Copyright © 2020 by Suanne Laqueur
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
Suanne Laqueur/Cathedral Rock Press
Somers, New York
www.suannelaqueurwrites.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
An Evening at the Hotel/Suanne Laqueur. — 1st ed.
Contents
An Evening at the Hotel
Room 1
Room 2
Room 3
Room 4
Room 5
Room 6
Room 7
Room 8
Room 9
Room 10
Room 11
Room 12
Room 13
Room 14
Room 15
Room 16
Room 17
Room 18
Room 19
Room 20
Room 21
Room 22
Room 23
Room 24
Room 25
Room 26
Room 27
Room 28
Room 29
Room 30
Room 31
Room 32
Room 33
Room 34
Room 35
Room 36
Room 37
Room 38
Room 39
Room 40
Room 41
Room 42
Room 43
Room 44
Room 45
Room 46
Room 47
Room 48
Room 49
Room 50
Room 51
About the Author
Also by Suanne Laqueur
An Evening at the Hotel
To everyone behind a “Do Not Disturb” sign
Room 1
The elevator binged sedately. “The cushier the hotel, the more dignified the elevator bell,” she said.
He smiled at her but the smile was disconnected from his eyes. He seemed preoccupied as they stood aside to let the elevator occupants come out. He ushered her in and she noticed, as always, that his “ladies first” protocol was accompanied by the beginnings of a gesture, a hastily-checked impulse to touch her shoulder or the small of her back as she went by. Always his quickness to thwart that contact disappointed her. She wanted to feel that little bit of touch, wanted to be the recipient of his spontaneous, protective chivalry.
The doors purred shut. She reached and pressed 9, moved to the back wall. He reached then, and his hand hovered over the number buttons, index finger extended. One beat of silence. Another. His head turned and he looked at her. Nothing playful in his expression, nothing teasing in his finger hovering over the buttons, rather there was something deadly serious, almost dire in his expression and its single, simple question.
Room 2
The doors had closed and they were rising now. He had the sensation of moving not up but forward, at a clip, afloat on a fast-moving river, heading straight for a precipice. She was looking at him, her eyebrows furrowed. Did she understand him? She must. She always had. The elevator was past the fourth floor, nearing the fifth.
Was he being a fool?
Something in her gaze softened, grew expansive. She stepped forward, reached out and put her hand on his. She folded his index finger back into his palm, brought his hand back to his side with hers in it.
Fifth floor. Their fingers squeezed and as the sixth chime intoned, he brought her hand up to his mouth.
“Are you sure?” he whispered against it.
“Yes,” she said, rolling her forehead against his arm.
His eyes fell closed with relief.
A seventh chime.
Room 3
Eighth floor.
She closed her eyes against his sleeve. It had happened so simply. In all her imagined scenarios, of all the ways she had contrived them coming together, she had never envisioned him simply asking.
The doors opened at the ninth floor. He laid his forearm against them and motioned, as usual, for her to go first. As she passed him, he touched her—put his hand on her head and let it trail down the length of her hair and her back. Her skin shivered with the pleasure, the almost intense relief of it.
His touch.
His touch and his intent.
Room 4
They walked down the long corridor, dim peachy light layered with oblique flashes from the mirrors on either side. A deep hum resonated from within the belly of the hotel. Do not Disturb signs dangled from doors, shut tight as secrets. In another minute they’d be in her room, undisturbed. They’d be another secret, another cog in the furtive, nighttime machinery of this building.
He felt a sudden, awed love for the bricks and steel and carpet, as if all of it were a revered church and it was his heart tolling like a great bell, slamming against the wall of his chest in hollow, measured thuds.
He put an arm around her, sliding under her hair until the apple of her shoulder was in the palm of his hand. She moved against his side, fitting beneath the drape of his arm.
This ought to have been brand new, yet it felt purely familiar.
He thought of the years of keeping her at a respectable distance. They rarely touched. There were the odd times she put her cheek against his and kissed the air over his shoulder in hello or goodbye. Once, on an escalator at the train station, she made him laugh—he couldn’t remember the joke, but he remembered the laughing—and she rubbed two playful circles on his back as the moving stairs carried them down.
The times they connected physically were few and far between, yet he never doubted that given the opportunity, she would fit to him easily, like a puzzle piece.
The skin of her shoulder was smooth against his palm and he ached to feel all that softness in both his hands. He couldn’t wait to be inside all the things he loved about her.
Room 5
Her fingers were shaking and she dropped her key card twice. He retrieved it both times and finally dealt with the lock himself. A cool rush of air as the door slowly swung back. It was pure darkness within, only a dim sliver of light came from the window, its drapes not fully drawn.
