Chapter 2: The Hotel Room Kneel
The bathroom was cold.
Brandon stood in front of the mirror, staring at a version of himself he barely recognized. Water dripped from the faucet in slow, measured beats. The nightlight above the sink cast everything in pale yellow shadows. Behind him, through the cracked door, Gabby slept on. Her breathing was soft, rhythmic, undisturbed.
He should have stayed in bed.
He should have closed his eyes and counted backward from a hundred until the wanting ate itself alive. But the wanting didn't eat itself. It fed. It grew teeth and claws and a voice that sounded exactly like hers.
His phone was in his hand before he'd made the conscious decision to pick it up. The screen glowed. Her messages sat there like open wounds.
Goodnight, Brandon. Dream about me.
I can't stop.
I know.
His pulse hammered against his throat. The bathroom tile was freezing under his bare feet, but he barely felt it. All he felt was the heat climbing up his spine, pooling low in his gut, turning his thoughts into something primal and stupid.
He looked at himself in the mirror again. Boxers. T-shirt. Hair still damp from the shower. He looked like a husband. Like a man who had everything under control.
He pulled down his boxers.
His cock was already hard, thick and heavy against his thigh, the head slick with the evidence of everything he'd been trying not to feel for the past six hours. It was almost embarrassing how badly he wanted her. How badly he'd always wanted her.
He didn't think. He just acted.
The camera app opened with a soft click. He angled the phone, framed the shot, and pressed the button. The flash didn't go off—thank God—but the image appeared on the screen, stark and undeniable. His hand wrapped around the base. His cock jutting forward, veins visible, the tip glistening.
He stared at it for a moment. At the proof of his betrayal.
Then he sent it.
Your fault.
The message delivered. Read. The three dots appeared almost instantly.
He waited.
His heart was a fist slamming against his ribs. The faucet dripped. Gabby shifted in her sleep, and he froze, listening, until her breathing evened out again.
The response came.
Room 917. Door's unlocked.
No hesitation. No second-guessing. Just an address and an invitation and the complete annihilation of everything he'd pretended to be.
He pulled up his boxers. Washed his hands. Stared at his reflection one more time, looking for the man who would walk out that door and leave his wife sleeping alone while he fucked another man's fiancée.
He didn't find him. He didn't find anyone at all.
Just a body moving on autopilot. Just hands grabbing keys. Just feet carrying him through the dark house and out into the night.
The hotel was fifteen minutes away.
He made it in nine.
The elevator ride was eternal. Every floor dinged with agonizing slowness. He stood alone in the mirrored box, watching the numbers climb, watching his own reflection stare back with hollow eyes. The suit he'd thrown on covered the evidence—no one would know he was the kind of man who did this. No one would ever guess.
The doors opened on the ninth floor.
The hallway was quiet. Carpeted. The kind of silence that swallowed footsteps and secrets alike. He walked past closed doors, past room service trays, past a housekeeping cart with folded towels and tiny bottles of shampoo. Normal things. Mundane things. Things that belonged to a world where men didn't destroy their lives for one more taste of something they couldn't have.
Room 917.
He stopped in front of it. Raised his hand. Let it hover over the wood.
The door was unlocked. She'd said so. He could just push. Just walk in. Just let it happen.
Instead, he knocked.
Two soft raps. The sound echoed in the empty hallway, and he felt stupid immediately. What was he expecting? For her to open the door and welcome him in like a guest? For her to pretend this was normal?
The knob turned.
The door swung open.
Raquel stood in the doorway, and the world stopped.
She was wearing a silk robe—deep burgundy, the color of wine, the color of blood. It hung loose on her shoulders, clinging to the curves of her body like it had been painted on. Her hair was down, spilling over her collarbones in dark waves. Her feet were bare. Her lips were parted.
She didn't speak. Just stepped back, holding the door open, and waited.
He walked in.
The room was a mirror of the one from that afternoon—same layout, same golden light, same faint perfume of jasmine and vanilla. But the details were different. The bed was turned down. The curtains were drawn. A half-empty bottle of champagne sat on the vanity, condensation dripping onto the marble surface. The air was thick with heat and the unspoken promise of what was about to happen.
The door clicked shut behind him.
He turned to face her.
She was already looking at him. Already seeing through him. Already knowing exactly why he was there.
"You came," she said.
"You knew I would."
She smiled. Small. Real. "I hoped."
The robe slipped.
It happened in slow motion—the fabric sliding over her shoulders, pooling at her elbows, catching on her hips for one agonizing second before falling away completely. She stood there in nothing but a scrap of black lace, her body illuminated by the flickering neon from the window. The city lights painted her in shades of blue and red and gold.
