Chapter 15 All Aboard the Pain Train
ALL ABOARD THE PAIN TRAIN
SAGE
It's late—an hour or so from midnight—when we step into the inn's dimly lit lobby, our footsteps soft and steady over the hardwood floors.
And yet with every step I take, I wonder if I can really do this.
Get Luke to my room without waking the guests. Or alerting the staff.
Or having a complete nervous breakdown about what's about to happen.
The November chill follows us inside, but I'm burning up under my coat. Luke's hand is warm on my lower back, and every nerve ending in my body is focused on that point of contact.
"Shh," I whisper, even though he hasn't made a sound. "Mira's probably asleep. And Mrs. Henderson has ears like a bat."
"Bats use echolocation, not—"
I press a finger to his lips, trying not to think about how those lips were just telling me his deepest secrets on a private train car. "Not the time for a biology lesson, Professor."
His eyes darken behind his glasses, and oh.
Oh, I'm in trouble.
We're halfway across the lobby when my life decides to be exactly as chaotic as always. Buttercup materializes from behind the registration desk like a fuzzy white demon sent to test me.
"Maaah?" she inquires at full volume.
"Shh!" I hiss. "Buttercup, please. Just this once."
She tilts her head, considering my request, then bleats loud enough to wake the dead and possibly some of the living in the next county.
"Of course," I mutter. "Of course you choose now to be vocal."
"Maybe she's happy to see us?" Luke suggests, and even now he's trying to find logic in goat behavior.
"She's happy to see you. She tolerates me." I scoop up the terrorist in goat form, who immediately tries to eat Luke's sleeve. "No. Bad goat. We don't eat the nice billionaire."
"Nice?"
"Would you prefer 'emotionally available billionaire whose bones I plan on jumping’?”
"That's a mouthful."
My brain immediately goes to the gutter. "That's what she—Nope. Not making that joke while holding a goat."
Luke's laughing silently, his shoulders shaking, and god, I love that I can make the nerdy grump of a CEO laugh.
We make it to the stairs, where I set Buttercup down with my sternest look. "Stay. Guard the desk. Eat some paperwork."
She bleats again but mercifully doesn't follow as we climb. Every creak of the old wood sounds like a gunshot in the quiet inn, and I'm hyperaware of Luke behind me, of what we're about to do.
"Which room?" he whispers, his breath warm against my ear.
"End of the hall. The owner's suite." I pause, realizing how that sounds. "Former owner. Current owner. It's complicated."
"Everything with you is complicated."
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"I'm starting to think I like complicated."
My heart does something acrobatic in my chest, but before I can respond, the universe strikes again. Mrs. Henderson's door opens, and she peers out, wearing a nightgown that could double as a circus tent and curlers that make her look like she's receiving signals from space.
"Sage? Is that you, dear?"
"Hi, Mrs. Henderson." My voice comes out squeaky. "Just heading to bed."
Her eyes slide to Luke, and her expression shifts to one of delighted scandal. "Oh! Mr. Sterling! How lovely to see you again."
"Mrs. Henderson," he nods, looking remarkably composed for someone about to follow me into my bedroom.
"Will you be staying the night?" She asks this with all the innocence of a fox in a henhouse. "I could prepare a room..."
"That won't be necessary," I say quickly, my brain scrambling. "Luke was just... inspecting. The security system. At night. For... optimal conditions."
"Optimal conditions," she repeats, her smile widening to Cheshire cat proportions. "Of course. Well, don't let me keep you from your... inspection."
She disappears back into her room, but I definitely hear giggling.
"Optimal conditions?" Luke asks as I fumble with my keys, my hands shaking.
"Shut up. I panicked." The door finally opens, and I pull him inside. "Quick, before she comes back with questions about our inspection methods."
I flick on the lights and immediately wish I hadn't.
My suite is a disaster.
Laptops everywhere. Sticky notes covering one wall like I'm planning a heist. And what appears to be a coffee cup graveyard on every surface.
"Sorry about the mess," I say, suddenly seeing it through his eyes. "I wasn't expecting... this."
"This?"
"You. Here. In my space. It's not very CEO-friendly."
"Good thing I'm not a very typical CEO.”
"No," I agree, stepping closer, drawn by some magnetic force. "You're not."
We stand there, the weight of the moment settling over us.
He just told me about his ex-wife, about betrayal that cut so deep it changed him.
And here I am, having lied to him from day one about why he's here.
The guilt threatens to choke me, but then he looks at me with those blue eyes, vulnerable and wanting, and I push it down.
Tomorrow.
I'll tell him tomorrow.
