by K B Cinder
She continued to tap on the keyboard, the click of a mouse joining the party. “Oh, I see. Your relation to Mr. Mullen?”
“His sister,” I lied. “Juniper Mullen. I’m staying in Room 705.”
She typed a bit more before pausing. “But, you’re calling from Room 703?”
Fuck.
“Yes, sorry — this is my best friend’s room: Karine Nunes. We’ve been in and out with each other all weekend. We’re getting ready together for a show now.”
Another lie. God, I couldn’t stop myself.
“Oh, okay. He’s staying in Suite B. Would you like me to schedule assistance with the delivery?”
Relief flooded through my chest. “That’s okay. I’ll call back if that changes. Thank you!”
I hung up before she asked anything else and shoved my keycard and cell phone into my jeans’ pocket. On went my sneakers again as I left the safety of the nest, rushing toward the elevators.
I was ripping off the bandaid once again, but I didn’t care. The elevator arrived, and I hopped on.
As I punched in the penthouse floor, the panel above the buttons chimed, prompting for an entry code.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I growled, scanning the message that scrolled across the touchscreen window.
Enter the four-digit penthouse access code you selected at check-in.
Well, shit. Who knew what went on in Sage’s head other than sex, dirty jokes, and workouts?
My fingers danced over the touchscreen PIN pad as I tried his birthday. Denied.
Sage had the memory of a grape, so it couldn’t be anything too complicated.
I entered his birth year, holding my breath. Denied.
Juni’s birthday? Nope.
Juni’s birth year? Extra nope.
There had to be a limit on how many attempts, right? Otherwise, some deranged nut could punch in numbers until they found the right one.
His gym street address? Nada.
His mom’s birthday?
His stepdad’s?
His real dad’s?
Nope, nope, and nope.
My palms started to sweat. I’d tried everything tied to the man. It was a matter of time before I was locked out or zapped by some anti-crazy person buzzer.
For shits and giggles, I tried my birthday: 0602. It was a throwaway, but at least it gave me time to think. There had to be something glaringly obvious I was missing.
To my surprise, the doors closed, and the car lifted. Okay, what the fuck?
Why was my birthday his access code?
It had to be a coincidence. Something like his weight lifting record or bed body count.
I rubbed my hands along my upper arms as cool air blasted through the vent above.
The doors opened, and I stepped out into a hallway, its floor a river of black marble cutting through gold. The white-washed walls were adorned with art, the designs looking more like inkblots than paintings.
I followed the blackened path before finding Sage’s room, a mammoth indoor palm beside the double-door entrance marked with a gaudy golden B.
I hammered my knuckles against the wood before ducking behind the plant. If he saw me through the peephole, he wouldn’t answer.
Sure enough, the door cracked a few seconds later, Sage’s head popping out. “Hello?”
I pounced, leaping out to grip the doorjamb, just as he jumped back in surprise.
“Don’t!” I screeched as he reached to slam the door. If he did, he’d smash my fingers. Fuck, he might chop them off.
Sage froze, finally seeming to register it was me. “Holy fuck, Karine! What the hell are you doing?”
I kept my hand on the wood so he couldn’t force me out. “Coming to help you.”
He squinted his eyes, sliding a hand high on the doorjamb above mine as he loomed over me. “By hiding behind a fucking plant? Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
I grinned at the gargantuan grouch. “Did I scare the shit out of you?”
He slipped in his little grumpy act, letting a smirk cut through the stone-cold set of his face. “No, as much as you’d love that, you little shithead.”
I dipped under his arm, stepping into his suite.
“Karine…” he warned, turning as he watched me weasel my way inside.
“I want to see your room,” I babbled, scampering out of reach.
His suite was warmer than the rest of the hotel, the chill of the hallways replaced with coziness as his cologne lay heavy in the air.
He shut the door loudly, leaning against it with a thud and a frown. “Karine, this isn’t a good idea.”
I tossed him a scowl. “Shut up, and let me look, Mullen.”
