Seven
SEVEN
Mia
THE MOTEL WAS clean and pleasant, but nothing to write home about. I’d have liked to be able to say that I agonized over driving there... that I nearly turned around at every intersection.
It would have been a lie.
The woman at the front desk gave me a surreptitious once-over, which really drove home the fact that I was showing up for a one-night stand smelling like cooking grease and with eyes red-rimmed from crying. Fortunately, she didn’t feel the need to comment. I had no doubt she’d seen way worse walk through the glass double doors into her lobby.
“Mia Dimitriadis,” I said. “There should be a key waiting for me under the name Byron Harper.”
“May I see some I.D., please?” she asked in a neutral tone.
I passed over my driver’s license, telling myself it was good that they didn’t let anyone walk in and claim to be someone they weren’t. It wasn’t as though she was going to post it to social media with the caption ‘ Look who showed up at the local Super 7 for a hook-up !’ followed by a bunch of shocked face emojis.
The receptionist made a noncommittal noise and handed the license back to me. She rummaged behind the desk for a few moments—just enough to make me irrationally nervous—and came up with a key card.
“Room 208,” she said. “Checkout is at eleven a.m., and the wi-fi password is on the card sleeve.”
I glanced down at the open cardboard sleeve as she placed it on the desk. Beneath the words ‘ Complimentary Wi-Fi in all rooms ,’ someone had handwritten the password ‘ pRetty_fLy_4_a_WiFi! ’.
I was guessing motel reception work got boring sometimes.
“Thank you,” I told her, trying not to sound like an unhappily married person getting ready to screw a virtual stranger after crying her eyes out over a lost Michelin star. I wasn’t sure how well I succeeded.
I headed toward the elevators and suddenly realized that I didn’t have a bag with me. Should I have packed a bag? Were you supposed to pack a bag for casual revenge sex? If so, what did people put in it?
I hesitated, stuck on this one small but ridiculous aspect of what I was doing. As I stood there gaping like a fool, a gray-haired couple hauling wheeled suitcases approached the elevator bank from the other direction, talking earnestly to each other. I wrenched myself free of my paralysis. Closing the final few steps, I pushed the elevator ‘ up ’ button.
The doors closest to me dinged immediately and slid open. I stepped inside.
“Ooh, hold that for us, would you, love?” called the elderly woman.
I slapped a hand on the edge of the door to keep the elevator car open for them, and the pair hurried inside.
The woman smiled. “Thank you! Fourth floor for us, please.” Her expression fell as I pushed the buttons for the second floor and the fourth floor. “Oh, dear. Is everything all right, sweetheart? Have you been crying?”
“Rosie!” said the man, sounding mortified. “Don’t be rude!”
Rosie scowled at him. “It’s not rude to ask if someone’s all right, Jeff!” she shot back.
Thankfully, the elevator had already started its journey upward, and it barely took any time to reach the second floor. It settled to a stop and dinged at us, breaking the moment.
“I’m fine,” I said, slipping out as soon as the doors parted. “Thanks for asking. Have a lovely evening.”
I power-walked down the hall, the sound of the two betas arguing growing fainter behind me as I put distance between us. Unfortunately, based on the room numbers, I’d power-walked in the wrong direction. I waited until I could be sure the elevator had moved on before backtracking.
Room 208 was about halfway along the hall on the right side. Only when I stopped in front of it did I realize that my heart was pounding like a sledgehammer in my chest, the vibration echoing throughout my body. My hand shook as I plucked the keycard out of its sleeve and stuck it in the slot. I pulled it out briskly, but the little light on the handle stayed red.
Feeling like I was trapped in one of those dreams where everything conspires to keep you from completing even the simplest of tasks, I turned it a hundred and eighty degrees and jammed it in the slot again.
Still red.
