Chapter 13
Marlow
The sound of my phone’s shrill ringtone pulled me out of a dead sleep, rocketing me clear out from under the burrow of my covers in order to slap my hand down onto it before it woke Blake up.
Whoever the fuck was calling me at the actual ass-crack of dawn was going to get a long text telling them to fuck the hell off.
Only, when I reached over to grab where I’d plugged it in last night before heading down to the bonfire, the side next to me was completely empty.
My body froze at the sight of the depressed sheets no longer containing the shape of another body, nor the familiar golden brown head of hair blending in with the stark white of the pillow I’d laid him down on after his body had finally given in to its exhaustion.
I shot my hand under the covers to brush along his side, feeling that it was cold to the touch with no lingering body heat anywhere other than the spot I was currently occupying.
Long gone by now.
Slowly, I fisted my hand around the fitted sheet.
He could be off getting us breakfast. He was the caretaker type, after all. He could be down at the mess hall right now trying to talk one of the cooks into firing up the grills early to make him something to smuggle back to me before the rest of the property woke up for the day.
There was no way he skipped out on me literally before the sun rose. That was impossible. We had a fantastic night together—one I was having a very hard time convincing myself I didn’t want a repeat of.
My phone continued to ring, cutting through my thoughts and forcing me to fish it off of the night stand next to the bed. Yanking the charging cord out of the port, I put it up to my ear.
“What?”
There was a long and exaggerated scoff on the other end. “Wow, really? You don’t call me at all yesterday and answer the phone like you’ve got something better to do?”
I was already feeling the buzz of annoyance crawling over my skin.
Normally, I’d take Silas worrying over me as a good thing, a flattering gesture even, since he wasn’t one to outwardly show his care and compassion for people outside of snarky comments and showing up to take care of business in times of trouble.
Today, however, my patience was already running thin and it was barely past six in the morning. “You’re not my boyfriend. I don’t need to check in with you every hour of the day.”
“What the fuck crawled up your ass and died?”
My covers snapped against the wall behind me as I tossed them off of me and rolled out of bed and headed out into the living area.
There were no signs of Blake’s clothes scattered on the floor from where I’d peeled them off of him piece by piece, nor were his shoes by the couch where he’d last left them.
In fact, it didn’t look like he’d been here at all last night.
There were only signs of me that lingered in this cabin.
Did he actually ditch me?
He certainly had a track record for it, but this was a little much.
No goodbye or note left behind?
Not even a ‘thanks, I had a nice time’?
He had to be coming back here soon. I had a hard time believing he’d leave me like I was some hookup brought home from the bar that had to be escaped from before the early morning ‘what are we’s started rolling in.
But isn’t that what you wanted? A one-night stand with no strings attached?
“Marlow.”
“What!” I snapped.
“Jesus, I’m talking to you. Don’t tell me you hit your head on something and have a concussion.”
My stomach churned at his tone—quite different than the usual sarcastic drawl. There was a tinge of worry snuck between the words, showing his actual concern outside of the usual barring jabs he threw at me.
I had to reel it back in. Blake going MIA wasn’t Silas’s fault and I was a dick for not at least texting him before I dragged Blake to bed and forgot that there was a world that existed outside of these cabin walls for the last twelve hours.
We’d made it a point to contact each other so he knew I was still well and breathing.
What other way did he have to make sure I was still good aside from calling Guest Services and making sure there were no active missing person reports?
I let out a slow breath. “Sorry. Had a rough morning.”
“What happened?”
There wasn’t any harm in telling him, especially since he had no clue who Blake was or that we’d technically broken some kind of ethical code by messing around last night and would therefore judge me for sleeping with the program’s director.
Or worse, accuse Blake of using his influence to crawl into my bed when that couldn’t be the furthest thing from the truth.
A part of me was still hesitant, though.
Would keeping all of this close to my chest stop me from jinxing it?
There was a very good and very real possibility I was jumping the gun and overreacting to finding my cabin empty and Blake was coming back from the mess hall, or wherever, right at this very moment and I was going to look like a complete fool for ever worrying.
