Hotel Indigo (13 page)

This makes my heart beat faster. I try to read his eyes, but it’s too dim over here and his eyes are so dark. “I didn’t complain to anyone.”
 

“My manager thinks I might have been inappropriate.”
 

“You were.”
 

“How was I?”
 

The coming words thrill me in a way I’m a bit ashamed of. It’s only a fact, but it makes my temperature rise, remembering. “You took off my bra.”
 

“I couldn’t massage you around it.”
 

“Was that all? Was that the only reason?”
 

He’s still staring at me. I’m trembling. I know we’re not truly alone, but we are in a corner, where the lights have been dimmed in some places and turned off in others. We aren’t being overheard. And no one can see us.

“No,” he says.
 

I swallow.
 

“After I left my manager’s office,” he says in his even, deep voice, “I started drinking, too. Because he told me exactly what I needed to do to
fix
whatever I’d done to offend you. And at first I was willing to try. Then I realized that my pride was worth more than this job. So I said,
Fuck him. Fuck what he wants
.” Marco waits a beat then adds a final sentence. “And fuck what he wanted me to do with you.”
 

“What did he want?” I have no saliva.
 

“That’s just it — I don’t want to think about what he wants. It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. I’m tired of Thomas Booth. And I’m tired of this place. It makes me hate people I have no real reason to hate. It’s not their fault. It’s mine, because I lose what I want while thinking of what Booth wants instead.”
 

“So what does that have to do with me?”
 

There’s another long pause. Marco doesn’t break eye contact.
Fuck
, is he intense. Just holding his gaze, I can barely breathe.
 

“I took off your bra because I wanted to.” Another beat of quiet. “And I did it because you let me.”
 

“I didn’t let you.”
 

“You didn’t stop me.”
 

I’m very uncomfortable. I can’t sit still. The way Marco fixes me with his eyes, it’s like a wolf staring. Like he’s waiting for me to make the wrong move so he can leap. Like he’s hungry and means to devour me.
 

I should leave.
 

I start to move, but Marco’s hand shoots out and grabs me by the wrist. “I don’t like how you made me feel today.”
 

Now I’m flustered. Panic rising. But I don’t squirm like I want to. My body is responding in ways it shouldn’t, watching him watch me.

“I’m sorry. If I embarrassed you or got you in trouble, it wasn’t because—”

“That’s not what I mean.”

His hand is on my leg. I’m wearing a skirt, and the hand moves higher.
 

“Why are you doing that?”
 

“Because I want to. And because you’re letting me.”
 

“What if I said to stop?”
 

“Then I’d stop.”
 

I watch his eyes. I say nothing.
 

“If you’d let me stay this afternoon, I’d have taken your panties off, too.”
 

“To give me a better massage?” I can hardly get the words out. My eyes are everywhere. Heartbeat in my throat. Every pulse of blood makes me throb, clouds my vision.
 

“To put my fingers inside you,” Marco says.
 

“You can’t do that.”
 

“I can if you let me.”
 

“I wouldn’t have let you.”
 

Marco’s hand inches higher. It’s under my skirt, on my sensitive inner thighs.
 

“Is that how you operate here?”
 

“No. There’s a line I can’t cross.”
 

“Where is that line?”
 

Marco’s finger finds the crotch of my panties. He pushes it aside and a digit slips inside me. I realize I’m soaking. There’s no friction until he hooks the finger a bit, causing me to twitch and involuntarily bear down. A tiny whimper slips from my lips.
 

“It was right there,” Marco answers.
 

His finger moves inside me. Then a second slips in to join the first. I moan.
 

“What I said before, about you being afraid of taking risks. It was presumptuous.”
 

His fingers are still moving. It’s hard to speak.
 

“Don’t apologize,” is all I can manage.

“I’m not apologizing. It was presumptuous and true. It’s something I shouldn’t have said, but someone needed to say it.”
 

“Why?”
 

“Because you’re fucked up. You’ve forgotten what it’s like to be alive.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know you’re about to come.”
 

I try to deny it, but it’s true. I’ve heard that a lot of girls don’t have a G-spot, but I sure as hell do. Marco’s got his fingers hooked around inside me just right, rubbing that little smooth spot I can’t bend my wrist far enough to hit on my own. It’s like he’s been with me for ages, but no — he’s found my hot spot right away, on the first try.
 

Pressure builds. I want to hold out, just to prove him wrong. But his index finger continues to tease that little interior bundle of nerves and I want to rotate my hips just so, to let it happen.
 

I can’t do this. Not right here in the lobby.
 

But I do. And I have to lean into Marco as I come, practically biting him through his thin white tee to keep from shouting out.

I flinch back. I’m too sensitive now, so I push his hand away.

“Again,” he says.
 

“I’m done.”
 

“Again,” he repeats.

