The lobby was gorgeous, decorated in a Mediterranean style with large potted palms and comfy looking overstuffed couches and chairs. The coffee and end tables were made of white wicker with glass tops and expensive looking vases filled with fresh flowers. The elevators were almost as elegant as the lobby and smoothly took us up to the forty-second floor. We stepped off into an almost deathly quiet hallway with one door directly in front of us, one across the hall and another at the far end of the hall.
“Are there only three apartments on the whole floor?” I asked him as he was unlocking the one in front of us.
“Yes, just three,” he said.
When we walked inside and he flipped on the light, I saw why. His apartment was huge. It had to be at least 2500 square feet with three bedrooms and three bathrooms. There was a gourmet kitchen and a formal dining room. But what completely took my breath away was the view. You could see all of Manhattan and the living room was surrounded by floor to ceiling windows and a set of glass doors that led out to a beautiful little balcony.
“Oh Aaron, your home is beautiful,” I told him. He looked around when I said it as if it were the first time he’d seen it too. Finally he shrugged and said,
“It’s home.”
We set our Chinese food up on the dining room table and had our dinner. The food was amazing and I felt like Aaron and I were finally falling into a comfortable place with our conversation. He was so smart and so well-informed that I wondered how he found the time to read so much when his life seemed so consumed by running a multi-national company. I often looked at him and marveled at the fact that behind the gorgeous face that didn’t look a bit over its early thirties had already seen the battles that starting and building a successful company and gained the respect of nearly everyone in his field. I was in awe of how much he’d achieved in such a short time. I also knew that had to be where his reserved personality likely stemmed from. I’m sure that in order to get the business world to take someone so young so seriously, he had to shed himself of the ways of the young too quickly. I could see him trying with me though and for that I was appreciative. It made me feel special and he was opening up more to me about his personal life as well. He told me about his family home and that he’d been trying to buy it for years but the people who own it now didn’t want to sell it.
“Have they lived there long?” I asked him.
“Yes, they’ve lived in it for almost twenty years and raised their children there. To them, it’s their home.”
“It didn’t go to you when your parent’s passed?”
“It did, technically, the entire estate did, although it wasn’t much. The attorney’s who handled it thought it would be best since I was so young to sell it and place the money in trust for me. I’m grateful to them for that, it’s most of what I used to go to school and start my business….but I think all the time about how hard my father worked to buy that house. My mother used to tell me that someday I’d grow up and raise my own family in it….”
“Maybe the owner’s will change their mind someday.”
“Maybe,” he said with a sad smile. I knew talking about his parents and their deaths made him sad so I said,
“I grew up on Long Island.”
“I had you figured for Upstate,” he said with a grin.
“Really? Why’s that?”
“You’re just so wholesome, like the girl next door. I could see you in the Hampton’s riding your horses every weekend.”
I laughed and said, “I’ve only been on a horse one time. I’d love to really learn how to ride though. Do you ride?”
“I have,” he said. “Do you want to have some coffee and take it in the living room?”
“Yes, I’ll clean this up…”
“No, leave it,” he said.
“I don’t want you to have to do it…”
“I won’t,” he told me. “I have a housekeeper. She’ll take care of it in the morning.”
“But the food will go bad if we don’t put it away tonight….”
“Robyn, it’s fine,” he said, in a stern voice like he was chastising a child.
He went in to make the coffee and I went out into the living room. I was looking out at the twinkling lights of the city when he came in. He came up behind me and wrapped his arm around my waist. He pulled me gently back and as I leaned against him I could feel the hard, sinewy muscles in his arms and chest and feel his warm breath on my neck. When he was that close to me any minor little concerns I had about him or us completely disappeared. It was like he cast a spell over me.
We just stood there like that for a while quietly enjoying the view and the feel of each other’s bodies. We were up so high that I once again felt like I could reach out and touch a star. I was having that thought and was caught off guard when he spun me around to face him. I recovered quickly, winding my hands up around his neck and brushing my tongue gently across his lips. He let out a low, guttural growl and grasped me by my hips, pulling me up against him and lifting me about two inches off the floor.
His hands grasped my backside and he held me there as he sucked on my tongue. Then I felt his lips leave mine and graze their way down my jaw to the side of my neck that I tilted for him to give him better access. He found the supple, sensitive skin there and began sucking and licking across it as I closed my eyes and moaned.