I see a tear begin to form in the corner of Matilda’s eye.
I reach for a Kleenex in my inside jacket pocket and hand it to her.
“She was beyond help by that point in her life. As you can imagine my future wasn’t so bright considering where I started. I was already fighting an uphill battle, but I hung in there. I never understood how my mother was able to stay alive long enough to deliver me, but somehow she did. The doctors played a huge roll of course, but the whole idea of her body taking over and doing everything it could to make sure I saw the light of day before she received the kiss of night has stuck with me forever.’
I pause thinking back.
“I wanted to learn about medicine and about the body. I had to know why I survived and what it meant. I searched and searched and searched, and there’s still no answer. Many doctors are atheists if they don’t think they’re God themselves. People accuse me of the same, and I do know that I’m damn good at what I do, but I will always believe in a higher power. The deeper and deeper I’ve got into my study of what makes humans tick, the more I realized I should have never been born. And the more I think about it the luckier I feel. And the luckier I feel the more I want to pass on that gift…that gift of life, but I’ve never met a woman that I knew instinctively was right. Never…until now.”
Matilda’s eyes go from surveying the room to darting up to meet mine.
“Me?”
“You. If you try and think about it logically it won’t make sense, but the world doesn’t run on logic…it runs on emotions and grit. The gritty do whatever it takes to succeed…to stay alive despite all the odds. They make a decision emotionally and then justify it rationally. It’s the same whether you’re fighting for your life or buying a new motorcycle. Even before you can form memories there’s just something inside you, or was inside me, that wouldn’t let me quit. And that was the spirit of my mother, rest her soul. And when you want a motorcycle you’re going to get it, but you have to convince yourself it’s okay. It can save me time. It can make my commute less stressful. It’s fun. I’ll spend less in gas. It’s easier to park. These are all things you tell yourself to make it okay to do what you already want to do, and what you already will do. But I’m old enough to know that it’s pointless to spend time trying to reason myself into something that’s inevitable. And that’s why I’m being so direct with you. I want you…no ifs, ands, or buts. It’s basic. It’s primal. And it’s a thirst that I absolutely must quench.”
CHAPTER 10
Matilda
He helps me off the bike and we remove our helmets.
We’re in an underground parking structure which appears to be at a super elite high end apartment complex.
“How did you get the gate to raise like that?” I ask. I’m also curious why the security guard was standing and offered him kind of a casual two-finger salute as we passed.
“I installed a chip inside the bike’s frame. It alerts the guard house when I’m more than five city blocks away and then re-enter that five city block radius.”
“Huh?”
“So I don’t have to wait. But I need to go outside of it’s range first to trigger it. Otherwise the device in their guard house would beep non-stop. Once it passes by the guard house the two devices talk to each other and the tracking device disengages and another one engages.”
“Another one? In case someone tries to touch my bike. It locks up and won’t operate, but it alerts me too.”
“You really love your bike,” I say giving it another look over. It makes complete sense. The bike is big, but it’s somehow sleek and sporty…just like him. Large, but nimble. Quick on his feet.
“Yea,” he says.
Without warning he reaches down and scoops me up in his arms and begins walking through the parking garage.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to carry you through the threshold, like a true gentleman does.”
“The threshold?”
“To my main apartment and to the next chapter in your life.”
“Oh,” I say.
He continues walking. “You want me to stop, you just say so. You want me to take you home I will in a heartbeat. You want to be anywhere else in the city and I’ll make it happen. Just say the word.”
I say nothing. He knows why. There’s no place I’d rather be than right here with him, or more accurately in his arms.
Who in their right mind carries a woman in this day and age?
He does. That’s who. And he’s obviously not in his right mind and that’s exactly what attracts me to him.
He’s so different.
It reminds me of one of my favorite sayings. “What’s the difference between crazy and eccentric?”
About a million dollars.
And by the looks of things he’s got millions, as in plural. I don’t know much about motorcycles, but I know his can’t be cheap. And that location where he office is? Pricey. And the part of town where he lives? Beyond pricey. Completely out of range for well over ninety-nine percent of the population, including me.
But there are a lot of rich guys in New York. Plenty to go around. But they do nothing for me. Guys that wave their cash around are the worst. I can’t stand it when a guy gets more “pleasure” out of showing his cash than actually using it.
I’ve heard of guys spending well over five or even ten thousand on a gaudy watch only to make sure that they always sit to the right of women, assuming they wear their watch on their left hand. They want her to know they have that watch. Funny thing is that the watch’s ugliness hurts them more than it helps.
