Nowhere is as lonely as the lobby of an airport hotel at two in the morning. The guests are all safely in their rooms, long past the need for room service; the bar is closed and no one is waiting to check in, or out. Sitting at the front desk, watching the minutes tick slowly by and wondering if she’ll have anything of any significance to do before the night ends, Lauren feels like the last remaining woman on Earth.
This could be an airport anywhere. Stepping out of the blandly decorated lobby, a curious traveller could hail a taxi and be whisked to downtown Tokyo, or Los Angeles, or Nairobi. Nothing distinguishes it from any other hotel in the parent company’s extensive chain, all priding themselves on the same high level of service that insists on having a receptionist to staff the desk twenty-four hours a day, whether one is needed or not.
When Lauren leaves at the end of her shift, it will be to catch the Tube, making the short journey through the grey dawn of West London to her flat in Boston Manor. Sometimes she wishes she was somewhere more exotic, somewhere where the air smells of frangipani rather than exhaust fumes and the planes take off over a rolling blue ocean, but mostly she’s happy in her job. The long hours of quiet give her time to work on her writing, scribbling longhand in the jotter that she takes with her everywhere. She pens urban fantasy, tales of a demon hunter called Liliana, who strides through a city that’s almost but not quite New York, dispatching monsters and having impossibly wild, kinky sex with her half-vampire lover, Brogan. None of these stories has been published as yet, but she’s sure it’s only a matter of time before someone recognises her talents.
Though they’ll never know it, half the characters in her books are inspired by people who work in the hotel, or the rare guest who stands out enough from the crowd to imprint themself on her memory. The grumpy demon that Liliana pushes to his death, impaling him on a cathedral gargoyle, is based on the man who complained about everything from the thread count of his sheets to the lack of hazelnuts in his breakfast muesli. Nothing less than polite to his face, Lauren has used her real feelings about his overly pernickety behaviour to consign him to a gruesome fictional fate.
When it comes to the many and varied sex scenes in her stories, the guests have played their part in their creation, too. A cute guy checking in may find himself the unwitting inspiration for one of Brandon’s buff, well-hung vampire cohorts, or a renegade soldier battling against the evil that corrupts the city. And not everyone will be asleep right now, she knows; human nature being what it is, someone is bound to be fucking in one of the rooms above her head, taking advantage of the thrill that comes from being in strange surroundings with no one to recognise them. Though she’s never actually walked in on anyone in action, more than one of the maids has interrupted a couple who forgot, accidentally or otherwise, to leave out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign. The anecdotes involving those who’ve been caught in the act have been repeated over and over, maybe gaining a little embellishment as they’ve passed into scandalous legend: the woman handcuffed to the bed in Room 412 while her husband licked chocolate body paint from her naked, restrained body; the black couple watching themselves in the dressing-table mirror as he ploughed his cock in and out of her plump, yielding arse while she crooned, ‘Yeah, fuck that booty!’; the respectable-seeming middle-aged gent found masturbating into a white silk stocking, a ball-gag securely stoppering his mouth …
With so many wicked thoughts running through her head, so many delicious combinations of breasts and mouths, fingers and tongues, cocks and cunts, Lauren soon finds herself on a roll. The words are flowing and she’s determined to complete a couple of thousand words before she comes off shift, so it’s a while before she notices the red light blinking on the telephone switchboard. When she first got the job, she used to watch for it all the time, anxious to help out whoever wished to speak to her, but those requests were so rare she soon fell out of the habit. Eventually, the sight registers with her. Snatching up the receiver, Lauren hopes she hasn’t left the guest waiting too long for a reply. Even in the dead hours of night, when no one expects instant service, it doesn’t do to look unprofessional. Whoever’s on the other end of that phone might decide to slate her on one of those tourist advisor websites when their trip is over.
‘Front desk, Lauren speaking. How may I help you?’