And look I did at the room well-worth the exorbitant price tag a night, something out of a home design of the stars magazine.
The black marble floor of the hallway morphed into an antiqued pattern of faint fleur-de-lis with delicate gray walls, the pair balancing pops of color all around.
“I need to pack,” Sage called from the entryway. “And so do you.”
I turned back to look at him, threading my fingers into a lush throw blanket over the back of the sofa. “You need to get your hand looked at.”
He had fresh ice inside the pack on his hand, which he tried to hide behind the other when my eyes honed in on it. “You need to mind your own business.”
I smirked. “The same could be said of you, bucko. You’re the one who got taken in for trying to fight my battles.”
Granted, he didn’t try to — he actively destroyed them. I doubted Trey would ever attend the same conventions I did again, let alone bother me. Fuck, he might avoid what state I was in.
“Why are you so argumentative?” he asked in a rough voice.
I rolled my eyes. “Because that’s all we’ve done for ten years: argue.”
His shoulders slouched as he adjusted the ice pack on his knuckles. “Why?”
I scanned the kitchenette as I mulled over the question, the white cabinetry hilariously delicate compared to the burly man inhabiting the room. The only sign of him was a packet of peanut butter protein powder.
“I guess because outside of love, hate is the strongest emotion,” I mused.
He cleared his throat, drawing my eyes. “You hate me?”
I pondered his words, finding a sliver of truth in the syllables. “I did.”
He cocked his head and adjusted the ice pack, revealing deep blue bruises. “But you don’t now?”
I shrugged, running my fingers along the back of the couch, the brushed white canvas hissing as I did. “I don’t know that I ever hated you, per se. I hated what you did, for sure. I’ve never figured out what I did to make you hate me, though.”
All I’d ever done was love him, and he’d never apologized for wounding me at my most vulnerable. In fact, he’d met my jabs with the same ferocity.
“I never hated you,” he disputed, pushing off the door to step further into the suite.
“Then, why?” I pushed.
How could someone be so cruel? He knew he was my first.
He raised a brow high, stopping a few feet away. “It kept you away, didn’t it?”
I snatched my hand from the sofa as if the fabric had burned me. “You wanted to keep me away? Was that before or after you fucked and ditched me like a used napkin?”
He hung his head, his eyes softening. “I didn’t know, Karine.”
Any bit of sympathy I had for his stupid hand went out the window. It could fall off for all I cared. His dick could, too. The world would be a better place. “Bullshit!”
He reached for me. “I didn’t…”
I ducked his hand, holding up a finger. “Don’t touch me.”
“Karine, I swear I didn’t know. When you told me after, I felt sick to my stomach.”
“Sage, I was the Virgin Mary in a potato sack back then. Don’t feed me that crap.” I’d practically walked around with my v-card stamped on my forehead between frizzy puffs of hair.
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“I’m not feeding you anything!” he snarled, hurling the ice pack to the floor. The flimsy bag exploded, sending ice everywhere. “Fuck! Just listen to me, Karine!”
I dodged a shattered cube on the way to the door. “I heard you loud and clear.” I wasn’t sticking around for his temper tantrum. He’d said enough.
“I didn’t fucking know, Karine!” he exploded.
I stopped at his side, meeting his eyes as his excuse echoed in my mind. “How does it make it any better even if you didn’t know? Is it somehow acceptable to fuck and chuck a girl if she’s not a virgin?”
His eyes rolled skyward with a groan. “That’s not what I said.”
“That’s exactly what you said!”
He massaged his temple with a hand as he shook his head. “If I could go back, I never would have asked you out.”
A hot wave washed over me, a mix of anger and pain swirling. “Oh, thanks.”
Great. I wasn’t just used. I was a mistake.
I turned to leave, but he captured my wrist. “I don’t regret you, Karine. I regret hurting you.”
I stared at his hand, the long fingers resting next to the healing wounds, the scabs raised and unsightly. “Then, why did you?”
