Chapter 23
23
Preston—A Few Minutes Earlier
N ext door, the shower stops and everything falls silent. She’s probably gotten into bed.
Does she sleep in pajamas? Repurposed casual clothes?
Nothing?
Does she lie on her stomach, her back, or her side?
Is she under the covers?
Where are her hands?
No.
I won’t. I won’t picture her.
And then I hear it. Barely. Only because I’m straining.
The thin, high-pitched hum of a vibrator.
I mean, it could be something else. Some kind of exotic white-noise machine. Her electric toothbrush.
If I hadn’t heard it earlier this week, buzzing against Natalie’s fingers. If the exact pitch weren’t written on my brain.
Oh, God .
It’s like an electrical charge. It races through my nerve endings and floods my bloodstream, and my cock swells. Like she’s one end of an electrode and the other is pulsing through my body.
I need my earbuds.
I dig in my suitcase, but they’re not in there. Nor are they in any drawer I search. They’re not on my nightstand or the desk, and it doesn’t look like they’ve fallen behind anything. Where the hell are they?
And then, suddenly, the sound next door changes. It’s not a high, tight hum, it’s a deep purr.
I know that sound. It’s so precise, it’s like a signature. It’s the Hitachi Magic Wand, one of those back massagers that doubles as—what do they call them? Intimacy aids. It has a big fat round head you can tuck between your legs, and the vibrations are strong. My ex-wife used to say it was the best orgasm on Earth for lazy people. Twenty seconds and you’re done. A minute on a bad day.
But maybe Natalie’s using it as a back massager.
And then I hear her moan.
Even if she’s using it as a back massager, I can’t listen. I’m so hard it hurts. My body is crying out for relief I don’t want to give it.
I’m desperate now, pawing through my stuff for where I might have missed my earbuds, until I remember:
I last saw them on Friday. I set them down with my stuff when I was talking to Hanna in her office. And…I left them there.
I could turn on the TV. Or some music on my computer. But in order to drown her out, I’d have to turn the volume way up, and she’d hear.
She’d know. She’d know I was trying to drown her out.
I could get into the shower. I wouldn’t be able to hear her in there.
I definitely can’t sit here, listening for the buzz of her vibrator or the barely audible pitch of her moans, which my body tunes to like its favorite radio station. I’ll go nuts.
I head for the bathroom and start the shower. Cold.
Maybe I can blame the heat of the hot springs for the loss of control. It steamed my brain. It muddled my thinking.
I step under the cold water and wait for sanity to return.
But I’m still thinking about her. About her moan when she opened to me. About the silk of her tongue against mine, the eager way she kissed. Kali never kissed me like that, like she couldn’t get enough, like I was nourishment she couldn’t live without. Not even in the beginning, and definitely not at the end.
And then there was the feel of Natalie’s body against mine.
She’s as strong and as soft as she looks. The flare of her waist and the sweet roundness of her tits feel as good as my unruly fantasies told me they would.
I want to bury myself in her.
The cold water isn’t helping. Not in the slightest. It’s only making me horny and miserable, my tight muscles starting to lock up again. With a groan, I yank the temp control into the red zone and groan again with relief when the hot water surges over me.
I reach for the conditioner and pour some into my palm. It’s the hotel’s conditioner, which means it’s what her hair smelled like when I kissed her in the hot springs. It floods my senses, tropical and florid.
I fist my cock, pretending it’s her hand wrapped around me.
Her fingers would be smaller. Softer. Smoother. More uncertain.
She’d dip her head to lick away the pre-cum that’s already beading at my tip. Swirl her tongue around.
Drop to her knees. Take me into her mouth.
That tongue, the one that was so eager and needy as we kissed, it would be equally greedy and impatient as she worked my cock. She’d tease the sensitive spot where my thumb currently pauses. She’d lick up around the head, over the softest, smoothest skin. She’d suck hard there?—
I lean against the shower wall, head back, struggling to keep the steady rhythm my body’s demanding. My cock swells and jerks under her imagined touch, until need surges up from my balls, flaring through my spine and gut, spilling out of me, coating my hand and abs.
That’s it, I think with relief. She’s out of my system. From now on, I can keep my distance and focus on getting this job done.
But a few minutes later, when I’ve finished my shower and dried off, when I cover my head with my pillow to make sure I don’t hear the slightest sound coming from her room—I know.
Biggest lie ever.