‘Hi, Lauren.’ The voice is Australian-accented, husky, as though it’s been desiccated by the dry air of a long-haul flight. ‘This is Greg Jackson, Room 324. The hairdryer in my room doesn’t appear to be working. I wondered if you could send someone up to take a look at it.’
Who washes their hair at two in the morning? Lauren can’t help but wonder. Smoothly, she assures him, ‘I can do better than that, Mr Jackson. I’ll have a new hairdryer brought up to you right away.’
It’s a wrench to tear herself away from her writing. Liliana and Brogan are in bed together, Liliana keen to show her gratitude to him for saving her from one of the vicious alligator shifters who infest the city’s network of sewers. Her skilful tongue is about to tease the sweetest of orgasms from his willingly bound body, mouth engulfing the full length of his straining cock. Lauren loves to write about oral sex almost as much as she loves giving and receiving it, and describing the lovers in their passion has got her all hot and bothered. But Mr Jackson needs his hairdryer, and he needs it now.
Slipping away from the desk, she takes the stairs down a level to where the supply cupboard is located. She unlocks the door with the master key she never allows to leave her side, flips on the light switch and steps inside, to be confronted by shelf upon shelf of plastic-packaged shower caps, miniature bottles of shampoo and shower gel, and packets of individually wrapped shortbread fingers. All the little goodies that help to make a hotel stay more pleasant and, more often than not, depart in the guests’ luggage at the same time as they do.
Opposite those are the electrical appliances she’s looking for: miniature kettles, big enough to produce enough boiling water for two dainty cups of tea, and beneath those, a box of deceptively small but high-powered hairdryers. Lauren takes one, signs for it in the log. When George, the maintenance man, arrives tomorrow morning, he can take a look at the malfunctioning dryer from Jackson’s room, and make an assessment as to whether it can be fixed. Lauren’s DIY skills extend as far as changing a plug. Anything else she’ll leave to the experts.
She locks up, leaving the room in darkness once more. The lift takes her to the third floor, a soulless Muzak rendition of ‘The Greatest Love of All’ the soundtrack to her journey. Checking her reflection in the mirrored wall, she smiles in approval. Her dark hair is sleek in its ponytail, her make-up as fresh as when she applied it before starting her shift. She looks professional, capable, willing to help. Stepping out into the hallway, Lauren breathes in the scent common to airport hotels: air freshener and the vaguely rubbery aroma of new carpet. Her heels sink into thick pile that muffles all sound but the low, constant hum of the air conditioning.
When she raps on the door of Room 324, Greg Jackson’s voice calls, ‘Come in.’ He doesn’t bother to ask who it is. Who else would be wandering the corridors when everyone else is in bed, asleep or otherwise engaged?
A pass of the master key card lets her inside. She’s learned over the years you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat their hotel room, even if they’re only staying for a night. Some keep them almost hygienically neat, as though afraid to upset housekeeping by leaving as much as a damp towel on the bathroom floor. Others litter the room with the contents of their suitcases, sprawling out and treating the place as their own, secure in the knowledge that clearing up after them is someone else’s job.
Jackson appears to fall somewhere in the latter camp. A trail of discarded clothes leads from the bed to the bathroom door, the TV is on low, tuned to a 24-hour rolling news station, and the minibar has been raided for its vodka miniatures. Two stand empty, the remaining one waits to be used by the side of a glass in which three or four ice cubes are slowly melting away to nothing.
As for the man himself, he lounges on the edge of the bed, blond hair wet from the shower, a towel wrapped round his waist. His legs are widely spread. Lauren isn’t sure whether he intends to give her a flash of his cock, lolling against his thigh and just visible through the opening of the towel. It’s certainly big enough that he might enjoy showing it off, out of proportion to his small but muscular frame. But if he was that much of an exhibitionist, she reckons, he’d have opened the door to her in the nude. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened – to Lauren, or to the hotel’s constantly changing staff of chambermaids. Some men, it seems, just love to show off everything they’ve got.