His voice dipped. “Because I wanted you. I’ve always wanted you. And rather than being an adult and resisting, I gave in, and well, fuck. I fucked up, I hurt you, and I’m sorry.”
I shook my arm free. “If you wanted me, you wouldn’t have thrown me away like I was trash. You build up people you care about; you don’t tear them down.”
He let out a ragged sigh. “I was trying to do the right thing in the long run.”
My chest burned, every new admission worse than the last. The bastard had a way of digging his own grave. “Ditching me was the honorable route?”
“I handled it like shit, okay? I admit that. But I couldn’t ruin you.”
I sucked in a shaky breath, fighting back tears. “How did you not ruin me? You broke my heart.” He’d incinerated any confidence I’d had and spit me out like I was nothing.
He swiped the pad of his thumb under my eye, catching a tear I hadn’t realized escaped before it reached my stitches. “Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think it was easy for me to watch the girl I was crazy about walk away crying? I cared about you. I always have.”
More tears fell, ones he wiped away just as quickly as they came. “Why would you hurt me, then?”
He hooked his other hand on my cheek, cradling my face. “You were too good for me. You always have been.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Sage Mullen? Too good for me? He was a god in Honey Hills then and now. Women lined up to smell his farts. I’d been a step above a garden gnome at eighteen.
He gently stroked his thumbs along my cheeks. “You don’t have to believe it, but it’s true. I told you: you’re perfect. You’ve always deserved better than me.”
“Because you’re a pig?” I blurted.
He laughed, leaning down to kiss my forehead. “That, and so much more. You were an innocent little thing on a fast-track to success, and I was a fuckup that couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do the next week.”
I pulled away, his face blurred by unshed tears. “I didn’t care about any of that. You were always kind to me. You didn’t make me feel like an ugly duckling. I always felt special with you.”
“You’ve always been special to me.”
My shoulders sagged. “I don’t understand.”
Anything special to me was cherished. I kept all my birthday cards from childhood in a shoebox for fuck’s sake.
“You’ve always been pure. Even now, in a world surrounded by sex toys, you’re innocent. You come into every situation with nothing but good intentions.”
“And you don’t?” I asked, tilting my head to search his face, its hard planes relaxed for a change.
“Not always…” he trailed with a slight grin. “But I did that night. I really wanted to spend more time with you one on one. When we went to Barneget, the last thing I expected was for us to have sex. I felt like a monster corrupting you. You were little Karine, the girl with the cute smile and sass.”
“I’ve gotten a lot sassier,” I warned.
“No shit!” he laughed, smoothing my hair behind my ear. “Every time I think you’ve reached peak attitude, you take it a step higher.”
“I have to make up for my size somehow.”
Humor finally reached his eyes, pulling him from the storm clouds. “I believe they call that a Napoleon Complex, my dear.”
I tilted my chin high. “It’s a Karine Complex.”
He smiled — a full-fledged, unabashed Sage smile. “That’s a great name for the memoir you’ll write when you’re an old woman rich off of lady boners.”
I raised a brow and jabbed a finger into his chest. “Excuse me, Kinx is for man boners, too.”
“You’re right,” he relented, eyeing me carefully. “So you can call it Karine Complex or Boner Queen.”
A laugh escaped despite the tears blurring my eyes. “That sounds like a restaurant.”
“One you need a test after leaving,” he agreed. “What would you name my memoir?”
I traced my finger along his chest, grounding myself as I thought long and hard. “Something about a man on a journey.”
He laughed, his hands falling to rest at my sides. “Am I a pilgrim?”
I nodded, my finger rising and falling with each of his breaths. “You’re coming to a reckoning of sorts,” I sighed, skimming the ridges of his pecs. “Growing from a boy that runs from problems to a man that faces them. A coming of age tale, maybe?”
He dropped his head back with a dramatic ugh. “You make my life sound like a shitty made-for-tv movie plot, Rini.”
