by Holley Trent
O FOR TWO
Olivia Patterson is a rolling stone…or maybe a flying one. As a flight attendant, she lives in the air. She’s never put down roots, and liked it that way…until now. When she touches down on the ground, she wants there to be someone waiting for her. For now, she’d settle for a bit of no-strings-attached company. She accepts an invitation to The Hotel Beaudelaire’s exclusive Den of Sin expecting to have her kinks indulged, not her heart battered.
Clint Morstad and Ken Brook have been in a committed, monogamous relationship for eleven years and are a mostly perfect match. However, after a decade together both admit their relationship needs a feminine influence. They visit the Den to search for their perfect woman, and believe easy-going Olivia could be their ideal match.
As much as she adores them, Olivia doesn’t want to get attached to men she can’t keep. When she slips away before they can invite her home, Clint and Ken left with a dilemma. Should they give chase to the only woman they’ve wanted to share, or let her fly?
CHAPTER ONE
Olivia Patterson shifted her fine China plate to her left hand and reached across the decadent food spread for a pair of silver tongs. She fumbled with the heavy things, finding them hard to manipulate with her weak right hand. She’d had problems flexing her fingers for months, ever since that turbulent flight from Denver to Houston, when her fellow flight attendant had lost her grip on the metal food cart. It had slammed against Olivia’s wrist and smashed her hand between it and an armrest. Upon landing, her airline had begrudgingly paid for her cab ride to the emergency room and the ensuing medical bills. After three hours of waiting, she’d learned she’d broken her wrist badly enough to require insertion of metal pins and sprained a few fingers.
She returned from her six-week medical leave without the pins, but with a brace, only to endure childish jabs from her airline peers who’d heard about the in-flight disaster. They’d called her “pin cushion” and asked if she had a nice vacation at home with her pain meds. She’d finally gotten the medical okay to get rid of her brace, but her arm was still weak. The doctor said it could be more than a year before it was anything close to normal. Maybe it would help if she were home more often for therapy.
Ha.
Calling her little apartment “home” seemed like an exaggeration.
Back when she’d just started with the airline at age twenty-one, she’d liked that nothing kept her shackled to one particular place. Now, at twenty-eight, she wondered if her lifestyle was at all conducive to normalcy. She wanted normalcy. For some things in her life to be predictable…just not everything.
Because her bum wrist kept her sidelined from her old hobbies, she rarely got out. The few friends she had worked for the airline, and she only saw them when they happened to be working on the same flight.
Dating?
As if. She’d dated a pilot here and there and connected with the rare individual at the fetish clubs in various cities, but not a single one of those men was memorable.
That’s why she’d accepted the invitation to come to this place, The Hotel Beaudelaire, for its annual Bacchanal. It was a week of wine, sinfully decadent food, and relaxation, all leading up to the scandalous weekend of no-holds-barred debauchery.
She’d been cooped up in her room all week and knew it was her own damn fault. She could have tried harder to connect with someone, anyone, but she was afraid. She’d fallen out of practice with the art of simple flirtation, and her gracefulness had taken a real hit since the wrist injury.
“Damn it.” She dropped the tongs between the watercress salad and the steamed shrimp platter. She sighed and made a little space for her plate atop the crowded buffet table, conscious of the line forming behind her. Why couldn’t she have smashed her left hand instead?
Rough fingers brushed hers as she wedged her hand between the platter gaps to get the tongs. She looked up and drew in some air when she saw the tall man across the table from her.
She hadn’t been out of her room for anything but meals since Monday, but she’d noticed him. She’d been ogling him across crowded rooms and courtyards since she’d arrived but never seen him up close. He had to be six-two or three and looked strong, despite his preppy get-up. But this guy wasn’t preppy. Not with those ear gauges stretching his lobes and the ends of a colorful tattoo forming tendrils up his neck.
“Sweet Jesus,” she whispered.
His dark eyes twinkled, and he grinned as he picked up the tongs. “May I help? You’ve got small hands. Must be hard holding the heavy plate and these things at the same time,” he said in a sultry, Southern bass.
“Uhhh…” She swallowed and tried, but failed, to formulate a sensible statement in response. All she could do was nod and try not to stare at him while imagining the possibilities.
People came to the hotel’s Den of Sin events for one thing: to have their brains screwed out. That had been the selling point for her, anyway. She’d gotten her referral from a businesswoman who often flew on Olivia’s Houston-to-Atlanta run. They always chatted in the terminal after deplaning, and when Olivia complained about her social life after she’d had her cast taken off, Faye leaned in close and whispered, “This is a secret between you and me…”
At first, Olivia hadn’t bought it. A hotel that coordinated lustful weekends? It didn’t seem on the up-and-up to her, but the more she complained about how lonely she was, the more Faye kept urging her. When Olivia had some vacation time, she’d called the general manager, Ms. Gibson, who confirmed everything Faye had said and extended Olivia a formal invitation.
She’d sat on it a few days, wondering if the engagement would be worth her vacation time. It took yet another lonely Friday night in her sad apartment, sitting in her bummy clothes in front of the television eating cold lo mein, to make her take the leap.
