Hotel Indigo (18 page)

Making Lucy White happy is more important,
I can imagine Booth telling Rainfall, who owes me one from yesterday anyway.
He’s on her, so you take his appointments
.
 

The ladies were probably
thrilled
that their massages were with a hippie girl instead of the muscle-bound masseur they’ve been eye-fucking all week. But Booth’s imagined thoughts are right: Lucy White
is
more important. It doesn’t matter that I’m feeling the need to make her happy for my own reasons. The end result was a free afternoon.
 

We made it to her room before having sex again. It wasn’t courteous or sweet or slow. But I think we both felt the need to underscore our points, each from our own perspective.
 

This is a vacation from real life for both of us,
that quick encounter said,
so let’s make the most of it. Indulge when we feel a desire
.

And we must have been thinking of “indulging,” because after we were finished we went back by the restaurant. Lucy said she wanted ice cream, so we both got a cone.
 

About that time, I knew she hadn’t forgotten my question, that we both knew she knew its purpose and was doing all she could to dodge it.
 

“What are you afraid of?”
 

“Failure,” she repeated. This time, I knew she was making it up.
 

“I’m your teacher, Lucy. I can’t teach unless you give me something.”
 

“I don’t need a teacher.”

“But I have so many lessons left for you.” I growled it a little, right into her ear.
 

She got the message. Her body shifted closer to mine as we paused along one of the hotel’s long hallways. “Then take me somewhere and teach them to me.”
 

“Only if you tell me what you’re afraid of.”
 

“Spiders.”
 

“Bigger.”

“Big
spiders,” she clarified, then laughed in deflection. She knew I wouldn’t give up, and her truth would come out.
 

“Tell me the truth.”
 

In a smaller voice, she said, “If I tell you, you’ll make me do it.”
 

I nodded.
 

“Can’t we just have fun?”
 

“This is about control. About you letting me steer your ship, so you don’t have to.”
 

“How about you take me back to my room and steer my ship there?”
 

“Is sex all you think about?”
 

Smaller still: “I don’t want to tell you my fear.” She sounded meek, like a creature in need of protection. “I just want to do the fun things, Marco. Why do you care? This thing?” She made a small gesture, presumably indicating whatever it is we’d embarked upon together. “It’s physical. Why get personal?”

“Because for you, being made to do things is the best way to free you.”
 

“That’s convenient.”
 

But then she told me.
 
And, in the end, we ended up here.
 

I’m not afraid of heights, so when Lucy returns her hands to her eyes I look down over the water tower’s railing and see my truck far below. All of Inferno is spread out before us, lights like sparkling gems atop jeweler’s velvet. I see Old Town at the edge, Hotel Indigo on the other side.
 

“Look down, Lucy.”
 

She shakes her head again. It’s almost a full upper-body movement. “I work in a tall building. Isn’t that enough?”
 

“What’s the best thing you can see from your floor of that building?”
 

“The Golden Gate bridge?”
 

She hesitated a second before replying. I know she’s making it up. The bridge is San Francisco’s most famous landmark, and it’s the first thing she thought of. Maybe her view is of the bridge—but if so, it’s coincidence. She’s never gazed at it from up high.
 

“Liar.”
 

“Alcatraz,” she says instead.
 

“Why don’t you just tell me you see gay people? Or Rice-a-Roni?”
 

Lucy opens her eyes. They’re soft brown, deep in the dim light. Her hair stirs around her head in a loose blonde halo.
“What?”
 

“I was just trying to think of famous things about San Francisco you might make up to bullshit me.” I stick a finger in the air. “Wait! I know. Trolleys.”
 

I’m against the water tower. Lucy’s back is to the view. But it worked; her eyes are open.

“Now turn around.”

Her eyes close again.
 

“It’s ridiculous to be afraid.” I let my voice deepen and say more sternly: “Lucy? Turn around and open your eyes.”
 

“What are
you
afraid of? This would be different if it were you.”
 

“Singing,” I say.

Again her eyes open. Then, realizing what she’s done, she closes them again. “Stop surprising me into opening my eyes.”
 

“I’m serious. I had to sing as part of a Christmas play when I was a kid, and it ruined me forever. But I’ve got an Italian family, and at every wedding someone gets drunk and tries to wrangle us all together to sing some old Italian wedding song. There’s a part where everyone has to sing a few lines solo. It terrifies me.”

“So sing for me and I’ll look,” Lucy says.
 

“We’re not in public.”
 

“Then let’s leave this death plunge and
go
somewhere public so you can sing for me there.”
 

“Lucy? Stop stalling.”
 

“You won’t face your fear but I have to?”
 

“Yes. Because it’s not about heights. It’s about you feeling like you might fall.”
 

She steps back, petrified.