I wanted to believe that was true, even if to save my own ego the embarrassment from getting walked out on. Something that had never happened to me in my thirty plus years on this planet.
Trudging over to the window that faced out toward the main part of camp, the glass was clouded with a thin layer of fog from how much the temperature had dropped during the night, making it a little hard to see out.
“I... brought someone back to my cabin last night and we got to messing around. He wasn’t here when I woke up. ”
There was a short pause on the other end of the phone, and then a, “Huh.”
“I thought we had a good time. At least, in my mind we did.”
Never in a million years did I expect the adorable, blushing, and who I thought was a virgin, director of Austin Adventures to be into getting his ass slapped and choked to tears by my dick being shoved down his throat until I came.
Even thinking about it now, I was growing hard again.
Those swollen lips wrapping tight around me, his tongue lapping at the underside of my shaft while I buried the head against the back of his throat hard enough to make him gag.
The way his nails had bitten into my thighs to keep me from pulling back to give him room to breathe, and the intense look in his eyes when I told him how close I was getting.
Fuck.
How was I supposed to keep this a one-night stand?
I shot my hand down to my cock to squeeze around it to give me some sort of relief from the throbbing ache that was settling there.
“That’s odd. You’re usually the dine and dasher,” Silas commented.
I grunted in response. “Yeah, I know. Hence the rough morning.”
“Are you going to see him around later today?”
“Hard to say.”
If I played my cards right, and charmed the right people, I could figure out where Blake’s cabin was located. At the very least, I could get someone to direct me toward his office and try to camp out there until he had no choice but to run into me and tell me what the fuck was up.
This was all speculating he didn’t come back in the next twenty minutes. I still was clinging onto those last few shreds of hope I was wrong about all of this and I’d soon be telling Silas I had to go because I saw a figure in the distance clutching a to-go container stuffed full of breakfast food.
I forced myself to step back from the window and pace around the living room instead. The longer I looked out through the fogged glass like a dog waiting for its owner to get back from the store, the more depressed I was getting by the second.
“I’ll be honest,” Silas said after another pause. “I’m surprised you care.”
“About being ditched?”
“Yeah, Marlow. Who cares if some guy needed to dip before his partner caught him in someone else’s cabin? Aren’t you out there with a bunch of couples? Last time I heard, you were trying to hook up with a couple of swingers.”
“This guy is single.”
“Okay, but is that what he’s telling you or is that something you know personally because you verified it with your own two eyes?”
I sighed heavily.
There was no way to actually know Blake wasn’t with someone, sure, but I found it hard to believe that man had the time to entertain anyone with how much running around he did as the director.
And that wasn’t at all including getting involved with being my partner for the first few days I’d been here.
Two separate staff members had corroborated as much, anyway.
“That’s not that point.” I hated how defensive I was getting over this subject.
Silas was right—I had no reason to be this bent out of shape about a man who had made it clear last night we were keeping all of this on the down low.
Why in the world I expected to wake up to him cuddled against me like we’d been exclusive for weeks was beyond me, and so far off from how I usually went about my hookups.
Getting ditched made it easier for both of us. We wouldn’t have to do that awkward song and dance as I quietly led him out of my cabin while making sure no one spotted us as I bid him a farewell before going back to pretending like none of it ever happened in the first place.
Yet, the more I paced around the living room, the more agitated I got.
Why didn’t he say anything?
Why not wake me up before going and telling me it was a good run but he had to get home?
Did he honestly think I was the type to cling and therefore had to make his grand escape before I roped him into something?
“Then what is?” Silas asked.
I really didn’t know. That pang of something still lingered in my chest regardless of how hard I was trying to stamp it down.
“You know, this is the part of the conversation when you tell me ‘there there, everything will work out’ and then give me some sort of pep talk about how there’s more fish in the sea. ”
“Are you hearing yourself right now? Since when do you need a pep talk to get over a one-night stand? Marlow, you’ve been there for five days. How fucking deep did you fall for this guy after sticking your dick in him?”
My face flushed hot instantly. “I haven’t.”