12. Charlotte
— ? —
Charlotte
Sean dropped the parcel on the desk like it was my problem.
“Harbor Suite,” he said. “Guest requested hand delivery.”
I looked at the line forming behind the couple I was checking in. “I can’t leave the desk right now. I’ve got three people waiting.”
“Randy has the desk.” Sean was already walking away. “It’s a guest request, and guest requests are the job. Go.”
I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell him that sending me to Sutton’s room was the opposite of solving the problem he had warned me about. But arguing meant explaining, and explaining meant admitting things I wasn’t ready to say out loud.
So I picked up the parcel and went.
The elevator ride felt longer than it should have. I watched the numbers climb and told myself this was nothing. A delivery. Thirty seconds. Hand him the package, turn around, leave. I didn’t have to look at him. I didn’t have to talk to him. I just had to do my job.
The hallway was quiet. I stopped in front of his door and raised my hand to knock.
It opened before I made contact.
He was standing there in nothing but a towel.
The white cotton was knotted low at his hips, barely holding on, and water was still beading on his shoulders from the shower.
His hair was wet, pushed back from his face, droplets running down his temples and along his jaw.
I watched one slide down the column of his throat, over his collarbone, down the center of his chest where the muscle split into two hard planes.
It caught in the grooves of his stomach, following the lines of his abs, disappearing into the dark hair that trailed below his navel and vanished beneath the towel.
I had forgotten how good he looked. Or maybe I had forced myself to forget, because remembering hurt too much. But now it was all flooding back.
I used to trace those muscles with my tongue. I used to fall asleep with my head on that chest, listening to his heartbeat slow after he made me come so hard I couldn’t see straight.
It had been months since anyone touched me. Months of lying awake at night with my hand between my thighs, trying to remember what it felt like to be wanted, trying to recreate sensations that my own fingers could never match. I used to come so easily with him.
He knew exactly where to touch me, exactly how much pressure, exactly when to speed up and when to slow down. He could make me fall apart in minutes or drag it out for hours, and either way I would end up shaking and breathless and desperate for more.
I missed it. God, I missed it.
My thighs pressed together. I could feel myself getting wet just from standing here, just from looking at him, and I hated how easily my body betrayed me.
I bit my lip without meaning to.
His eyes dropped to my mouth and went dark.
“Fuck, Char.” His voice came out low and rough. “Don’t tempt me like that, baby.”
The heat rushed up my neck and into my cheeks before I could stop it. Baby. He used to whisper that word against my skin when he was buried inside me. He used to groan it into my ear when I clenched around him.
The sound of it now made my stomach flip and my pussy throb.
“I’m just delivering a package,” I said. My voice came out breathier than I intended.
“Then give it to me.”
He held out his hand. I extended the parcel toward him.
Our fingers touched as he took it.
He didn’t let go.
His grip shifted, his thumb sliding over my wrist, pressing gently against the spot where my pulse was hammering. He held me there, feeling my heartbeat race beneath his touch, and a slow smile spread across his face.
“Your heart’s pounding,” he said.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
His thumb stroked across my pulse point, back and forth, slow and deliberate. “Your body still responds to me. Even when you’re trying to pretend it doesn’t.”
“I’m not pretending anything,” I said. “I’m just here to do my job.”
“Then why haven’t you pulled your hand back?” He tugged me forward, just slightly, just enough that I had to take a step closer to keep my balance. “Why are you still standing here, letting me touch you?”
“Sutton.” I meant it as a warning.
“I’ve been trying to talk to you for a week,” he said. “You keep acting like I’m the enemy. Like I did something unforgivable.”
“You did,” I said.
“Then tell me what it was.” His grip tightened on my wrist. Not painful, just firm. Insistent. “Tell me what I did that was so terrible you had to disappear for six months. Tell me why you couldn’t just talk to me.”
“Are you serious right now?” The anger flared in my chest, hot and sharp. “Are you actually standing here asking me why I didn’t talk to you?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m asking. Because I’ve spent months trying to figure out what went wrong, and I still don’t understand.”
“I did tell you.” The words ripped out of me before I could stop them.
“I texted you, Sutton. Minutes before I had to walk down that aisle. I know we were divorced. I know I had no right. But you were still the only person I wanted, and I told you I couldn’t do it, I told you I was waiting for you, I begged you to come get me. And you never showed up.”
