Chapter One
Wes
There must be something more infuriating and emasculating than your boss publicly shoving his tongue down your wife’s throat. I’d rather not find out.
Whatever it is, I’d probably deserve it.
It’s six in the evening, and I haven’t even started my shift as the night manager of the Belle Argo Premiere hotel. Already, though, I’m at the end of my rope.
“Wes. Hold up.”
As I’m nearing the employee entrance, my boss’s voice stops me. My neck cracks as I turn around. “Something you need, Max?”
Something other than checking my wife’s tonsils?
Over his shoulder, my ex, Gina, gives me a look of apology and then ducks into her car.
The car I paid for.
Max approaches me with long strides. It’s not exactly that I hate him. More like I daydream about holding his head underwater in the hotel pool until he stops kicking.
“You need to get your shit out of Gina’s house.”
Remember, Wes, he’s your boss. You can’t afford to lose a paycheck. You’d look like shit in prison orange.
“She may be riding your dick, Max, but it’s my name on the title. It’s still my house.”
Max, who seems to enjoy looming over me with all two inches of his height advantage, finds this funny.
“Still sounds like a you problem, Monroe. I don’t give a shit who’s paying the mortgage.
I give a shit that my lease is up next month, and I’m planning to move in.
You’ve got boxes clogging up the closets. ”
Awesome. My temples throb. I resist the urge to rub at them, then do it anyway.
“Yeah, well, I’m working on it, Max. I’m still looking for a place.”
You can’t punch him. You can’t run him over with your car. You cannot ? —
But God, I want to.
“Work on it harder, will you? The hotel’s new owner’s got a bug up his ass about us giving you a reduced-rate room, so I’ve gone about as far as I can go with my generosity.”
“Real fucking generous when the reason I’m staying here is you fucking my wife behind my back. You deserve a medal.”
Max’s grin is all teeth, and I do my best to hide the fact that I’m picturing taking them out one at a time with my knuckles.
“Christmas and New Year’s are coming, Wes.
It’s one of our busiest times. You’ve got until the end of next week to vacate your room.
” He leans in. “And if you don’t get your nasty old running shoes and shitty workout equipment out of that garage, I’ll happily hire someone to haul it all away. Because that’s what buddies do.”
With another oily grin, he turns on his heel and gets into his douchey sports car. The engine is loud enough to wake the dead, and the exhaust trail slaps me in the face as he pulls out of the lot.
Asshole.
I’m fuming as he drives away. Where does this fucker get off telling me what to do? He has the power to make my living hell even shittier, though, and we both know it.
My trek toward the employee entrance is spent pulling myself together. Or trying to. I also text my brother, desperate for a lifeline even though he rarely answers these days.
Wes: Hey, man. Lunch soon?
No reply. Still. Again. As I approach the sprawling, mirrored, luxury beachfront hotel, I hear a familiar laugh.
Standing side by side when I turn around are two young men.
In their early twenties, they have the bearing and ego of guys who make money from their looks.
Because they do. Troy, with his short sandy hair, sculpted arms, and dimpled chin; Adam with his olive skin and his round-the-clock, too-sexy-to-shave stubble, and a man bun that should look stupid but infuriatingly does not.
Troy, on the left, looks especially amused. “Hey, Brunch Daddy. Rough night? ”
Asshole. He’s fucking with me. The last thing I want is to reward him with my reaction.
A reaction is hard to avoid, though, seeing as how the last time I saw these guys, one of them had a hand on my dick. After cornering me in a locker room, Troy jerked me off so aggressively he might as well have punched the orgasm out of me.
I want to land my fist between his eyes almost as much as I want him to do it again. Which really makes me want to punch him in the fucking face.
“Don’t call me that. You get off on playing with your food or are you just bored?”
Where the hell do these guys get off making me question myself at the age of forty-two? I don’t have enough fucks left for this. I left the last one back at the house Gina and I bought together, and it’s stuck in the garbage disposal, which she had the nerve to ask me to fix before I moved out.
So, I give Adam and Troy an unprofessional middle finger as I push past them both, focused on getting inside.
“Is that finger an invitation?” That comes from Adam. He’s closer to my height and leaner than Troy, with deep brown eyes. It makes my chest hurt to acknowledge, but I can see his lashes even from where I’m standing.
For a moment, I get lost staring at them.
What would happen? If I walked over there and inserted myself between them right now, and I told them they could manhandle me into the nearest corner or closet? If I let them throw me against a wall and do whatever they wanted to me like before?
Or, hell, if I took them upstairs to my temporary accommodations and told them that the day they shoved me into a corner of a gym locker room and held me down had me closer to losing it than my wife cheating on me. That I wanted to lose it again.
What would happen then?
When I turn to fully face them, Troy is right fucking there. Close enough to punch him. Or spit in his face. Or…other things.
I’m not noticing how full his lips are. Or following the column of his throat as he swallows. The quirk at one corner of his mouth. I’m not remembering him spitting on my dick while stroking it.
I’m also not not doing those things.
“Someone looks like he needs a hug,” he says in what must be the least sympathetic way possible.
Okay, I really can’t handle this. I’m not letting some twenty-three-year-old menace screw with my head. I’ve got much bigger problems.
After glancing around, I lean in and lower my voice to counter with, “It’s interesting to me that two known sex workers can get away with spending so much time loitering around this very expensive hotel without someone calling the authorities. Perhaps someone should.”
“Ooh. That sounds like a threat.” Troy fakes a shiver and steps into me.
At six feet, two inches tall, I have a height advantage, but he has longer legs, while I have a longer torso.
This means that I would only need to move forward a few measly molecules of space for our crotches to touch. Like they did before.
“It’s an observation. The Belle Argo Premiere isn’t a place for whores.”