His throat closed.
"Brandon."
It wasn't a question. Wasn't a command. Just his name, soft and certain, spoken like a prayer she'd been repeating for years.
He crossed the room in three steps.
His hands found her waist. Her skin was warm, feverish, and she inhaled sharply when he touched her, like she'd been holding her breath since the second he opened the door. He pulled her against him, and the lace of her bra scraped against his chest through his shirt. She arched into him. Her fingers curled around the back of his neck. Her lips found his jaw, his throat, the hollow beneath his ear.
"Fuck," he breathed.
She laughed—low and breathless. "That's the plan."
He kissed her.
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't tender. It was teeth and tongue and five years of wanting compressed into a single, brutal moment. She moaned against his mouth, and the sound went straight to his cock, already straining against his pants. He walked her backward until her knees hit the edge of the bed, and she fell onto the mattress with a soft gasp.
He followed.
His shirt came off first—her hands grabbing the fabric, yanking it over his head. Then his belt, her fingers working the buckle with practiced efficiency. She had his pants open, had her hand around him through his boxers, was stroking him with slow, deliberate pressure that made his vision blur at the edges.
"You have no idea," she whispered, "how many times I've imagined this."
"Tell me."
She pushed his boxers down. Her fingers wrapped around his cock, bare skin on bare skin, and he groaned. Loud. Too loud. He didn't care.
"I imagined you in my mouth," she said, stroking him slowly. "That first night I met you. At Zane's birthday. I went home and touched myself thinking about your hands."
"You were with Zane."
"I know." She squeezed. He gasped. "I didn't care then. I don't care now."
She released him.
He watched, breath held, as she slid off the bed and sank to her knees.
The carpet offered no cushion, but she didn't seem to notice. She knelt there like she belonged there, like this was exactly where she'd been meant to be all along. Her hands came up to his thighs, nails raking lightly over the fabric of his pants. She looked up at him—those eyes, God, those eyes—and licked her lips.
"Watch me," she said.
He couldn't have looked away if he wanted to.
She leaned forward and took him in her mouth.
The warmth hit him first—wet and tight and so much better than he'd imagined. Then the suction, a slow pull that made his knees buckle and his hand fly to the back of her head. She took him deeper, inch by inch, her tongue flat against the underside of his cock, working the sensitive spot just beneath the head.
"Jesus," he breathed.
Her eyes flicked up to his face. She smiled around his cock—or tried to. The expression was lewd, obscene, and he felt himself twitch against her tongue.
She pulled back. A string of saliva connected them for a moment before breaking. "You like that?"
"Yeah."
"Tell me."
"I like it." His voice was wrecked. "Fuck, Raquel, I—"
She took him again, deeper this time, until he felt his head hit the back of her throat. He gasped. His fingers tangled in her hair, and she hummed in response—a low, satisfied vibration that made his hips jerk forward. She took that, too. Every inch. Every thrust.
He let her work him. Minutes passed—or hours, or seconds, time had stopped meaning anything. All he knew was the wet heat of her mouth, the scrape of her teeth, the way she looked up at him with mascara smudged under her eyes and hair tangled around his fist.
He was close. Too close. The pressure built at the base of his spine like a gathering storm.
"Raquel." Warning. Prayer. "I'm gonna—"
She pulled off. Her hand took over, stroking him fast and rough while she caught her breath. "Not yet."
"Fuck—"
"You're not coming in my mouth." She stood, and the movement made the world tilt. Her lips were swollen, her chin wet, her eyes wild. "Not the first time."
She stepped out of the lace underwear—the only thing she had left—and the scrap of black landed on the floor. Then she pushed him backward, and he fell onto the bed, sprawled against the champagne-stained sheets.
She climbed on top of him.
Her thighs straddled his hips. Her body arched over his, the tips of her breasts brushing his chest. He could feel the heat of her, the slickness of her, hovering just above his cock.
"You want me?" she asked.
"God, yes."
"Tell me."
"I want you." The words tumbled out, desperate and broken. "I've always wanted you. Since the first time I saw you. Every time Zane brought you around, I—"
"Shh." She pressed a finger to his lips. "I know. I know."
She lowered herself onto him.
The first inch was bliss. The second was torture. She was so tight, so wet, so impossibly warm that he had to dig his nails into the sheets to keep from coming right there like a teenager. She sank down slowly, her eyes fluttering, her breath coming in shallow gasps.
"Fuck," she whispered. "Fuck, you're—"
"Yeah?"
"Bigger than I thought."
She laughed. He laughed. The sound was absurd and beautiful and he knew, in that moment, that he would never recover from this. There was no going back. No pretending. The thing was broken, and it was broken forever.
