These were the very questions he hadn’t want to face when he’d issued the no-fraternization policy. Fucking too much had fucked him up as a rock star. Guidelines. Basic rules. These were the things that made him thrive in a professional environment.
“Alright. Well, I’ll get out of your hair,” Charlotte murmured, suddenly understanding she’d overstayed her welcome. She stabbed her feet into her shoes, giving him an injured animal look, and then fled the office, bringing his sexual scent with her. She clipped the door closed, leaving Quentin to slump down into his chair, feeling vaguely defeated.
“Fuck,” Quentin breathed. He eased his cheeks into his hands, smelling the scent of her pussy on his fingers. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
A knock on his door sprung him out of his reverie.
“Come in!” he called.
Maggie opened the door, peering in. Her eyes were dark, like a wild animal’s. “Can I talk to you, boss?”
“I have to get going, Mags,” Quentin said softly. “The Morning Star assholes are waiting for me up the road.”
“I have loads of spreads I need you to look at,” Maggie said, her voice softening with the nickname. He’d been calling her “Mags” off and on since they’d met each other ten years before. “You took quite a long time with that new intern. The brunette one.”
“Sure,” Quentin said, trying to sound blasé. “I think she has pretty good ideas.”
“It was just a fucking advertisement, Q. I think she needs to learn when to talk in turn.”
“When has anyone ever gotten anywhere talking in turn?” Quentin asked her, rising from his chair and leaning against his desk, still feeling the warmth from Charlotte’s body. “In fact, I might remember you talking out of turn earlier this morning.”
Maggie’s face grew red, startled. She bowed her chin slowly, clearly simmering with embarrassment. “I wanted to apologize about that. It was unnecessary and out of line. I’m—”
“No need,” Quentin said, raising his hand. “Just don’t question my actions regarding these interns again. I want to be more involved with them. Give them a streamlined route to a professional life. Something I really didn’t have as a twenty-something, if you remember.”
Quentin left his office, then, and sped down the road, toward the Upper West Side, his shoes flashing black against the sidewalk. He was amazed at how easily he’d lied to Maggie about his decisions to “guide” the interns. Back in his twenties, he’d been an impeccable liar, scarcely able to remember what the truth was after telling a lie once or twice. He’d resolved to give this up as a parent—as a proper “adult.”
But the lie of his affair with Charlotte was beginning to grow very, very sweet on his tongue. He could lie about “not sleeping with her” for years, as long as he was allowed that sweet, pulsing pussy. He lifted his chin high in the air, feeling the darkness of his youth descend upon him, wholly.
He was fucking Quentin McDonnell. He wasn’t just some dad, ready to end his life in an easy chair. He was akin to the Morning Star rockers, with a very basic, very stark difference. He wasn’t a sad, aging rocker. He was a yearned-for, wanted editor of a major music magazine.
In many ways, this was the coveted next step of his sexual life. He couldn’t very well walk like a zombie through the rest of his life, a la the Rolling Stones. He was moving up. He was educated. He had sexual prowess.
And fuck, if he could get away with it, he would move on Charlotte as many times as she allowed it: that gorgeous, virginal woman, who talked a big game. Quentin could smell how much she wanted him.
11
The rest of the day at the office, Charlotte sat in waves of panic at her desk, feeling her shoulders slump. She’d broken the no-fraternization clause once more, and, worst of all, she recognized that she was growing linked to Quentin in ways that he probably couldn’t understand, as a man over ten years her senior and far more experienced.
She was meant to be typing up an article about a Brooklyn show she’d attended the previous week, before she’d even begun at the magazine, with two up-and-coming bands from the area. They’d flung their bodies across their guitars and drawn sweat lines across their t-shirts, screaming out song after song. The energy had been enlightening. It had been akin to how Charlotte had always imagined an Orpheus Arise show to be.
Of course, she knew she never could see that reality, up close.
Lost in thought, Charlotte’s eyes danced toward the window, where she watched a plane in the distance barrel toward the airport. Randy poked her with his pen, lightly in the shoulder. Whisking around, her eyes panicked, she slowly found a smile.
“What are you daydreaming about, little miss?” Randy asked her softly, so as not to pester the others.