by Emily Snow
While the washer runs, I wait patiently without looking at my phone, but as I load the dryers, I can’t help but finally check. Still nothing from Wyatt or Lucas. I have too much pride to contact Wyatt, so my brother is the lucky recipient of my text message.
12:43 a.m.: Call me about Sin tomorrow, okay? Love you, Lucas.
Since it’s 1:43 in Atlanta right now, I don’t expect him to reply. I lay my phone facedown on one of the machines and crank the volume on my iPod even higher. As I insert quarters into the gleaming white Whirlpool dryers, I can’t resist singing along to Weezer. “…my love is a life taker.”
The next line of “Say It Ain’t So” is cut off because I notice a new scent in the small laundry room. It’s clean and masculine, and as I breathe it in, the only image that comes to mind is the top of Wyatt’s head visible between my legs.
“I didn’t Foursquare where I was this time,” I say softly.
When Wyatt presses his tall body up against my backside, my muscles weaken. He gently removes my earbuds, and his lip ring teases my skin as he growls into my ear, “I’ve never seen someone’s hips move like that to that song.” He’s always disliked that song because the lyrics are about addiction and heartbreak, and they hit a little too close to home, reminding him of his parents. He doesn’t mention this though as he places my iPod beside my phone. He brushes his fingertips down my chest, skimming over my breasts, until they finally stop at the closure on my jeans. “And no, you didn’t have to Foursquare yourself this time.”
No, I guess not when we have a mutual friend who’s bound and determined to see us together. Cal and I are going to have a serious heart-to-heart about his inability to keep his mouth shut.
“Did you get your car?” I breathe, turning to face him.
He nods and returns his hands to the button on my pants. I step backward, and he follows until I bump into the dryer.
“And I’ve got a pocket full of…”
His voice trails off as I run my palms over his back pockets, and foil crunches in the left one.
“I thought you forgot about me,” I admit.
He crushes my body to his and shakes his head. “Never, Kylie.”
I reach up and touch the sides of his face, threading my fingers into his wheat-colored hair.
“And besides, I called and messaged you many, many times.”
My lips quirk up skeptically. I ease away from him and flip over my phone to see if I have any missed calls. There are none from Wyatt. “Did you dial the wrong number?”
“Unless the wrong number has your voice on the answering machine, beautiful.” He plucks his phone from his back pocket and scrolls through a list of names. When he reaches mine, he recites the number. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
“That’s my home number, babe. I use it, like, once a year.” I pull his phone from his grip and examine the entry he’s made for me. A soft, almost nervous laugh bubbles from the back of my throat as I realize he has my numbers saved backwards—my cell phone is listed as my home number and vice versa. As I correct both numbers, letting him know about the mix-up in the process, the irritation I’ve felt the majority of the night drifts away.
Wyatt kept his word, and he came down here to find me.
He sought me out for our last night together.
Realizing this sends both pleasure and pain throbbing through my chest. My body threatens to crumble, but I hold on to the dryer behind me for support.
“I can be upstairs in fifteen minutes, and then we can…” I stop speaking for a moment, my eyebrows pulling together, as he leans far over to lock the laundry room door. “What are you doing?”
I gasp when he jerks me to him, finally undoing the pesky top button of my jeans with his other hand at the same time. In one rough motion, he drags the denim along with my panties down my hips.
Oh. My. God.
His hands spread across my ass frantically, and the initial slap he gives my backside sends a delicious sting across my skin. Bending his head slightly, he plunges his tongue into my mouth. I kiss him back just as greedily, meeting the slightest movement of his mouth with my own. As I taste Guinness on him, I remember the night of my twenty-first birthday when we downed too many Black Velvet drinks at the Halloween Rock Ball where YTS was playing. We’d had sex, hard and frantic, in the dressing room’s bathroom before they went back on stage to play.
“You taste so good,” I murmur.
As he glides his finger between my legs, a look of satisfaction takes over his face. I fumble with the button on his jeans just as he flicks his tongue across his fingertip, savoring my flavor.