Was the universe trying to give me a message? Was fate trying to stop me from making a mistake I’d regret for the rest of my life, or—
The handle turned, the latch clicking open a moment before the door swung inward. I stood frozen in the hallway, staring at a broad chest covered with a partially unbuttoned light green tailored shirt and a dark, emerald-colored vest.
“Hello,” said a faintly amused voice—deep, but smooth... like the purr of a lazy housecat.
I craned up to meet Byron Harper’s gaze and swallowed hard. Had he always been so tall?
“Um... hi?” I said.
The expression of amusement deepened as Byron stepped back, giving me space to enter. “Hi. Why don’t you come in, rom-com girl.”
I went in, ignoring the sense that I should be taking this last chance to run back home and pretend this whole thing never happened.
The room appeared untouched except for an emerald-green suit jacket flung carelessly over the back of a chair, and a laptop open on the desk in front of it. Had he brought work to do while he was waiting, or in case I stood him up?
Behind me, the door clicked closed. I turned to see the blond alpha walking toward me, brushing past my frozen form in the room’s cramped entryway. The sharp, delicious scent of aniseed and fennel wrapped around me, prickling its way along my nerves like tiny needles.
I cleared my throat. “So...” I began, with no idea what words came after that.
“So,” he echoed, with the same crooked half-smile that had first made me realize I might be in trouble, back at his and Luca’s house in Ladue. “You have the look of someone who’s never done this before. Put your handbag on the dresser and have a seat on the bed.”
I complied before realizing I was doing it, watching wide-eyed and silent as he leaned a hip against the heavy desk and started deftly removing his cufflinks.
“Is there anything I should know about before we start?” he asked casually, as though he had this kind of conversation every day.
Maybe he did.
“Like... what, exactly?” I asked. My mouth was dry. I licked my lips, trying to work up some moisture. Unhelpfully, my lady parts chose that moment to release a little pulse of dampness.
He tilted his head, considering me. “The usual. Likes, dislikes. Known venereal diseases. Whether that wedding ring on your finger plays into this scenario in a way I need to know about.”
The blood drained from my face fast enough to make me dizzy. Like an idiot, I looked down at my left hand, where... yup .
Wedding ring.
I’d forgotten to take it off... not that you couldn’t still tell I usually wore one. Zalen had figured it out quickly enough that night at the bar.
I squared my shoulders and tried to rally. “Didn’t Luca tell you everything about me?” My tone came out more aggressive than I’d intended, but I forced myself to hold that pale alpha gaze defiantly. His eyes were gray, I noted. No hint of blue.
“Luca wants to be friends with you,” Byron said, placing a faint, ironic emphasis on the word. “He hasn’t told me a thing; not since warning me off, that first night when you came to the house.”
“Well, it’s pretty simple,” I nearly spat the words. “My husband demanded an open marriage. So, I’m giving him one.”
Byron nodded, as though to himself. “Fair. I can work with that.”
For some reason, the urge to push boundaries made me keep talking. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I’ve been crying?”
He tossed his cufflinks onto the desk. “Not your therapist, pet. Unless you want me to ask if you’re a big girl who can make her own decisions about who she fucks.”
Some kind of large, scary emotion was rising up in my chest, even as the scent of rich alpha pheromones frayed my control.
“I can make my own decisions,” I grated out. “And no, I don’t have any goddamned venereal diseases.”
That was one positive aspect of never getting laid, anyway.
“Glad to hear it.” He still sounded amused, the fucker. “Now tell me what you want out of tonight. Other than revenge, I mean.”
A dozen answers swirled around, trapped behind my lips. None of them felt right, though. None of them felt true .
I took a hitching breath and whispered, “I want to forget. Just... just for tonight.”
“Forget what?” he asked.
“Everything,” I told him. “I want to forget everything .”
He nodded again, as though he’d already known what I was going to say.
“That, I can definitely do.” He lifted his chin, looking down at me with an assessing eye. “Now, strip and kneel on the bed, rom-com girl. You and I are going to be here for a while.”