“There’s no
again
.” Even with Aaron there was never an
again.

But his hand is back. Making me flinch, too much touch.
 

“Take my cock out.”
 

The sensitivity in my clit recedes. His words thrill me. I keep looking around the lobby, but nobody’s come into view. We can’t do this here. A picture would go straight to the tabloids. I’m a public face. And now he’s pushing that public face toward the giant bulge in his pants.
 

I find myself unzipping him, wondering what in the hell I’m doing.
 

But his fingers sliding back inside me feel amazing.
 

And his thumb, which has found my clit, feels even better. I’m already rising again. I wonder if I can come twice. I’ve heard about it, but I’ve always been too busy with life to try.
 

“Suck me off, Lucy,” Marco says, as I remove his shaft and gaze at the smooth head, the drop of liquid already at its tip. I wrap my hand around his stone-hard cock and feel it throb against me. “Make me come in your mouth.”
 

I must still be a little drunk.

Because I do it.
 

And the minute his hardness is between my lips, Marco begins to roll the ball of his thumb more rapidly across my clit, sending arrows of sensation down my legs, through my ass, up my spine. I want his other hand on my tits but I won’t ask for it.
 

I’m not that kind of girl.
 

I’m a responsible person, who always gets things done.
 

Marco’s cock is already twitching as I suck it, as my hand moves along its impressive length. I run my free hand along his stomach, feeling his hard abs. I could count them all as I work. As he sends me into overdrive.

But then he slows just a little. My orgasm abates.
 

“I want to come with you. I want you to swallow me when yours hits.” His thumb moves. His fingers rub. “Tell me when,” he says.
 

I move my mouth on his shaft. Frenzy builds. I want him to fill me up. My very center aches for him. I suddenly want Marco to pull me out of my seat, prop me up on the cushion, and enter me from behind. I want his hard cock slamming into me. I want his balls slapping my pussy, his body jarring against my bare ass. I see it as Marco works my slit, as I suck his cock.
 

I clench. And I manage to whisper,
“Now.”
 

It begins, the second orgasm much bigger than the first. Marco groans under his breath and I feel his cock throb hard in my hand and between my lips. Then my mouth fills with warmth. I suck breath through my nose, short on air but unwilling to loosen my lips. Our simultaneous orgasm must only take a handful of seconds, but then it’s over, and my mouth is empty and still wanting him. Marco’s big chest heaves, his cock still leaking a drizzle of fluid.

He straightens. He shrugs me away so I sit upright, and both of us compose ourselves.

“Better,” he says. “But you still need to learn to relax.”
 

I take this in as every muscle in my body goes limp. As I taste Marco on my lips.
 

He stands.
 

“But it’s okay. Because I’ll teach you.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

L
UCY

I
WAKE
WITH
A
POUNDING
headache and regret creeping in.
 

It’s not that I don’t remember last night. I remember it perfectly. And what’s more, the part I regret most is, paradoxically, the fact that I’m not sure I regret a thing. It’s like Anna is sleeping in bed beside me, because all I can think, as I consider that awkwardness, is what she said before bringing me home:
Whatever you decide is yours to keep.

And what that meant, in Anna’s new-age way of thinking, was that the act of choosing something made it something to own. And appreciate. I’d been
choosing
not to have any fun. The minute I decided to indulge, it was fine simply by virtue of my deciding. There is no right or wrong — not here, not now, not while I’m off the clock and supposedly on vacation. There are simply things I choose to do and things I choose not to do.
 

If I choose something, it’s mine to enjoy.
 

I tell myself this over and over while slowly waking, as the ghost of doubt surrounds me.
 

What Marco and I did … that’s usually a “bad” thing to do. We don’t know each other; I don’t really like him much. I let him tell me what to do.
 

But on the flip side, it’s not bad during this vacation hiatus, because I chose to do it.
 

I chose to take Marco in my mouth.
 

I chose to let him touch me.
 

And because I chose, it’s within my rights to enjoy, free of guilt.
 

That’s what Anna made me promise: not necessarily to fondle some asshole in the hotel lobby, but to let myself accept whatever delights might come my way.
 

It means not checking my phone.
 

It means not wondering if Mom is getting along. I know I sorta promised I’d drop in during the week, but Anna smacked me right out of that. Mom has been fine on her own for months, and
essentially
on her own for decades while my father was alive, seeing as he was never home. She can make it another six days.
 

It means not sweating my job. Caspian didn’t want to help Mom, so he gave me an extended sabbatical. The minute he agreed to that (and left me to do all the work), he forfeited the right to bug me about coming back.
 

It means accepting that I
never
take time off from some obligation or another, and that a human being cannot live under constant stress. “Taking a vacation doesn’t just help you; it helps everyone because there’s more of you to go around afterward,” Anna told me. And she was right.