“Hold on,” she said. “I have the key card right here.” She fumbled with the clasp on her purse, and I slid my hands back to where they had been, caressing her ass. “Hands off, Silas.”
I grabbed the key card from her fingers and waved it near the door handle, swinging it open. Squatting down beside her, right there in the hallway, I pulled the skirt up over her ass, my arms wrapped around her thighs, holding her in place.
Tempest squealed. “What the hell are you doing, Silas?”
“I’m not sure I remember your ass,” I said. “It’s been a long time. I need a closer view.”
“Not here,” she said.
“You’re right.” Before she could protest again, I leaned into her, standing up with her draped over my shoulder, her rear near my head, skirt bunched up to her waist.
“Silas Saint,” she said. “Put me down.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I have a better view now.”
“Put me down.”
But I didn’t. Instead, I smacked her ass cheek as I walked inside the room, then grabbed a handful of flesh. “You used to like it when I touched you like that.”
“We were kids,” she said.
“I’m sure that's all it was,” I said. "We were just horny teenagers, right?" I ran my hand down her curvy cheek, still on my shoulder, then touched my finger between her legs, feeling her wetness. She squirmed at my touch.
“Silas, put me the fuck down now,” Tempest said.
But I ignored her as I walked through the suite, past the sitting room and the grand piano, noting the ridiculous opulence. “Jesus, Tempest. You're living large, aren't you? Who the hell stays in a hotel suite with a grand piano?”
“It’s a business expense,” she said.
“Business expense,” I said. The words came out bitter, even though I didn't mean them to sound that way. Put it out of your head, I told myself. You don’t need to ask about however the hell Tempest gets her money. This is just a fling. This is revisiting the past, getting beyond it, and letting go.
When I reached the bedroom, I deposited her onto the bed. “At your service, my lady,” I said, in the best butler voice I could muster. I added a gesture and a bow, just for the hell of it.
I was trying to lighten my mood, but failing. It just made the moment more awkward.
“At my service?” she asked. She turned onto her side and propped up her head with her hand. A piece of hair fell across her face and she tucked it behind her ear. “If that’s the case, you’d better get to work.”
"Is that right?" I asked, standing beside the bed, drinking her in with my eyes. She lay with one leg crossed over the other, the fabric of her dress riding up on her thigh, covering the ass I'd just smacked. I wondered if I'd left a handprint on her flesh, and my cock stirred at the thought.
I crossed to the other side of the room and tugged at the sides of my shirt, intending to toss my clothes on the overstuffed chair in the corner. But I stopped at the sight of the chair.
Shit. That fucking chair probably cost more than the purse from my fight.
I sighed. I needed to put those kinds of thoughts out of my head. I had a girl lying here on the bed - not a girl, the girl, the girl I would have given everything in the fucking world to hold on to back when we were kids, the girl I'd have done anything for - and here she was, soon-to-be naked, lying on a bed in a fancier hotel than I'd ever been in in my whole damn life.
And all I could think about was how she'd made the money that paid for the damn room.
Shit, Silas, what the hell is wrong with you?
Trigg and Abel would kick me in the nuts for what was going through my head right now.
Behind me, I heard music come on, soft over the speakers, and I turned to see Tempest leaning over to replace a remote on the table beside the bed.
"What?" she asked, sitting up on the bed. "You have a look."
"I don't have a look."
"You have a look, and it's not the same look you had a minute ago, the one that said you were about to pounce on me."
I shook my head. "It’s the whole place, Tempest," I said. "You have a damn piano in your hotel room. Is it always like this?"
Tempest looked down, her hair slipping forward and shielding the side of her face. She tucked her legs underneath her on the bed. "Silas," she said. "It's not what you think."
"It's hard to swallow, is what I think," I said. "Seeing all of this, paid for by innocent people."
Tempest laughed, but when I looked at her, she wasn't smiling. "Innocent," she said. "Yeah, sure."
I walked along the length of the windows that lined the walls of the bedroom from floor to ceiling, overlooking the Vegas skyline. Those lights in the houses out there were where regular people stayed, people like me and my brothers.
The kind of people she and her parents conned.
People like her parents, Tempest and her crew, they saw regular folks as marks. Chumps.
"I remember you wanted to give it all up, you know," I said. Back then, back when she’s mattered to me and I mattered to her, she wanted to leave it all behind.