Temptations: A Limited Edition Contemporary Romance Collection

by Blue Saffire

  I narrowed my eyes. “I’m not…” even as I said the words, they sounded hollow. I didn’t know what I was. I’d thought about it a lot and all I knew was that I liked him. That was as far as my self-reflection went and it scared me. I was sure I was supposed to have more of an idea of what I wanted. My hand immediately went to my pocket and I put it on my phone, thinking about the conversation we’d had on the hook-up app. The one my assistant had made me download, because she knew more about me than I did about myself.

  My mouth was dry as I looked up at him. I could feel his gaze on me. “You’re not what, Devon?”

  “Gay,” I said, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear myself.

  I looked down at my almost empty cup of coffee and took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure what reaction I could expect from him and part of me didn’t want to see his face when I told him. For a second, I was certain that I wanted him to be disappointed. But that feeling only lasted a second, before I realized that I was probably being unreasonable, that he wasn’t doing anything but being friendly.

  There was no way he was hitting on me. Absolutely no way.

  When I finally managed to look back up, I noticed that he had inched his face closer to mine.

  I laughed quietly. “What?”

  “Bi then?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I replied, after a little while. I didn’t want the silence to stretch between us for longer than it had to. It felt like he was waiting very intently for me to do something, to say something. He was still staring at me, his eyes wide and glimmering, his mouth half-open.

  He leaned back on the chair then nodded. “That’s okay,” he said. “I can work with that.”

  “You can?” I asked.

  “I mean, it’s not ideal,” he said. “Confused men are always harder to pick up. They need…”

  “What?”

  “More of an incentive,” he replied. He was still staring into my eyes. I swallowed, not quite sure what I was supposed to say to that. My heart was beating fast and my hands were sweating. I wiped them on my jeans and took a deep breath.

  “An incentive to do what?”

  “Exactly,” he replied, then winked at me. He opened his mouth to say something else, but he was interrupted by a buzzing sound. It took me a second to realize that his phone was vibrating in his pocket. He glanced down at the screen then looked up at me, flashing me a tight little smile. “Sorry. Pilot stuff.”

  “Pilot stuff,” I repeated.

  “We’re probably going to get shuffled around,” he said, then craned his neck and sighed. He looked stressed. He put his phone back in his pocket and flashed me a weak smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Nothing fun.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “To be honest with you, this is the best time I’ve ever had in Cleveland.”

  I smiled at him. “I’m sure there are things to do here.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure too, but I’ve never found out. I’ve never had anyone to find out with.”

  I cocked my head and looked at him. “What does that mean?”

  He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Look,” he said. “You can act all coy if you want, but we both know that if you weren’t interested, you would have made that a lot clearer—”

  “I don’t—”

  “It’s okay,” he said, his voice so quiet I practically had to strain to hear him. “I get it. I’ve been there, too.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Not for a while but… look, let’s be honest. We’re grounded for the night, probably, and tonight is the only time you and me are probably ever going to be in the same city.”

  “What?”

  He took his wallet out of his breast pocket and took a business card out. For a second, all I could think about was why a pilot would need a business card. “You should think about booking a hotel soon,” he said. “They’re going to get packed pretty quickly. It might be better if you can afford a Honeymoon suite or something like that.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry?”

  “They always put effort into the honeymoon suites,” he said. “Even on nights when planes are grounded.”

  “Okay,” I managed to say. It wasn’t impressive. I wasn’t impressed and it was clear that he wasn’t impressed either, which made me feel a little sick to my stomach.

  He smiled at me, the smile not quite reaching his eyes as he began to get up to his feet. “That’s my cellphone number,” he said. “You can give me a call, if you want. Since we’re both stuck here. I’ll be booking a honeymoon suite myself.”

  “I—”

  “Like I said,” he said. “There’s no pressure.”

  With that, he turned around and began to walk away.

  4

  It was possibly the worst thing he could’ve said. I was sitting there, wondering if I should take him up on this.

  He had gone so easily from just talking to flirting, I couldn’t help but think that he had a lot of experience. But of course I couldn’t be sure, because I wasn’t sure about anything, and the worst part of it all was that I’d lied to him. Well, I kept something from him, which wasn’t necessarily lying. It was definitely, however, not telling the truth.

  I watched him disappear into the crowd. There were lots of people around us, and soon he became a blurry dot among many others. I shouldn’t have cared much about what he wanted or didn’t want me to do, but the idea of sharing a honeymoon suite with this man made my heart skip a beat. Maybe Valerie had been right, maybe I really wasn’t a straight as I thought. Maybe everyone was a little gay.

  I shook my head. This train of thought was ridiculous, and I knew it would lead me down a dark path. One I didn’t even want to contemplate. It wasn’t because there was anything wrong with him. In fact, he was sort of perfect. Charming, beautiful, smart… And the weirdest part of it all is that I’d watched him grow into that man. From afar, certainly, never having anything to do with it. But I had been there. And, on reflection, it had been sort of wonderful.

