Daphne Vs. Daddy
Just as the maître d’ opens his mouth to ask me if I have reservations, Diesel slides his arm around me. “George, she’s mine,” he tells the man, and leads me back to a private table in the back. Sure enough, a man playing the alto sax is serenading the restaurant, and I stare at Diesel.
“You think this is some place dangerous?” I ask him. “This is the Clover Club!”
“I noticed,” he said with a chuckle. “Let’s order, shall we?”
The waiter, in a black suit and tie, came up to the table, and I let Diesel order for me, since he seemed to know the menu here from memory. After the waiter disappears to retrieve a bottle of red wine, I just stare at Diesel, eyebrow cocked, total imitation of Ashley. Hey, it works on me; it can work on him!
“Brooklyn is dangerous,” Diesel says. “Did you know that there is this really long history of killings that have happened in Park Slope?”
The waiter smoothly slides our wine glasses between us and then disappears again.
“Down by the Atlantic Pacific Avenue,” he insists, when I continue to just stare at him disbelievingly. “They’ve been going on for years. I have to protect you from all of that.” The jazz musician continues to wail on his saxophone and I tilt my head toward him.
“Going to protect me from the evil musician who might blow his sax a little too loud in my ear?” I ask sarcastically.
“Deafness isn’t something to joke about,” Diesel said, mock seriously. “I could always save you from him.”
“By asking him to go into the other room?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Don’t bother. I think my eardrums will survive the night. But I appreciate your willingness to battle for me.”
“Anytime,” he says with a swagger in his voice and I laugh and I know I shouldn’t be encouraging him but I can’t help myself. He really is full of shit, but since he’s the sexiest man I’ve ever laid eyes on, I forgive him for it.
After eating a sumptuous four-course meal that includes escargot—because that’s something only outlaws eat—we finally head outside, the maître d’ bowing as we leave. “Put it on my tab, will you?” Diesel asks as we pass by. He nods his head in acknowledgment, and then we’re outside, the evening air rushing over us.
“Well, it’s really too bad you didn’t come here on a motorcycle,” I tell him with a teasing grin. “I would’ve gone home with you and fucked if only you’d lived up to your bad boy promises. I already told you, outlaws don’t ride in Rolls—”
A Harley pulls up to the curb, the engine idling loudly and then the valet cuts the engine and puts down the kickstand. The sudden silence is almost as deafening as the engine had been. He hands the keys to Diesel.
“Here you go, sir,” he says, a little wide-eyed with excitement, but trying to pretend that he rides Harleys every day. He isn’t fooling me. He pulls down on his jacket as he heads back inside, smoothing back his hair casually.
Diesel smiles a naughty grin at me. “You were saying?” he asks, swinging his leg over the seat.
I stare at him for a moment. Oh god, I really talked myself into that corner, didn’t I?
With a groan that is part panic, part pure excitement, I swing my leg over behind him, hitching up my skirt so I can straddle his body with mine. My crotch is pushed up against his hips and the vibrations of the motorcycle; I might just orgasm from this ride alone.
Ducking my head and snuggling my face against his back, I close my eyes as we take off into the evening air.
Maybe Diesel is an outlaw after all. Or, at the very least, owns a cool bike.
56
Lisa
“You really have to be kidding me. Is this your outlaw pad?” I ask him, rolling my eyes. He’s standing by the doorway, his lips cocked into a smile as he bows.
“My humble apartment,” he says with flair, allowing me to enter his apartment before he does. Like a true outlaw. Yeah, right.
His pad is everything but humble; let’s just start by saying that no self-respecting outlaw would own an apartment in the Upper East Side. And when he flicks the light switch by the door, turning on the lights, I can’t help but gasp: he’s definitely pulling some kind of prank on me.
The living room is like something out of a magazine, the furniture perfectly laid out as if he spent weeks getting the right angle just for the couch. The walls are a clear white, contrasting with the dark high-end furniture, and the room is so large it almost becomes uncomfortable. I look around, trying to find something personal—a family picture, or maybe one of him and some ex-girlfriend—but all my eyes find on the walls are paintings. The canvases are huge, and the artwork seems so abstract I don’t even know what I’m looking at.
“I didn’t know outlaws hired interior designers,” I tease him, turning around to face him.
“Maybe it was a criminal interior designer,” he shoots back, placing his keys and wallet on the mantelpiece. Even the fireplace seems like it was made to order.