The door clicked shut softly. As he put on the chain, she set down her purse and cardigan. He was muting his phone, then setting it on the bedside table. She took her own phone and brought up one of her playlists, hit the shuffle button, then set it down by his. Their screens went off at the same time, putting the room in darkness again.
They stood, not speaking. Not touching yet. Letting the music wrap around them, letting their eyes adjust, finding one another’s face in the dimness.
“Are you nervous?” he asked softly.
“No,” she said, nodding her head.
“Me too . . .”
Room 6
Then she moved to him as he stepped to her and their mouths met with one huge, shared inhale. For a moment they were still, holding each other’s heads, holding each other’s breath, then she sighed in the back of her throat and he sighed deep in his chest and each exhaled into the other.
Her hands peeled his jacket down his back and off his elbows. He slithered free and her arms reached up around his neck. His wrapped around her waist and he picked her up, caught her up tight, hugged her body
full against him. She was small in his arms, but brashly present, clutching him with lean, hard curves.
Her body. Her skin. Her hair. All of it here, now, for him. Nose in the arc of her neck, he pulled in her scent. That orange-y perfume he’d known for . . .
Room 7
Years. I’ve dreamed of you holding me for years.
His hug was enormous, his arms swallowed her up. He turned around with her once, twice, and she buried her face in his big shoulder and clung to him. Two quick steps and he had her up against the wall by the window and then he took her head, put his hands on her face, his thumbs running along her cheekbones, his forehead to hers. No end of things she wanted to tell him but at that moment she could only say his name, breathe it once just before he kissed her.
God, his mouth on hers.
She was nothing but air and stomach and an enormous, pounding heart. She shivered beneath . . .
Room 8
That grey wool dress he liked so much, a sheath so perfectly tailored it hurt to look at her.
“That’s not a dress, that’s an Audrey Hepburn movie,” one of the managers said once, when she walked into the Monday meeting wearing it with pearls. Slender as a blade, something out of the 1940s.
He glowered inwardly at the remark, wishing he’d made it himself. Perplexed by sudden, petulant jealousy at the smile she beamed in reply.
It was no secret she was his treasured colleague. He took a certain pride in her being well-liked and indispensable to his entire organization. Yet the compliment about her dress annoyed him. It made him realize his pride in her had morphed into something personal, almost possessive. He liked to think she came to see him on Mondays and dressed accordingly. For him.
Now he was turning her away from him, to face the heavy drapes at the window of a dark hotel room. Now his hand pushed aside her hair and picked out the tab of the long zipper on that Audrey Hepburn of a dress. This was now, and this was the dress he liked on her but it was coming off. Now . . .
Room 9
He unzipped her.
Now I’m undone, she thought.
He held her hand as she stepped out of the circle of the fallen dress, stepped out of each pump, the red ones with the silver buckles. Rarely did he remark on her clothes or appearance but the first time she wore these shoes to the office, with a white blouse and a grey pencil skirt, she got an unchecked comment from him.
“Those shoes make you look—” He stopped abruptly even as his eyes continued to sweep her from head to toe, and he finished with a slightly confused, “Tall.”
She loved it. She knew she had his full respect on a business level, but when he noticed her as a woman, it delighted her, as did the charming bit of mental juggling as he’d tried to reconcile both things. Besides, she was tall, taller than most men in the office. His height appealed to her: in heels she could look him in the eye.
Now, having stepped from her we’re-not-in-Kansas-anymore red shoes, the crown of her head merely skimmed his chin. His hands were between her shoulder blades again, unhooking her bra—a frisson of regret that she wasn’t wearing a nicer one, but how in hell could she have known?
She leaned back against his chest as he slid the straps down her arms. For one gorgeous moment, his arms folded around her from behind, and she was completely naked in his still-clothed embrace. He held her tight, and they were quiet, looking through the gap in the drapes, out the window at the slice of lights across the Hudson, his mouth rubbing against her hair.
Her hands hooked around one of his forearms and she lay her cheek against his sleeve and the edges of the room blurred hot and wet.
Room 10
They were quiet, yet they were both pulling in deep, labored breaths. The air was so thick and chemical it was impossible to get a lungful. He could feel minute twitches beneath her skin and he made his hold heavier, his hands soothing. He was nervous but not anxious. Calm as he could possibly be with any undressed woman in his arms, but having a slight heart attack at it being her in the altogether, closed up in his jubilant grip. He could barely wrap his mind around having spontaneously and miraculously orchestrated this with merely a look. Yet under the thrilling disbelief was a composed conviction he was meant to be here.
