The Penthouse Rule
An MM Age Gap Romance
Ashford Sterling Book 1 • by Jace Wilder
Pairing: MM
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Age Gap, Dad’s Best Friend, Daddy Kink, D/s Dynamics, Boss/Employee, Forced Proximity, Praise Kink
He’s his dad’s best friend. His boss. And now his Daddy.
Toby Crane is chaos incarnate. At twenty-two, he’s burned through colleges, jobs, and patience—including his father’s. When his dad arranges a summer internship at his best friend’s finance firm, Toby expects three months of boredom in a sterile Manhattan penthouse.
He doesn’t expect Marcus Ashford.
At forty-five, Marcus has built his life on control. Control over his firm. Control over his environment. Control over the needs he’s spent years suppressing since his marriage fell apart. The last thing he needs is his best friend’s bratty son disrupting his carefully ordered existence.
But Toby doesn’t just disrupt—he devastates. With his smart mouth and sharper instincts, he sees right through Marcus’s walls. And what he finds there is exactly what he’s been searching for his whole chaotic life: someone who can finally make him stop.
What starts as tension becomes temptation. What begins as a single night of surrender becomes something neither of them can walk away from. But when their secret threatens to destroy Marcus’s oldest friendship and both their careers, they’ll have to decide if what they’ve built is worth fighting for.
Some rules are made to be broken. Some rules are made to be kept.
You’ll love this if you enjoy:
✓ Dad’s best friend (who becomes Daddy)
✓ Age gap with power dynamics
✓ Grumpy Dominant x Bratty Submissive
✓ Praise kink and discipline
✓ Forced proximity in a luxury penthouse
✓ “I’m not supposed to want you” tension
✓ Explicit D/s scenes with emotional depth
✓ Guaranteed HEA with collar ceremony
⚠️ Content Warning
This book contains explicit MM sexual content including Daddy/boy dynamics, spanking, praise kink, light bondage, and emotionally intense D/s scenes. There are also themes of parental emotional neglect, grief, past relationship trauma, and navigating family disapproval. The relationship is between consenting adults with enthusiastic negotiation and ongoing communication.
Reader discretion advised. This book is intended for mature audiences only.
📖 Read Chapter One Free
Chapter One
The elevator opened onto the forty-second floor, and Toby Crane stepped into a world that clearly didn’t want him there.
White. Everything was white. The walls, the floors, the furniture that looked more like sculpture than anything a human being might actually sit on. Floor-to-ceiling windows lined the far wall, offering a panoramic view of Manhattan that probably cost more than most people’s annual salaries just to look at.
And standing in the middle of it all, looking like he’d been carved from the same marble as his décor, was Marcus Ashford.
Toby had met Marcus before, of course. The man was his father’s oldest friend—they’d been roommates at Princeton, had stood up at each other’s weddings, had maintained the kind of lifelong bond that Toby found vaguely incomprehensible. Growing up, Marcus had been a peripheral figure: the stern-faced man who appeared at Christmas dinners and graduation ceremonies, always impeccably dressed, always watching with those cool gray eyes that seemed to see everything and approve of nothing.
But Toby hadn’t seen him in years. Not since… when? His mother’s funeral, maybe. That blur of black suits and sympathy cards and the particular emptiness that had hollowed out his chest and never quite filled back in.
That Marcus had been softer, somehow. Grief-touched. Human.
This Marcus was something else entirely.
…
🔥 Want an EXCLUSIVE Bonus Chapter?
“The Anniversary” — A 3,500-word scene TOO HOT for Amazon
One year after the collar ceremony. Marcus has a surprise planned for Toby—and it involves the St. Regis penthouse suite, a new set of restraints, and a night that will push them both to the edge. This scene didn’t make it into the book.
More MM Romance from Jace Wilder
If you loved The Penthouse Rule, you might enjoy…
Puck You
MM Hockey • Enemies to Lovers
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Raw & Roasted
MM • Grumpy/Sunshine
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Stud Finder
MM Small Town • Forced Proximity
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this book part of a series?
The Penthouse Rule is the first book in the Ashford Sterling series. It’s a complete standalone with a guaranteed HEA—no cliffhangers! Future books may feature other characters in the same world.
How spicy is this book?
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ — This is a 5/5 heat level book with explicit MM content featuring Daddy/boy dynamics. Includes spanking, praise kink, light bondage, D/s negotiation, and multiple on-page intimate scenes with significant emotional depth.
Is there a happily ever after?
Yes! Marcus and Toby get their HEA complete with family acceptance, a collar ceremony, and a future they build together. They overcome the obstacles of age, power dynamics, and family disapproval to find their forever.
What’s the “Dad’s Best Friend” element?
Marcus is Toby’s father’s best friend from college—they’ve known each other for 30 years. Marcus and Toby are not related. All romantic/sexual content occurs between consenting adults who meet when Toby is 22. The “forbidden” element comes from navigating their connection while maintaining Marcus’s friendship with Toby’s father.
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