Lane
On my second night at the resort, I took the front desk girl up on her unspoken offer to have a drink together. Clearly I was having some sort of existential breakdown after changing my flight, asking a waitress to dinner, and basically rescheduling twenty-four hours of my busy life for an absolute nobody.
Well, not really a nobody if I were honest with myself. Which I rarely was anymore.
She was the woman—the girl—I dreamed about nightly, along with the tattoo of a crying eye. That image lurked in the back of my mind, judging me when my own two eyes closed at night.
Still, these weren’t risks I took on a day-to-day basis. Or ever, for that matter.
My outer shell formed the day I became an orphan. It hardened as I matured until it became impermeable, and my professional persona as a businessman was locked into place. I was smart—the one widely known fact was I turned down Vanderbilt, the Harvard of the South, choosing instead to enroll in an “accelerated program” at the University of Pittsburgh. At least, that was what my bio read.
I didn’t wheel and deal or make concessions. I was stubborn and formidable, determined and tough as nails.
Don’t let my wild hair and trendy appearance fool you.
The women who were in and out of my bedroom weren’t needy; they knew the score. Sex, dinner, companionship, and that was it. I traveled, worked, and fucked. I didn’t take phone calls, and I didn’t respond to texts when pets died or friends fought or there was a sad movie on TV.
In an effort to appear as though I interacted with employees low on the totem pole at all the establishments I did business with, I met Cara, the bubbly, all-too-cheerful, and way-too-willing blond receptionist for a nightcap.
Of course, I didn’t mean to take her to bed. But I did.
Ever since I’d screwed Lexie’s brains out, sex had become nothing more than another challenge to me, a presumed competition to be the best lover, a man who knew his way around every inch of flesh on a woman. I wanted to be a gentleman in a suit by day, a lion in the bedroom by night.
After a few beverages in a dark corner of the bar, I stood to escort Cara to the elevator, my hand drifting to the small of her back as she stood from her chair.
She leaned in and whispered close to my ear, “Let’s be discreet. You go up first and I’ll follow behind. I know your room number.”
Ignoring what she said, since it was ridiculous, I never let go of her back.
Once we were upstairs, she slowly stripped for me, revealing black thigh-highs and ample breasts. I spent some time licking and sucking those tits, not allowing my mouth to wander up to her lips.
That was not something I did with regularity. Mouth on mouth reeked of feelings and intimacy. Something else I didn’t do.
She kept making these awful fake moans. “Ooh, Lane, or should I call you sir? Ooh, ah, ooh. You are a naughty CEO.” She sounded like a dying cat, and I could almost see her counting my money in her head.
I knew that look well from the ladies back home. The women who never got a call back—they also made those money-hungry faces masked as lust.
My hand slipped between her thighs and the wide-eyed, bushy-tailed small-town girl was sopping wet for me.
“Ooh-ooh—ooh.”
I kept thinking,Please shut up. I’m going to lose my hard-on.
Too bad. Not all of the lionesses could meet my prowess, and Cara was a poor match for me. The woman might be competent working behind a desk, but she truly lacked dick-sucking skills, not to mention the ridiculous noises she made.
A brand spanking new fantasy rolled through my head—visions of a lonely, yet seductive waitress dressed in navy slacks and a little matching vest, her long hair spread down around her neck—and I came silently.
Is she in the building?
With nothing else to do with my newly found day off, I stayed confined to my suite, ordering both breakfast and lunch from room service. I’d already made up my mind to do business with the WildFlower. They were a legitimate resort despite being in a rural cesspool, and I could make a good bit of cash from their contract, so I had absolutely no reason to stay other than my dinner date.
I wasted my day alternating between banging on my laptop, doing push-ups and sit-ups, and contemplating what I would say to Bess. My mind ran through a million and one scenarios including lies and half truths, but the whole truth was the only one that sat well with me.
Except somehow, I knew I wouldn’t do it. I wasn’t even sure if I knew the truth anymore.
Yeah, I’d made myself into some type of ice-cold, unfeeling, all-business machine over the years, but when it came to this girl, I had a little soft spot that grew wider by the minute. Over the years, I’d contemplated what she’d been doing, and if she’d even survived. If she had, I wondered if her friend ever told her about the random guy who semi-helped and yet semi-ditched her.
After I’d taken Lexie to bed that ill-fated evening, I’d sneaked into the bathroom and called the emergency room, pretending to be a cousin when I asked after someone I had no business inquiring about. “I’m calling about a young woman, Bess, brought in after almost overdosing?”
