“You’re late.” His voice is authoritative. Deep and without any welcome.
“I was right outside. I thought you might have someone in here.”
He looks at me. There’s something unreadable in his eyes. “Late is late.”
I’m sure, right then and there, that he’s going to demand that I leave. Instead, he pulls out his massage stool and sits across from me. He picks up the bottle of water, opens it, and takes a drink.
I’m still on the table. I feel stupid up here. Exposed.
I shift my weight to hop down, but Marco shakes his head to stop me.
I settle back.
“There’s still the matter of your punishment. For being late.”
I blink, unsure where this is going.
“Take it off and spread your legs,” he says, “then show me how you make yourself come.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
LUCY
MARCO’S FACE IS IMPASSIVE. HE’S sitting on his stool like a lord, bare-chested, big arms crossed. His dark eyes are watching my body, making no attempt to hide his blatant staring at my chest.
“What did you say?” I ask.
“You heard me.
“Your note just said to be here. You told me to bring my swimsuit.”
“I did. Now take it off.”
I’m trying to summon anger. I don’t know why, but I can’t. Embarrassment is the closest I can come. The way we’re arranged is familiar: I’m like a patient up on one of those paper-lined exam tables and Marco is like a judgmental doctor.
Got yourself into a sticky situation, have you? I imagine him saying. That’s what you get for taking a strange guy in your mouth.
“Do it, Lucy. I won’t ask again.”
I need to storm out of here. This guy is bipolar or something. The first time I saw him, he was shouting and raising a scene. Then we had that botched massage, where he decided to psychoanalyze and presume to know me. I had to make him leave. Then he wants me, and I let him take me. After that, breakfast on a silver platter, accented with a fresh lily. And now this—these demands.
I’m Lucy White. Nobody tells me what to do.
But I don’t hop down or storm out.
Marco doesn’t flinch. His hard, dark eyes keep boring into me. I want to be angry, but can’t be. My mind is on last night, when Marco told me I couldn’t relax, then said I was doing better, before promising that he’d teach me how to relax even more.
The pressure inside me. The way every little movement brushes my clit’s hood against my suit bottoms. I’ve never felt so hot. All I can think of is rushing back to my room to take care of myself.
But instead, swallowing and looking away, I move my hands down and hook my thumbs under the strings at my hips. I glance up at Marco, see him watching intently and perhaps a bit impatiently.
I look away again, lift up just enough to slip my suit bottoms underneath me, then slide it down with my knees clamped together. After dropping my suit to the floor, I sit with my hands in my lap, cold and exposed.
“Now spread your legs.”
My joints don’t want to move. I insist, and my knees finally part a fraction of an inch. I force things to keep moving until I’m sitting there normally, legs neither open nor pinched closed, hands still in my lap. Marco is lower than me, looking up. Unless I reach between my legs to cover myself, he can see the lips of my pussy, and probably the wetness beading my skin.
“You’re not doing as I asked, Lucy.”
“Maybe if you said it nicely.”
He looks annoyed. “I don’t want to be nice to you right now. Just do it.”
I don’t know why, but I follow my orders. My legs open wider, and I watch him take me in, hungrily.
“Touch it for me.”
So I do. Because my hands want to go there, they do so easily.
The first touch is electric. It’s all I can do not to gasp.
“You’re gorgeous,” he says. “Your pussy is so beautiful.”
Should I say thanks to that? I close my eyes, try to forget this is happening, wondering how big of a mistake I might be making.
“Close your eyes. Let go and feel it.”
I do. And it doesn’t take long. Once the sensations start to steamroll, I can’t hold myself back. My ass is clenching. My pussy is gripping the tips of my fingers, so I plunge them inside and work my clit with my thumb.
I come with a gasp, juices gushing.
When I open my eyes, Marco is standing in front of me. He’s taken out his cock. Its tip is less than an inch from my quivering pussy. I can feel its heat melting into my own.
“Do you have a condom?” I ask.
“No.”
“Then don’t.”
“You want me to stop?”
I look down. I see a drop forming on the tip of his cock. He’s so close, I can imagine what he’d feel like inside.
Like I’ve been imagining since last night.
Since my massage.
Since the first time I saw him.
I grip his cock and pull him forward until he’s inside me. He fills me completely—but the sensation is too much all at once. I gasp.
Marco groans. His breath purrs against my neck. He nibbles at my ear, hungry.
“You feel so good,” Marco growls, his lips brushing mine. “My cock feels so good inside you.”
I close my eyes. I wrap my arms around him, but find I can’t reach. He’s too big. Too broad.
As he thrusts into my pussy, I feel the flex and swell of every muscle on his back.
“Tell me you want me to fuck you harder.”
My head tips back. My mouth opens. I’m lost in ecstasy. I couldn’t speak if I wanted to, but even if I could, there’s no way I’m saying that.
“Tell me. Tell me you want me to fuck your pussy harder.”
I’m all panting, all spasming, gripping sensation. I can barely think as I come again.
“Say it, Lucy!”