He deserved this.
She sighed in his arms. He wasn’t entirely sure what she was feeling but he wanted all or nothing. He didn’t want to belabor the point, but she was shaking now, and so was he.
“Are you all right?” he said.
Room 11
She wasn’t sure what she was. Wildly excited, crazed with wanting him, fighting an anticipatory impatience to feel him already. To cut to the fucking chase and pull him down on the bed, even the floor. Pull him on her and make love, feel the long length of him along her body, feel his weight crushing her, feel him inside her.
Yet she didn’t want to move from his arms. Not yet. Her heart splashed in her chest and a funny tightness in her throat threatened sobs. Not from sadness. Or fear.
“I’m all right,” she said, “I’m just emotional.”
There was no point pretending she wasn’t caught up in her feels. They’d known each other too long. What would be the point of artifice anyway? Seduction? Getting laid? That had never been her intent. She always knew what she felt for him could never be dismissed as cheap thrills. They were attractive people—either one of them could stand in a bar and get digits. But instead they were standing here, together by the window, trying to breathe a way into this. He was here. He’d asked to be here. The way he was trembling let her know that this wasn’t a conquest. The way he was holding her left no doubt he would move in her like he was born to.
Room 12
He held her carefully, filled with his own emotions and filling up his eyes from this unusually wonderful vantage point. Standing behind her and looking over her shoulder, down the full length of her body, the view was spectacular. She was a long drink of water. His shaking hands began to wander, sliding down her sides, into the curve of her waist and out the curve of her hips. They traveled up again, enfolded her once more.
“I don’t want you to be afraid to tell me you’ve changed your mind,” he whispered, rocking her gently against his chest.
Her head swiveled and she looked up at him. Even in the dim light from the window, he could see the edges of her eyes were liquid, but her face was filled with that signature irony he adored.
“I’ve changed my mind, please leave,” she said, deadpan.
And forever, the rest of his life, he would have that moment, freeze-framed in a slice of city light, when she was looking up at him, wearing nothing but her skin, with damp eyes and that tongue-in-cheek expression. And he looked down at her, transfixed and smitten, mirroring it all back.
He put his hand on the side of her neck, moved it into her hair, holding her eyes. Growing hard as he felt desire ripple over her skin. Growing harder as they kissed, hungry, then hungrier, then starved. He felt her shiver and turn and spiral into him and they were . . .
Room 13
. . . backed up against the wall again, out of her heels, out of her clothes, nearly out of her mind. Tucked in the crooks of his elbows, her own arms wound up around his neck as they kissed. Under her hands she could feel all the layers, all the edges and seams of him: where his shirt was still starchy and where it had broken down into softness. The different texture of his tie against her chest. The cool smoothness of buttons and cufflinks on her skin. His belt buckle in her belly and beyond that, him. Hard like iron. Wanting her, wanting her bad, wanting her in the worst way.
Awareness swirled around her head like a sandstorm, shifting waves of dream and reality. It didn’t seem possible she was caught up, finally, in his arms. That he was, finally, kissing her, touching her, pulling her against him. This was the feel of his hands, finally. This was the taste of his mouth, at last. This was him, hard for her. He said her name, murmured it like a prayer into her neck. She’d always loved her name in his voice but now his voice was a ke
en whisper with barely any breath in it. She could feel him trembling, for her. Feel the heat coming through his clothes like a fever, for her.
Her own shaking, hungry hands slid from his shoulders and joined to start loosening his tie. The tie he picked out and knotted that morning, unaware of what the day was going to bring. Never dreaming it would be her deft fingers undoing him.
Room 14
Not long ago, she told him, as if commenting on the weather: “My passionate devotion to you professionally isn’t without passionate curiosity about you as a man.”
That passionate curiosity was letting nothing escape her tonight. She took him to pieces, every bit of software and hardware stripped off him as if she were a competent car thief, undressing him like some sublime act of deconstruction. Tie slid from the channel of his collar, his collar stays slid from their secret slots. His watch released, his cufflinks unhinged, his belt drawn from its loops. Everything held momentarily in her wondering, feverish hands, then dropped to the floor and she was moving on again, exploring something new to take apart.
His buttons lovingly undone, shirt tails pulled from his waist and her hands worming between like parting curtains, sliding around his back, pressing up against him. Her bare body like a length of silk through his fingers. Naked, kissing again, she was all up in him, giving him her tongue, her breath in his lungs, following as he walked backward in the dark, pulling her to where the smooth expanse of the bed yawned, beckoning like a giant hand for them to fall into its palm.
An Evening at the Hotel: An Affair in 51 Rooms Page 1