Far from seeming offended, he chuckles and presses forward.
The dimple that pops on his cheek makes my eyelid twitch.
He’s one of those guys literally anyone would call good-looking.
Razor-sharp nose and cheekbones. That jaw could break rocks.
Lips any plastic surgeon would be proud to hang a photo of on their wall.
He smells like a thunderstorm. I want to roll around in that smell.
Not that I’m trying to smell him. It’s oxygen and proximity, that’s all.
He grabs onto my upper arm. My nostrils flare with the force of my exhale, but do I back away? I do not.
As a representative of the hotel, I tell myself it behooves me not to cause a scene. Outside an entrance used primarily by employees, where there are no security cameras and no guests aside from Troy’s partner in hand job, Adam.
Right.
“This classy establishment you work for is exactly the sort of place we do business.” Troy bats his blond lashes.
He presses up on his toes, leaning so we’re chest to chest as he murmurs into my ear.
“Most of our customers stay on the VIP floor of this place, Kitten. Report us, and you’ll be pissing off a whole lot of important people.
That’s before it even gets back to our pimp.
And long before any of that happens, I’ll have fucked you from here to Tallahassee. ”
He probably doesn’t mean that the way it sounds. Not like… Right?
My cock twitches even as my jaw clenches. I hate this. I hate his threats. I hate that they’re making me hard. “Why are you doing this?”
Troy laughs.
“So fucking glad I can amuse you,” I growl.
“Eh.” He pats my chest with his free hand.
My nipples tingle at his touch. Why the hell are my nipples tingling? “Why?”
“Who knows, Kitten? Maybe we like holding a mirror up to other people’s hypocrisy. Maybe we just like fucking with you.”
Hypocrite. The word smacks me across the face.
“I’m not…” But fuck, aren’t I? Hating all the times my brother let his late wife boss him around, all the times I heard him refer to his boyfriend, PJ, as his “keeper” with affection rather than disdain.
These things have elicited such an immediate and negative reaction from me, but what did I feel that day I accidentally walked in on my brother being dominated by his boyfriend?
Envy. In all my years of marriage I’d never felt the passion and abandon on my brother’s face. And what did I do when Adam and Troy shoved me onto a bench and jerked me off? I let them. Without a single word of protest.
Because I didn’t want them to stop.
“I’m not a hypocrite,” I say with no conviction whatsoever. All these new thoughts have my stomach churning.
Troy shrugs. “I mean, I remember you giving your own brother all sorts of shit for being submissive and fucking around with a male escort. But, Kitten, look how easy you are every time I put my hands on you. Isn’t that right, Adam?”
From his spot a few feet away, Adam grins and gives a thumbs-up.
Jesus. I tighten my right hand into a fist with no good outlet for my frustration.
Now’s the time to back away. Instead I ask, “Kitten?”
Troy licks his lips. “You didn’t like it when we called you Brunch Daddy. So I tried a bunch of nicknames out in my head and chose the one I thought would piss you off the most.”
“Classy.” Also, he’s not wrong. The implied comparison makes me want to claw his eyes out.
Again, I tell myself to back away. To straighten my spine and go inside. In my head, though, there’s a whirling tornado of questions and emotions. I still don’t understand why I responded to him the way I did. To both of them.
Fuck’s sake. I’m broke, and my life is in the toilet. I can’t think—what the hell am I supposed to do with two sex workers giving me an identity crisis?
Someone up above must have my back for a change, because as soon as I wonder, two things happen: a young woman with gorgeous curves, golden-tan skin, and pouty lips to rival Adam’s lashes comes out of the building.
Adam’s gaze stays on me even as she takes hold of his hand, and I don’t like the way I keep noticing their interlaced fingers.
Troy spares her the briefest glance before returning his predatory gaze to me. He’s still got one hand on my arm. With the other, he’s making jerk-off motions.
“Jesus.” Turns out there is something more infuriating than seeing my wife kiss her boss. I run my hand over the front of my shirt, smoothing the tie and the buttons in a desperate attempt to beat back how goddamn messy I am inside.
My phone rings. I pull it from my pocket and see Belle Argo Oncology on the screen. Troy looks down at the display, frowning.
Fuck. Fuck. Dread squeezes everything inside me into a tiny, painful ball.
“Fuck off. I have to take this,” I mumble, yanking out of his grip. I hustle past the two young men to get inside while trying to pretend that I don’t know what it feels like to have one of them hold me down while the other one makes me come.
Once inside, I’m immediately bombarded.
“Wes. Good. I need to talk to you.” Nancy, one of the desk clerks, comes out of a nearby storage room. From the far hall, our maintenance guy, Glen, walks up, trying to flag me down. The phone stops ringing in my hand.
Dammit.
I give everyone a “wait a minute” gesture as I head to the front desk and duck into the manager’s office.
My desk is covered in notes that already need my attention.
Either they were written by the daytime manager, or the little prick has been playing video games on the job.
Again. That’s what happens when Max hires some business associate’s son instead of someone with actual experience.
I’m too flustered from my parking lot encounter to care much. Shaky enough that the first two times I try to unlock my phone, I fail.
Everything around me goes still as I finally manage to pull up my voicemail. A burning sensation in my chest tells me I’ve been holding my breath.
Please don’t tell me I need to make an appointment.
They never want to give bad news over the phone.
“Mr. Monroe, this is Nurse Sheila at Belle Argo Oncology. We wanted to let you know that your blood work came back, and everything looks good…”
Ignoring the knocks at the door, I let my body sink against the wall. Thank fuck.
Well. I may be forced to see my ex tongue-fucking our boss every day, and I just ran into my latest source of shame, and my brother won’t answer my texts, but at least I’m not dying.
Not today, anyway.