A background check and some health screenings later, and here Olivia was at the Bacchanal event. Some of the early arrivals had already paired off and hadn’t been seen for days. They were probably in their rooms having a good time.
Well, maybe it was her turn. She hoped it was, because she was running out of time.
The man cleared his throat. He must have thought she’d had one too many sips of the all-you-can-drink wine.
“I’m sorry. Yes.” She nodded toward the platters, pleased as hell she’d managed to speak to the man without stammering.
Don’t get your hopes up. He’s probably already with someone.
“I was trying to get some prosciutto. I broke my wrist this winter, and I’m still rehabbing it.”
“Damn,” he said. “I can’t imagine not being able to work my wrists. I’m a mechanic.”
She drew her bottom lip between her teeth and fixed her gaze on those large hands of his.
Hmm. She’d let him twiddle her knobs any day.
“Hold out your plate and tell me when,” he said as he worked the tongs under the pile of cured meat. He layered slice after slice on her plate, and when she didn’t stop him, he pushed up one dark eyebrow at her.
Wow, he was really something to look at. He kind of reminded her of a pierced, probably kinky, Henry Cavill.
Nice.
“Keep going?” he asked.
“Mm-hmm. It’s my favorite.”
“I love a woman who eats.”
“I love you, too.” She clapped her left hand over her mouth and closed her eyes. What a fanfuckingtastic blunder that was. She shouldn’t have stayed up so damned late reading that novel she’d been toting around for six months. If she’d had more sleep, maybe she’d be able to converse like the semi-classy, intelligent woman she was.
Raised to be, anyway. She was a work in progress.
“Oh yeah? Will you love me even more if I offer to put some melon on your plate, or are you
a meat-only girl?”
She dropped her hand from her eyes to see him grinning at her again. Without the piercings, he might have almost been too pretty. He knew exactly what he was doing with all that metal. “I like meat,” she said lamely.
“So, you want all the meat?” He gestured to the piles of cold cuts on the table, and she waved to the folks in the long line to go around her.
“What are you having?” She hadn’t noticed before that he didn’t have a plate.
“I’ve got a pile of food over there and an entire bottle of wine.” He crooked his thumb toward the back corner of the courtyard, where several cast-iron tables were arranged. “I came up to get a napkin and stayed for the pretty lady.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“Did you mean to say that out loud?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Sorry. I’m running on a sleep deficit. Not that I ever have a good schedule. I’m a flight attendant, and I work a lot of overnight flights.”
Both of his eyebrows darted up. “Flight attendant?”
They eased down the line, and she pointed to some soft cheese.
He picked up the accompanying utensil and served her some.
“Yes.” She swirled a finger around her face and rolled her eyes. “Couldn’t you tell by my easy smile, assembly-line makeup job, and neat-as-a-pin hair?”
He set a few large wheat crackers on the edge of her plate without her asking. “Need some help messing it up?”
“What, my plate?”
“No.” He tucked a bunch of perfectly plump red grapes onto the edge of her now-crowded plate and leaned across the table. “Your hair,” he whispered and winked before straightening up. Then he grabbed a couple of cloth napkins and a clean wine glass from the end of the buffet. “This way,” he said, before he turned and strode toward his table. She stood there, flapping her jaw and clutching her lunch as if it were a security blanket.
Mess up her hair?
She hadn’t had so much as a hair out of place in months, given the tepid sexual encounters she’d been having, even at the clubs when she was flat on her back, and that was really saying something.
Fuck, yes, she wanted him to mess up her short-cropped hair. She wanted it standing up at all angles and maybe even curlier than when she’d started.
He had a chair pulled out for her by the time she joined him at the table.
She set her plate down and took the seat.
He spread the napkin in her lap and pushed in her chair.
A gentleman. What a nice change from her usual fare.
“What’s your name? If I don’t know your name, I’ll have to call you princess.” Still standing, he grabbed the wine bottle by the neck and worked the cork out.
Princess, she was not. Princesses shouldn’t like guys with big, rough hands and tattoos. She leaned sideways a bit and set her sight on his immaculate loafers. They didn’t even look broken in. Big feet.
Holy mother.
She calmed down and righted herself. “Olivia.”
“Olivia,” he repeated and poured a few fingers of white wine into the empty glass. He nudged it toward her before sitting behind the place setting to her right. His plate demonstrated a possession of superior organization skills in comparison to hers. It contained an actual sandwich and some fruit. “I’m Kenneth, but you can call me Ken.”
“Not Kenny?”
“I haven’t been Kenny since my braces came off at thirteen.” He grinned to reveal a wealth of straight, white teeth.
If she hadn’t been sitting, she might have swooned. “Aren’t you just perfect?”
He laughed and picked up half of his sandwich. “Are you always so unfiltered?”
“Only when I haven’t slept.”
“What would happen if you didn’t get a nap this afternoon?”
She shrugged and fidgeted with one of her crackers. “For me, it’d be worse than getting drunk. I’d probably go around kissing strangers or something.”
He shook his head and put the sandwich down without having taken a bite. “Can’t let that happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because you should be in my room tonight.”
“Wow. And you called me unfiltered.”
