The Gentleman in Blue

AFTER DARK DIARIES | ROMANCE | THE GENTLEMAN IN BLUE

Madison had spent three days being professional. Ryan took less than an hour to make her wonder what might happen if she stopped.

There was something particularly revealing about hotel cocktail lounges on the final night of a business trip. They were full of people who had spent all day being whoever their jobs required them to be, only to loosen slightly once the laptops were closed and the meetings were over.

Ties relaxed, jackets disappeared over chair backs and voices softened. Strangers became more interesting after the second drink, while conversations that might have felt inappropriate at four in the afternoon somehow seemed perfectly reasonable after nine.

Madison understood the transformation because she was experiencing it herself.

At forty-five, she had perfected the art of looking composed even when she was exhausted. Three days of meetings had left her with a headache, seventeen unanswered emails and absolutely no desire to spend another evening discussing quarterly projections over dinner.

Her navy trouser suit was hanging upstairs, her laptop was closed, and the hair she’d pinned neatly throughout the afternoon now fell around her shoulders. She had changed into a dark silk dress she’d almost left at home because it seemed ridiculous for a business trip, added the red lipstick she rarely wore during the day, then looked at herself in the mirror and decided she wasn’t quite ready for bed.

Now, sitting alone beneath the amber lights of the hotel cocktail lounge with a martini between her fingers and soft jazz drifting through the room, she was rather pleased she’d packed the dress.

The Man at the Bar

She noticed him because he wasn’t looking at her. Not initially, anyway.

He walked into the lounge shortly after nine wearing a beautifully cut navy suit, a white shirt and a tie loosened just enough to suggest his working day had ended too. Madison guessed mid-thirties. Dark hair, broad shoulders, lean through the waist, with just enough stubble to soften what might otherwise have been an overly polished appearance.

Attractive, certainly, but attractive men weren’t exactly an endangered species in expensive hotels. It was something else that held her attention.

He seemed comfortable alone.

There was no frantic checking of his phone and no exaggerated glance around the room to see who might be watching him. He simply took a stool at the bar, ordered a whisky and thanked the bartender before settling back as though he was perfectly content with his own company.

Madison looked away, took another sip of her drink and told herself not to be ridiculous.

Then she looked back.

Unfortunately, that was precisely when he turned.

Their eyes met across the room, and although Madison could easily have pretended she hadn’t been staring, she was suddenly too tired for games that required that much effort. Instead, she smiled.

Not the polite smile she used in lifts or across conference tables, but something warmer that lingered for a moment longer than necessary.

His mouth lifted slightly at one corner.

Interesting.

Madison returned her attention to her phone, although she couldn’t have said what was on the screen. Five minutes later, a shadow fell across her table.

“Would another martini be presumptuous?”

She looked up.

Close to, he was even better. Brown eyes, a strong jaw, and a face that was handsome without being so perfect that it became uninteresting.

“That depends.”

“On?”

“Whether you’re buying me one because I’m sitting alone or because you caught me staring at you.”

He laughed, and there was something unexpectedly easy about it.

“The second one.”

“At least you’re honest.”

“I thought it might improve my chances.”

Madison considered him for another second before gesturing towards the empty chair opposite.

“Sit down before you ruin it.”

His Name Was Ryan

His name was Ryan, and he was thirty-five, which confirmed Madison’s estimate almost exactly.

He was in the city for work as well, although in a completely different industry, attending an equally tedious conference and apparently just as desperate not to spend his final evening answering emails in his room.

Their second drinks arrived, and what Madison had expected to be twenty minutes of harmless flirting became something unexpectedly easy.

Ryan didn’t interview her or ask what she did only to start measuring his career against hers. More importantly, he didn’t seem interested in performing for her. He listened when she spoke, laughed properly when she made him laugh, and when she challenged something he said, he leaned closer and argued his point rather than retreating behind polite agreement.

She liked that more than she intended to.

“So,” he said eventually, turning his whisky glass slowly between his fingers, “were you really staring at me?”

Madison raised an eyebrow. “Don’t become unbearable.”

“That’s not a no.”

“It’s not a yes either.”

“You smiled.”

“I smile at lots of people.”

“Like that?”

She took a slow sip of her martini, watching him over the rim of the glass before allowing the smallest smile to return.

“No. Probably not like that.”

Something changed in his expression. There was no smugness or little flash of triumph, both of which would have irritated her immediately. It was simply recognition that whatever had begun across the room was no longer entirely one-sided.