“Not as good as you taste,” he growls. “Bend over, Ky.”
He doesn’t wait for me to comply. He simply turns me around, so I’m facing the dryer. I grasp the sides and lean over it, shuddering at how the warmth from the machine spreads through my chest, at how the vibration sends more heat spiraling to the pit of my stomach.
Wyatt draws away from me only for a moment, but when he returns, I feel him, hard and long, against my bare ass. “You know this isn’t it for us tonight,” he says, cupping my sex.
When I mutter, “It better not be,” he chuckles into my ear and glides his cock between my slick folds. He slides himself against me, back and forth, testing my wetness, before thrusting into me.
A sigh escapes my lips, and I grip the corners of the dryer tighter. I rock my hips back and forth, meeting his deep thrusts. He presses his lips to my bluebird tattoo and groans.
“Fuck, Kylie, you feel so good. So right.”
Reaching around me, he squeezes my clit softly, and I gasp.
“Don’t stop. God, don’t stop.”
Because I need this from him. I need everything he can give me tonight, so I can move on and not want more.
“Harder?” He rubs my center in quick circular motions.
Strands of my dark hair cling to my damp forehead as I nod. “Please.”
With his free hand, he clutches my hip and slams into me. I just know that I am going to scream. I’m going to scream, and the hotel staff will rush down here to find us screwing like rabbits over their brand new Whirlpool dryer. Then, I’ll be banned from The Veranda for life.
For this, though, it’s worth it.
As the moan builds in my throat, he lets go of my hip and slides his finger into my mouth. When I bite down on it, hard, he releases a low noise. “Come for me,” he orders roughly.
I shake my head. “Not yet, not until—”
“Come for me,” he repeats. “You’ve got me all night. You’ve got me for as long as you want. I want to hear you come.”
I’m still moving my head furiously from side to side even as the orgasm rips through me. I tighten up around him, clenching his cock inside me, until a moment later when he trembles. We don’t make a sound or a movement for what seems like hours.
At last, I feel his lips part between my shoulder blades. It takes a second, but I finally make out what he’s saying.
“That’s my fucking girl.”
Breathing heavily, I turn around, so we’re face-to-face. He touches his lips to my forehead, then to my lips, and finally, to the tip of my nose. “Thanks,” I murmur. I place my palms flat against his chest, not to push him away, but so I can feel the unsteady drumming of his heart. “I mean it. Thanks.”
Keeping his blue eyes on my face, he slips my jeans back up and grins when I shift uncomfortably. “I meant what I said, Kylie. You’ve got me for the rest of the night. I don’t want there to be any—” He’s cut off by the doorknob jiggling.
I mutter a curse and scramble to button my pants and adjust my halter-top as he pulls up his jeans.
“Kylie?” Heidi’s muffled voice filters in from the other side of the door. “Please tell me you’re in there. I lost my key to the room, and it’s booked under your name, so they won’t give me a replacement.”
Relieved, I sag against Wyatt’s chest, and he strokes his hand down my spine. This slight motion b
rings me close to unraveling, even closer to spinning out of control. Gripping a handful of his t-shirt, I clear my throat before answering Heidi. “Yeah, let me grab my stuff. I’ll be upstairs in a few, okay?”
“Why’s the door locked?”
Wyatt grins, but I place my finger over his mouth and give him a warning glare. He retaliates by squeezing my breast.
“It locks when it shuts. I’ve got an armful of laundry, so I’ll be up there in five, okay?”
She mumbles something inaudible and then calls out, “Whatever, see you in a few.”
I count to a hundred before I yell out her name. When she doesn’t answer, I look up into Wyatt’s eyes. “You like to make your presence known, don’t you?” My voice is teasing, but the look on his face is serious. The pit of my stomach coils. I don’t want seriousness from him—not tonight.
“Where you’re concerned, Ky, yeah, I do.”
I touch the base of my throat, massaging the area carefully, and watch him as he heads to the door. “You’ll be in your room?”
