When he’d first held Morgan, he’d decided to change. For good.
But, Jesus, seeing someone like Charlotte forced him to reconsider.
He turned to the office roster on his computer, then, and found her name: Charlotte Barracks, interning in music writing. From western Ohio, near the Indiana border. Majored in writing and music in college, listed her top favorite bands in her résumé, and didn’t include his.
Digging a bit, Quentin typed her name into a search engine, discovering a photograph of her easily on a social media page. That stunning, angelic face peered back at him. She was an absolute knock-out and, best of all, didn’t even know it. She looked as if she’d been born and bred in the very shadows of Ohio cornfields, hidden from the world for over two decades. Naïve. Young. Fresh. Easily destroyed.
Insistent, his cock pulsed up against his pants once more. Slowly, methodically, he reached for his belt and undid it, unzipping his pants and wrapping his hand around his veiny, rock-hard member. He remembered getting naked on stage, over ten years before, and penetrating some raucous groupie in front of the drum kit, as fans watched nearby.
SEX-CRAZED ROCKER had been the headline. He remembered reading it, from this very magazine, before he’d known he’d be any kind of “suit” in an office. Before he knew he’d ever grow up. He’d loved the title, slicing the magazine pages out and hanging them in his shitty, studio apartment in Brooklyn.
As he thought back to these glory days, all the women in his memories transformed into the little Ohioan intern. He yanked his cock from his pants fully, now, and began to ease his palm up and down gruffly, imagining her lips wrapped around the tip. He imagined those bright red lips bobbing up and down, her eyes gazing up at him from between his legs. He would shove his cock deeper between her teeth, watching as she deep-throated him.
Shivering with lust, his eyes turned toward the clock. It was nearly three-fifteen in the afternoon. His phone began to blare with the alarm he set, always certain he’d be too caught up in writing to remember. Shocked, he dropped his cock, slipping it back into his pants and re-zipping, re-buttoning, re-clasping.
He had to pick up Morgan from piano lessons. It was his day. It was his turn.
Shaking his head gruffly, he stood, tapping his muscled ass to ensure he had his wallet and keys. He sent a brief email to Maggie, that poor, rough-looking thing, who—yes—he’d fucked ten years ago. She was a stunning writer, a real asset to his team at MMM. But she always brought up the issue of them once copulating, never considering that he’d been too addled on mushrooms at the time to know if she was an actual woman or just a figment of his unending imagination.
Had to pick up Morgan, he typed furiously for Maggie, already running a bit late. I’ll be back tomorrow morning, early, to approve the rest of the magazine spreads. Good luck with the interns. I know they drive you wild. He tapped send swiftly and forced his laptop closed, bolting for the door. He avoided Maggie’s glance before escaping to the elevator. He couldn’t afford the time she required, half-casually flirting with him.
The tension and jealousy she created was sometimes an assault to his office frame of mind. He certainly didn’t want to give her any cues that it could happen again, although he knew she wanted that. He could feel the simmer in her glances, sense the way she shoved her breasts upward when they spoke.
By the time he reached the sidewalk in front of the Manhattan office building, his brain was diluting itself from the hard day at the office, even allowing him a slight reprieve from thoughts of that hot intern, Charlotte. He was transitioning, now. For the next few hours, he would be a father. And damn, he’d be a good one.
3
Morgan’s school was close to Quentin’s penthouse apartment on the Upper West Side, a place he’d been able to afford after he’d stopped cashing all his checks for drugs, cleaned up his act, and begun writing at MMM officially, at the age of thirty-one. The royalties for the music continued to roll in, graciously, like echoes from a near-forgotten time. And suddenly, at the age of thirty-six, he was a very rich man, with a Music Editor title and acclaim from several journalistic award groups.
He and Morgan’s mother, a once-model named Kate, had decided upon the school because of its commitment to music. Nearly every day, the kids had a music lesson, with piano, guitar, voice, and even some of the brass or woodwind instruments on offer. Morgan had decided upon piano, since Quentin had a large grand piano in his penthouse, and she’d grown up with him tinkering on it, writing songs and crooning.