"We don't have to—" I start.
"I want to," he interrupts. "God, I want to. I just..."
"Haven't done this in a while?"
"Haven't done this since her. I mean, there’s been…”
“Copulation? Intercourse?”
“Jesus, woman, do you think I’m incapable of speaking like a human being?” He grins, and the expression is gorgeous on his handsome face. “Yes. Sex.” The admission is raw, honest. "There have been... attempts at romance. Dates. But nothing that got this far."
"How far is this?" I put my hands on his chest, feeling his heart race under my palms.
"Far enough to terrify the shit out of me."
"Good," I say. "I'm terrified too. We can be terrified together."
He laughs, sudden and deep. The sound is literally a rumble. "Is that supposed to be reassuring?"
"Is it working?"
"Oddly, yes."
I stretch up on my toes, and he meets me halfway, our lips meeting in a kiss that's different from our the kiss in the kitchen or the groping in the limo.
This is intentional, a choice we're both making.
"Luke," I breathe against his mouth.
"Yes?"
"Stop thinking."
"I'm always thinking."
"Then think about this." I take his hand, place it over my heart, letting him feel how fast it's beating. "Think about how much I want this. Want you."
"Sage..."
"And think about how if you don't kiss me again right now, I might actually die."
"Dramatically?"
"So dramatically. There'll be a whole scene. A wholly inefficient production.”
"Well, we can't have that." He pulls me closer, and the sound I make is embarrassing but I don't care. "Inefficiency is unacceptable."
"Completely unacceptable," I agree, then promptly trip over a stack of books I forgot was there.
He catches me, barely, and we stumble against the wall, laughing at the absurdity of it all.
"Smooth," he says.
"I'm very graceful. Ask anyone."
"I'll take your word for it."
I attack his sweater with more enthusiasm than skill, but it gets stuck on his glasses. We spend thirty seconds in an awkward tangle before successfully freeing him.
"How do people make this look easy in movies?" I gasp, knowing my hair is now standing at angles that defy physics.
"Editing," he suggests, then his breath hitches as I start unbuttoning his shirt. "Lots of editing."
"Your turn," I say when his shirt is gone, trying not to stare at the unexpected muscles. Tech CEOs shouldn't be allowed to have abs.
It's false advertising.
He reaches for my sweater, pulls it up and off. Or tries to. It gets caught on my earring.
"Ow! Wait, I'm attached!"
"Hold still." He carefully untangles me, and I can feel him trying not to laugh. "There."
"My hero," I say, then look down at my chest. "Oh god."
"What?"
"I'm wearing my laundry day bra."
It's beige, practical, and has a coffee stain on one cup from that incident last week I don't want to think about.
"It's seen better days," I admit, wanting to die.
"I don't care."
"Really? Because I have nicer ones. Somewhere. Probably."
"Sage." He cups my face, making me look at him. "I don't care about your bra. I care about you."
"That's... that's a very nice thing to say."
"It's true."
"Even with the coffee stain?"
"Especially with the coffee stain."
I kiss him then, pouring everything I can't say into it. My guilt, my want, my growing feelings that terrify me more than any foreclosure notice.
We make it to the bed, breathing hard from equal parts arousal and awkward athleticism, and I can't stop smiling even though my pulse is a war drum in my ears.
Luke looks down at me like I’m something sacred and sinful all at once.
“You sure?” he asks, voice low, rough, barely holding back.
I nod, throat tight with need. “I don’t want to think anymore. I just want this. I want you.”
“Good,” he says, stripping off the last of his clothes with a kind of precision that shouldn't be hot but is. “Because I plan on fucking you so thoroughly you won’t remember your own name.”
Oh.
Well, then.
My laugh turns into a gasp when he climbs over me, palms braced on either side of my head. His body is all sleek muscle and coiled tension, the heat of him a sharp contrast to the November chill still lingering in the air.
He kisses me—deep, wet, and slow—before dragging his lips to my ear.
“I’ve been dying to get you under me. Hear you beg. Feel you shake.”
I bite my lip, already writhing beneath him. “Then what are you waiting for?”
His smile is wicked, sharp. “Permission.”
“You have it. Every kind.”
That’s all it takes.
His mouth is on my neck, biting and licking a path down my collarbone, and when he yanks my panties down, he groans like he's been starved.
“Fuck, Sage. You’re soaked.”
I arch into his touch as he runs two fingers through the slick mess between my thighs.
“This for me?”
“No,” I tease. “Buttercup really does it for me.”
He laughs—then slides a finger inside me, crooked just right—and my teasing turns into a moan that feels ripped from my chest.
