.
“What do you want, Miles?”
“What makes you think I want something?” Miles asked.
Max only gave his brother a sidelong look.
“Alright fine. I need you to come out to a club with me tonight,” Miles said.
“No,” Max said, not even looking up this time.
“Come on. I need you to tell me if it’s a good investment or not, and you are the most impartial person I know.”
“Still no,” Max said.
Miles placed one of his big hands on top of Max’s proposal. For a moment, Max glared down at it before finally meeting his brother’s gaze.
“Please, it’s just one night, and you only have to stay for an hour tops,” Miles pleaded. “Plus, don’t you think it’s time to break your dry spell? When was the last time you even went on a date?”
“I have no idea,” Max said, exasperated. “Unlike you, I don’t need to constantly be in a relationship. I am busy with work, and I actually enjoy my solitude. Growing up with you made me yearn for alone time, actually.”
“Ha ha,” Miles said.
He pulled his hand away and stood so he was towering over Max. They both knew this intimidation tactic only worked because Max was seated, yet he allowed it because he truly didn’t feel like getting up.
“You cannot be alone forever,” Miles said.
“I know you, Maximo. You’re a lovey-dovey heart-on-your-sleeve mama’s-boy kind of guy.
And you’re not going to meet someone hiding out here in your office.
So get up, put on the suit and mask I brought for you, and let’s go check out this club and meet some chicks. Or dicks. Whatever floats your boat.”
Max rolled his eyes at this weak attempt of support from his only sibling.
“Come on,” Miles whined. He gripped Max’s shoulders, giving them a little shake. “It’ll be fun, and I need my big bro to help me make good financial decisions.”
“I’m still in the middle of helping you with another financial decision,” Max said, rolling his eyes. “Speaking of which, do you really think it’s a good idea to be going out the night before we announce the AIX/Yellow Sparks partnership?”
Yellow Sparks was to Miles what AIX was to Max.
In sum, Yellow Sparks was Miles’ baby. When they graduated college, they both received an extensive trust fund from their parents to use as they saw fit.
It was one of the perks of being adopted by two wealthy white people who had more money than they knew what to do with.
Max tended to focus on that more than on the downsides.
The point was, Max had used his money as the baseline capital to get AIX off the ground, and five years later, Miles had done the same when he launched Yellow Sparks, an online news outlet that became well known for its viral lists and quizzes and had since branched off into video and hard-hitting news content.
A couple months ago, Miles approached Max with the idea to integrate AIX’s artificial intelligence technology into the content management system, or CMS, for Yellow Sparks so writers could use it to help them create content more quickly and efficiently.
The tech, which they were calling Sparky, would be able to take the content writers’ ideas for lists and quizzes and search the web, pulling the necessary information, images, videos, etc.
rather than the writers having to do that research.
The idea sounded brilliant to Max, but it took some convincing on Miles’ part, because going into business with his little brother wasn’t exactly something Max had ever seen himself doing. But after meeting with his own team and investors, they’d all agreed it was a solid new venture.
Now, of course, Max was worried Miles was already screwing it up.
Miles shrugged, unconcerned. “We won’t be out that late. Besides, my accountant, who you recommended by the way, told me I should be diversifying my interests. Red as Sin will be a new interest.”
Max rolled his eyes. He’d recommended his friend Skyler Richardson to Miles when he first started Yellow Sparks ages ago and hadn’t even known the two had finally linked up. Of course, it was now being thrown in his face.
“Now,” Miles said, clapping his hands. “Can you please get dressed so we can go? We’re already running late.”
“I never said I was going,” Max reminded him.
Miles smirked. “You never said you weren’t either.”
“I literally did. Multiple times.”
And yet, Max still got up, marked where he was in the proposal, grabbed the suit and mask Miles brought, and followed his brother out the door.
Now here he was in the club—which was not a regular cub, but a sex club—and Miles was nowhere to be found.
Almost as soon as they got inside, Miles disappeared to find his friend Ricky, the owner, leaving Max to fend for himself.
He felt a little overdressed in the black velvet suit and crescent-shaped mask that covered the left side of his face, but he had to hand it to Miles.
It was perfectly tailored for Max’s frame, and he did look immaculate.
Still, he found himself needing a drink when he realized there was a woman getting fingered in the corner of the room, as if everyone couldn’t see her.
He’d barely taken a sip of his whiskey neat when he stumbled down a dimly lit hallway and a woman whose head stopped right below his chin barreled into him, spilling the majority of his drink all over his shirt and jacket.
“Fuck me,” she muttered.
“If that’s what you wanted, all you had to do was ask.”
The woman, who’d begun to use her bare hands to either pat Max dry or feel him up, he honestly wasn’t sure, paused at his words. She looked up to meet his gaze, and he inhaled sharply.