I smiled wide. “Might as well name it like one, too. How about Coming of Sage?”
He grimaced. “You’re back to a witch in my book.”
I patted his chest lightly, leaning up on my tippy toes to kiss his chin. “I’m not a witch doctor, though, so grab your shit, Hammer Fist. Time to fix that busted paw of yours. Then you owe me a drink.”
His brows snapped together. “For what?”
I shrugged as I sank back on my heels. “Putting up with your ass.”
19
I didn’t want to toot my own horn about my primetime medical drama degree, but Sage’s hand was broken, so tooty toot toot to me.
A green cast covered it, a color I’d insisted on to bring out his eyes. He’d argued it was stupid and wanted blue, but a little girl in the waiting room agreed with me, and Sage lost the battle swiftly and brutally.
Walking into the emergency room with his broken hand and my black eye was yet another awkward experience I didn’t want to relive, but thankfully, the same doctor who treated him stitched me up the night before.
Thanks to a spike in wait times courtesy of a bridal party with food poisoning, we didn’t make it back to the hotel until nearly 2:00 AM. Juni had texted a few times to check in while we struggled to make it out splash-free, but I played off my absence as attending a convention event. I’d let Sage show off his cast and explain it in the morning.
The past anger was squelched in favor of current needs like his hand and more pressing — sleep. Our flight left at 9:30 AM, and Dash was one of those insufferable worrywarts that insisted on everyone getting to the airport at least three hours early.
I wasn’t sure how we’d made it back as I slid the keycard in my door, my eyelids heavier than my parents’ expectations. I mean, I might’ve nodded off a few times while we waited for the doctor, but it wasn’t enough to be considered sleep.
Sage, per our established routine, led the way to check the room. I followed, kicked my shoes off, and tossed my keycard and cell phone on the bedside table before sinking into the covers. If there were any crazy characters ready to rumble, they’d have to fight me lying down.
“Cozy over there?”
Sage asked as he re-entered from the bathroom, empty-handed in his search for big, bad boogeymen.
I nestled against the bedspread with a ‘mmm’ of a response. I didn’t know it was possible to fall in love with a stiff hotel bed, but at the moment, I was ready to marry it and its coverings that hundreds of people had boned on.
“Well, I’ll catch you in the morning.” He sounded as tired as I felt, his voice groggy.
I stretched an arm in the air, beckoning him over with a finger.
“Yes?” he asked as he came to a stop at the foot of the bed.
I turned to look at him, smiling softly at the deliriously tired man. “Why don’t you sleep here? I know it’s no penthouse, but it’s better than hiking all the way back up there.”
He raised a brow as he crossed his arms, the cast clearly still awkward for him as it stuck out. “I don’t know. The last time I was in here, I was kicked out, and the time before that, a fiery woman had her way with me.”
I folded my arms under my head into a makeshift pillow. “Oh, you poor thing. I’m sure you didn’t enjoy it at all.”
He kicked off his sneakers with a grin. “Nope. It was torture.”
“I bet.” I watched him unhook his belt and jeans, quite the feat with his non-dominant hand.
He pulled the denim down, revealing thick, muscled thighs and a red-brief wrapped package. “She was a wicked witch. I barely made it out with my penis — let alone alive.”
I ran a finger along the bedspread as he lifted his shirt over his head, the creamy miles of skin peppered with dark hair from his chest to the waistband of his briefs. “That bad, huh?”
He plodded to the light switch, his casted hand held over his heart dramatically. “Oh, yeah. She was a wild animal. Tiny, but full of fire like a Tasmanian devil.”
With the flip of the switch, we plummeted into darkness, the curtains pulled tight to hide the Vegas lights. I couldn’t see him, but I heard his steps as he neared. I rolled to the side to make room for him but immediately toppled toward him anyway as his weight sunk into the mattress.
He chuckled, adjusting the covers as he slipped into bed, his arm snaking to pull me to his chest. “See? Told you. She’s a dick devourer.”
