By the time we escaped the vault, it was very late into the night. It felt like an escape because there was a kind of seductive allure to staying hidden in such a private, restricted place with a man I couldn’t get enough of.

But eventually, our stomachs told us that we needed to get out of there and find something to eat. Noah and I got dressed and spent a little time gathering up notes from what I was informally calling the ‘archives’. There might not have been a literal test waiting for me in the near future over all this stuff, but I took my own words seriously. If I wanted to be a leader in this establishment with all its rich history, I needed to know where it came from so I could help plan out where it was going. I wasn’t doing this to impress Jack with trivia but to make myself a nominee he could work with and perhaps respect.

We made our way up the elevator and through the carpeted hallways while I scrolled through my phone, feeling my stomach growling again.

“We could slip out for a little late-night dinner,” Noah said, noticing that I was searching for restaurants nearby. “But I don’t think I’ve gotten a chance to cook for you yet.”

I perked up, raising an eyebrow and smiling at him.

“You cook? I mean, I figured you did a little something behind the bar, but…”

“I don’t know if I cook well, but I do cook,” he said with a grin. “And the kitchens are mostly empty at this time of night, so we can have a little privacy. I don’t think anyone would think me making a private dinner between a couple of ‘friends’ would raise an eyebrow, even if anyone else wants to be up and around the kitchens.”

“That sounds good to me,” I said. “You’re full of surprises, I have to say.”

“You haven’t even tasted my cooking yet. It could be a nasty surprise,” Noah teased.

“One way to find out.” I chuckled.

A few minutes later, I learned that one of Noah’s skills was also selling himself unbelievably short. My stomach was in open rebellion against the fact that it was empty as I sat in the kitchen, leaning on one of the counters and watching Noah create the most heavenly aroma I’d smelled all week.

He was hard at work making brie and pepper jam grilled cheeses, the sweet and spicy aroma filling the pristine kitchen and making my mouth water. I openly stared at the sizzling griddle as he pressed a spatula onto the bread gently. I caught sight of a little of the creamy cheese oozing out the side, trickling down the bread crust and hissing as it touched the hot metal.

My gaze followed the spatula up to the muscular forearm that was holding it, and I felt a different kind of hunger. The sight of Noah standing there over the counter wearing an apron and making me what smelled like a gourmet meal after midnight was something I could get used to.

“So, why don’t you work in the kitchens, again?” I asked playfully as I leaned on an elbow, smiling dreamily up at Noah while he worked.

Noah blushed, glancing over at me with a smile he was obviously trying to hold back.

“I might have been offered a job in the kitchens every now and then,” he admitted as he flipped the sandwiches. “But I just like the bar too much to give it up.”

“Really? That’s a little surprising. I would have thought the kitchens would be the kind of place you’d prefer. More behind the scenes, less pressure to perform for people.”

“You’re right and wrong.” He chuckled. “I wouldn’t mind being out of sight, but that’s where the good parts stop. Kitchens are tense. We get well-known chefs from around the world in here, either full-time or visiting. Some of them have, let’s say, very high standards. That, and there’s a lot of kitchen drama. You can basically guarantee that in any given kitchen staff, everyone has dated each other at least once.”

“Wow,” I said. “Sounds like it has a lot in common with my industry.”

“Just a little more greasy,” Noah joked with a wink.

“Only slightly,” I said, and we laughed.

As I watched the rosy glow on Noah’s cheeks, I felt my heart fluttering in an unexpected way. I had always been a man who lived a fairly fast life—I often felt like I lived in hotel suites more than my own home, and it was very rare that I had the chance or need to sit down and cook for myself or with friends. Moments like these were unheard of. I had never expected myself to spend much time on domestic moments like this at all nor really given the prospect of it a second thought.

But as I watched this sweet, caring, passionate man cooking us a couple of delectable sandwiches after incredible sex, joking around with him while he walked around with the apron string tied into a cute bow above that tight butt, I couldn’t help but feel my heart thud faster. Seeing him with a tea towel over his shoulder, strong forearms working the counter like a master, I let my mind wander to a much quainter place than it had when I first laid eyes on Noah.