But I’m crying out, too loud, sure to be overheard. This is a cabana, not a room. The walls are canvas, not drywall or concrete. It’s one long, delightfully torturous orgasm and it goes on forever. And ever.
Finally, he grips me tight and slams into me with force, tipping me further than I knew I could go. I fly up to a new level, barely able to breathe. Marco is coming inside me and I feel our rhythm change, the thrusts wetter, a warm sensation leaking down the crack of my ass.
I feel warm as I return to my body, and my eyes find Marco’s face. I want to smile, but he looks disappointed.
“You failed that lesson,” he says. “So we’ll have to do it again.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
LUCY
BUT APPARENTLY NOT RIGHT AWAY.
Because after an awkward post-coital moment involving tissues and cleanup, I decide that the man I just had sex with isn’t the kind of man I want to sit around bare-assed in front of, so I retrieve my swimsuit bottoms. My head was in the clouds, but now it’s back. Now that my itch has been scratched, it’s obvious just how ill-advised that all was.
“You’re embarrassed,” Marco says from behind me.
“I’m not embarrassed. I just …” I exhale, then face him, my back against the massage table. “I just want to know what that was, with you ordering me around.”
“You didn’t seem to have a problem with it in the moment.”
“I did it. That doesn’t mean it was okay.”
Marco has fully composed himself. It was easy, seeing as all he had to do was to pull up his shorts. He’s back on the stool, his body language more open. “So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t like being told what to do.”
“But you did it.”
“That doesn’t mean I like it.”
“But you did it,” Marco repeats.
The cabana is quiet, and I realize he thinks he’s trying to teach me something. His earlier words about lessons and instruction return in a flash.
“Look,” Marco says, his big shoulder
s lighter than they were before, his face less aggressive. “How old are you?”
“23.”
“How many men have you been with?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“Stop being so self-important and answer the damn question, Lucy.”
I shake my head and roll my eyes. I snatch my bag. I’m so out of here.
But Marco grips my wrist. It’s not hard. If I fight, he’ll let go. “Why did you come here?”
“You told me to.”
“I mean, why did you come to Hotel Indigo? Why did you book this trip?”
“I wanted a vacation.”
“I’ll let you in on a little secret. My boss, Thomas Booth? He’s a creep. He thinks that the better he knows his guests and their needs, the better he can serve them. Then they’ll be more inclined to tell their friends and return to the Indigo. So I know some of your story from him. Now I want to hear it from you.”
“Why?”
“I guess you intrigue me.”
I don’t know how to take that. But it disarms me a bit, so I spend sixty seconds giving Marco the whirlwind tour of my recent life: my father’s illness, Caspian’s unwillingness to help, my work, my overbearing mother.
Marco nods. “So you came to escape.”
“I came to relax.”
“To relax is to escape. You need distance to let go of your worries. You’ve brought yourself on vacation, and that’s a problem. Because you won’t allow yourself be this other person you desperately need to be.”
“Is ‘the person I need to be’ a woman who spreads her legs at your command?”
I expect a vehement, possibly frustrated denial. But Marco just shrugs. “Maybe.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“As are you.” He hasn’t let go of my wrist. “Sit down and stop pretending to be offended, Lucy.”
“Maybe I really am offended.”
“You’re not offended. You just think you need to act offended so I won’t think poorly of you. But it’s the posturing that makes me think poorly of people. Because that’s what I see all the time around here: people who feel they need to put on airs to impress others. Usually, though, it’s to impress themselves, because deep down they don’t believe they’re worth much.”
“Amateur shrink, are you?” I snap.
“I saw a shrink for a long time.”
Marco saw a psychiatrist? For a long time? It’s hard to believe that this man has another layer.
He says, “I’m not going to think poorly of you for being who you truly are.”
“What makes you think you know me?”
“Because you’re different from the rest of them — but you could become like them. I know who you are. I know who your brother is. I can imagine the circles you orbit in. Right now, you’re this unique, interesting person. But I could see you changing. Marrying some rich guy who treats you like shit and ignores you, then wasting weekends at a place like this just to feel again.”
“So, what … I should marry someone like you instead?”
Marco shakes his head. “I’m not looking for anything more than sex. It’s best we’re clear about that.”
I could deny all of this, but don’t. He’s released me and I’ve sat back down — I’m not being held against my will. Might as well rise to Marco’s expectations and be honest.
“I’m not looking for anything else, either,” I say.
“That’s good. Emotion clouds impulses. And right now, you need to listen to your impulses.”
“I love how you think you know what’s good for me.”
“I love that you think I don’t,” he counters.
We stare each other down.
“Your entire life is based on being in charge. It sounds like you run a lot of your brother’s company, but it’s not what you really want; you want your own thing. But because you have to be in charge of so much, there’s no room for anything else. Same for your mother. Same for your father, while he was sick. Who made the decisions? You did. Who took the reins when things went wrong? You did. Who planned the funeral? Who invited the guests? Who wrote the obituary? You did.”
“What makes you think I did all those things?”
“Your expression. Right now.”
