Holding My Breath

by A. M. Hartnett

  As he squeezed his fingers between her legs and glided easily into her sex, she almost relented.

  Instead she squirmed enough to push him off. She didn’t look at him as she went to work on combing her fingers through her hair. ‘I can’t. I still need my job in the new year.’

  Once in the living room, she started to collect her scattered and crumpled clothes. She needed a good scrub-down, but now that she’d put the brakes on this … sweet Jesus, this sordid episode, she needed to put some space between them. A jingling sound drew her attention back to him, and she was oddly disappointed to find him drawing his slacks up his thighs.

  ‘About our arrangement …’ he said.

  Molly dragged her dress over her head and spoke through the fabric. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any harm in giving you until the new year. After that, I don’t want to see you again.’

  She shoved her head through the neck and jumped to find him standing in front of her.

  ‘Our arrangement.’

  ‘We don’t have an arrangement.’

  He looked unconvinced, and completely gorgeous with his chest still bare and his hair all rumpled. She itched to reach up and smooth down the ruddy spikes she had made.

  Instead, she hiked her purse onto her shoulder and took a deep breath. ‘Take your time. I won’t have housekeeping up here until the morning – and don’t forget …’

  She glanced at the envelope on the sofa.

  ‘Trust me, I won’t,’ he said, but his smile said it wasn’t the money he was talking about as he shrugged into his shirt. ‘I’ll see you around, Molly.’

  She could have purred over her name lilting, liquid, off his tongue. It ran through her as she headed for the door and left her light-headed.

  ‘If you change your mind, you have my number,’ he called to her. ‘You know my working hours. Otherwise, I’m yours for a little more of that “or something”.’

  * * *

  What had long been a habit for Molly had evolved into a deliberate routine she was certain she’d feel lost without.

  Every workday she’d close and lock the door, drop her purse, kick off her shoes, then lean against the door with her eyes closed. In a series of deep breaths, she’d push the day away: the boring hours of paperwork, the bitchy guests and the gripes from the staff, the mountain of bills she’d ignore, and all the other garbage in her life. A long sigh and all of it would flake away.

  Nothing was different today. She still sealed herself in. She still let her purse fall onto the doormat and pushed her shoes off, but this time when she leaned back she lifted her gaze to the ceiling.

  Her sigh was different. It wasn’t relief or exasperation. This slow exhalation was lush and satisfied, and with her second breath she let out an airy, disbelieving laugh that shook her shoulders.

  She’d had sex with a stranger who made his living with that talented tongue and hard body.

  When she’d left work that morning, she certainly hadn’t intended to indulge in some illicit encounter in the honeymoon suite, though she wouldn’t have been the first. In fact, when she’d first started at the front desk she’d developed a camaraderie with the lothario bartender: her friends got one free round every time she passed him a key card to an empty room so he could spend his break with whoever he had been flirting with. From kitchen staff and deliverymen, to housekeepers and porters, Molly doubted there was a nook left in the hotel that hadn’t been used for the purpose of sexual congress.

  She’d always abstained from fucking at work. The fear of losing her job trumped the high of being bad. The closest she’d ever come was giving Aaron a hand job in the parking garage after a Christmas party.

  So far she’d evaded regret about what had happened with Quinn. She expected it to creep upon her as she moved through the darkness to the living room, but when she turned on the light and sank down on the sofa, nothing like it manifested.

  Out of the shadows came a haughty little figure with glaring yellow eyes. Up until today, Scot had been the only male in her life since Aaron moved out. It was a simple chieftain/servant relationship, and as far as roommates went the feline was tolerable. He sat primly in the archway where the living room met the dining room and stared. This was supposed to be her cue to get up and feed him, but with her tap against the edge of the sectional he strutted forward. Apparently the promise of a belly-rub was as good as the promise of food, maybe better.

  With the cat sprawling on her lap, Molly scratched his stomach and turned on the television, but paid no attention to the 24-hour news station. While the sensible side of her enumerated the risks of indulging with someone who sold sex, the wilder side ached at the memory of Quinn’s hot mouth on her sex, and rolled her eyes like a petulant child being scolded.

  She conjured that James Bond package he sold. She remembered him telling her he had his limits, and he didn’t need to specify that risky sex was off the menu. Like any other dealer in the illicit, Quinn kept his product pure. It wouldn’t do for one of his well-paying clients to discover she’d been left with an unpleasant souvenir of her time with him. Word would travel fast, and he’d be done.

  Scot broke her reverie with a twist off her lap and an annoyed croak. She relented and followed him to the kitchen. She couldn’t tell if she was still slippery from their time together or if this wetness rubbing against her panties was from remembering it. After filling Scot’s bowl, she delved into the fridge-freezer and pulled out a frosted bottle of vodka.

  It was fire and ice as it went down, and just what she needed. There was a time when she used to add a splash of soda and juice, but since her marriage failed and two had become one, she took her liquor neat.