“Not literally. Like you might lose something. Like if you do as someone else says rather than being in control yourself, everything will crumble around you. But that’s not the case, and you need to see it. You don’t have to do everything yourself. You need to learn that even when someone else is in charge, you’re not going to get hurt. Your world will stay whole, and you’re not going to die.”
 

“If I fall,” she says, “I’ll die.”
 

“I won’t let you fall.”

Something changes in Lucy. It’s subtle, but I realize she’s crying. A little, but enough.
 

An idea strikes me.
 

She might not like it, but at this point I can’t let her go back down defeated by fear. I can’t end this the wrong way, or she’ll keep believing that life is destined to end in disaster if she isn’t the one behind the wheel.
 

The more we’ve talked, the more I’ve learned. And it’s tragic, the way she’s weighted by obligations, both real and imagined. Because there’s genuine stress in her life, yes. But then there’s also the stress she’s imagined and heaped atop it.
 

If I let this end without her facing her fear, she’ll never be free.

So I say, “Lucy, do you trust me?”
 

She shakes her head.
 

No
. And behind the simple negative I read her P.S:
I trust nobody
.
 

I push her toward the railing. She resists, so I push harder.
 

I guide her hands, firmly, until she’s gripping the railing. Her hair stirs in the breeze. If she were to open her eyes now, she’d see a gorgeous vista yawning before her.
 

I kneel behind her.
 

And my hands grip her ankles.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

L
UCY

M
Y
HEART
LEAPS
. I
KNOW
exactly where I am and what’s in front of me. The railing isn’t high, so when Marco grabs my ankles I’m sure I’ve made a mistake.
 

This was all a setup. He bedded me, tricked me, got me into a perilous position. Somehow, he’s angled himself to receive my money — maybe even make a claim on Caspian’s. He’ll toss me over this low railing, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him.
 

But his hands don’t stay at my ankles. They move up my bare, chilled legs. I shouldn’t have worn a skirt, but I didn’t know what Marco had in mind, or how cold it might get once the sun was done with the day.
 

His hands slide up my calves.
 

Up the backs of my thighs.
 

“What are you doing?”
 

“When I was seeing my therapist, she said that you can’t ever remove bad thoughts from your head. You have to replace them with good ones. And you do that by
reframing
— by changing what those bad things mean to you.”
 

I start to turn, but Marco’s arms are long enough that he can put a firm hand on my spine and keep me from looking back. I’m firmly planted, but it feels like the slightest movement might send me ass-over-teakettle to the base of this tower.
 

His hands are under my skirt. High up, on my ass.
 

“What are you doing?”
 

“Changing the meaning of heights for you.”
 

“Marco, don’t—”

His fingers hook into my panties and drag them all the way down. I feel them in a pool at my ankles, and the breeze under my skirt, where I’m bare.
 

“Seriously. Don’t—”

But
don’t
must be a trigger word for this guy, because he stops me again. This time by lifting my skirt, exposing my ass to the world, and running his tongue along my pussy from behind.
 

It lights me up. Despite my predicament, my juices start flowing. I’m wet for this man. Memories of earlier in the day flood back, and I want him all over again. Fear is a lubricant. Adrenaline and terror, it turns out, aren’t far from the reckless chemistry of fucking. I’m like a performance sports car: from zero to sixty in two seconds.
 

I almost want to fight it — to prove how afraid I am, and hence how inappropriate this is. But Marco’s tongue feels too good on my wet flesh. It’s strong, like the rest of him. He presses his mouth against my opening, and all I can think of is how I want more of him inside me.
 

“Spread your legs.”
 

“Marco—”
 

“Do it. It’ll give you a wider support base, so you won’t feel like you’re going to fall when you bend over the railing.”
 

Wait a minute.
“If you think I’m going to—”

Marco wrenches my feet further apart, opening my pussy. Then his hand is on my back, bending me over the rail. My eyes are still closed, but my heart must be going two hundred beats per minute. If I were to open my eyes now, I’d be looking straight down.
 

Marco will end this if I push him — but with my body bent and legs spread, his tongue can reach all of me, and I’m dripping for his touch.
 

I don’t want to push him. I want him to keep pushing me.
 

“Fuck me, Marco.”
 

“Open your eyes.”
 

“Please. Just fuck me.”
 

I hear him unzip. He’s wearing jeans — a better choice than my skirt. I hear rustling and imagine him taking his cock out. I remember its look. I remember its feel as it pushed into me, parting my wetness.
 

“Open your eyes, Lucy.”
 

I shake my head. I can’t speak. My legs are spread and my naked ass is pointing toward Marco, but I feel like my center of gravity is way out in front of my nose. If I open my eyes, I’ll see how far out I’m leaning — and how far down I’d go before never seeing anything else.