Their knees touched beneath the small table.

Neither moved away.

The Problem With Younger Men

Madison had dated younger men before, although dated was perhaps generous in one or two cases.

She understood the attraction. Youth could be flattering, enthusiastic and occasionally exhausting, but after half an hour with Ryan she had almost stopped thinking about the ten years between them.

His age wasn’t the interesting thing about him. His attention was.

When she spoke, he watched her as though the answer genuinely mattered, and when she paused, he didn’t rush to fill the silence. Better still, he hadn’t once told her she looked good for her age, which was a surprisingly low bar that several men had nevertheless managed to trip over.

“What?” Ryan asked eventually.

Madison realised she’d been studying him again.

“I’m deciding something.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Possibly.”

“Can I know what?”

“No.”

He smiled. “That’s slightly terrifying.”

“Good.”

His eyes dropped briefly to her mouth before returning to hers, and Madison felt the atmosphere shift again. The conversation was still easy and the teasing was still there, but underneath it sat something considerably less innocent.

She crossed one leg over the other and saw his eyes follow the movement for a fraction of a second.

He noticed.

Of course he noticed.

Yet rather than allowing his gaze to linger, Ryan looked back into her eyes and continued the conversation as though nothing had happened.

For some reason, that made it worse.

One More Drink

By half past ten, the lounge had begun to empty. A couple near the windows left first, followed by three businessmen who abandoned their table laughing too loudly as they headed towards the lifts. The jazz softened, and the bartender began the quiet ritual of clearing glasses from tables that wouldn’t be occupied again that night.

Madison and Ryan were still talking.

Her third martini remained mostly untouched because she’d reached the point where she wanted a clear head, and Ryan appeared to have made the same decision. His whisky had been sitting in front of him for at least twenty minutes.

“You don’t strike me as someone who does things accidentally,” he said.

“Such as?”

“This.”

Madison glanced around the room. “Having a drink?”

“Sitting here with me.”

She smiled. “Perhaps I’m being friendly.”

“Are you?”

“No.”

His laugh was quieter this time.

Ryan’s hand rested on the table between them, close enough that Madison could have touched it simply by moving her fingers a few inches. She found herself looking at his hands, then at the open collar of his shirt, before meeting his eyes again.

“You’re very confident,” she said.

“Not particularly.”

“You walked across a room to buy a strange woman a drink.”

“You smiled at me first.”

“So this is my fault?”

“Entirely.”

Madison laughed, and Ryan’s expression softened. For a moment the flirtation slipped away and he simply looked at her, without trying to turn the silence into another clever line.

She felt unexpectedly exposed.

Not because of her dress or the way she’d been flirting with him, but because he seemed genuinely interested in the woman doing it.

That hadn’t been part of the plan.

Of course, neither had he.

Room 412

Last orders came shortly before eleven, and Madison knew that if she went upstairs alone she would spend the next hour wondering why she’d done it.

She glanced towards the lifts before looking back at Ryan.

There were moments when life became unnecessarily complicated because people refused to say what they wanted. Madison had never been especially fond of those moments, and tonight she saw little reason to start.

“I’m in room 412.”

Ryan didn’t answer immediately.

His gaze held hers, and for the first time that evening she saw the confidence give way to something more careful.

“Are you sure?”

The question pleased her more than she expected.

“I wouldn’t have told you otherwise.”

He stood without swagger or a ridiculous grin, although Madison noticed the way he exhaled as he reached for his jacket.

Apparently she wasn’t the only one affected.

The lift arrived almost immediately, and they stepped inside together. For the first few floors neither spoke. Ryan stood close enough that she could feel his warmth without actually touching him, while Madison watched the illuminated numbers climb and became increasingly aware of every unnecessary inch between them.

“You’re very quiet,” she said.

“I’m trying not to do something before you’ve decided you want me to.”

She turned towards him, close enough now to smell the faint trace of his aftershave beneath the whisky.

“What makes you think I haven’t decided?”

The lift doors opened before he could answer.

For half a second neither moved, and then Madison stepped into the corridor, glanced over her shoulder and smiled.

“Come on, Ryan.”

The Door Closed Behind Them

Room 412 was exactly as Madison had left it.

Her laptop sat on the desk, her suit jacket hung neatly over the chair and the heels she’d worn that afternoon were lined up beneath it. Her professional life had been organised into sensible little pieces, which suddenly seemed faintly absurd considering what she’d just invited through the door.

