Unruly black hair is tousled around a face that belongs in a museum. Dark brows slash together over aristocratic cheekbones. His mouth is the only soft part about him.
He yanks off the headphones and leaves them screaming around his neck.
I expect him to shout at me. Or demand to know my name so he can call a manager and have me relieved of my position for daring to interrupt his taciturn solitude.
But he only regards me in a kind of head-tilted wonder.
“I-I’m sorry,” I say, stumbling backward out of the bathroom—and tripping right over the towels I dropped. My face flames, and I scramble to my feet, gathering up the towels in my arms and power walking out of the bedroom. “I thought the room was empty,” I call uselessly over my shoulder.
Footsteps stride up behind me. “Wait.” He catches my elbow and slows me down.
An electric current blasts up my limb and explodes in goose bumps along my neck.
I don’t dare turn around and look up into that face again. I’ll be rendered speechless.
“Is this…part of the act?” he rumbles.
Confusion briefly clouds my panic. “Act, sir?”
His fingers twitch around my elbow, his breath quickening slightly. “You can’t really be a maid. You’re too…” With an audible swallow, he removes his headphones with his free hand and tosses them onto a nearby bureau. “You’re way too fucking beautiful. Did they…send you to me?”
I’m rocked by the fact that this man just called me beautiful.Sothrown that I blurt a response that barely makes sense. “Yes, of course they sent me,” I manage, assuming he means the hotel. As in, yes, they sent me to bring him extra towels. To do my job.
I’m obviously not thinking clearly, because he’s an upper-crust kind of gorgeous that I’ve never seen this close up. And secondly, he smells like musk and grapefruit, a combination I had no idea would be so appealing.
“I thought so,” he says, his voice much lower than before. Resonant and rich.
That giant hand strokes up my arm until it encircles the back of my neck, his thumb digging into my nape and massaging me carefully. Hesitantly.
“My God, I might actually do it this time,” he mutters, his breath ghosting along my hair, the heat of his body warming my back.
I’m being wrapped in a pink haze of pleasure as he rubs the exact spot where I’ve been sore for a week, forcing me to hold back a whimper.
“Do what, sir?” I whisper.
He advances a step, his tall frame towering behind me. “I might actually fuck you.”
TWO
Tripp
I don’t knowhow my friends did it.
They’ve sent me at least a dozen call girls over the years, and I’ve rejected each and every one of them. Paying for sex is not my thing. They know that, too. I don’t get off on some poor girl being sent to my door, probably half in fear for her safety. I’m not sure why my friends continue to keep the yearly prank running. Maybe because we’ve all been weaned on tradition.
But it appears they’ve finally sent me a girl Ican’tturn down.
She’s been dragged straight out of my fantasies.
Ones I’ve never shared with anyone and never will. Dark ones that cause me nothing but shame, persisting for as long as I can remember.
Long dark hair in a perfect braid.
A face like a fucking angel.
She wears a plain gray uniform that must have come from a high-end costume shop, because it’s incredibly realistic. A short gray skirt and white T-shirt, topped with a buttoned burgundyvest. Black tights. Sensible shoes. This isn’t one of the cheap role-playing costumes girls were wearing in the past, before I sent them away. No, it looks like the real deal. She even carries an armful of towels she must have scooped up on the way in.
She keeps her head bowed forward.