Although her mask covered the top half of her face, Max was certain, without a doubt, that she was beautiful.
Staring back at him with round brown eyes, her full lips painted red and slightly parted.
Perhaps Miles was right and Max really did need to get laid, because that simple movement had him imagining what it would be like to have those lips wrapped around his dick.
“Um, sorry, what?”
She was so obviously flustered, and for a second Max worried he’d overstepped.
Even though they were in a sex club, perhaps she wasn’t looking for sex tonight.
To be fair, he hadn’t really been looking for it either, but now, as he took her in more fully, exploring the way her dress hugged all her curves, he was certainly considering it.
He decided to try his luck by repeating himself, seeing if perhaps the second time would be the charm.
“I said, ‘If that’s what you wanted, all you had to do was ask.’ ”
The woman nodded, pushing out a breath. “I thought that’s what you said, but thank you for clarifying.”
Max couldn’t help his slight grin. “My pleasure.”
The crowd around them shifted, reminding Max that they weren’t the only people standing in the hallway.
He put down his empty glass on the ledge in front of the display window and took her hand, leading her away from the small group to the opposite wall.
Her hand was soft in his, and he was reluctant to let her go, but once they were pressed up along the wall, he released her.
“Wait!”
The woman took his hand again, as if to keep him from walking away, even though he hadn’t moved and certainly wasn’t planning to.
If he didn’t have some semblance of decorum ingrained in him, he’d have already pulled her away from this hallway and taken her somewhere more private so he could see if she tasted as good as she looked.
“Let’s do it,” she said, as if she was reading his mind.
Max quirked a brow, unsure. “Do what…?”
“Fuck.”
She seemed to force out the word, giving it a necessary push to dislodge it from her throat.
Max’s other brow raised, even as his dick began to stand at attention with just the thought of giving her what she wanted.
“I mean if you want to,” she added quickly. “If you were serious, I mean. Because I would like to. Have the sex. With you. If you want to. Here.”
Max couldn’t stop himself from saying, “In this hallway?”
Her eyes went wide. Well, as wide as they could go with her mask.
“No, not, like, right here—”
Max stepped forward with a soft chuckle and brought up his free hand to cup her cheek, a move that felt almost involuntary, as if he needed to touch her again.
“That was a joke,” he said. “But how about we kiss here first and then go from there?”
Max didn’t need to kiss her to know he wanted to be inside her. But he could tell she was nervous, or at the very least unsure, and he wanted to put her at ease before he took her anywhere.
And also, he was suddenly desperate to know if her lips were as soft as he imagined.
“Oh yes, okay.” She nodded, making the edge of her mask scratch against his fingertips in a way he didn’t altogether dislike.
“You may want to close your eyes,” he whispered across her lips, which made her laugh softly.
“Right sor—” She cut herself off, nodding again. “Right.”
She let her eyes fall closed, and Max erased the sliver of space still left between them, pressing his lips gently to hers.
It was a little awkward at first with both of their masks, and they had to shift angles a bit before their lips could glide together.
The feel of her soft lips on his was almost a tease.
It was nice, but Max wanted more. He was rewarded when she parted her lips, letting him taste her more fully.
She was so sweet, and he wasn’t sure if she just tasted that way or if her lipstick was flavored but he didn’t care. He groaned when she pressed up into him, her arms wrapping around his neck, the wetness of his shirt now pressing into her dress, though she didn’t seem to mind.
He turned them until she was flush against the wall, and he moved his hands down to her thighs, lifting her until her legs were wrapped around his middle. She gasped against his lips but didn’t pull away, only holding on to him tighter as his dick pressed right against the space between her thighs.
Max wasn’t particularly into public sex or having an audience, but just then he suddenly didn’t care that there were people walking around them.
They barely even registered as he moved from her lips to her chin and then to her neck, her hands moving up to cup the back of his head, pressing him to her.
When he finally pulled back so he could meet her eyes, they were both breathing hard, their chests rising and falling in tandem. She broke eye contact first, looking down at his shirt.
“You should probably take this off,” she said between breaths.
An unexpected laugh escaped Max, her lips quirked with a smile, and he couldn’t help himself. He kissed her again before gently letting her go so she could put her feet back on the ground. As she fixed her dress, which had ridden up, he asked her, “Would you like to take it off for me?”
That made her glance up at him again and then around at all the people near them who were surprisingly paying them no mind. Max imagined that in comparison to everything else going on, what they were doing was quite tame, but he understood that perhaps for her this was already enough PDA.
So when she reached for his buttons, Max grabbed her hand, pulled it to his mouth, and pressed a kiss to her palm. She shivered at the contact, and he grinned.
“Not yet,” he said, lacing his fingers through hers. “Let’s find a room.”