Chapter Five
Nathan
I had agreed to meet Chris at Exposé that evening, but when I got there, he was already upstairs on the 3rd floor. For once, I felt like socializing, though I knew that probably wouldn’t last long since most of the people that came there were so wrapped up in themselves a conversation was almost impossible. Still, I wandered down through the clubs, scoping out the place. The girls were all dressed in their sluttiest attire, some staring over at me flirtatiously, and others already having picked their victim for the night. When I got to the first floor, I stared down the hall at the dark club that most of the non-VIP’s ended up partying in. It seemed like an interesting idea, talking to some normal everyday women, but it also seemed like a huge headache. I went to take a step forward toward the room and glanced over, realizing they had a bar at the front. I had been going to Exposé for years and never realized they had a nice quiet bar there.
I shrugged my shoulders figuring it was worth a try and walked into the room. It had low lighting like the rest of the place but looked much more upscale than any of the pubs I usually frequented. I walked up to the end of the bar and nodded at the bartender. They had just about any liquor you could think of plus some that I had never heard of before. I was going to stick to what I knew, though.
“What can I get you?”
“I’ll have a Blanton’s on the rocks, please,” I said.
I reached to my back pocket to retrieve my wallet and looked up at the person sitting a few stools down. I paused staring at this woman, who was sipping her drink and looking slightly miserable. She had a couple of empty shot glasses in front of her, too. Her hair was long and deep chestnut brown, and as she glanced up at the television, I could see her striking hazel eyes. She had fair skin with rosy cheeks, and she seemed so perfect that it was hard to believe she was real.
“Sir?”
“Oh,” I said looking back at the bartender and taking my drink.
I wandered over to the closest place I could sit without being a creeper and pulled out the stool. She glanced over at me, and I smiled, watching her cheeks grow a bit redder. She smiled sweetly back and then looked up at the television. On the screen, they were playing some sort of local news channel, their rhetoric streaming across the bottom of the screen in captions.
“Every time the news comes on I feel like they want you to think the world is ending,” I said glancing up at the screen. “I don’t know how someone does that job without losing it and telling everyone the truth in a glorious on-screen meltdown.”
She looked at me for a moment with a shocked look on her face and immediately I remembered why I didn’t have regular conversations with people. I said the wrong thing, as usual, forgetting that most people were sheep just like the mainstream media. Hell, for all I knew she was a reporter for one of the stations.
“I’ve been saying that since I was a little kid,” she said with a smile on her face. “The truth is everywhere except up there on that screen. It’s all money, power, and politics.”
“I’m Nathan,” I said, immediately impressed.
“Ruby,” she replied.
“I wasn’t even watching it, it was just somewhere to focus my face, so I wasn’t staring blankly at other people,” she said, slightly tipsy.
“Ha,” I said throwing my head back. “That’s totally my move. I’ve been in a bar and watched an entire basketball game before and had no idea who played.”
“Bars can be awkward,” she laughed.
I scooted over and sat in the seat next to her, continuing the conversation. We talked about the politics on the screen, the truth of money and power in society, and many other deep conversational topics. I liked her. She was not only gorgeous, but she seemed to be relatively intelligent as well. She was extremely passionate but not in a way that she let her emotions take over too much, which was a good thing since too many people made huge decisions based off their emotional responses to things. It wasn’t that I didn’t have emotions, I just was able to separate them from the reality of a situation.
We sat there for several hours, conversing, drinking and just generally having a good time. She was slightly hard to read since her first reaction wasn’t to flirt with me, but at the same time, so was I. I was the guy that flirting never came naturally too, and after a while, and several embarrassing one-liners, I decided that being myself was the best option.
“Wow,” I said glancing down at my watch. “It’s already midnight.”
“Really?”
“Time fly’s when you’re having fun,” I said with a smile.
“That it does,” she said, looking kind of flirtatious for the first time that evening.
“Long shot here but would you like to come back to my place and have a drink? I just live down a few blocks across from Central Park,” I asked, feeling self-conscious about the question.
“Sure,” she said after a few moments of contemplation. “Let me just pay my tab.”
“Please,” I said. “Allow me.”
I handed the bartender my credit card and glanced at her, letting him know I wanted to cover her tab too. She looked up at the thick black card in my hand and sighed slightly, but I ignored it, figuring she was just reacting to me purchasing her drinks. We left the club and took a cab since we were both a bit on the drunk side.
When we got to The Avalon she didn’t say a word, merely followed me to the elevator that took us to the 51st floor. When we walked into the apartment, she looked around, her eyes wide with the well-appointed, expansive space. She ran her fingers down the large glass table that was situated in the dining room and turned to me, shaking her head.
“Impressive,” she said. “What did you say you did?”
I ignored her question as I poured us both a drink from the bar. I smiled thinking about her reaction if I told her I owed a large corporation. She would have something to say about that. For the moment though, I didn’t want her to know. I turned and walked over, handing her a glass and tapping mine against hers.
“I didn’t say,” I said with a mischievous smile.
She smiled back and reached forward, pulling my glass from my lips and out of my hand. She set it down on the table and turned back to me, stepping forward. Slowly she leaned in and brushed her lips against mine, the smell of her lavender scent pulsing through my nostrils. I could feel my heart pick up the pace as our lips barely touched and her hot breath smoothed over my mouth. I reached forward and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her into me and tilting my head to the side, opening my mouth as I forced the passion between us to come out of hiding. I pushed through her lips with my tongue, and she met with hers, swirling around each other, tasting the whiskey on our breath. It was erotic, and there was something about this woman that made me want to take my time.
She moaned lightly into my mouth as she wrapped her arms around my neck, leaning further into the kiss. Electricity shot through my chest as she pushed her hips forward pressing against my cock that was fully erect in my pants. I reached down and picked her up with one arm, holding her tightly, pulling back and staring into her eyes for several moments. The tension between us was thick and hot, and all I could think about was getting her back to the bedroom and undressing her slowly. Her chest was heaving up and down, and she moved her head back to mine, pulling her legs up and wrapping them around my waist.
I walked from the living room and down the hall, entering my bedroom and sliding my finger down the censored light switch. The room was dark, streams of low light cascading across the floor from the moon outside the window. She walked slowly over to the floor-to-ceiling glass panels that looked out over the city and the park, unbuttoning her jacket and dropping it to the floor.
I couldn’t wait to find out what she tasted like.