  I didn’t think I’d ever see him again. We were both outcasts in our own way, him probably more than me. Maybe he was right. Maybe we wouldn’t see each other again after this, and this was the perfect opportunity to explore something without getting attached. I close my eyes and exhaled heavily. This didn’t seem like the kind of thing where I could come to a solution all by myself, so I took my phone out of my pocket and glanced at the conversation we had been having on the hook-up for a second. I couldn’t help but smile. He didn’t know it was me who he was talking to online but it didn’t seem nearly as deceiving as everything else I was keeping from him. If anything, there was something slightly charming about it, something that I could even consider a little whimsical.

  I thought about that as I called Valerie. She picked up after only one ring. “Hello?”

  “Hello. I’m stuck in Cleveland.”

  “I know. I already told the client. They understand, freak storms happen.”

  I licked my lips. I don’t want to talk about business, but I supposed it was important that I did. I close my eyes and leaned back against the chair. “This client is important.”

  “I know. But they know that we’re software company, boss, we don’t control the weather,” she said. I could tell that she was smiling, probably at how worried I sounded and that made me smile.

  “Right.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  I nodded, but I couldn’t bring myself to say anything.

  “Boss…”

  I shook my head that time, a smile on my face. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “How can you read me like that even though you’re not even around me?”

  “Well, don’t take this personally, but you are not hard to read. Also, you kind of pay me to do this.”

  “I only pay you to be my assistant,” I replied, laughing. “That’s all.”

  “Yeah, bu
t I mean, I come with two semesters of psychology,” she said. “Remember? I told you I thought I was going to be a therapist.”

  “Your competence never ceases to amaze me,” I replied. I was glad we were moving away from the topic but I shouldn’t have been so naïve.

  “Spill,” she said. “Is it something I can help with?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I guess… Something happened.”

  “Okay.”

  She waited. Patiently waited; not saying anything for a very long time, putting me in the awkward position of coming to tell her exactly what happened, because if I didn’t, she would’ve known immediately I was bullshitting her, and I needed her to trust me. She might’ve been my system, but she was one of the closest friends I made as an adult.

  And I wanted to keep it that way.

  “I met someone.”

  “Okay. You don’t sound too happy about it.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Who are they?” She asked quietly. I didn’t miss the pronoun, I was sure she didn’t miss that I wasn’t correcting her.

  “Someone I knew, a long time ago, before all this.”

  “Oh, so they recognized you?”

  “No. No I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, but you told them who you were?”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t tell him anything.”

  There was a beat of silence, as if she needed some time to process the information. “Right,” she said. “But you like him, and that’s what matters, right?”

  “He doesn’t know who I am, and I don’t know if I want to tell him.”

  “Wait, you guys are talking to each other?”

  I swallowed. “Yes. He invited me to his hotel room.”

  “Are you going to go?”

  “I don’t know. That’s kind of why I’m calling you.”

  “You don’t need my permission for one-night stand. You’re a big boy.”

  “I know. I just need to know if it’s really shady if I don’t tell him.”

  “That you know him from before?”

  “Yeah. Exactly.”

  “Are you going to fuck him?”

  She asked it so bluntly, it made me laugh. “No. Maybe, I don’t know. You can’t just ask me questions like that.”

  “Why not? That seems like the most relevant question here.”

  I took a deep breath. “Because I don’t know the answer. It’s…”

  “You can do whatever you want,” she said after a little while. “No one is going to judge you.”

  “I’m going to judge me,” I said. “Surely that’s enough.”

  She laughed a little quietly. “You should do what you want to do,” she said. “The problem is, can you figure out what that is?”

  I sighed. “I’ll figure it out,” I said.

  “You always do,” she replied. “Call me in the morning? Maybe I can get you a chartered flight.”

  I smiled and shook my head. “That won’t be necessary,” I said. “I can always drive there.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “That’d take forever. Do you need me to find you a hotel room?”

  I swallowed, then pinched the bridge of my nose. “No, I’ll figure it out.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  I hung up on her after that. I was hoping that speaking to her would have provided me with some clarity, but I just felt more confused. She was right, the only thing the matter was whether I wanted to sleep with him or not, and I would probably never see him again. So maybe I should have just gone with it.

  I wasn’t going to get any more chances like this. He didn’t seem to mind, being an experiment, being somebody who may not end up being anything but a footnote in my life. It made me wonder if he did this kind of thing a lot, but then I told myself that it didn’t matter if he did. I could injection, considering that I myself wanted to use him.

  Plus, what else was I going to do? I was stuck in Cleveland and it seemed like he already had arrangements to stay somewhere. It was only sensible. I grabbed his card and began to dial his number. He picked up after the first ring. “I didn’t think you’d call.”

  “I wasn’t sure I would.”

  We both waited for a second, neither one of us saying anything. It was me who broke the silence. “I’ve never done this before.”

