Hotel Indigo Read online

  And because I’m Lucy — the girl who forgot what it was like to be young and free.

  I’ve built my own jail cell, bar by bar.

  Someone slides into the booth beside me. The lobby is dim and the newcomer has dark hair and darker clothing, so at first I don’t know who it is. Just another lonely guest with no sense of personal space.

  “Drinking alone?” he says.

  And I realize it’s Marco.

  I swallow. I’m already reacting to him. I feel panic wanting to rise inside me. But Anna’s words are with me. If he’s honestly a threat — which I’m sure he isn’t — I’m still in a public place. There are others in the lobby, even if they’re out of sight. I have an escape plan; I can yell if I have to. But until then I’ll throttle the need to run. Either Marco was never a threat and I’ll prove it to myself by staying put this time and letting him do the same — or he did intend his ill-will after all. In the latter case, at least I can face him. I owe my pride — and my dwindling sense of control over my own life — at least that much.

  “I’m not drinking.” I gesture to the empty table.

  “But you have been. I can smell it on your breath.”

  It’s creepy, his being so close. I can smell him, too, but it’s definitely not bad. It’s the scent of his skin and hair, dust from a day on the job. Something in me wants to stay close, to keep savaging myself with those scents. I flare my nostrils, wanting to inhale him.

  “What business is it of yours?”

  “None,” Marco says. There’s a long moment. Then finally he adds, “I got in trouble because of you.”

  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

  LUCY

  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.

  So as I recall last night, and battle my knee-jerk reaction to feel like a fool who was taken advantage of, I remind myself that I chose to do it.

  Marco didn’t exploit me. I got mine — twice, in fact, which was something I didn’t even know I could do. If there was any exploiting done, then we exploited each other.

  I believe it for a while — but then I get out of bed and brush my teeth and start to wonder what I should do with my day. That’s when my thoughts turn to the brochure of services.

  And I think, I should get a massage.

  My resolve to decide and enjoy starts to fail me. I don’t know Marco, and he might be a real prick now that he’s got what he wanted — what he maybe always wanted, meaning I was right about his behavior here in my room.

  I try to stay strong, but doubt wants to claim me.

  I was raised to be a good girl, even if that often meant Dad’s wrath and Mom’s ever-present guilt.

  And I was raised to be responsible. To be strong.

  I was, I realize, raised to believe that pleasure is for the weak. Caspian obviously took the same lessons, given the twisted shit that gives him pleasure. Pain is pleasure? Thank God I didn’t inherit that little psychological quirk.

  There’s a knock on my door.

  I open it and see a silver tray in the hallway, with no servers in sight.

  It must be in the wrong place. Delivered to me by accident.

  I inhale as I stoop to see whose it might be, and the scents of a delicious breakfast strike me. I smell butter. And cinnamon. Probably French toast.

  I’d have to lift the sliver lids to see for sure, but I get a good feel for what’s under them and it makes me want to order my own breakfast. Perhaps this exact breakfast, because whoever screwed up this delivery has inadvertently brought me exactly what I didn’t even know I wanted most in the world.

  There’s a tall, thin vase in the tray’s center. I’d wager it’s genuine crystal. Just big enough inside for a single thick-stemmed flower. A large yellow lily is in it now, petals fully opened like an exploding firework.

  There’s a folded piece of paper taped to the vase — a receipt or a note. Either way, it should tell me where this breakfast belongs.

  I flip the note open and see my name. I stand upright, unfold the lush paper with its smooth lines of black ink, and read the rest:

  Lucy,

  Enjoy breakfast, then meet me

  at my cabana by the pool at noon.

  Bring your swimsuit.

  Marco

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MARCO

  I GO BACK AND FORTH all morning, toggling between pleasant anticipation at seeing Lucy again and dread for the same.

  I arrive at the Indigo after dragging my unusually sluggish ass out of bed, and immediately hit the gym, harder than normal. Partly because I need to wake up, and the blood flow helps startle my brain from last night’s hazy dreams that still refuse to retreat. And part of it is probably due to a subconscious desire to look a bit more impressive today — I remember reading somewhere that when a man’s competing for sex, he’s driven toward aggression in case he has to battle other males for the same mate. But the last part, I think, is a form of self-flagellation. Like I’m working myself so hard as a form of punishment.

  I can normally deadlift around 495 pounds. Today I somehow manage 545, but my back and legs scream as I wrestle the weight from the floor. Even after managing it, I decide to do squat
s because the idea of squatting after deadlifts sounds so intensely unpleasant. And I do the deep kind, too, where I sit in the hole for two seconds before rising. I’m covered in sweat in no time. Every rep is agony, and I must be waking guests as I practically shout to get it up.

  I can barely walk to the shower. I honestly think I might throw up. It takes five minutes standing in the ice-cold spray for the feeling to pass. Even after, I’m still in pain, wondering what the hell is wrong with me. I’ve got four massages in a row again, with only a half-hour break after the first two. Massaging is its own form of workout.

  Usually the idea of lifting before work is to get a decent pump, so I look more muscular, per Booth’s conception of me as little more than man-candy. But today I’ve not done myself any favors. Lighter weights will do what Booth wants. Today I’ve merely made my day impossible.

  And that’s what makes me think I’m punishing myself, more than anything else.

  What the hell was last night about? I only meant to talk to her. I went into it with intentions somewhere between my own and Booth’s. On one hand, I need my job, and Mimi and the rest of my family are depending on me to keep it. But on the other hand, fuck Booth. I have an anatomy degree and an LMT certification, and could find another job in sports medicine. I don’t need to be one step above a gigolo for a guy whose head I routinely fantasize about twisting off like a bottle cap, no matter how much better this pays than any other gig I could possibly get.

  So why did I do what I did? I wasn’t thinking. I sat with only the vaguest intentions and the rest spilled right out. Just like in Lucy’s room, when I was doing her massage. She’s just another rich bitch. Why do I feel so affected?

  Leaving the food and note outside her door made sense.

  Until the middle of my first massage when it started to feel like a mistake. I shouldn’t have done that. I should stay away. She’ll be embarrassed. She was drunk; I took advantage. That wasn’t the way to make her happy, and neither will what I had in mind when meeting her later.

  As I’m finishing my second massage, I flip-flop. Lucy didn’t exactly run away. She enjoyed things as much as I did, even if she had shame on her face. I can assuage that, make her see that it’s okay to have fun. And Booth is right about one thing: Lucy White sure seems like someone in desperate need of a vacation. So what’s the harm?