They’d be better off spending five thousand on a weeklong trip to Mallorca or Ibiza which are global hotspots every summer.
Even better they could donate it to help people less fortunate than themselves.
They do neither, but not him.
Something tells me that he’s the one funding that ER we just visited. He wasn’t tacky enough to tell me and he didn’t have to. I could see the way people responded to him. The workers there had a genuine respect, admiration, and even desire for him.
And I’m exactly the same, but you can add fear to that list.
I’m afraid of what’s going to happen when we get upstairs and he takes me like I know he’s going to take me.
He’s going to alpha widow me, the term kids are using these days when a young woman has an experience with an absolute alpha male early in her life and then searches for someone as high up the food chain as that man for the rest of her life only to find out either one doesn’t exist, or she can’t attract that kind of a man ever again which basically widows her forever.
A strange way to put it, but it makes sense.
Everything about him makes complete sense and is completely illogical at the same time.
It’s illogical how we met. It’s illogical that our ages are so far apart, but I still want him so bad. It’s illogical that we’re here now and what we’re going to do.
And because of all that serendipity and confusion and lack of reason it’s completely logical that I want him unequivocally.
And he’s right. The feeling is primal. I feel it too. And I want to release myself of my social burdens and experience my first time the way most women never get to experience in their entire lives.
I’ve been saving myself but often times I wondered why. Sure I flirted and felt the need, but I just knew none of the guys were ever right.
Until him.
CHAPTER 11
Matilda
“Do you drink?” he asks.
“Not too often.”
“Nor do I which makes the occasions that I do all the more enjoyable.”
He presses a button on the wall and a glass door slides open just off to the side of the kitchen. He steps inside and I can see that it’s some kind of wine room. I’m pretty sure it’s bigger than my first apartment, and there were two of us living there.
He reaches up and grabs a single bottle tha
t’s on the top shelf.
My first inclination is to think he might be bringing a bottle of Dom Pérignon, but then I realize that’s something that an average guy can save up for and get and he’s anything but average.
And he doesn’t fail to surprise me when he re-enters the kitchen.
I’m sitting at the bar watching him. He sees this and without looking away from me removes two champagne flutes that are hanging above our heads and pours the glasses.
I was expecting something elegant, but the bottle is completely anything but. To be honest I’m shocked and not even sure what to think of it.
It appears to be covered in dirt or something similar. It’s kind of gross looking actually, at least in this light.
He hands me a glass and raises his, but doesn’t make a move to clink glasses and doesn’t say “cheers.”
“You may have noticed the unusual appearance of the bottle and considered whether it was a good idea to drink what is inside. Maybe you wondered if it was even safe,” he says.
He pauses giving me time to reply, but I’m not about to question his generosity or look a gift horse in the mouth. And I can tell he’s about to unlock the secret of the weird looking bottle before we clink glasses.
“This is the perfect bottle to symbolize what has happened between us tonight.”
We’re going to get dirty? Please don’t tell me his sense of humor is that sophomoric.
“This particular bottle was produced by the House of Juglar. They ceased to exist in the 1840s, but by fate this bottle survived a shipwreck on its way over from France and was pulled from the depths of the Atlantic before it found its way into my hands recently. That’s why it’s covered in barnacles. Some are approaching two hundred years old.”
“Wow,” I say. Why did I ever even consider there wouldn’t be extreme meaning and symbolism behind anything in his life? All his choices are so well thought out, even if done so in the blink of an eye.
“And I think it pertains to us. Everyday we take a journey and we assume that journey will go smooth…that everything will go according to plan. But sometimes we experience our own version of a shipwreck, which can define us in either a negative or positive way. As we see with this bottle,” he says, picking it up and examining it closely, “it has only made it more rare, more cherished, and more appreciated. Its ability to survive the elements of the outside world has only strengthened what’s in the inside. And it’s what’s on the inside, and the ability to hold on to that and seal out everything that doesn’t matter, that truly matters in this life.”
I. Am. Completely. Wet.
And I say nothing. I don’t even want to taste this champagne now. I only want to taste him.
I want to ask him if he’s sure we should be drinking this. I don’t want to be the one to think I came over to his house and drank his best champagne, especially within a few hours of getting to know him.
But I can’t. The glasses have already been poured and the meaning conveyed, and I know if I am anything other than appreciative, which I completely am, the significance of my comments will be strong and won’t communicate my true thoughts.