He glances over his shoulder. “I’ll be there.”
“Cal’s not going to show up, is he?” I ask as he steps out into the hallway.
Wyatt scratches a hand through his blond hair and cocks his head to the side, grinning. “Not if he doesn’t want his fucking fingers broken.”
“Well aren’t you Mr. Effing Possessive.”
As he closes the laundry room door, he rakes his deep blue eyes over me, sending another flash of desire speeding through my body. “Damn right I am, Bluebird.”
Finally alone, I smile to myself as I stuff my laundry, which is still slightly wet, into the bag before I take the elevator back to my room. Heidi’s standing outside of our door with her arms crossed over her chest, scowling.
I stop in my tracks. “You okay?”
“That asshole Finn bailed on me, but I’m alright.” She stretches her arms out over her head and yawns theatrically. “I just want my bed.” As I dig in my back pocket for the key card, she tilts her head to the side. “You look way too happy for having just done laundry.”
I bite my lip to suppress a grin as I unlock our door. I’m contemplating whether or not I should tell her, but then I flip on the light switch.
And my heart sinks.
Every inch of our room has been rummaged through. There are clothes, both Heidi’s and mine, thrown all over the place, and all the dresser drawers have been pulled out.
“What are you—” Heidi begins, sliding past me to get inside. Like me, she stops in her tracks. She sums up exactly how I’m suddenly feeling in the single word she says next. “Shit.”
Chapter Five
Over the last several years, I’ve gotten used to dealing with cops, not because of myself but due to the notoriety of the band. There’s the loud and completely out of hand hotel parties, Sin’s drunken habit of dropping his pants and pissing on the side of the street (or wherever else he happens to be standing at the time), and of course, my brother’s foul temper, which has gotten Lucas into trouble time and time again. Still, I’ve got to admit that going through the motions of filing a report with the police officer who shows up at this hotel drains my energy.
Since we can’t go back into our room yet, the staff at The Veranda is nice enough to set us up in one of the smaller event rooms located on the main floor while they prepare us another room. A Happy Anniversary sign is still hanging at the front of the room, and napkins congratulating Moira and Tom on reaching twenty-five years together are stacked on the table where the manager left us sitting.
“They’re probably more worried about losing guests due to a break-in than us. I mean, I’m pretty sure they don’t really give a shit about our safety,” Heidi says once the manager leaves the room.
I roll my eyes. It’s all I can do to stop myself from saying something that I’ll later regret. For starters, Heidi’s key card mysteriously went missing while she was out with Shiner Bock. Then, while we stood outside the door of our wrecked room, the person across the hall wandered out and drunkenly told us—through sloppy bites of loaded nachos that made my stomach turn—that the guy from last night had just left. It didn’t take a detective to figure out that Heidi had been royally screwed over by Finn, the so-so one-night stand.
I hear footsteps coming in my direction, and I flick a wary gaze up from the blank police report to take in Officer Townsend, the police officer who answered the call. “Mrs. Martin—” he begins.
I cringe but quickly jump to correct him. “It’s Kylie,” I say, glancing up at him. Out of habit, I run my thumb over the last name tattooed around my ring finger. “Or Ms. Wolfe works, too. I never got around to changing my last name after my divorce.” It was more than seven years ago, but I’m not about to tell him that.
A deep flush spreads around the crown of Officer Townsend’s balding head. “I’m sorry about that, ma’am.”
There’s no need for him to apologize for calling me by my legal name, so I manage a ghost of a smile and shake my head.
When I drop my attention down to the sheet of paper sitting on the banquet table, Officer Townsend adds, “You’ll want to call your credit card companies and let them know your cards have been stolen. You’ll need to keep a copy of the report for your bank and a copy for your reference because it has your case number on it.”
I slump in the folding metal chair. For a long time, I simply stare at the police report, letting the typed words blur together into a dizzying cluster of black and white. My brain is such a catastrophic mess from what happened in the laundry room with Wyatt to finding out my room was robbed that I didn’t even think about taking precautions to make sure my bank account and my brother’s business account won’t be wiped out.