  “Do what?”

  I swallowed. I knew what he meant, but there was something else there, something implied, and I didn’t know how to answer it. “This. Any of this.”

  “I’ll text you where I’m staying. You can come see me, have a drink or something. Like I said, no pressure.”

  “I don’t know if I have anywhere else to stay.” I closed my eyes, immediately regretting my words.

  He chuckled. “Then I’ll sleep on the floor,” he said. “Those hotel carpets are more comfortable than the futon that I slept in all when I was in school.”

  I laughed. “The last thing I want to do is put you in that position.”

  “We’ll figure it out, Devon. I’m just glad you came to your senses. I’ll text you the details.”

  “Great,” I said. “See you soon.”

  The words sounded hollow in my own ears. I could still back out, it wasn’t as if I was blood-bound to go there. But I had told Valerie not to get me another hotel room, so my options were sleep next to him or sleep on the floor.

  I knew which idea I preferred. So when my phone buzzed in my hand, I didn’t hesitate. I just began power walking toward the door.

  5

  The hotel he was at was only a stone throw’s away from the airport. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the place well enough to take the covered path, so I had to brave the storm in order to get there. It wasn’t raining, but it was an extremely cold day that I was barely prepared for. It was hard to maneuver in the inclement weather with my bags, which were large and cumbersome and made me feel like I was going to get pulled back any minute.

  By the time I was only halfway there, I was already swearing under my breath, certain that this was a bad idea. The snow was sticking to my nose, my skin, my clothes, and it felt like the wind was whipping against the back of my ears fiercely enough to make me practically wince in pain. I thought I should have stayed at the airport for a second, but I finally saw the hotel he was staying at. It didn’t look impressive, but a shack would’ve been a more welcome situation than the one I was in right then. I began to run, as fast as I could with my bags still lagging behind me. I practically tripped a couple of times before I finally got to the reception area, which was surprisingly full. I wiped myself down as I tried to walk nonchalantly towards the elevator.

  I told myself it wasn’t necessary that I checked in. At the very least, Logan could always hold my bags. My heart was pumping as I boarded the elevator and pressed the button to Logan’s floor. I could still turn around. I could still tell Valerie I needed a reservation somewhere. I could still wriggle my way out of this one.

  It felt like my body was in charge, not my mind, and so when the doors opened after the elevator beeped, I began walking out caring very little about the logistics of the situation. It wasn’t until I arrived at his door that I realized the magnitude of what I was doing. This was a big deal. I couldn’t just back out of this after I knocked on his door, even if nothing happened, I had walked all the way there. What I wanted was clear. And, if I was going to get what I wanted, that he needed to know the truth. All of it. Because I go into something like this blind, and I didn’t think that he should have to either.

  I steeled myself to go in. Before I could knock, he opened the door. He smiled at me. “I heard footsteps. I wasn’t just waiting for you.”

  I smiled at him. “I didn’t even knock.”

  “Okay. I was just waiting for you. Why do you have to go and blow my cover story?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “You definitely weren’t waiting for me.”

  “That’s more like it,” he said. “Come on in. God
, you look like you’re freezing. Do you have any clothes you can change into?”

  I shrugged. “All I have is presentation clothes,” I said. “I mean, I can wear a suit.”

  He furrowed his brow. “I feel like you want me to say you shouldn’t,” he said. “But I’m not going to stop you.”

  “You want me to wear a suit?”

  “I mean, you saw me in uniform,” he said. “It seems only fair that I see you in your uniform.”

  “It’s a hoodie,” I replied. “I only wear a suit for special occasions.”

  “Again, I feel like you want me to talk you out of this,” he said. “It’s not going to happen.”

  I smirked. “I have some pajamas,” I said. “Do you mind if I wear pajamas?”

  “By all means, wear pajamas,” he said. “As much as I enjoy talking to you, I don’t want you to freeze to death.”

  “I’ll be right back,” I said. “Can I just—”

  “It’s the only door you see,” he said. “Have a shower, get warmed up. I can order some food for us. Are you a vegetarian?”

  “No,” I said. “Surprise me, okay?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” I replied as I opened the door to the bathroom. “I trust you.”

  “That makes one of us!” he called after me as I lugged my bag behind me and closed the door. When I heard his footsteps in the room, I couldn’t help but smile.

  I showered with very hot water and then stepped out of the bathroom, wearing nothing but flimsy pajama pants and a V-neck white shirt that felt like it clung to my body in unflattering ways. Logan didn’t seem to share that opinion. He looked me up and down and wolf-whistled.

  You also make sure your content is justified. This means your paragraphs reach from one side to the other. This paragraph, for example, is justified. The next one is not. I cast my eyes toward the floor at my bare feet and felt my cheeks redden. I didn’t know how I was supposed to react.

  I cast my eyes toward the floor at my bare feet and felt my cheeks redden. I didn’t know how I was supposed to react.