“None of you gargoyles get ideas,” Maisy snapped as he stumbled through compliments and asked after grandchildren. “Toby’s finding his feet, not auditioning as a toyboy.”
Eventually, he’d become friends with all of them: Suzannah, Mary-Lynn, Jessica B, Jessica A and Victoria. He had no idea why people were so down on middle-aged women; they were fucking hilarious, charming and uncensored. Maisy’s monthly group dinners were some of the most fun he’d ever had.
His self-elected fairy godmother kept him dating like it was a part-time job, and to his surprise, after a while, everything started to click. He could do the whole routine: drinks, chat, first kisses without a flicker of nerves. Andsex. What started awkward soon became easy as breathing. No one set him on fire like Tabby, but hooking up with girls he once would have struggled to even look at was an ego boost.
Then they started pursuinghim:girls at work, his co-workers’ friends,and sisters. He quit Tinder and started hooking up with women from his social circle or ones he met in bars.
“You’re a fucking assassin,” Brennan, his podcast co-host, grumbled during one recording session. “Save some for the rest of us, asshole.”
Toby had laughed mostly primarily because he’d realised Maisy had pulled it off. He had a reputation as a finance guru, as a ladykiller, as someone with confidence who important people took seriously. The kind of reputation he’d never believed possible before he met her. Shewasa fairy godmother, if one the Brothers Grimm never had the balls to imagine.
It was her idea to start the finance podcast, too. She told him he had a great voice and it would help him speak with more confidence. He’d been doubtful, but once he pulled Brennan and Tom into the fold, he found he liked talking shop and trying to educate reckless retail investors. The podcast had quickly found an audience, and his DMs had been inundated with even more women wanting to meet up with him. Limitless adventure, his for the taking.
And now he was here, sweating his ass off in his luxury home, horny and bored and longing for the same thing he couldn’t have back when he was broke. Tabby.
Climbing the hedonic ladder, he’d felt like he had something to aim for. Now, it didn’t feel like much at all.
He pressed his forehead to the glass, staring into darkness. Why did he want Tabitha DaSilva so badly? But there was no real point questioning it. He just did. He’d known from the second he’d first seen her that they’d be fucking great together. And now that Maisy had helped him build an empire, it was time to win over his empress.
For months, he’d been working out with the intent of developing muscle. He had wanted to ask Tabby to do a sleeve tattoo without seeming like he was overcompensating for lack of definition, something all the artists at Silver Daughters had made fun of. He’d hit his goals, and then some, but something had held him back. He’d been waiting for a sign that the timing was right, that Tabby was ready. That he was ready.
And then she’d appeared out of nowhere at the Village Belle while he was with Olive and Lily and fucked the plan to high hell.
A twisted part of him had been gratified by her shock at finding him entangled with two women. For the first time since they’d met, he’d been in the power position, drunk at a bar with two hot girls vying for his dick. And as far as showing her he’d gotten some since leaving her bed, he couldn’t have asked for better.
Still, he’d have gone apeshit if he’d walked in on her sucking face with some dude, let alone two, and the way she’d looked at him, Olive and Lily licking his neck and pawing at his chest hadn’t brought him any pleasure. Jealousy was one thing, but she’d seemed… distraught.
She hadn’t looked like her old self. She was still heartbreakingly beautiful but drowning in her dark clothes, her hair limp around her shoulders. A shadow of the electric fairy he’d once known. The sparkling lightness that had seemed as much part of her as her blue eyes and tattoos was gone. When their eyes met, it was like a thundercloud rolling into the bar.
A high-pitched moan rang out from his bedroom.
“Tobyyyy,” Olive pleaded. “Please come back? We need you.”
He scrunched his forehead. The adult virgin in him said, ‘Why not?’ but everything else protested. An hour ago, Olive had been riding him hell for leather while Lily ate her pussy, and all he could think about was Tabby. It was like a bad joke.‘Hey, either of you girls thought about dyeing your hair blue? No? How ’bout a wig?’
He only wanted Tabby. Could think about nothing but Tabby.
“Not right now,” he called back. “You girls go on without me.”
“Mmmf!Okay…”
Toby sat back on his couch, his bare ass sliding on the sweat spot. He grabbed his phone and blinked, not sure if he was seeing the screen right. He had a message from Tabby and not another picture of a naked man.
You up?
His downbeat mood shot into the stratosphere. He’d been right. Tabby wasn’t done with him. He crept to his bedroom door and quietly closed it on Olive and Lily’s squeals. Heading for the stairs, he went to the second floor and sat in a red velvet armchair Maisy had described as ‘the very thing, dahling.’ Then he called Tabby for the second time in two days.
“Greetings, shitbag.”
She’d been smoking weed. He could hear it in the velvety purr of her voice. The sound was like lips sliding down his cock.
“Hello, Tabitha.” He loved saying her name and how his tongue flicked up at the end like he was tasting her. Tabby loved getting eaten out. She’d loved kissing, too. Light kisses. Deep kisses. Between her legs and across her neck. They’d almost drowned in each other’s mouths when they’d hooked up, making out except when he had his tongue on her clit, or when it made fucking her from behind impossible. But unlike him, Tabby didn’t seem to be wallowing in those perfect memories.
She burped into the receiver again.
“Nice, Tabitha.”
“Keep my name out of your mouth, class traitor.”