“Your point?”
“You always have to be in command, Lucy. You’re always being called in to control things because no one else will. So when you come to escape, more than anything, you need to flee that sense of obligation. You need to be out of control — at another’s command — to be truly free.”
“And be reckless rather than smart about things.” I’m thinking of one particular aspect of the last fifteen minutes’ irresponsibility. Again I use a tissue to wipe at my bikini line, as if that will forestall consequences.
Marco sees me, interprets my meaning, and says, “I’m not going to get you pregnant, or give you any STDs.”
“I see. And how is that?”
“I had a vasectomy. And before you, I haven’t had sex in over a year.”
I blink. “What?” Then more relevantly: “Why?”
“I was going to get married. She had a son already, but the pregnancy almost killed her. We decided it’d be best not to risk it. So I got the snip.”
“What happened?”
“That sounds dangerously close to an intimate question, Lucy. And this is about you, not me.”
I look him over. He’s like a different person now. I thought he was angry, aggressive, and cocky, but there’s this other side to him, beyond all of that. He can’t be much older than I am, but he almost got married. The way he spoke about it — and his mention of therapy — must mean one of two things: either she left him, or she died.
Either way, it changes the way I see this man, and all that’s happened between us.
“It’s like I told you last night, Lucy: tell me to stop and I will. If you honestly don’t like how I’m speaking to you, tell me to knock it off. But I’ll keep pushing until you do. Because that’s what you need.”
I’m disarmed. This situation isn’t what I thought, and I’m lost in how to face it. “You’ll keep pushing?” I say, unsure what else to focus on, emphasizing keep, desperate to know what he means.
“For as long as you let me.” Marco shakes his head and corrects himself. “For as long as you’re at the Indigo.”
“And when it’s time for me to leave?”
“Then we say goodbye.”
I look him over, trying to figure him out. Is it really possible for Marco to look and act like he does, and not partake of any of the women who must constantly throw themselves his way? I’m on vacation, but this is his reality. It’s possible he’s lying to me, but somehow I’m sure that he’s not. For a long time, this amazingly hot guy has been celibate, and I broke his fast.
“Why me?” I ask, unable to stop the question.
“Because you’re the first person I’ve met in months who’s as defiantly single as I am, and who I think knows how to have fun without making things into a big deal.”
I look into his eyes. “That’s good. Because I’m not looking for any commitments. I have a life that requires attention, and it’s in San Francisco.”
“All the better. It gives you a clean break. You can be one person here, to escape. And when you leave, you’ll have no worries about dragging any imagined consequences along with you into your real life, other than the lessons you choose to hold close. Same for me. I know you live out of town. The fact that we can’t be more will let us be how we want to be, without worrying that we’ll run into each other once our time has ended.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding slowly. “Just as long as what happens at Hotel Indigo stays at Hotel Indigo.”
Marco smiles. “No strings.”
We sit there for a moment in quiet. Then I realize we’ve laid it all out, with nowhere to go. “So it’s just sex.” I wonder if I sound too eager … because I sort of am. Ten minutes ago, Marco implied we�
�d go for round two. Parts of my body are already impatient.
But he shakes his head. He takes my hand and both of us stand. “Sex is only part of it.”
“What’s the rest?”
Marco gives me a mischievous little smile.
“What?” I ask, a reluctant smile gracing my lips.
“Lucy,” he says, “out of everything in the rational, everyday world, what scares you most?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MARCO
“LOOK DOWN,” I TELL HER.
“No,” she replies.
Lucy has her eyes closed. Her hands are also over her eyes, like two halves of a mask. Most of what she’s doing is for effect, like she’s trying to make a joke of this so I won’t be serious. But it doesn’t come off as amusing or sober. It’s adorable. She looks like a little kid playing a game, rather than an adult being goaded into pushing her limits.
I take her by the wrist. She tries to hold her palm over her eye but I’m a lot stronger than she is. She doesn’t really fight, because this is sort of a game to her,and her eyes are closed anyway. Short of some eye-prying gadget like in A Clockwork Orange, I’m not going to get her looking anywhere she doesn’t want to before she’s ready.
The breeze stirs my hair. It’s cool, and we’re both in long sleeves. The chill is surprising, after such a warm day. But of course it’d be cooler up here.
“You need to face your fear.” I’m speaking to Lucy’s squinched-shut eyes. Her face is adorable this way. I kind of want to kiss her, but there’s no call for that at all.
“No I don’t.”
“Why did we come up here?”
Eyes still shut, Lucy says, “That’s a good question, Marco.”
After leaving my cabana this afternoon — after Lucy lied and said her biggest fear was a fear of failure — I took her around the Indigo for a behind-the-scenes tour. Part of it was because I never get to show the place off, and I would honestly love it unreservedly if not for my boss.
But part of it was because of him. I made sure to let Booth see me taking Lucy around, her smiling and both of us laughing. The bastard even tossed me a thumbs-up, as if to say, Way to do your job with our VIP guest. I considered raising a different digit in reply, but restrained myself.
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