“Why waste time, right? Who needs niceties when we all know what we’re here for?”
He had a point, but still…
She crossed her arms. “At least give a girl the illusion of courtship.”
“Okay, if it’ll make you more comfortable, I’ll let you go ahead and walk to first base.” He pursed his lips and made a kissy-face.
She scoffed. “That’s gracious of you. I’m so flattered, I can’t stand it. You know, you could—”
He pressed his index finger over her lips and leaned in close. “Olivia, just kiss me. Don’t you want to?”
He smelled of some delectably heady cologne and fruit and wine… God, of course she wanted to kiss him to find out if those lips felt as soft as they looked. And wasn’t that what she was there for? She’d wanted to bypass all those pleasantries and connect with someone. She’d come to this place to fill the aching void for companionship. She wanted someone to see her, to look her in the eyes and acknowledge her as a woman and not just a purveyor of in-air customer service.
That’s what he was offering, right?
She leaned in, closed her eyes, and tightened her fingers around the sturdy chair arms.
He grazed his lips against hers.
Yes, they were soft. And warm.
He traced the tip of his tongue along the seam of her lips, and she parted them.
He pulled at her hip to draw her closer to the edge of her seat then curled his fingers at the crease of her thighs. It sent an anticipatory jolt to her pussy.
As he went deeper with their kiss, she pressed her own hands against his hard thighs and slowly made her way up to squeeze his firm muscles.
She massaged in small circles, until she felt his growing erection.
He pulled at her bottom lip and shifted his hold to her wrists before he pressed her hands more firmly against his cock to show her how he wanted to be rubbed.
And the more she rubbed, the more difficult it became for her to catch her breath, especially when pitted against his dominating kisses and intoxicating scent. With much more of this brazen performance, she’d be on his lap. So what if people in the courtyard were watching? She’d hitch up her dress, straddle his thighs, and beg him to fuck her hard right then and there. He felt like he’d put a good kind of hurt on her, and she wanted it.
At The Beaudelaire, people may watch, but they knew how to keep a secret. Nothing that happened inside those gated walls would ever be shared outside them. That was a rule.
“What do you want?” he whispered against her lips.
She squeezed harder with her good left hand and rubbed his shaft up and down through his pants.
He skimmed his palms up her torso.
Her body quivered when he nudged her V-neck collar to the side and slipped his fingers into her bra cup. He clamped her nipple hard between his thumb and forefinger, which made her yelp and break their kiss.
Shit, he didn’t play around. Who needed lunch, anyway, when the man tasted so good?
If he wanted to play dirty, she’d oblige. She gave his cock a teasing yank that made him hiss and pull his hands free of her dress.
“Fuck.” He gently disengaged her from his erection and pushed his chair back a few inches. His cheeks were flushed, and his lips were the color of crushed berries. His breaths came out in ragged gusts. “Unless you want me to bend you over this table and give these folks a show with their meal, I suggest we finish lunch in my room. Broad daylight and everything. Damn, girl.”
“Hmm.” Maybe she liked the idea of a bit of outdoors exhibitionism.
She sat back as casually as she could manage, being that there was a gorgeous, eligible man in front of her who could probably fuck her into a dick-induced delirium, and drummed her fingertips on the
chair arms.
He shifted uncomfortably and adjusted the cock that was tightening the right leg of his slacks.
Oh, he wanted her, and thank fuck, she wasn’t going to be the odd girl out this weekend. First, though, she needed to confirm her reading on the guy. It would be a waste of their time if he were frisky but vanilla. If she wanted ordinary, she had a toy in her suitcase that could do the same job.
“You gonna keep me hanging, Liv?” he asked.
“Patience is a virtue.” She picked up a piece of soft cheese and took a tiny bite at the corner.
“Well, at least kiss me some more. It’s been so long since I’ve kissed anyone without stubble,” he said. “You feel so good and soft. I want to feel all of you.”
“I want to…” She was going to say kiss you, too, until his words hit her. Did he say stubble?
The squeal of iron being dragged against stone made her startle. A beautiful copper-haired man, with green eyes and a grin that could seduce an angel, pulled back a chair and sat down. He winked at her.
“Uh, hi?” she said in a tiny voice.
Wait. Hadn’t she seen him this week? Some bombshell of a blonde had been following him around. She turned her attention back to Ken.
“This is my boyfriend, Clint,” he said.
“B-boyfriend?”
Ken’s roguish smile broadened as he nodded. “Mm-hmm. Boyfriend. Partner. Whatever you want to call him. We’ve been together almost eleven years, isn’t that right Clint?”
Clint nodded.
“Say hi to Olivia.” Ken pulled his sandwich closer, and this time he took a bite. He took a fucking bite, as if this was all so normal.
“Hi, gorgeous,” Clint said.
“Uhhh…” She swallowed and looked from chewing Ken to the smiling Clint.
He didn’t look at her like a pissed-off boyfriend on the rampage. He scanned her up and down, eyes narrowed, as if he wanted to know what she looked like under her clothes. She had one mind to show him and realized she was learning a lot about herself this week. She hadn’t known she liked guys with piercings and tats, and she hadn’t known she liked gingers, either.