Then she started to move.
Slow at first—a gentle rock of her hips, a steady rhythm that worked him deeper, deeper, deeper. Her hands planted themselves on his chest, and she looked down at him with the kind of expression that made men do stupid things. Wars were started over less.
"You feel that?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"That's your cock inside me. That's me." She ground down, and he groaned. "You think Zane would approve?"
"Don't—"
"You think Gabby would approve?"
"Raquel—"
"She's home sleeping, right?" Raquel rode him faster, harder, her tits bouncing with the motion. "And you're here. Inside me. Fucking me."
He grabbed her hips and flipped her over.
The movement was rough, and she gasped when her back hit the mattress. He was on top of her now, still buried inside her, and he pulled out just long enough to thrust back in—hard. Full. Deep.
"Shut up," he growled.
She laughed. The sound broke into a moan when he did it again. And again. And again.
He fucked her like he hated her. Like he loved her. Like she was the only thing in the world that mattered and he was trying to destroy her before she could do the same to him. The headboard slammed against the wall. The champagne bottle rattled on the vanity. Sweat beaded on his forehead and dripped onto her chest.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him closer.
"Harder," she said.
He obliged.
The rhythm became brutal—a punishing pace that made her scream into the pillow, made her nails rake down his back, made the whole goddamn city disappear behind the sound of skin slapping against skin. Every thrust was an accusation. Every moan was a confession. Every second was a nail in the coffin of everything he'd ever believed about himself.
"I'm gonna come," she gasped.
"Not yet."
"Brandon, please—"
He reached between them and found her clit with his thumb. She jerked like she'd been electrocuted. He rubbed circles, fast and rough, and felt her tighten around him—walls fluttering, breath catching, mouth open in a soundless scream.
"That's it," he said. "Come on my cock. Show me what I've been missing."
She came.
It was violent—a full-body convulsion that arched her off the mattress and clenched hard around him. Her eyes rolled back. Her mouth hung open. Names spilled from her lips—none of them his, none of them Zane's. Just sounds. Just pieces of broken language that didn't mean anything and everything all at once.
He fucked her through it.
And when she finally collapsed, boneless and trembling, he pulled out.
The sight of his cock, slick with her, inches from her open mouth, was too much. He stroked himself once, twice, three times—
"Come on me," she said.
That was all it took.
He came with a groan that seemed to shake the walls. Rope after rope of it, hot and thick, splashing across her stomach, her tits, the hollow of her throat. She watched him do it, watched him mark her, and something in her expression shifted. Something soft. Something satisfied.
He collapsed beside her.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The city pulsed beyond the window. The champagne bottle had stopped rattling. The only sound was their breathing—ragged, syncing, slowly returning to something resembling normal.
She turned her head to look at him.
"That," she said, "was worth waiting for."
He stared at the ceiling. "We're going to hell."
"Probably." She reached over and traced a finger through the mess on her stomach. "But not tonight."
He should have left. Should have showered, dressed, gone home. But when she rolled toward him and pressed her lips to his shoulder, when she curled into his side like she belonged there, he let himself stay.
Ten minutes. Just ten more minutes.
He closed his eyes.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a clock ticked. The wedding was getting closer. The lies were piling higher. And the clock on the nightstand—just past midnight—reminded him that he was already too late.
For all of it.
She was asleep within minutes, her breathing slow and even against his neck. He stared at the ceiling. The crack in the plaster, a thin, jagged line that ran from the crown molding down to the light fixture. He followed it with his eyes like a road map to nowhere.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand.
He didn't reach for it. Couldn't. The spell would break, and he'd have to face whatever waited on the other side of that screen. Gabby. Zane. The whole goddamn world.
It buzzed again.
Raquel stirred beside him but didn't wake. Just shift, a soft murmur. Her hand found his chest and stayed there, palm flat over the steady thud of his heart.
His phone buzzed a third time.
He reached for it.
Zane.
Yooo bro. She still not answering her phone. You hear from her? Getting kinda worried.
Another message, this time from Gabby.
You okay? You're not in bed. I checked.
His thumb hovered over the screen. There was no good answer. There was no answer at all that didn't involve lying. And he'd done enough of that for one night. Maybe for a lifetime.
He typed back to Gabby first.
Couldn't sleep. Went for a drive. Be home soon.
Then Zane.
She's probably just sleeping. Don't sweat it. I'll text you tomorrow.
He hit send on both and dropped the phone on the nightstand.
Beside him, Raquel stirred. She shifted, her hair spilling across his pillow, and opened her eyes just enough to find his. A slow smile stretched across her face.
"Come back," she whispered.
And he did.