4. Tate

CHAPTER 4

TATE

Brooks looked even better than I remembered, which felt like the second greatest unfairness of my life. The first of which, of course, being losing my virginity to him—the best fuck on the planet.

There was a fleeting second where Brooks looked like he was pleased to see me, but it was gone in a flash. His expression immediately shuttered like the sound of my name had pressed a panic button that sent him into an emotional shutdown.

“Is this…” Dylan started, but trailed off. I knew the question he was getting ready to ask, and both of us knew the answer.

Yes, this was Astor Brooks in the flesh, the man I’d been obsessing over for the past six months. The best sex I was never going to have again.

Brooks collected the two drinks Dylan had made for him, then looked at me with a polite dip of his chin toward his chest.

“Good seeing you again, Tate. Have a good night. ”

With that, I was dismissed. He turned quickly on his heel and headed toward the elevators without so much as a glance back in my direction.

“Is that really him?” Dylan asked, expression equal parts horrified and curious. “I didn’t even know you’d heard of this place before.”

“Some friends from work…” I explained, brow furrowed.

The first night I’d found myself at The Black Door, I’d been with some coworkers. They’d gotten me in as a guest, then promptly ditched me for funner pastures. Brooks’ friend Ford had propositioned me to play the part of a good little boy on my knees, but that only lasted long enough for Brooks to set his sights on me and then all bets were off.

Brooks had taken me to a back room at the club and proceeded to fuck me to within an inch of my life. I’d never felt better, more alive. He’d told me to stay put, said he’d make sure I got the money I was owed, then he’d gone into the bathroom and left me there, dressed in cold clothes and feeling more like a whore than was comfortable. Even as I’d gotten up and snuck out of the room, I’d known he hadn’t meant it that way. Ford owed me money and Brooks was going to make sure I got it, but didn’t he understand the money didn’t matter? What he’d given me counted for far more than a few hundred dollars ever could.

“So, when I told you I got hired here, you knew about this place?” Dylan asked.

“I’ve only been here once,” I said. “I’ve been trying to get a membership, but the waitlist is a mile long.”

“Knowing an employee has its perks then.” He raised a brow.

“Apparently. ”

The truth was I could have found Brooks if I really wanted to. I knew his first and last name, but I hadn’t found the courage to look him up on the internet. And even though I was desperate for more of his brand of sex, I wasn’t going to show up at his house or his work for it. That would have been positively unhinged, and I was only in the beginning stages of being sex-crazed for him.

“Are you going to go after him?”

“He clearly doesn’t want to talk to me.”

Dylan narrowed his stare, giving me a disapproving shake of his head right before getting called to the other end of the bar to mix a drink.

I should have gone after Brooks. For as long as I’d spent chasing after the high of being with him, as many fantasies as I’d built and stacked on top of each other, I was stupid to not run after him. But what would I do if I found him again? If he was willing to speak with me?

Brooks, please. I need you to fuck me again because no one since you has ever come close and I’m starting to think I’m losing my mind and creating fake memories because there’s no way you could be that much better in bed than every man since you.

It sounded crazy.

It felt crazy.

But my feet carried me toward the elevator anyway, and I was shocked to find Brooks lingering there, two drinks still balanced in one hand. He was looking for me when I got there, expression pulled tight and very close to miserable.

“Can we talk?” I asked.

I didn’t remember he was shorter than me, didn’t recall the graying blond around his temples. For me, it was the strength of his hands, the pulse in his cock, the things he’d said to me…

“How are you liking the weather, Tate?”

I scoffed. “Are you serious?”

“It’s warm for this time of year,” he said.

“I don’t care about the weather.”

Brooks traced his tongue across the front of his teeth. “What do you care about? Because it’s clearly not respecting other people.”

My jaw hit the floor, and I bracketed both hands over my hips, in absolute shock at the accusation. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The last thing I said to you, Tate, was that I was going to go piss and then we would get a drink. Do you remember that?”

“Of course.”

“And what did we actually end up doing?” he asked.

Embarrassment burned my cheeks, reminding me of the way I’d fled the back room when he wasn’t looking. “I left.”

He nodded. “You left.”

“I was intimidated,” I tried to explain, but Brooks just shook his head and rolled his eyes at me.

“I don’t want your excuses.”

“It’s not an excuse,” I snapped, a cold sweat breaking out against the back of my neck and sliding down my spine. My shirt stuck to my skin, but I didn’t dare move to dislodge it. Even though the conversation was tentative at best, it was better than nothing, and I worried any sudden movements or exclamations would ruin that.

Brooks sighed, shifting the martinis from one hand to the other. I didn’t know how he was able to balance both between his fingers in the first place, but it was just one more thing for me to add to the list of things about Astor Brooks that made no sense and blew my mind all at the same time.