“Mrs. Ma—Kylie?” Officer Townsend takes the seat directly across from me, and I lift my face to his. “Do you need help filling out the report?” His heavy accent is gentle, but I shake my head.
“No, I’m fine, thank you.” I pick up the pen to begin writing out my statement. It won’t be much, considering I was bent over a running dryer with my jeans pulled around my knees while my room was being ransacked. As I scribble my signature and the date across the bottom of the page, I work my bottom lip between my teeth. “Can you show me what I’ll need to do to follow-up on this?”
Officer Townsend spends the next few minutes showing me where my case number is located on the report and what phone number I’ll need to call in order to check the status. When he’s finished, he asks, “Will you be in the area for a while?”
I rake my hands through my blue-and-black hair, pulling it up into a stubby ponytail on top of my head before dropping the strands to fall around my face. “No, I’m heading back to Los Angeles in the morning.”
The moment those words fall from my lips, realization hits me hard, making me wince, but Officer Townsend doesn’t seem to notice. He’s speaking to Heidi, explaining everything to her now.
Shiner Bock has my credit cards, which would be okay because I can get back home without my Visa or American Express. I’ve survived traveling without money before, and I can easily do so again. But when he cleaned out my room, he took everything in the nightstand drawer, including my ID.
I’ve had my entire makeup bag confiscated by TSA. There’s no way in hell I’m getting through the gate tomorrow without my license.
Or renting a car.
Or even boarding a Greyhound bus.
Fuck.
Clenching my teeth together, I amend my statement with Officer Townsend. “I might be going back to L.A., in the morning.” My breath hitches, but I swallow down the anxiety, making myself continue. “My license is gone, so I don’t think I have a way to get on my flight.”
He gives me a sympathetic nod. “We’re going to do everything we can to recover all your belongings, ma’am.”
As Officer Townsend escorts us out of the banquet hall, so we can book a different room for the night, Heidi shoots me a pitiful look. “I’m so sorry, Ky
,” she whispers.
Since most of my initial irritation with her has evaporated, I lift the corner of my mouth and shrug. “Shit happens, babe. I’m just glad he wasn’t dangerous.”
My words must do her in because by the time we reach the entrance to the empty lobby, tears are streaming down her face, leaving dark eyeliner smudges that ruin the rest of her makeup. Miserably, I lower my brown eyes to the polished black floor just as I hear Wyatt call out to me from the concierge desk.
“Kylie?” The panic resonating in his deep voice causes my throat to swell. He reaches me in a few long sprints and yanks me to his muscular chest. Cupping the sides of my face between his large hands, he bends down, so our eyes are level. “What the fuck?”
I’m startled by how wild his blue eyes look, and I immediately blurt out, “I’m alright.”
I dart my gaze to Officer Townsend and whisper a thank-you. He gives me a nod of his head before taking off to talk to the manager on duty. Heidi slinks off toward the front counter, looking behind her in my direction once before dropping her eyes to the floor.
Pushing my shoulders back, I turn my gaze to Wyatt, and he straightens, dropping his hands to my waist to encircle it. “I’m fine,” I say once more.
He slightly loosens his hold on me, only moving his fingers to the small of my back. It’s as if he’s unable to let go, and I find it comforting. As he guides me toward the couches in the lounge area, I stay as close to him as our bodies will allow because, truthfully, I don’t want him to let go of me either.
Not just yet.
“Don’t put me through that shit again.” His voice is hoarse. Before I’m able to respond, he continues, “I text you, on the right number this time, and I get nothing back. When I go to your room, a fucking cop is there, and still, nothing from you. And then these fuckers at concierge refuse to tell me what’s going on.”
“I was filling out a police report.” We sit on the couch at the same time, and I accept his hand when he reaches for mine, linking our fingers. I tell him everything that’s happened before and after we met up tonight, leaving out the part about the disastrous double date with Shiner Bock and James. “I honestly didn’t even think to check my phone.”
