Page 2 of Staff Only

“Fuck, Roland. I love you so much,” he gritted out, his inhibitions non-existent with all his barriers down. “I always have.” I almost pulled straight off to tell him I felt the same. “Yes,” he panted. “Yes, yes… I’m checking out.” Wait, what? Was that a euphemism for coming?

“Excuse me? Sir?” His voice sounded strange.

I blinked a few times, the fantasy disappearing, slipping through my fingers like mist, no matter how tightly I clung to it. There was no cock in my mouth, no fingers tangled in my hair. I wasn’t in Emerson’s office. Instead, I was standing at the hotel’s front desk, and my eyes were dry, my lids scraping like sandpaper, like I hadn’t blinked in a good long while.

In front of me stood a man with a pinched expression. He’d obviously been trying to get my attention for a while. “Can you hear me?” He waved a hand in front of my face. “Hello?”

I cleared my throat, trying to release some of the tension. “Yes, sir. I hear you. You’re checking out.”

This was such a familiar task that I could do it in my sleep. Unfortunately, I was now very much awake, and no matter how much I longed to slip right back into the fantasy, I knew it was no good. It was gone. Emerson Holland was not mine to have. He was just my boss. The same as he always was, and always would be.

2

Emerson

I hadn’t even had my morning cup of coffee yet, and already my heart was racing.

Walking along the sidewalk at a clip, my shoes, polished to a high gleam, beat a quick rhythm in the predawn stillness. The city was just beginning to stir, but there would be no sleeping in for me. In fact, there never was, not even on Sundays. The Scarlet Hotel was my life. I had poured my blood, sweat, and tears into this place for over a decade, since I graduated with my business degree and my father handed the managing role over to me. He had patted me on the shoulder in an uncharacteristic gesture of affection, and he’d said, “I’m entrusting you with my hotel—my father’s legacy. Don’t fuck it up.”

And so far, I had done everything I could to make my father proud, or at the very least, minimally angry. Time and time again, the hotel had inched its way toward closure, between structural issues and near financial ruin, but in each case, I had done whatever it took to come out on top. Budget cuts, working extra hours, maneuvering deals. I had no social life to speak of. No friends, no family other than my father, and certainly no man to warm my bed.

I told myself it was worth it. It had to be. Otherwise, I would be lost. I would have given up everything… for nothing.

Glancing at my watch, I saw the hotel’s night shift was almost over, and I picked up the pace. I was later than I thought. The sun had not yet risen, and already it was too warm, the scent of another impending summer scorcher in the air, like sunburnt leaves and baked pavement. We desperately needed rain, but it looked like it wouldn’t be today. Pressure was building in the atmosphere. We were due for a storm.

As I approached the hotel, a figure in a crisp red coat stepped forward. “Morning, sir,” Gerald said with a tip of his hat. The doorman was by far our oldest employee, though he showed no interest in retiring. In fact, he had more energy than some of our other young pups. Gerald pulled the door open ahead of me.

“Thank you, Gerald,” I said out of reflex, but my attention was elsewhere. My gaze went straight across the lobby to the front desk, and my chest tightened.

Every morning I felt this sharp anticipation, even when I told myself it was hopeless. Nothing would ever change. I must’ve been some kind of masochist to keep torturing myself, but no amount of pain could stop my eyes from searching for him.

For Roland.

Like every morning, I found Roland staring back, as though he’d been waiting for this moment as much as I had. His dark eyes held a smoldering intensity that was nearly strong enough to knock down every wall I’d built around my heart. Instead of rushing, now I slowed my pace, allowing myself to savor this moment. It was the most luxurious misery, to be so close and yet so far from the one thing I wanted more than anything.

Roland was younger than I was by nearly ten years, but it wasn’t the age difference that made me pause. He was also my employee, and while a relationship with a staff member would be inappropriate, breaking at least one rule in the employee handbook, it still wasn’t the real reason I kept my distance. It was that Roland deserved better than what I had to offer.

That didn’t mean I couldn’t admire from afar, though.

“Good morning, Roland,” I said softly as I stopped in front of the desk.

His Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow, and he reached up and tugged at his collar, as if his tie were suddenly too tight. “Morning, sir,” he replied in a whisper that felt far too intimate for the public setting. His tongue darted out and seemed to drag slowly along his bottom lip, and I watched the motion, wondering what he tasted like. “Did you sleep well?”

It would absolutely be inappropriate to tell him I would’ve slept much better with him tucked in beside me, so instead I murmured something indistinct. “Quiet night for you here, I hope.” I was delaying going to my office. I didn’t really care whether his shift was quiet or not; if something noteworthy had happened, I would have been notified. I just couldn’t bring myself to walk away just yet.

“Mm,” he hummed, his eyes trailing lower. I wondered if he was aware of how he looked at me, with unguarded hunger. Oh, how I wished I could tell what he was thinking. Some days I hoped he would quit his job and put me out of my misery, while other days, the thought of him not being nearby was impossible to imagine.

I opened my mouth to say something else—not sure what, as if it even mattered since it was all just a stall tactic anyway—but I caught sight of movement over Roland’s shoulder, and my jaw snapped shut. My cheeks warmed. Why did I feel guilty, like I’d been caught doing something wrong?

Emily, the front supervisor, came up, ready to take over the desk from Roland. “Morning, sir,” she said, her eyes missing nothing as they flicked back and forth between us. She smirked and raised a brow at me, as if to say I’m on to you.

“Yes. Morning, Miss Matthews. If you’ll both excuse me, I have a lot of work to do. Have a good day, both of you, and… sleep well, Mr. Stohl.”

Roland seemed to flinch when I used his last name in an attempt to put some distance between us. It hadn’t come naturally to me, which was part of the problem. When I had first hired Roland, I’d brushed what I felt off as merely physical attraction, assuming it would fade. I couldn’t have been more wrong. In fact, the longer we worked together, the harder it was to stay apart. It was clear he felt something for me too. Lingering glances, the brush of a hand on the way by, and just once he’d invited me for dinner. I’d had to turn him down, obviously.

Feeling cold and sick, I turned away from the desk and made my way to my office, feeling Roland’s eyes on me until I closed the door behind me. His shift was now over. That brief glimpse of him would have to hold me over until I left late this evening when his next shift began.

I sat heavily in my chair and rolled closer to the desk, booting up the computer. For the next hour, I caught up with emails, made sure all the proper supply orders had been submitted, looked for necessary maintenance orders, checked staff schedules—obviously not so I knew when Roland would be working. That would be unprofessional. It was only because I needed to know everything about the hotel, to ensure nothing fell through the cracks, as had happened too many times in the past.

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