She placed her handbag beside the laptop while Ryan closed the door behind them.

The quiet was immediate.

There was no jazz now, no bartender moving around behind them and no little table providing a safe distance between their bodies. When Madison turned, Ryan was still standing by the door, and for the first time that evening he looked slightly uncertain.

She liked him more for it.

“So,” he said.

“So.”

“Still sure?”

Madison crossed the room slowly, reached for his loosened tie and used it to pull him towards her.

“Stop asking.”

He kissed her.

There was nothing tentative about it now. His mouth met hers with enough hunger to make the entire evening downstairs feel like an extended kind of foreplay, all those looks and almost-touches finally allowed to become something real.

Madison’s hand tightened around his tie as Ryan’s palm settled against her waist and drew her closer. When his mouth left hers and travelled along her jaw to the side of her neck, she tipped her head instinctively and felt his lips against the sensitive skin beneath her ear.

“Christ.”

The word escaped before she could stop it.

She felt his smile against her skin.

“Don’t get smug.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Liar.”

She kissed him again before he could answer.

No More Polite Conversation

Madison pushed Ryan’s jacket from his shoulders and let it fall somewhere behind him. His tie followed, and then her fingers began working at the buttons of his shirt while he kissed her again.

“You’ve been thinking about this,” he murmured.

“Since approximately your second whisky.”

“That long?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

He laughed against her mouth, and she liked the sound of it there.

Ryan reached behind her and found the zip of her dress. His fingers rested against it for a moment before he looked at her, the question unspoken this time.

Madison held his gaze.

“Yes.”

The zip slid slowly down her back.

Cool air touched her skin as the dress loosened, slipped from her shoulders and eventually gathered around her heels. Ryan took a small step backwards and looked at her.

Actually looked.

Madison had stood naked in front of men before. She had been married, had lovers and possessed neither the body nor the insecurities of a twenty-five-year-old. She was long past apologising for the softness age had given her or pretending she didn’t enjoy being desired.

Still, something about Ryan’s expression made heat rise beneath her skin.

“Say something.”

“I’m trying to think of something that won’t sound idiotic.”

“That’s never stopped a man before.”

His laugh disappeared when she stepped closer and pushed the open shirt from his shoulders, allowing her palms to travel over the warmth of his chest.

“You’ve been hiding that under a suit all evening?”

“Apparently.”

“Very deceptive.”

“I’ll apologise in writing.”

She kissed him before he could say anything else, and this time neither of them bothered pretending they were in any hurry.

What She Wanted

They reached the bed eventually, although later Madison wouldn’t have been able to say precisely how.

There were clothes scattered between the door and the mattress, one of Ryan’s shoes had somehow ended up near the minibar, and her bra was missing completely. None of it was particularly graceful, which was part of why she liked it.

There had been enough polish downstairs.

Ryan kissed his way slowly down her body, taking his time over her breasts, stomach and hips until Madison’s impatience began to outweigh her determination not to show it. When his mouth travelled lower, her fingers slid into his hair and stayed there.

“Ryan.”

He looked up at her, and the sight of him between her thighs sent a sharp pulse of anticipation through her.

“Yes?”

“If you’re waiting for written permission, you’re going to be disappointed.”

His grin lasted only a second before his mouth found her.

Madison’s head sank back against the pillow.

“Oh, fuck.”

So much for sophistication.

Her fingers tightened in his hair as his tongue moved over her, slowly at first, teasing enough to make her hips shift towards him before he settled into a rhythm that made coherent thought increasingly difficult.

He learnt her quickly.

The pressure that made her thighs tighten. The movement that pulled a low sound from her throat. The moment when slowing down was far more effective than giving her exactly what she thought she wanted.

There was nobody here she needed to impress and nobody she needed to remain composed for, so Madison stopped trying.

Pleasure gathered through her in slow, relentless waves until she could feel herself hovering at the edge of it. Ryan’s hands held her hips as she moved against his mouth, and when the climax finally came it hit hard enough to make her back arch and her thighs tremble around him.

For several seconds she simply lay there, breathing.

Ryan moved back up beside her and kissed the inside of her shoulder before settling against the pillow.

Madison turned her head and found him watching her.

“You’re looking pleased with yourself.”

“A little.”

She placed a hand against his chest and pushed him onto his back.

