24. Cass
CASS
By half past midnight, Raymond still isn’t back.
I’ve been picking at the rest of the room service chicken with my fingers like a raccoon.
It came with a hot sauce to dip in and now, my mouth is on fire, and nothing in this world sounds more satisfying than a glass of ice water.
Unfortunately, the ice bucket on the bar cart has melted into a sad little puddle of regret.
Ergo, it’s time for a field trip to the ice machine.
I shrug on the cream cashmere robe that came with the suite, knot it around my waist, and slide my feet into the matching embroidered slippers. I look in the mirror over the dresser and wince.
Oh, so that’s what I look like after seeking revenge for four years straight while constantly wallowing in heartbreaking memories. I’m not exactly a L’Oréal commercial at the moment.
My hair is in a messy bun with two wispy, ratty pieces falling out of it, and there’s a row of parallel pink creases on my cheek from where I leaned on the heel of my hand while watching the fire. I’ve undone years of my aesthetician’s finest work.
In this oversized robe, I look like I stole clothing from the Jolly Green Giant’s closet. To top it all off, I have matching dots of sauce on the upper part of either boob. Yellow mustard on the left, red ketchup on the right. How perfectly lovely.
Where’s Mr. DeMille? I’m ready for my close-up.
I consider running a brush through my hair, then decide against it. It’s an ice machine, not the Met Gala. The hallway will be empty at this hour, and if anyone’s up, they’ll be in their own version of bathrobe-and-room-service despair.
I grab the ice bucket and slip out the door.
Lucky for me, the hallway is indeed empty.
It’s a shame this place will always hold gruesome memories for me, because it’s really quite nice, if a bit old money for my taste.
The wallpaper is hunter green with little gold pheasants on it, and the carpet is plush enough to swallow my bare feet up to the ankle.
Tinkling piano music emanates from somewhere unseen.
Each door is marked with a knocker in the shape of a different animal. The Honeymoon Suite that I just emerged from has a sneering ram. Next door is a sleek wolf with its fangs bared.
A little brass plaque on the wall reads ICE the mustard and ketchup stains are safe where they are.
It’s the dried tear on my cheek.
“You’ve been crying,” he observes as he brushes it away.
“Says who?”
He merely looks at me and waits for a better answer.
“It was a dignified cry,” I insist. “Well-deserved.”
“Having second thoughts?” he asks.
“ Fuck no,” I declare. “Not even a little bit. Not even first thoughts.”
He nods, pleased. “Nothing sexier than a determined woman.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I tease back as my eyes sweep up and down. “I could think of one or two things.”
He smiles, just enough to reignite all the little fires cascading through my body. It hasn’t been lost on me that this room is the size of a coat closet. Every time I shift, I’m a half-step closer to him.
Matvei’s eyes flick to the door as if he can see through it, then back to me. “Is he still out?”
I nod in confirmation. “Squash, then drinks, then ‘partners only; could go late; don’t wait up.” After all these years in his close orbit, my Raymond impression has gotten pretty good.
“He’s been on his phone all day. Since the second we left Manhattan, basically.
He texts, sets it down, picks it up, types, stares at it, texts, sets it down.
Rinse and repeat, with a side dish of glaring at me whenever I so much as sneeze.
He’s keyed up like I haven’t seen him in months. ”
Matvei frowns. “Define keyed up.”
I can only shrug one shoulder. “I just know it when I see it. All the telltale signs are there. Vein on his forehead, white knuckles, monosyllables. He was on the phone in the bathroom for fifteen minutes when we got here. Came out the color of steak tartare.”
“He say who he was talking to?”
“El-oh-el. As if he’d ever confide in me.” I hesitate, then add, “I think it’s the thing. The shady thing. The thing -thing.”
He nods, simple as that.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that he already knew. I sometimes forget that Matvei has a whole other life I’m not party to. Secret folders and burner phones and broken noses in back alleys.
“Has something happened?” I ask.
“Nothing you need to worry about tonight.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is. Just not the one you want.”
I press my lips together. “I missed you.”
It comes out before I can do anything about it, soft but definitely audible and embarrassingly sincere. Instantly, I feel my face go hot.
He stops what he was doing and turns to face me fully. “Have you now?”