He went completely still.
The water was drying on his shoulders, going cold, and he didn’t seem to notice. His face had gone pale beneath the tan. His grip on my wrist had loosened, his fingers slack with shock.
“What are you talking about?”
“The morning of my wedding.” My voice cracked and I hated it. “I waited. I watched that door for an hour, waiting for you to walk through it. But you never came.”
“Charlotte.” His voice was barely a whisper. “I never got that message. I swear to you, I never got anything.”
“That’s impossible,” I said.
“I don’t know what you saw.” He shook his head, his eyes wide and bewildered. “But I never got a text from you. Not that morning, not any morning. If I had known you were waiting, if I had any idea you wanted me there, I would have come. I would have broken down the fucking door to get to you.”
“Then why didn’t you?” The tears were building behind my eyes and I couldn’t stop them. “Why did you let me sit there? Why did you let me wait?”
“Because I didn’t know.” His voice broke on the last word. “Charlotte, I didn’t know. I thought you had chosen him. I thought it was over.”
I stared at him. He stared back. Two people holding two truths that couldn’t both be real. Two people standing on opposite sides of a gap that neither of us knew how to cross.
And then I saw his eyes. The pain in them. The confusion. The desperate need to understand something that made no sense.
He couldn’t bear the hurt in my face. I could see it breaking him apart, watching me stand there with tears sliding down my cheeks.
And before I could say anything else, before I could push him away or run or do any of the things I should have done, he pulled me into the room and kissed me.
His mouth was desperate against mine. His hands cupped my face, tilting my head back, holding me in place while his tongue pushed past my lips. I should have stopped him. I should have shoved him away and walked out the door and never looked back.
But I didn’t.
I kissed him back.
I grabbed his shoulders and pulled him closer, my nails digging into his skin, my mouth opening wider to let him in. He groaned against my lips and I felt it vibrate through my whole body, felt it settle low in my belly where the heat was already building.
He was hard. I could feel him through the towel, pressing against my stomach. The knowledge of it made me dizzy. He was hard for me.
I couldn’t hold back anymore.
I deepened the kiss, my tongue sliding against his, tasting him, claiming him.
My hands moved from his shoulders down his chest, feeling the muscles flex beneath my palms, feeling the heat of his skin. He groaned again and his hands dropped from my face, sliding down my body, gripping my hips hard enough to bruise.
His fingers traced the inside of my thigh through my uniform pants and I gasped into his mouth. He swallowed the sound and did it again, his touch feather-light, teasing, making me squirm against him.
“Sutton,” I breathed. “Please.”
“I’ve got you.” His voice was rough, wrecked. “I’ve got you, baby.”
He lifted me like I weighed nothing. His hands gripped my thighs and hoisted me up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist instinctively, clinging to him.
He carried me two steps and set me down on the end table near the door, the wood hard and cool beneath my ass. He stepped between my spread legs and pulled them wider apart, making room for himself, and then his mouth was on mine again.
The kiss was rougher now. Hungrier. His teeth caught my bottom lip and tugged, and I moaned, the sound loud in the quiet room. His hands were at my shirt, fumbling with the buttons, and when they wouldn’t cooperate fast enough he grabbed the fabric and ripped.
Buttons scattered across the floor. Cool air hit my chest and I gasped, my nipples hardening instantly. He looked down at me, at my plain white bra, at the swell of my breasts above the cups, and his eyes went so dark they were almost black.
“Fuck,” he said. “Look at you.”
He yanked the cups down and my breasts spilled out, bare and aching. He didn’t hesitate. He lowered his head and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, and I cried out, my back arching off the wall behind me.
His tongue swirled around the stiff peak, licking and flicking, while his hand came up to cup my other breast.
He rolled the nipple between his fingers, pinching gently, then harder when I moaned.
“You taste so fucking good,” he said against my skin. He bit down on my nipple and I yelped, my hands flying to his hair. “I used to dream about this. About having you spread out for me, making these sounds, begging me for more.”
He switched to my other breast, giving it the same treatment. Sucking, licking, biting, until I was writhing on the table, my hips rolling forward, seeking friction that wasn’t there.
I was so wet I could feel it soaking through my underwear, slicking my thighs, making a mess of myself.
“Please,” I gasped. “Touch me. I need you to touch me.”