I pictured him in my apartment, showing him around my place the way he’d showed me around his. I’d listen to his opinions on my interior decorating job, let him peruse my personal wardrobe and pick out a few things we could share back and forth. I’d give my kitchen staff the night off so the two of us could work on brunch together the next morning. I pictured him teaching me how to poach an egg properly, a few basics about cooking more than the bare minimum I knew how to handle on my own. I thought about buying him all the little odds and ends he might feel like he was missing in his life, enriching him in ways he was always too afraid to voice.

Damn, I was infatuated with this guy.

“Ben?”

I snapped out of my reverie when I realized Noah was sliding the sandwiches onto a couple of plates, and he carried them over to me to take a seat and hand me mine with a smile.

“They’re still a little hot, but I always thought burning my mouth to hell was kind of obligatory for grilled cheese,” he said.

“Agreed,” I said as we held up our sandwiches and tapped their corners together as if we were making a toast. “And thanks for this, I…don’t actually have private dinners that much anymore.”

“We might have to make this a regular thing, then,” he said, smiling over the glistening bread.

I smirked back.

“I think we just might.”

Three days later, I stepped out of the shower in my en suite with Noah, toweling myself off with a newly satisfied feeling after the orgasm Noah had just given me. Today, I needed the stress relief—I was about to walk into a council meeting at the request of Uncle Charles, and I knew it was about his retirement and my nomination.

“You’ve been immersing yourself in the club more than most people do in a year,” Noah assured me as I finished drying off and started grabbing the clothes I’d set aside for myself.

He stayed naked, leaning against the doorway to the bathroom as he watched me get dressed. It was a nice distraction, along with the simple pleasure of getting dressed in an outfit I knew I liked.

“True, but how the rest of the council is going to react to Charles’s proposal is still a wild card,” I reminded Noah. Rather, that was my anxiety speaking for me. I was a confident, decisive man, but Noah was one of the few people in the world I was feeling more and more comfortable sharing my secret worries with when they came up.

He was right, however. I hadn’t just been studying dusty old relics from the past over the last few days. I’d spent time getting to know some of the club members, talking about their stories and the connections they’d made over the years, and getting a good sense of how the club operated. And the more I did, the more I loved the place. It was infectious, and all the long-term members knew it.

“All right, quiz time,” Noah said with a playful smile. “What’s the procedure for forcing a council member to retire?”

“Unanimous decision by the rest of the council,” I recited, thinking back to the bylaws I’d memorized. “And if it happens, then the replacement has to be nominated and elected by the rest of the club, not the council. It’s only been done once in the history of the club when a council member during the Prohibition era tried to cut a deal with the mob to earn some money on the side.”

“Good,” he said proudly. “What happens if the money we raise in a fundraiser exceeds the goal the club agreed upon?”

“The rest of the money gets anonymously donated to charities devoted to helping LGBT homeless people and at-risk youth,” I answered.

“Perfect, and we do that pretty routinely,” he added with a bright smile. “Last question: what are we going to do when you finish knocking this meeting out of the park?”

As I finished buttoning up my shirt, I raised an eyebrow at him, smirked, and crossed the room to wrap a hand around the back of his head and bring him in for a deep kiss.

“Pick up where we left off in the shower,” I growled in a husky voice, and I felt him shiver in delight.

“That’s an answer I like to hear,” he said. “Here, let me help you.”

I turned my chin up as Noah reached up and did my bow tie for me, and when he finished, I stepped back and looked myself over in the mirror before grabbing my jacket.

“It’s perfect,” Noah said, catching me before I could start nitpicking my own outfit.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll be back soon—and I meant what I said. You be ready for me.”

Noah blushed at the assertive statement, and he nodded.

“Don’t have to tell me twice. Kick ass in there, Ben.”

I left the room dressed to kill, and as I made my way down the hall, I couldn’t get Noah out of my head. The man had an unbelievable effect on me that I never seemed able to shake. The past few days had been a storm of meeting new people and immersing myself in this new and rich world, but even so, the thing I wanted to spend the most time on was Noah.

How the hell had I gone through life so far without running into him? He gave me the kind of energy I never knew I needed, but now, the idea of going without it felt wrong, somehow. I wanted time to be able to think about where our relationship was going, but things were moving so fast with the club that I barely had time to breathe without getting whiplash.

As I made my way through the wood-panel-walled lounge that smelled like whiskey and tobacco, it hit me that I didn’t even know what kind of word to use for my relationship with Noah. Could I even call it a relationship? We’d been inseparable since meeting. Did that matter? It sure as hell didn’t feel like it did. I felt like I’d known him for years and was just catching up and remembering everything I liked about him.

