The mattress dipped deep beneath her knees.
Wes lay back against the tangled silk pillows with his lungs refusing to pull in a full breath.
His suit jacket was gone, his tie was discarded on the carpet, and the collar of his dress shirt was ripped wide open.
The amber lamp on the nightstand threw a warm, flickering glow across the ceiling, but down on the bed, everything felt dark, heavy, and dizzying.
Colleen climbed over him with her dark hair falling across her face in messy waves.
Her black lace robe was untied, hanging loosely off her shoulders, exposing the pale skin of her neck and chest.
She was not crying anymore.
Her eyes were wide, glassy from the champagne, and burning with a frantic intensity that made Wes’s stomach drop straight to the floor.
“Are you… are you okay?” Wes managed to rasp out, his voice sounding thin, shaky, and completely pathetic.
Colleen looked down at him and let out a dry, breathy laugh that was closer to a gasp than humor.
“I did not come to this hotel to be okay, Wes,” she whispered, her voice rough and cracked around the edges.
She brought her knees forward, sitting on his thighs and pressing her weight down into the mattress until he could feel the heat radiating off her skin.
“I spent eight years being okay. I cooked breakfast, I washed Walt’s filthy work clothes, I smiled at his stupid friends, and I apologized every time he screamed at the walls. I am sick to death of being okay. I came here to feel something. Anything at all.”
She leaned down so fast he did not even have time to blink.
GASP!
Her mouth crashed against his in a desperate, bruising kiss.
It was not gentle neither was it polite.
She kissed him with a ravenous, messy hunger, her lips wet and tasting of bitter champagne and sweet cherries.
Her tongue pushed past his teeth with an aggressive urgency that completely knocked the air out of him.
Wes went rigid as a stone board, his hands hovering uselessly above the sheets.
He was twenty years old, completely inexperienced, and terrifyingly aware that the woman pressing him into the mattress had made him lunch before his high school exams.
“Well, well,” Colleen murmured against his lips, pulling back just half an inch.
“Look at you. Hard as a wooden board.”
Her hand slid down his chest, her fingernails digging lightly through the thin cotton of his shirt until her palm flattened firmly against his stomach.
“Colleen, wait,” Wes stammered, his pulse hammering in his throat.
“I don’t know… I don’t know what I am doing here. I’m not some professional from an agency. I’m just Wes.”
“Shh,” Colleen hissed softly, leaning down to press her forehead against his chin.
“Stop thinking. Just stop that stupid, noisy brain of yours for five minutes and feel. Look at me. Look at my face.”
Wes forced his eyes open.
Colleen was staring directly down at him, her lips parted and swollen from the kiss.
Her cheeks were flushed bright pink, and her eyes held an unhinged, wild relief, like a prisoner who had just kicked open the cell door after a decade in solitary confinement.
“This is real,” Colleen whispered, her voice trembling with raw conviction.
“This is not a play. This is not some silly script from your drama club where you pretend to be a prince. This is real life, Wes. You and me in this room.”
PING!
On the nightstand, the sleek slate-gray phone lit up with a quiet digital chime.
[The Ledger: Client Heart Rate Spike Confirmed]
[Session Timer: 22:15 Remaining]
[Directive: Fulfill Client Priority]
Wes’s eyes darted toward the screen, but Colleen did not even turn her head.
She did not care about the Company.
She did not care about the timer.
She reached down, took Wes’s left wrist in a surprisingly tight grip, and dragged his hand straight to her waist, forcing his open palm against the soft, bare curve of her hip.
“Touch me,” Colleen commanded.
Her voice had dropped into a low, smoky rasp that brooked no argument.
“You have hands. Use them.”
Wes swallowed hard.
The moment his fingers tightened slightly on her buttocks, Colleen let out a sharp moan.
“Ah!” she gasped, arching her back as if he had burned her.
She leaned down again, burying her face into the crook of his neck, and bit down on it above his shoulder.
“This is what I should have done years ago,” Colleen murmured against his throat, her lips dragging hot tracks across his skin.
“What your uncle was too damn bitter, too damn proud, and too damn broken to ever give me. He looked right through me for eight years, Wes. But you are looking at me right now, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Wes choked out, his chest rising and falling hard against hers.
“I’m looking at you.”
“Good boy,” Colleen whispered.
The words slammed into Wes’s chest like a physical blow.
It was not the gentle praise she gave him when he carried the groceries.
It was raw, heavy ownership.
She was claiming him, piece by piece, right there on the white sheets of Room 714.
“You really don’t know what to do, do you?” Colleen asked, shifting her weight as she pulled herself higher, straddling his waist with total, unyielding control.
A wicked, crooked smile spread across her face, completely transforming her from the tired housewife into a woman drunk on newfound power.
“The big, confident boy who thought he was going to save the day for twelve hundred dollars. You are just a frightened amateur.”
“I am not frightened,” Wes said, his jaw tightening as his pride flared up.
“Then prove it,” Colleen whispered, her voice dropping to a teasing, dangerous purr.
She reached down and gripped his collar, pulling his face up toward hers until their lips were brushing with every breath.
“Stop lying there like a piece of wood. Show me what you’ve got, nephew. Or are you only good at talking on a wooden stage?”
That was the spark that broke the dam.
Wes stopped hesitating.
The nervous, broke orphan who had spent the last ten years tiptoeing around Walt Grimes’s kitchen vanished under a wave of pure, unfiltered adrenaline.
He grabbed both of Colleen’s buttocks with his hands, his fingers digging into her soft curves with real, demanding force, and flipped their positions in one sudden, breathless heave.
Colleen gasped in shock as her back hit the mattress, her dark hair spreading across the white pillows.
Her eyes widened, a sudden flicker of surprise crossing her face, but before she could speak, Wes leaned down and crushed his mouth against hers.
He did not hold back.
He met her hunger with his own, matching her frantic rhythm, kissing her deep until she let out a broken, muffled whimper against his lips.
His hands moved with a sudden, natural confidence he had never known he possessed.
He ran his palms along her boobs, over the silk of her robe, pushing the fabric aside until nothing stood between them.
Every time he squeezed her boobs, Colleen moan louder and arch, her nails digging hard into the muscles of his upper back.
“Yes,” Colleen cried out, turning her head into the pillow as her breath came in desperate gasps.
“Right there. Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop, Wes!”
The quiet, timid woman was completely gone, replaced by an insatiable hunger that demanded every single second of his attention.
She grabbed his wrists, guiding his hands, showing him exactly what she wanted with a shameless, frantic urgency that left Wes completely breathless.
He followed her lead, learning the rhythm of her gasps, the way her body tightened when he kissed the side of her throat, and the desperate, pleading sounds that spilled from her lips every time he moved.
“Good boy,” Colleen sobbed into the quiet room, her hands tangling desperately into his dark hair, pulling him down harder.
“Such a good boy… don’t let me go!”
Her hips jerked upward, her whole body locking rigid beneath his weight as a violent, shuddering wave crashed through her frame.
She screamed into the pillow, her heels digging into the mattress as the climax tore through her, leaving her gasping, trembling, and completely spent in the amber shadows.
Wes collapsed beside her onto the tangled sheets, his chest heaving, sweat dripping from his forehead onto the cool silk.
The room went dead silent except for the harsh, synchronized sound of their ragged breathing.
Colleen turned her head slowly, looking at him with wide, dazed eyes, a small, victorious smile curving her swollen lips.
CLICK.
The bedside digital clock flipped to 11:45 PM, the quiet mechanism cutting through the silence like a dropped coin.