“Where?” His hand slid down my stomach, over the waistband of my pants, cupping me through the fabric. I bucked against his palm and he groaned. “Here? Is this where you need me?”
“Yes.” I was beyond shame, beyond pride. “Please, Sutton.”
He popped the button of my pants and dragged down the zipper. His hand slipped inside, past the waistband of my underwear, and then his fingers found me.
“Holy shit.” His voice was strangled. “You’re fucking drenched. I can feel you dripping onto my hand.”
I couldn’t respond. His fingers were sliding through my folds, spreading the wetness, coating themselves in it. He traced my entrance, circling it without pushing in, and I whimpered, my hips chasing his touch.
“So wet for me,” he said. “So fucking ready. How long has it been since someone touched you like this?”
“Since you. Only you.”
He groaned like the words physically hurt him. And then he pushed two fingers inside me.
I cried out, my walls clenching around him immediately. He was thick, his fingers long and calloused, and the stretch was exquisite. I could feel every ridge and bump as he sank into me, feel the way my pussy gripped him like it never wanted to let go.
“Tight,” he breathed. “So fucking tight. You’re squeezing my fingers so hard I can barely move them.”
He started to thrust, curling his fingers on the outstroke to drag against that spot inside me that made my vision blur.
The wet sounds of his fingers fucking me filled the room, and I should have been embarrassed but I wasn’t. I was too far gone to care about anything except the pleasure building in my core.
His thumb found my clit and pressed down, rubbing in tight circles, and I nearly screamed.
The sensation was too much, too intense after so long without being touched. I grabbed his shoulders and held on, my nails leaving half-moon marks in his skin.
“That’s it,” he said. “Let me hear you. I want to hear every sound you make.”
The towel had fallen at some point. I hadn’t noticed when. But now I looked down and saw him, fully naked, his cock jutting out from his body.
The head was shiny with precum, a strand of it connecting to his stomach, and he was so hard it looked painful. He wasn’t touching himself. His hands were both on me, one between my legs and one gripping my hip.
But his cock was twitching, pulsing, reacting to every sound I made.
“You’re so hard,” I breathed.
“I’m dying,” he said. “Watching you, feeling you, hearing those sounds. I’m going to come without even touching myself. That’s what you do to me.”
His fingers sped up, fucking me harder, faster, the wet slapping sounds getting louder. His thumb ground against my clit relentlessly, pushing me higher and higher.
“Give it to me.” His voice was ragged, desperate. “I want to feel you come on my fingers. I want to feel your pussy clamping down on me.”
He curled his fingers hard, hitting that spot deep inside me, and I shattered.
It went on and on, each squeeze of my pussy sending another spike of pleasure through my body.
And then I heard him groan.
I looked down and watched him come. His cock jerked, untouched, spurting thick ropes of cum onto the floor between us, onto my thighs, onto the table beneath me.
His whole body shuddered with it, his fingers still buried inside me. He came with my name on his lips, his face contorted with pleasure, his hips bucking into nothing.
We stayed like that, neither of us willing to move. His forehead dropped to my shoulder, his breathing ragged against my skin. His fingers were still inside me, softening now, feeling the last aftershocks of my orgasm. The room smelled like sex.
And then he lifted his head and looked at me with something soft in his eyes. He leaned in, his lips parting, going for the kind of kiss that meant something.
I put my hand on his chest and shoved him back.
“Don’t.” I was already sliding off the table, already pulling up my pants, already buttoning what remained of my ruined shirt. “Don’t do that.”
“Baby, please.” He reached for me.
“I said don’t.” I stepped back, out of his reach. “This was a mistake. This was a stupid, reckless mistake, and it doesn’t change anything.”
“How can you say that?” He was still naked, still half-hard, cum drying on his stomach. “After what just happened, how can you stand there and tell me it doesn’t change anything?”
“Because it doesn’t.” I was at the door, my hand on the handle. “I can’t let you touch me like that again. I can’t let you kiss me like you love me when I don’t know if you left me standing in that church on purpose.”
I walked out with my shirt gaping open and his cum cooling on my thighs.
I made it to the stairwell before my legs gave out. I sat down hard on the concrete steps and pressed my shaking hands to my face. My pussy was still throbbing, still clenching around nothing, still aching for more. I could smell him on my skin. I could feel the ghost of his fingers inside me.
But it wasn’t the sex that had me shaking.
It was the way he looked at me when I told him about the text.