I let my face drop, but it’s too late to take back now. “Yeah, unfortunately, I have. Very stupidly. Like a lovesick girl in a bad movie. And I’m sorry for that; I know we have a plan and this has nothing to do with that, but?—”
He hooks two fingers under my chin and tips my face up to him and kisses me, just once, soft. The cold of the room and the heat of his mouth do the same trick they did in the stone passage. I feel the floor remember to hold me up.
“I missed you, too,” he murmurs against my mouth. “Every hour. Don’t be sorry.”
I exhale a laugh that almost turns into something worse. “That’s really, really good to know.”
He keeps his fingers under my jaw, but he doesn’t kiss me again. He just looks at me and looks at me and looks some more, and finally tilts my head to the side the smallest amount and presses his lips to the spot under my ear.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Tired. Nauseous in the mornings. My boobs hate me.”
“And the rest of you?”
“Is lonely,” I admit. “Coiled up. Like if I don’t shake some of it loose, I’m gonna scream into a pillow.”
“Hm.” His thumb drags a slow line down the side of my neck. “We could do something about that.”
“Here?!”
He pretends to sweep a glance around the room and shrugs. “Plenty of room.”
“Room for what?”
He smiles. It’s small and crooked, meant for no one but me, and the mere fact of that smile sets me on fire all over again.
“For me to take the edge off,” he says. “Quietly, though. Can you handle that?”
I lean my forehead against his collarbone. “We’d have to be fast.”
“I can do that.”
His hand slides off my neck and down inside the lapel of the robe, slow, asking.
I don’t say no. As a matter of fact, I don’t say anything.
I just scoot a little closer until his palm is flat against the base of my throat, and then he’s walking me backward until my shoulder blades meet the cold tile next to the vending machine.
The robe falls open at the hip. Underneath, there’s only me. Nothing else between us.
“Look at you,” he murmurs. “So fucking beautiful, it hurts me . ”
“Don’t tease me. I’ll start crying again.”
“I’m not teasing,” he scolds. “I’m admiring.”
“Well, do it faster. Can’t you see I’m dying here?”
His hand slips between my thighs. He’s careful with me, the way he’s been careful with me since the park—no, since the hospital—no, since the alley where we first met. Careful, like I’m something he can’t afford to break. Even though I see how bad he wants to do just that: break me.
Two fingers, exploratory, finding their way. I am embarrassingly ready for him. He hums low in his throat when he discovers that. “Already?”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not complaining.”
He kisses the corner of my mouth, then the hinge of my jaw, then the place behind my ear that turns me limp and useless, like an off button that he himself installed. His thumb finds where I need it, his fingers crook just so, and I bite down on the side of his shoulder to keep the noise in.
Quietly, like he wanted.
I’m burning up, half-wondering if there’s smoke and steam spiraling out of my ears, but my pulse is so loud I’m not sure I’d hear a fire alarm if one were to go off.
His hand floats away and my hips chase it without permission. I have one fist in the front of his shirt and the other braced against the cool side of the vending machine. “Matvei…”
“Shh,” he murmurs. “Shh, shh. Almost. Don’t make me gag you in a hotel hallway.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
He huffs a laugh against my temple. “Behave.”
“Make me.”
“There are many things I want to make you do, Mrs. Snyder. ‘Behave’ is not one of them.”
“Oh?” I say breathily. “What were you thinking?”
That cold, dark, beautiful grin ripples across his lips. “I was thinking I’d much rather make you cum.”
Without warning, he spins me around so fast my slippers nearly come off. The flat of his palm plants itself between my shoulder blades and walks me forward until my cheek meets the cold steel face of the ice machine. I gasp at the shock of it.
The cashmere robe slides off one shoulder, and now, it’s frigid metal kissing my breast, my nipple drawing up tight enough to ache.
Then both his hands are on me. One slips around my hip from the front, two fingers sinking back inside me where they were before, picking up exactly where he left off.
The other slides between the machine and my belly, his thumb finding that spot from underneath.
The contrast splits me in two. Cold steel against my front, the furnace of him at my back, his fingers working me in stereo until my knees go liquid and a high, thin whimper builds in my throat, climbing, climbing, almost?—
The door opens.
A whoosh of warmer hallway air.
The smell of expensive perfume.
The click of a heel on tile.
I look up to see Susan Oglethorpe is standing in the doorway with an empty silver ice bucket of her own dangling from one manicured hand.
Oh, shit.