I want to accept his gift, I’m just not sure I deserve it. But I’m not about to be a rude guest, and I also realize the chance to drink this will never come again…unless another shipwrecks and we both find a way to live a couple hundred more years. Only vampires in the books I read are able to live that long, although he is one of the best doctors in the world with access to cutting edge technology. Who knows what the future of life expectancy will bring?
“That was beautiful,” I say.
“You’re beautiful.”
He stares into my eyes and pauses.
The kitchen is completely still, a stark contrast to the streets of the city. I swear I can hear my heart beating and surely he can too.
But he just looks so calm, cool and collected as he takes in the sight of me.
His eyes and body don’t move. It’s as if he has complete control over himself at all times, and I have to know if that extends to the bedroom. He did say primal, right?
I’m already forgetting things. Not so much forgetting but just temporarily rattled. How couldn’t I be?
“Cheers,” he says.
“Cheers,” I say.
We clink glasses and take our drinks.
He never removes his eyes from mine as he takes a sip and as I simultaneously raise the glass to my lips. As expected it’s completely unlike anything I have ever tasted. Ever. How that bottle was able to retain its flavor and effervescence all these years is beyond me.
He doesn’t ask me how it tastes because he already knows. Like sweet heaven on my palate. Incredible.
A quick visual flashes into my mind of us both naked on the couch in the other room. I’m on top of him pouring the bottle on his chest and then licking it off. As I become more intoxicated and more free I grab his cock and stick it in the bottle and then pull it out and suck it dry.
But I know his cock would never fit. I already saw the size of his lust back in his office.
And the longer he stands here looking at me the more I want to see it for myself. Uncaged, free, and then inside me.
“Please join me to take in the view of the city,” he says.
He walks around the island and holds out his hand.
I walk around to the end as well and continue forward, feeling his hand as it finds the small of my back perfectly.
I stop for just a microsecond. Just his touch sets me off. A light touch that makes me want to turn and drop this champagne flute with its priceless contents to the marble tiles as I grab him and pull his lips down to mine.
But somehow I’m able to resist…for now.
But I don’t know for how much longer I’ll last.
The animal inside me wants out for the first time, and just like that vintage champagne bottle I know one thing…once the top is off there will be no getting me back inside.
CHAPTER 12
Matilda
How many rooms does this place have?
I’m not the best with directions, but after enough turns and movement within his home I start to realize something…he owns the entire top floor.
The word penthouse truly means penthouse, not pentapartment.
I never knew it worked like that, mostly because I’ve never been in a penthouse before.
We walk into a huge room with a one-hundred-eighty-degree view out across the city.
“Is that,” I begin as I bring my free hand up to my mouth. There’s just no way. “A full moon over Central Park?”
“You picked the perfect night,” he says.
Is he ever right. But I analyze his words closely. I picked because I won’t be here again? I know this is a once in a lifetime experience, but I don’t want it to end up that way.
But who am I fooling? I have to go to Africa and who knows what he’ll do during that time…or more importantly who he’ll meet.
I’m sure any woman in the world would be more than happy to come up here and listen to his romantic lines while drinking his priceless drinks as she takes in the view of Central Park in anticipation of smoldering hotness between the sheets.
But I feel like his lines aren’t exactly romantic by definition. He’s not forcing them on me, and they never sound cheesy. They really make sense and I feel a real connection as crazy as that sounds being that we just met hours ago.
I just stare at that view. The snow covered treetops in the moonlight. The moon. The lights from the city in all her glory.
He says nothing, allowing me to take it all in on my terms.
I have no idea how much time has passed, but sometime later I snap out of it and realize where I am. My head is definitely in the clouds and my view backs up that thought, but this is real. I’m standing on his marble floor high in the sky overlooking the best city in the world. The city that never sleeps and tonight I won’t either.
I lower my glass and feel his fingertips fall in l
ine against the small of my back. I don’t look at him. Not yet. I can’t. I know what will happen and I want to enjoy the build up first.
His fingertips are joined by the length of his fingers and then his palm as he runs his hand up from my lower back hitting all the nerves along my spinal column affecting me everywhere.
I feel my scalp tingle. Goose bumps on my arms. And my wetness has turned into a puddle.
Part of me is going to be embarrassed when he finally does take my panties off, but the rest of me doesn’t even care.
Doctor Bad Boy's Secret Baby_An Older Man Younger Woman Romance Page 4