  In fact, the last time she’d diluted her liquor was the same night she last had sex. It had been her anniversary, and she and Aaron had returned from an uncomfortable dinner. As he’d showered, she’d gulped down a screwdriver – her second – and resigned herself to the inevitability of sex that night. She was sure that Aaron was as unenthusiastic as she was, but when they’d got into bed together he was hard. Less than a minute of foreplay preceded sex that not even lubricant could make bearable. When it was over he had slept, and Molly took herself downstairs. Sore between her legs, her soul dried and brittle, she’d poured herself another drink and wiped away tears that squeezed out from behind her eyelids like acid.

  It was an episode she tended to dwell over when she’d had a bad day and needed a drink. She’d sit at the kitchen table and sip, brimming with resentment at Aaron for not making an effort to make her come. As the vodka soaked into her brain, she’d drag up all of his faults, sexual and otherwise, before turning to hers until she passed out drunk.

  Not tonight. Tonight, something wonderful and electric ran thick through her veins.

  She leaned against the island and thought of Quinn’s tongue gliding between her pussy lips. For as long as she’d live, she’d never forget it.

  She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth as her thoughts turned to how unabashedly he’d watched her while she sucked him, like he’d needed to forge the same connection she craved, in order to get off.

  Was it always like that for him? Was it a part of the package? Flick a switch and he’d turn on all that virility that made a woman feel like fucking her was the best goddamn thing to ever happen to him?

  She didn’t want to think about it. Not with the bite of her drink mingling with the lethargy he’d left her with and creating a delectable potion in her blood. She left the bottle to perspire on the tiles and pulled her dress over her head as she went barefoot down the hall.

  An odd feeling struck her just before she reached the bathroom. She halted and turned, stomach churning and hands turning cold as she reached out. The knob on the spare-room door was old and loose and rattled when she wrapped her hand around it.

  Every so often, usually on a Saturday morning when a long weekend stretched bland and empty before her, she’d get it into her head that she’d replace the whole door and so
metimes would even make it to the hardware store. Wandering the aisles, she’d be dazzled by paint chips and crown moulding and think about what she could do with the room inside if she could hold onto that ambition that crept in. Yet she always left the hardware store empty-handed and weak-kneed.

  It had been weeks since she’d stood before this door like this, but only hours since she’d thought about it. Usually its presence rushed at her towards the end of the day when her feet began to ache and her thoughts would turn to home, and the room would linger.

  She’d last thought about it as she rode the elevator up to the honeymoon suite, and then Quinn had wiped her life’s entire residue away. She hadn’t thought about the room at all.

  Molly reached up and with her index finger traced the shape of the rubber-duck sticker on the outside of the door. Guilt about having forgotten about the room made her arm tingle and threaten to go numb. Rather than welcome it like she usually did, she took a step back and squared her shoulders.

  ‘Not today,’ she said almost cheerfully.

  Not today, she repeated in her head as she ventured into the bathroom. Not on a day when a man as wicked as Quinn had awakened that part of herself she never thought she’d see again.

  Today she was going to be that woman whose knees were a little burned from the carpet and whose thigh muscles gave an aching whimper with every step, and who was immensely proud of both.

  It was that woman who emerged from the bathroom in her kimono, still damp and leaving small puddles as she made her way back to the foyer. She collected her purse from where she’d dropped it by the door and pulled out her phone, then returned to the sofa.

  One didn’t simply pick Quinn out of the adult personals. The night she’d called Nick into her office, she’d sat with her hands folded on the desk in front of her as he made the call. She’d read about websites dedicated to connecting with gigolos, but according to Nick this small network of men who worked the local hotels found their clients via referral. Front-desk clerks and bartenders kept names and earned their cuts, more affiliates than pimps. They made the calls and provided contact details. Quinn, Nick explained, wasn’t available at short notice. He had a list of clients he served several times a week, and he took on new ones at his discretion.

  A detailed message had been left on Quinn’s voicemail, and a few hours later, as Molly was settling into bed, he sent a text to his ‘prospective client’. The exchange had been short and businesslike. He named his price, noting that any special requests would cost extra. Particular fantasies could be sent via email. She texted back that she just wanted to sample the fixed menu, and a date and time was agreed upon.

  As the newscast on the television provided white noise just beyond her attention span, Molly scrolled back and forth through those messages. She’d been frustrated at the time of the exchange, but now she understood it. He was The Boss, the CEO of a very lucrative business, and the biggest fucking deal in his world, and he conducted himself as such.

  Was that why she had done what she had done? She couldn’t work it out, and she couldn’t stand not knowing why she had taken him up on his offer.

  But she didn’t have the same conviction that she should regard today as a one-off as she’d had when she left him in the room to clean himself up. The allure of meeting him again had become a constant burn that grew hotter and hotter every second she spent thinking about it.

  She rested her head against the sofa back and blew out a sigh. Eyes closed, she let herself slip back into that honeymoon suite. She tingled with the same anticipation she’d felt when she’d exposed that hard chest. She tasted the salt from his skin on her tongue and her mouth watered. The low timbre of his laugh penetrated her blood and made her breath quicken.

  She squeezed her fingers around the phone and clamped her knees together. The thought of him turned her on so much that she couldn’t imagine not getting another fix, and soon.

  It’s only for another month and change, she reasoned as she tapped the screen so that the keyboard popped up.

