Banished at Dad's Wake, So I Came Back to Run the Boardwalk novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Roof Rules

Asher gives her a suite on 38 and three rules, and at the suite door she turns around, takes his hand and puts it under her dress; at 2 a.m. she walks out onto his terrace.

The elevator to the thirty-eighth floor had a mirror on three walls, so I watched him from every side.

Asher Sklar stood with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the numbers.

His lips moved a little as the floors went by.

"Are you counting?" I said.

"I count everything," he said. "It's how I keep a building."

He took off his glasses, folded them and put them in his breast pocket.

Without them his eyes were brown and very steady, and they went to my face and stayed there.

"Three rules," he said. "You can say no to any of them."

"Go ahead," I said.

"One," he said. "You sleep behind your own door, and I do not open it."

"Two. You don't leave this building alone after dark. Not because you can't handle yourself. Because your cousin can't."

"Three," he said. "Anything that happens between us, if anything does, you start it."

I looked at him in the mirror on the left and the mirror on the right.

"Is something going to happen?" I said.

"I'm the host," he said. "I don't plan the guest's evening."

The doors opened onto a hall with a dark green carpet and four doors.

"One more thing," he said. "On Labor Day Sunday I stand behind your chair, whatever you decide."

"Decide about what?"

"The chair," he said, and walked ahead of me.

He stopped at the last door and held out a key card.

"The suite has a terrace," he said. "It runs around the corner to mine, but there's a locked gate. The lock is on your side."

"That's a lot of trust."

"It's a lot of lock," he said. "Sleep well, Miss Taddeo."

I took the card and did not open the door.

I put my back against it instead.

He had stepped away already, two long paces down the hall, and he turned when he heard me stop.

"I've been in this hallway four minutes," I said. "You haven't looked at my mouth once."

"I've looked at it since the club," he said.

His voice had dropped.

"Rule three," I said. "I start it."

"You do."

"Then come here."

He crossed the two paces and stopped with his chest inches from mine.

I took his right hand by the wrist, the one with the thin gold ring, and put it flat on my hip.

He breathed in through his nose, very slowly.

"Taddeo," he said.

"Don't talk," I said, and kissed him.

His mouth was warm and it tasted of club soda and lime.

For a second he did not move at all.

Then his hand tightened on my hip and he kissed me back, and it was not careful.

I pulled him in by the front of his shirt and my head hit the door.

His other hand came up under my jaw and tilted my face where he wanted it.

His tongue stroked mine, slow, and I heard a sound come out of my throat.

"There she is," he said against my mouth.

"Who?" I said.

"The woman who split a man's eyebrow open in a funeral home."

"You heard?" I said.

"Everyone heard," he said.

His hand left my hip and slid down my thigh to the hem of my black dress.

He stopped there and waited.

"Yours to start," he said.

"Under," I said. "Now."

His hand went under the dress and up the inside of my thigh.

His knuckles brushed the damp cotton of my panties, and I pushed my hips off the door into his hand.

He swore, quietly, a word I had not expected from him.

Then he hooked two fingers in the cotton, pulled it aside and slid his middle finger along me.

"You're soaked," he said.

"It's been a long bus ride."

He laughed, once, low against my cheek, and pushed that finger inside me.

My head fell back against the door.

He worked it in slowly, all the way to the knuckle, and curled it up.

"Another," I said.

He gave me a second finger, thick and unhurried, and set his thumb on my clit.

I grabbed his shoulders.

He stroked me with his thumb in small tight circles and fucked me with his fingers, and I felt it start low in my belly.

"Look at me," he said.

I opened my eyes.

His were fixed on my face, dark and hungry and completely focused on me.

"That's it," he said. "Let me see you."

"Asher Sklar," I said, which was stupid, and it was all I had.

"Say it again," he said.

His thumb pressed harder and his fingers curled again, and I came with my mouth open against his neck.

I bit down on his collar so the hall would not hear me.

He held me up through it with one arm around my back, his fingers still moving, slower, until I shook and stopped.

Then he drew his hand out and held it still against my hip.

His breath was uneven.

I could feel him, hard against my stomach, through his trousers.

I put my hand on his belt.

He covered it with his.

"Not tonight," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because you got off a bus an hour ago and walked into a room of men who wanted you gone."

His voice was rough.

"I won't be one more thing that happened to you tonight," he said.

"I'm asking."

"I know," he said. "Ask me tomorrow, when you're not running on a drink from your father's glass."

He kissed my forehead, and that was almost worse than the rest of it.

Then he stepped back, and his hand left me.

"Your door, Taddeo," he said.

He walked down the hall to his own door without looking back, and I heard the lock turn.

I let myself in and stood in the dark with my dress still pushed up around my hips.

The suite had a king bed and a window over the ocean.

I lay on top of the covers and listened to the building hum.

At two in the morning I was still wide awake and still wet, and I could still feel his hand.

I got up.

The terrace door slid open on warm wet air and the sound of the sea.

The gate in the rail was where he said it would be, with the lock on my side.

I turned the lock and went through.

Asher stood at the far end of his terrace with both hands on the rail and his back to me.

He had taken off his jacket.

He knew I was there, and he did not turn around.

"Your door is behind you, Taddeo," he said.

I walked up behind him and took his right hand off the rail and put it where I wanted it.

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