“Don’t start what you can’t finish, sweetheart.”
I grab his wrist, panting. “Who says I’m not gonna finish?”
His grin darkens. “Oh, you’ll finish. Again. And again. And again.”
He moves lower, spreading me open like a gift he intends to unwrap with his mouth.
And then he does.
“Oh my god, Luke—”
His tongue is sin itself. Precision and chaos. A perfect contradiction. Like him.
He works me over like I’m his only job, his only mission. Every flick and press of his tongue is matched with those thick fingers stroking exactly where I need them.
Methodical. Intentional. Devastating.
“Lukas, I need—” I choke on the words. “I need you inside me.”
“Not yet.”
He doesn’t even look up, just flattens his tongue against my clit and sucks.
I shatter.
My body jerks, heels digging into the mattress as I cry out, loud and unfiltered and completely undone.
By the time I come down, he’s kneeling between my legs, stroking his cock slowly, watching me with eyes that say you’re mine now.
“You okay?” he asks, almost tenderly.
I nod, barely coherent. “More than okay. But if you don’t get inside me in the next ten seconds, I might cry.”
With a grin as wicked as he is handsome, he reaches for a condom, rolls it on, and settles over me, notching the head of his impressive cock right at my entrance.
“Look at me, Sage.”
I do.
“I want you to feel every fucking inch.”
He pushes in slowly—agonizingly—until he’s buried to the hilt.
We both gasp.
“Holy shit,” he breathes, forehead pressed to mine. “You feel like heaven. Like velvet heat and bad decisions.”
I wrap my legs around his waist, locking him in. “Then make all of them. Right now.”
He fucks me like he’s got something to prove. Like he wants to rewrite every memory of everyone who came before him.
And I let him.
I take every thrust, every filthy word he groans in my ear:
“That’s it, baby. Take it.”
“You’re so fucking tight, I could lose my mind.”
“Been thinking about you—about this—since that goddamn limo.”
“This is better than the limo,” I pant, nails raking down his back.
“Much better.”
He kisses me as he drives into me, our bodies slick and straining and desperate. And then his rhythm changes—goes deeper, slower—and I feel it in my soul.
And when we come—together—it’s not just physical. It’s fucking spiritual.
When we fall onto the mattress, panting, sweat-soaked and breathless, I realize I’ve never felt more seen. More claimed.
More loved.
He doesn’t pull away, just strokes my hip and murmurs nonsense into my hair until my breath slows.
“Still think I’m Mr. Robot?” he asks, and I feel his smirk against my temple.
I smile.
“Definitely not. But we might need to revisit your commitment to efficiency. That was... overachieving.”
“I don’t do average,” he mutters, already half-asleep.
No, he doesn’t.
And neither do I.
Not anymore.
"Good. Because I've been thinking about this since you held my Wonder Woman underwear."
"That's a very specific timeline."
"I'm a very specific person."
He's quiet long enough that I hold my breath. Then: "Any regrets?"
I shake my head. “None at all.”
"Good. Because I think I might have broken your coffee table with my foot."
He lifts his head to look. My coffee table is indeed at an odd angle.
"How?" I ask, lost for breath.
"Enthusiasm?” He kisses my earlobe. “I’ll buy you a new one."
"You can't buy me furniture."
"Why not?"
"Because that's what sugar daddies do, and you're not my sugar daddy."
"What am I then?"
The question hangs between us, and I trace patterns on his chest while I think.
What is Lukas Sterling, exactly?
The man I tricked into coming here? My business partner? The person who's somehow become essential to my daily happiness?
"I don't know," I admit. "But I'd like to find out."
"Me too."
We lie there, wrapped in one another, the inn settling around us with familiar creaks. Somewhere below, Buttercup bleats, probably terrorizing the night staff.
"Luke?"
"Mmm?"
"Thank you. For telling me. About her. About everything."
"Thank you for listening."
"Anytime." I yawn, exhaustion hitting me all at once. "Stay?"
"If you want me to."
"I want you to. But fair warning—I'm a cover hog."
"I'll risk it."
"And I sometimes talk in my sleep."
"About what?"
“Inn repair receipts, mostly. Very sexy stuff."
"I'll try to contain myself."
As I drift off, wrapped around him like a particularly clingy vine, I let myself have this moment. Tomorrow I'll have to face what I've done, the lies I've told.
But tonight?
Tonight, I'm just a woman falling asleep in the arms of a man who sees her messes, every disastrous moment, and thinks they’re magnificent anyway.
Even if I don't deserve it.
Especially because I don't.