  A ticklish feeling raced through her, as powerful as the arousal she couldn’t and didn’t want to shake.

  I like you.

  His smile as he said it, the one that took over his whole face and made his eyes light up, was what made her want to take on what a select group of women had to pay for. Quinn overflowed with conceit, but was … pleasant, and she liked him right back.

  It was foolish, but Molly couldn’t help but feel that his interest was genuine. Sure, she’d agreed to give him until the new year, and his apparent eagerness to further their arrangement could have been self-preservation, but that option didn’t feel right to her.

  Maybe it was just wishful thinking from a woman who hadn’t had a lover, or even a truly good friend, in a long time, but she felt that something had truly sparked between them, and she was sure she wasn’t mistaken.

  The screen on her phone faded to black, and Molly found herself thinking about his hands and those scars that formed a crosshatch over his knuckles.

  They were far more proof of his manhood than his abilities in bed. Those scars, and the man they made him, were why she had been compelled to stay when she could have walked away. They no longer hinted at something rough and bestial, but perhaps something more complex than just a man whose game was seduction.

  As she tapped the phone and roused it again, she groaned.

  The smart thing to do was to forget that today ever happened, to turn around and look away when he came into the hotel, and teach herself to think about this afternoon’s episode as something to cringe over during daylight and relive in a fever when night fell. The smart thing to do was to go back to her grey life and forget about that spot of colour she’d found in the honeymoon suite.

  But not today, she thought, and began to type.

  About that ‘or something’ …

  Chapter Three

  ‘Would you please call up to room 720 and let them know their guest is waiting for them in the lounge?’ he asked.

  Molly minimised the window on her computer screen and picked up the phone to her right. She didn’t dial out. She just cradled the receiver against her ear and watched the front desk from the corner of her eye.

  ‘Yes, sir – oh, one moment. I have a key card for you. You can go right up.’

  The people-shapes beyond her office stood still, and try as she might she couldn’t bear not to look. She bit down on her smile and swivelled just a little in her seat.

  What a look that is. You’ve gone and thrown him off his groove, haven’t you, Moll?

  He looked slightly annoyed at the clerk as he took the card, but gave a cordial nod and thanked her. As he turned, his gaze connected with Molly’s, and she couldn’t help flashing him a smile before she turned back to her computer.

  Ten minutes later, she locked her office door behind her and wished the clerk good night. She stopped into the ladies’ room to freshen her lipstick and do a quick wardrobe change¸ and then headed for the elevator. Once she stepped off the car, she glanced down the corridor to the double doors that opened onto the indoor walkway leading to the parking garage. Instead of her usual route, Molly turned in the other direction.

  She had picked the third floor so she could make an easy escape. If security noticed she had left her car overnight, they would just assume that it was one of her rare evenings out with friends and that she was taking a taxi home. She’d already collected her overnight bag from the trunk and left it in the room, and now she was ready to lock herself in with him for the night.

  Using her master key card, she once more let herself into the honeymoon suite. It was easy to block off the same room at this time of year. Outside the warm weather months, the room was typically only let out for anniversaries. When no one had claimed it by suppertime, she’d simply discounted it and sold the room to a Miss Plum, who paid cash and whom Molly checked in herself.

  Shrugging out of her coat in the narrow corridor flanked by the closet and the
bathroom, ‘Miss Plum’ cocked her head but couldn’t see him, just his coat draped over the edge of the sofa and his scarf tossed on top of it. There was no noise other than the whisper of her own clothes, and she wondered if he had stepped out for a moment.

  Not quite, she discovered as she stepped into the room. The light in the bedroom was on behind him. He sat on the end of the bed, bent forward with his forearms across his thighs. His suit jacket and tie were slung on the accent chair in the far corner. He had unbuttoned and rolled up his sleeves, and it was clear to Molly that he had discarded the character in which he’d entered the hotel. This man was someone altogether different, someone who wanted his rough edges to be seen as soon as she walked in.

  One crook of his finger beckoning her, and he might as well have been twitching the tip against her clit. She walked towards him – it seemed to take ages – and stopped on the threshold of the bedroom.

  Quinn moved an arm to prop his chin on his hand. He raised his brows, and wiggled his finger again.

  Losing the fight with that urge to smile, she moved forward with a grin. She had taken two steps when he raised his hand and made a twirling motion.

  As soon as her back was to him he grabbed the bottom of her skirt and drew it up to her ass on one side. She thought she caught the tremble of laughter in the air as he regarded what was underneath, but when she glanced down on him he looked as serious as ever.

  After just a moment he tugged the skirt back down, then gave her a little nudge.

  ‘Back in the doorway and strip.’

  ‘Hello to you, too.’

  This time the laughter was unmistakable, and the smile remained once she turned in the doorway. She unbuttoned her jacket and split it open, then planted her hands on her hips.

  ‘I do hope you’re going to reciprocate,’ she said.

  When he didn’t break his silence, Molly let out an impatient little sigh that burned in her throat but fizzled giddily on her tongue. She knew he’d been reading her again, that he had probably started the second she came into view as he approached the front desk, only this time he was doing so in silence.