“That seems unfair.”

His eyebrows lifted.

Madison smiled as she moved over him.

“My turn.”

Nothing to Prove

After that, whatever remained of the careful strangers from the cocktail lounge disappeared completely.

There was laughter when Madison nearly kicked the bedside lamp, followed by a muttered swear word when Ryan caught his knee against the bed frame. Then there was the condom packet that refused to tear properly until Madison finally snatched it from his hand.

“Oh, give me that.”

“I had it.”

“You very clearly didn’t.”

“This is destroying the mood.”

“No. Watching you fight a foil wrapper was destroying the mood.”

Ryan laughed, caught her around the waist and pulled her back beneath him, and the humour dissolved naturally when his mouth found hers again.

Madison wrapped one leg around him, drawing him closer. When he entered her she gasped against his shoulder, feeling the sudden fullness of him before Ryan stopped moving altogether.

“Okay?”

“Don’t you dare stop now.”

That answered him.

He began slowly, allowing them to find the rhythm together rather than rushing towards it. Madison’s nails pressed into his back as each movement pushed deeper, the pressure building until patience was the last thing she wanted from him.

“Harder.”

Ryan lifted his head and looked at her.

Madison held his gaze.

“I said harder.”

Whatever restraint he’d been holding onto disappeared.

His rhythm changed, and Madison moved with him, meeting him rather than simply lying beneath him as the bed shifted against the wall. There was nothing polished about the sweat between their bodies, the sound of the mattress beneath them or the breathless obscenities she no longer cared about keeping inside her head.

It wasn’t elegant and it certainly wasn’t cinematic. It was hot, messy and gloriously real.

Ryan’s hand tightened around her hip as Madison pulled him closer, wanting the pressure, the friction and the delicious sensation of losing herself in something she hadn’t planned.

The second climax built differently from the first, deeper and less controlled, tightening through her until she couldn’t decide whether she wanted him to slow down or never stop.

“Ryan…”

His forehead touched hers.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.”

She almost laughed, but the rest of the sentence disappeared when another hard thrust tipped her over the edge.

Madison buried her face against his neck as her body tightened around him, holding onto his shoulders while pleasure rolled through her. Ryan followed moments later, his breathing breaking against her skin before his weight settled carefully beside her.

For a while neither of them spoke.

Madison lay with one leg tangled through his, staring at the ceiling while her breathing gradually returned to normal. The room smelled faintly of perfume, warm skin and the whisky they’d abandoned hours earlier.

Then a thought arrived with such terrible timing that she started laughing.

Ryan lifted his head.

“What?”

“I’ve got a breakfast meeting at eight.”

He stared at her for a moment before laughing too.

“You’re joking.”

“I wish I was.”

“That’s brutal.”

“You have no idea.”

He rolled onto his back beside her, and Madison let one hand rest against her stomach as the last traces of adrenaline faded.

“This was a terrible professional decision.”

“Absolutely appalling.”

“I’m glad we agree.”

After Midnight

The room became quieter afterwards, not awkwardly so, but with the comfortable stillness that sometimes followed something neither person had expected.

Ryan found the whisky glass he’d brought upstairs, rinsed it, filled it with water and handed it to her. Madison drank half before passing it back.

“Very glamorous,” she said.

“I aim to impress.”

“You did all right.”

“High praise.”

She smiled and looked at him properly.

Without the suit, tie and carefully arranged clothes, he seemed different. Not younger, as she might have expected, but simply more human. His hair was a mess, there was a faint red mark across one shoulder where she’d gripped him, and the confident stranger from the bar had been replaced by a man sitting naked beside her drinking tap water from a whisky glass.

Madison liked this version too.

Perhaps she’d assumed the attraction would disappear once the tension had been satisfied, leaving them with that peculiar post-sex awareness of two strangers who had suddenly become far too familiar with one another.

Instead, she found herself enjoying the quiet almost as much as everything that had come before it.

That was slightly more dangerous.

“What time do you need to be up?” she asked.

“Nine.”

“I hate you.”

“You invited me.”

“An error in judgement.”

“Another one?”

“Apparently I’m having an evening of them.”

Ryan smiled and reached across to brush a strand of hair from her cheek. It was such a small gesture that it caught her more effectively than anything else he’d done.

For a moment Madison simply looked at him.

She wasn’t going to turn one night into something it wasn’t, nor did she need to invent a future for two people who happened to meet in a hotel bar.