“What do you want, Tate?” he finally asked, sounding resigned.

“I don’t know,” I said, even though it was a lie. I wasn’t brave enough to ask him for what I really wanted, which was another round or ten. I wanted to let him take me back to his house and show me how he would have fucked me the first time if I’d let him have his way.

“I know what you want,” he said, biting the inside of his cheek and hollowing it out. “You want to fuck again. You want me to take you home and do all the things I would have done that last time.”

My breath caught in my throat, but I managed a nod. “I wouldn’t hate that.”

“It’s never going to happen.” Brooks moved his weight from foot to foot.

“Why not?” I asked the question so quickly, I didn’t even give myself time to think about how out of order it was. Brooks could have a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or something. There were a thousand reasons for him to tell me no, and he didn’t owe me an explanation, but I’d spent so long dreaming and wanting, and it felt cruel to have him here now but also so out of reach.

“I don’t fuck people I can’t trust, Tate,” he said simply.

That was one thing I’d forgotten. The way he used my name, how it rolled off his tongue like a kiss.

“I was a stranger,” I rasped, “the first time.”

“I had no reason not to trust you then,” he said. “I give people the benefit of the doubt, but now I know you aren’t a man of your word, and I can’t sleep with people…I can’t fuck people the way I like to fuck if I don’t trust them.”

“I was scared!” I practically shouted at him, my voice echoing loudly over the noise of the club at my back. The exclamation startled us both, and I slapped my hand over my mouth to stop myself from another ill-timed outburst. He watched me carefully as I swallowed back down any other protest, a thousand follow-ups racing through my head as I fought my own body to take my hand away.

“All the more reason,” he said sadly, sidestepping toward the elevator.

“Not during,” I said quickly, holding up my hands like I was surrendering to him.

Again.

“Not during,” I repeated, shaking my head. “I wasn’t scared then, just…”

Brooks swallowed, stare flickering toward the elevator doors that slid open to my right. He didn’t make a move to get on and after a beat, they slid closed. I exhaled, relieved that even though his words said he was finished with me, he wasn’t done yet.

“After?” he prompted.

I nodded.

“The end of it is my favorite part, Tate,” he said, tilting his head to the side. The weight of his stare was as heavy as the memory of his hands in my hair.

“You don’t understand,” I stammered, eyes going wide as he pushed the call button again. The elevator was still right there and the doors immediately opened. I jumped in front of the gap as if I could stop him from getting on. Like I wouldn’t move out of the way if he told me to .

The doors closed again, and Brooks sighed heavily.

“I have a friend waiting for his drink,” he said.

“I know, I’m sorry. I just…” I was fucking it up. I had the chance I’d been waiting months for and I was absolutely ruining it by somehow saying both the right things and the wrong things at the same time.

“You just what, Tate?” He blinked at me slowly. “Call the elevator back.”

I pushed the button without thinking because he’d told me to, and I promptly cursed myself for being the one to deliver him his escape vehicle. The doors didn’t open, which meant it had headed toward the top floor. There was still more time.

“You have until it’s here to say your piece, then I’m going upstairs to finish my drinks with Alex and enjoy the rest of my night,” he said.

The only wrong thing to say was nothing, I decided.

“You can’t just…”

Brooks arched a brow at the implication he’d been the one at fault here.

“You can’t just fuck someone like that and then leave,” I said.

“I didn’t leave,” he said dryly. “You did.”

“I know, and I shouldn’t have.” The doors opened behind me and three men got off, stepping around me to get out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Brooks cocked his head to the side, chin angled toward the empty elevator waiting behind me. I moved out of the way and he brushed past me into the small space, smelling like gin and lemons and everything I wanted every partner I’d had since him to smell like .

“Have a good night, Tate,” he said, turning to face me once he was safely in the elevator.

“You can’t just leave,” I pleaded, angry at myself the words wouldn’t come out.

For all the times I’d imagined wild and new fantasies of sex with Brooks, I’d never once given a single ounce of thought to what this conversation would go like. If I had, I would have known what to say, I could have handled it better and said the right thing to make him understand.

“Good night, Tate,” he said again.

The doors started to close and I shouted the only thing that came to mind, which was probably also not the right thing, but…

“You can’t just take my virginity like that and expect me to be okay fucking boring vanilla men for the rest of my life, Brooks!”

The doors were closing by the time I told him I’d been a virgin, but the rest of it happened in slow motion. His eyes went wide and his grip faltered. One of the martini glasses slid out of his otherwise steely grip and fell, shattering at his feet. Neither of us looked down at the mess. His gaze was instead fixed on me, whiskey-brown eyes filled with a horrifying level of shock and alarm.

And then the door slid closed, and he was gone.