Page 38 of Tease Me

Back in the elevator, I fixed my hair and inhaled several deep breaths in an attempt to ready myself for whatever was waiting for me downstairs. I closed my eyes and actually prayed for the lobby to be empty.

The doors pinged. My eyes shot open, and an overwhelming sense of relief just about triggered my legs vanishing beneath me. I poured myself onto the reception chair, plonked my head down on the desk, and counted the seconds until my heart had a regular beat again.

It was midnight when I opened the diary and turned to the 28th of July. And as I thought about my highly erotic dance with Sebastien De Marco in Room 50, I wrote, Titillating Tango in the top margin.

I detailed the start of my day with the wonderful picnic with Clayton and how pleasantly our conversation had flowed and the perfect white-gold pendant he’d given me.

Then I wrote about my other birthday present, my sexy Frenchman who’d had me gliding across the floor as if I were in slippers, not ridiculously high heels. Everything about him had oozed sexuality. I thought about what he’d said about the beauty within me and smiled.

Two men in one day. Two magical experiences.

Best birthday ever.

Chapter Eleven

I had a love/hate relationship with Friday nights. I loved them because they were usually busy with people coming and going through the lobby, which meant the hours whizzed by quickly. I hated them because I was working while it seemed everyone elsein the worldwas having fun.

Tonight, ithadsettled down a little after midnight, and I only saw about ten people until three o’clock in the morning. At quarter to four, my shift changed. Forthe better.

Five people tumbled into the foyer: three men and two women. The girlswere scantily claddespite it being winter and the early hours of the morning.Tattoos covered their arms and chests—actually,nearly every visible part of their flesh except for their faces.Each girl had her arm around a man. The third guy hung back from the two couples.

They all wore eyeliner, the men and the women.They looked mean or angryor something, and as they waltzed right past my counter without evena glancein my direction, I wondered if they were in a band.

The last guy was different from the other two men. He was slightly shorter, square in the shoulders, and his hair was styled short at the back and sides, with a side part that led to longer hair that swept from left to right with a high top.

Unlike the rest of the group, he appeared to take pride in his clothing. He wore black like the others, but his skinny jeans didn’t sag around his thighs, and the button-up shirt with square gold buttons looked expensive. His leather jacket was such a good fit that I wondered if it had been custom-made.

At the elevator, one couple started kissing, and it wasn’t just a little peck. Even from my distance, I sawtheirtongues. They weren’t shy with their hands either, and within secondshishand was upherskirt, and based on the amount of ass cheek I saw, I doubted she was wearing underwear. The other three seemed oblivious to the action.

The third man turned to me, tilted his head toward the sexed-up couple, and scrunched up his face. I waved a timid little hand-in-the-air move that said I saw them, but I wished I hadn’t. The woman raised her knee, giving the tall man even more of her to play with, and thankfully, the elevator pinged, and the five of them disappeared from view.

The second they were gone, I pulled the check-in cards off the back counter and riffled through, trying to find the five mysterious strangers. There were fifty-two rooms in the Hot Horizon Hotel, and tonight, forty-four of them were occupied. At this time of year, it wasmostlybusinesspeople here for conferences or international guests enjoying our glorious winter weather.

I found one of the tall menfirst.Zenon Justice. I huffed. With a name like that he was destined to be in a band. He was twenty-four years old and visiting from Melbourne. The second tall man was Dallas Cole, same age as his mate and also from Melbourne.

The last guy, the onewho’d held back from the others,was Mason Cole, also from Melbourne but twenty-six years old.I slid over to my computer and Googled their names.Within acouple of searches, I’ddiscovered that three of the five strangers formed the band Empire Angels, which consisted of two men and one woman.

I recognized the men as the two taller ones, and the woman in the band had to be one of the two I’d seen; however, I couldn’t tell which one. According to their website,there were four membersin the band, but the fourth one was not with the men who’d walked through my hotel. Tenmore minutes of searching revealed that the bass guitarist who usually played with the band was currently in rehab after a near-fatal drug overdose.

It wasa search on their Facebook pagethatput the final piece of the puzzle together.Mason Cole had agreed to fill in until their usual bass guitarist recovered. I shuffled the check-in cards back together, leaving Mason out.

“Well, hello, Mason.”

I’d rolled in the hay with a lead guitarist once before. Literally. When I was seventeen.Joel Parkinson and Ihadspent an evening in the hay barnsituatedright above the room where the Blue Light Discowas held.The fact that he was a lead guitarist in a band and that he’d picked me over every other girl in Mildura had me as horny as a virgin on prom night.

We’d kissed until my lipswere bruised, but other than him manhandling my previously untouched boobs, that was where the barnyard romp had stopped.

As I thought about that night in the hay—uncontrollable breathing, feverish, groping hands, the smell of his leather jacket, the taste of rum on his tongue—I realized this was my chance to improve my claim of having slept with a guy in a band.

I giggled as I decided that Mason Cole, the fill-in bass guitarist for Empire Angels, had just become my thirty-second sexual challenge.

I spent the final hours of my shift searching Mason Cole on the web, but the man was an enigma.Unlike the other members in the band who had pages and pages of pictures, usually with women hanging off them, Mason was a virtual unknown. By the end of my shift all I knew was Mason’s age,address, that he played bass guitar, and that he was about to meet Memphis.

I just hoped he wasn’t too tired.

The end of my shift came and wentwithno sign of Needledick.Half an hour after he was due to start, I rang him.

“Hello.” His groggy voice confirmed my assumption.

---