But she wasn’t going to pretend it had meant nothing either.

She leaned across, kissed him once, softly this time, and then settled back against the pillow.

“Go to sleep, gentleman in blue.”

Ryan smiled.

“Goodnight, woman who was definitely staring at me.”

Madison closed her eyes.

“I can still ask you to leave.”

His quiet laughter followed her into sleep.

Morning Light

Madison woke at six twenty-three with Ryan’s arm resting across her waist and the pale beginning of daylight showing around the curtains.

For several seconds she couldn’t understand why there was a man in her bed. Then the previous evening returned in pieces: the lounge, the whisky, the lift, room 412 and, finally, the condom wrapper lying rather accusingly on the carpet.

She smiled into the pillow.

Ryan was still asleep behind her, his breathing slow and even. In daylight the room looked considerably less mysterious. Her dress lay in a dark heap near the door, his trousers were hanging halfway off the chair, and the orderly little business suite she’d returned to every evening had become evidence of a night that had gone nowhere near according to plan.

Madison carefully slipped from beneath his arm and headed for the shower.

Hot water restored some degree of civilisation.

Afterwards she found her underwear, then one heel and finally the other underneath Ryan’s jacket. Her bra remained missing until she crouched beside the bed and spotted one strap protruding from underneath it.

“Classy,” she whispered.

By seven, Madison was dressed again in her navy business suit. Her hair was brushed, her make-up subtle and her laptop packed neatly into its case.

Professional Madison had returned.

Almost.

She looked across at Ryan, who was still asleep, one arm now stretched across the space where she’d been.

For a moment she considered waking him.

There could be coffee, perhaps breakfast, maybe an exchange of numbers followed by the inevitable conversation about where each of them lived and whether either really intended to do anything with those numbers.

She decided against it.

Some encounters didn’t need an awkward morning negotiation to make them legitimate. Last night had been exactly what she’d wanted it to be, and she wasn’t going to diminish it by forcing it to become something else before seven in the morning.

Madison took a sheet of hotel notepaper from the desk and wrote:

Thank you for last night.

She stared at the sentence.

It sounded like something she’d write after a corporate dinner.

With a quiet laugh, she added another line beneath it.

You were worth missing some sleep for.

Better.

She left the note beside his watch, looked at him once more and quietly closed the door behind her.

The Woman in the Lift

The corridor was silent, and Madison’s heels sounded surprisingly loud against the carpet as she walked towards the lifts.

When she pressed the button, she caught sight of herself in the mirrored wall.

Navy suit. Heels. Briefcase.

Exactly the woman who had arrived at the hotel three days earlier.

Except there was a faint mark near the base of her neck.

Madison leaned towards the mirror.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Ryan.”

She touched it with two fingers, half annoyed and half delighted, before the lift arrived and interrupted her inspection.

Her phone began vibrating almost as soon as the doors closed.

Two emails had arrived overnight, followed by a message from a colleague asking whether she wanted coffee before breakfast and a calendar reminder informing her that she was expected downstairs in thirty-seven minutes.

Normal life had resumed with almost insulting efficiency.

When the doors opened, the lobby was already busy with guests checking out and business travellers collecting takeaway coffees before disappearing into taxis.

Madison walked towards reception, then stopped beside one of the tall windows and opened the front camera on her phone.

The mark was definitely visible.

Concealer would probably cover it. She had enough time to disappear into the ladies’ room, repair the evidence and walk into breakfast looking exactly as she had every other morning.

Competent. Organised. Sensible.

Madison looked at her reflection for another moment.

Then she smiled and put the phone away.

Perhaps she wouldn’t bother.

Last night hadn’t transformed her into somebody new. She didn’t need a younger man, a hotel room or an impulsive night to prove she was desirable, and she certainly wasn’t about to start measuring her confidence by whether Ryan had wanted her.

That wasn’t what had mattered.

For three days, Madison had been precisely who everybody expected her to be, and she had been very good at it. Last night had simply allowed another part of her to come out and play for a while: the woman who stared openly at handsome strangers, said what she wanted, laughed when sex became messy and didn’t apologise for enjoying any of it.

Both women were her.

Madison adjusted the strap of her handbag and walked towards the hotel doors, where the morning traffic was already moving beyond the glass.

Her breakfast meeting was waiting.

So was the rest of her life.

But last night belonged to nobody but her.

And she rather liked the woman who had taken it.