And by the time I reached the doors to the council meeting, I realized that my heart was racing, but I’d almost forgotten about the meeting. It was all because of Noah.

“And there’s the man of the hour,” I heard Charles say as I stepped inside, and I felt five gazes turn to me, sizing me up like a piece of meat tossed to the sharks.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” I said as I closed the door behind me and made my way to a seat. “Thank you for inviting me. It’s an honor.”

“We’re all friends here, Ben,” Charles half lied with a chuckle. “No need for formalities.”

“Some need for formalities,” Jack corrected him. “That’s the reason we have these meetings.”

“Well, that’s fair,” Charles admitted. “Now then, with everyone present, let me call this meeting to order. As the one who called this meeting, I’ll be presiding unless there are any objections.”

He waited for a moment, but there were none. All the council members watched him carefully, except for Jack, who was making eye contact with me and didn’t seem interested in looking away.

“I have two reasons for gathering you all this morning,” Charles said, folding his hands in front of him. “And the two are indeed related. First, the bad: I know it’s a long time coming, but I would like to announce my retirement.”

None of the council members looked surprised by this, but they all looked saddened. Even Jack frowned and nodded sympathetically, making me wonder whether the guy was just a good liar or not quite as cold as I’d guessed, based on our chats.

“You all know I’ve given the Fox my best years, and I’m more than happy to have done so,” he said with a fond smile. “It has been a true pleasure to serve alongside the rest of you and get to know you as some of my closest friends. I can’t hold a candle to the Cabots who have come before me, but my time has come and gone, and it’s more than time for me to pass my family’s torch to someone else. And that brings me to the second order of business.”

The room turned to me, and I sat still, looking both confident yet not too forward as I sat before them, nodding to Charles.

“Members of the council,” Charles said, “as I step out of my council seat, I would like to formally nominate my nephew Benjamin Cabot to my seat, to serve in my place.”

The younger two members of the council looked mildly surprised by this, and they looked me up and down judiciously.

“Despite being the youngest gentleman in this room, Ben has made strides in the family business that many men and women have not been able to do in their entire lifetime,” Charles went on, making his case for me. “He is singlehandedly responsible for tangible stock value rises, and he has a natural mind for aesthetics that is unprecedented. He’ll one day take over our company when my brother passes, and when that happens, I have no doubt in my mind that he’ll shake the fashion industry to its core, for the better. He is relatively new, but the past week has demonstrated what he’s capable of contributing to our society in even a short amount of time. I gladly stake my reputation on him, and I propose putting his councillorship to a vote.”

Charles looked around the room, and just as I expected he would, Jack spoke up.

“I object.”

Raised eyebrows shot over to him, but he looked at me coolly.

“Promising as Ben might seem, I feel that while Charles has strong judgment and has contributed a lot to the Fox over the years, he’s letting his judgment get clouded by the need to keep a member of his family on the council. I think this is a rushed decision that we would be remiss to vote on immediately, especially considering how brief Ben’s membership has been.”

“Well, we don’t have anything formally keeping us from voting now,” Andy spoke up, leaning forward and nodding to me. “And we have no ‘probation period’ for new members, so I don’t see why not.”

“My objection stands,” Jack said firmly. “Youth can be a good thing sometimes, but he isn’t even out of his twenties. Our young members very often find themselves distracted by one thing or another.”

When he spoke the last line, Jack peered at me meaningfully, but I was more surprised that he didn’t just out Noah and me right then and there. He was proving to be more complex than I had given him credit for.

“His dedication to this art expo should be more than enough to show what he’s capable of,” Charles said, glaring at Jack. “It’s more than many of our members do in their entire time here.”

“I propose a compromise,” Jack said, and his tone told me he had been expecting this. “Ben is planning to put on this expo, and it’s a few weeks away yet—if you’re so sure it’s the kind of energy we need here, then let’s see it firsthand. I propose postponing the vote until after the expo and considering Ben’s qualifications carefully in the meantime.”

You could have heard a pin drop in the room as everyone peered around at each other carefully. Charles looked almost apologetically at me, but I was confident—I had known something like this would come up, and I gave a solemn nod in return.

As if breaking a spell, the room spoke in loose unison.

“Agreed.”