“He still has it until midday.” He throws a mischievous smile in my direction. “Want to go up there and use the bathtub?” He kisses behind my ear, running his hand down my back in tiny circles.
I imagine saying yes, sinking further into Oliver’s world. Lying my back against his bare chest in a sprawling bathtub filled with bubbles, his fingers exploring every inch of me. I groan, both out of being turned on and annoyed that the decision to leave just became a whole lot harder.
I tilt my chin toward him; the light reflects off the morning stubble lifting from his skin. “So very, very tempting, but Spencer and I have a flight to catch. And unlike Dominic, I can’t afford to rebook. Maybe I could speak to him while he’s in London?”
Oliver sits up on his elbows. “His schedule is kind of crazy over the next week. Receiving bad news at the moment is going to be stressful for him.”
My stomach twists briefly when I remember the situationI’ve put Oliver in. He knows everything; he could quite easily go to Dominic himself and expose the truth. He’d probably get a promotion for his honesty. Finally being honest with myself and the world is going to be my downfall. But at least this time it will be under my control.
I raise my eyebrows. “I’m kind of on a time crunch here. You remember, the blackmail of it all?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose and he sighs. “Fucking Malcolm. If he didn’t exist, you could have just...” He trails off, looking sheepish.
I scoff, studying his face. “Were you about to say, ‘I could have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling kids’?”
He rubs the side of his jaw. “Maybe, I don’t know.” He shrugs and gives me a soft smile as the reality of this situation dawns on us in the daylight.
In a way, it’s the best thing he could have said. His being unsure about what he would do in my situation makes me feel less like a criminal. Last night, everything seemed so dramatic, so at odds with everything I’ve ever wanted to do or be. But now, with the sun shining through, I know I have to do what I didn’t with Malcolm the first time round. I didn’t take control of my own decisions; I didn’t do what needed to be done. Malcolm needs to be exposed for what he did and have a light shone against his darkness. Sure, I’m the collateral damage in this strategy, but maybe I deserve to be. I did this. I made Spencer pretend to be the founder of Wyst. At no point did I stop to consider the consequences. The photos Malcolm took were not my fault. But if I sit back and let other people have control of my life, I could never forgive myself. Even if finally destroying him might destroy me too.
I reluctantly drag myself away from Oliver, away from the warm king-sized bed and out into the chilled expanse of the hotel room. The window has condensation from the cold end of winter morning outside. We don’t make the obligatory statements of intent, promises to make time and see each other.
We do this dance; a dressing rather than undressing one would usually expect with a make-out session this intense. He kisses up my thighs as I slide on my underwear, teases my nipples with his tongue as I button up a borrowed shirt. I use my tongue, gliding up his stomach as he slides on his trousers. By the time we are fully dressed, he’s rock-hard and I’m utterly liquid.
“I should go,” I say breathlessly over my shoulder. He somehow manages to help me step into shorts with one hand while running the other up the inside of my thigh. As I turn my back to him to leave, he keeps his hands on me like magnets. My palms push against the door, fingernails scraping across the grain as he brackets me. Clasping my jaw in his fingers, turning my chin over my shoulder to meet his mouth. Our tongues brush against each other’s instead of talking. My fingers lace into his hair while his erection presses into me, turning my core completely molten.
“And I have a meeting in twenty minutes,” he says into my mouth, curling a hand around my waist and into the front of my shorts, his peppery scent enveloping me like a blanket.
My voice comes out jagged. “I just need fifteen.”
“How about ten?” he says with a smirk.
“Deal.”
We know we shouldn’t reverse the progress we’ve just made. My shorts are pulled back down in his fist as I grind againsthim. I undo the zipper and button of his trousers and rub him across my wet center in long languid strokes. His head drops to my shoulder, bumping his brow against the door.
“You are evil,” he says, his voice vibrating onto my skin.
Twenty-five minutes later, I slip out of the room, giggling, as I watch Oliver, erection still pressing against his trousers, logging into his Zoom meeting and apologizing for his delayed arrival.
I wink at him before I shut the door, feeling weightless for the first time in years.
My mind is comfortably empty as I ride the humming elevator to the lobby, until the doors slide open and I lock eyes with my brother.
“Hey, where were you last night? I tried to find you. I can’t believe we placed!” he says, squinting with a bewildered and panicked look on his face.
I rub my arm. “Yeah, amazing. Thanks for going up there.”
He is still in his suit; did he stay out all night partying?
“Well, I didn’t really have a choice. When Wyst was announced as third place, I had to go up there. I looked for you to pull you up onstage, but you and Oliver had disappeared.” He looks me up and down. “I assumed you went back to his hotel... and looks like I was right. What was all that about not seeing him anymore?”
My heart palpitates for a few beats before the words burst out of me. “I told Oliver what we did.”
Spencer lets out a gasping cough, taking my elbow and maneuvering me away from the crowd of tourists lining up at the check-in desk to a pair of purple armchairs in the corner. “Why the bloody hell would you do that?”
My lip quivers. “It was an emergency. Malcolm was there last night. He threatened me.”
Spencer blinks, the outrage melting from his expression. “Fuck. What happened?”