Lauren tries to keep her gaze at eye level, though the flash of Jackson’s cock has stirred up a fire in her belly already stoked by thoughts of all the sex that’s taken place in the hotel’s rooms and her breathless description of Liliana giving Brogan a long, leisurely blowjob. There’s a stickiness in her panties, her nipples are hard pebbles against the cups of her bra, and she’s afraid that she’ll have to take a detour on the way back to the front desk, so she can lock herself into a cubicle in the ladies’ powder room and bring herself to a swift but oh-so-necessary climax.
She fights to keep her expression neutral as she addresses him, not wanting to give him any clue as to what she can see beneath that towel. ‘Your hairdryer, sir.’
Jackson takes it from her, casting a glance at the name badge on her left breast. ‘Thanks very much, Lauren.’ He grins, revealing slightly crooked white teeth, a little imperfection that only serves to make him more attractive to her eyes. ‘There’s nothing like being all wet and not able to do a damn thing about it.’
If only you knew, Lauren thinks, feeling another trickle of juice dampening her underwear even further. She never flirts with guests; it’s not in her job description. Yet something about this suggestive, handsome Australian makes her want to linger in his room just a little longer. And it’s not just the twinkle in his eye or the apparent dimensions of his cock.
‘I should take the hairdryer that isn’t working,’ she tells him. ‘The maintenance man will want to have a look at it, see if they can fix it or whether it’ll have to be thrown away.’
‘Sure thing.’ Jackson reaches for the last vodka miniature, twists open the top with an audible crack. He gestures to the socket by the nightstand with the bottle before pouring his drink. ‘It’s plugged in down there.’
He could very easily unplug the dryer himself, Lauren knows that. But she’s sure he wants her to lean over and perform the task so he can take a look at her rear view. The navy blue suit that makes up her receptionist’s uniform isn’t really designed for women as curvy as her, and the skirt strains taut across her arse as it is. When she bends, the fabric tightens even more, and she’s sure the line of her panties will be visible, outlined against the material.
As she tugs the plug free, she hears Jackson’s voice close by her ear. ‘Oh, very nice,’ he purrs. A warm hand stretches out to caress her bum cheeks through the tight-fitting polyester.
He’s crossed a line. Looking might be one thing, but touching … Lauren should leave the room now and scuttle back to the front desk, leaving him to deal with the hard-on that, she discovers when she glances round, is visibly tenting out his towel. But she doesn’t. Never mind company policy, with its rigid rules on interaction between staff and guests. Forget that the desk downstairs is unmanned, that her extended absence may be picked up by the closed-circuit TV system designed to add an extra level to hotel security. She wants this handsome, barely clad stranger; wants him with a ferocity that surprises her. And for once, in this bland airport hotel room in the middle of a sultry August night, she’s going to make sure she gets what she wants.
Jackson pulls her on to his groin, so his erection butts against her arse. It seems to be seeking out the heat of her sex through her clothing, wanting to bury itself in the cleft between her cheeks. Dropping the broken hairdryer on to the easy chair by the bed, she pushes back at him, blatant in her need. He guides her into position so she’s resting on the bed on her elbows, rump in the air. Fingers fumble at the zip of her skirt, and she hears the harsh rasp as he pulls it down. She doesn’t resist as Jackson strips her of the unflattering garment, nor when he tugs her regulation tan tights and white cotton knickers all the way down her legs and off.
‘Oh, I love a girl with a luscious big arse,’ he murmurs, emphasising his point by spreading her cheeks and pushing his nose between them, snuffling at her in his eagerness. Lauren can smell her excitement, a mixture of truffles and brine, and she knows the scent must be stronger where it’s concentrated in the dark, hidden crease Jackson begins to explore with long, deft sweeps of his tongue. Desire shudders through her, making her moan and clutch at the satiny burgundy bedcover. She can’t see the man’s face but she can picture his expression, like a greedy child tucking into his favourite dessert, and the little smacking noises he makes with his lips are an obvious sign of his relish.
This isn’t the slow, sensual exploration she’s been writing about tonight, the passion of lovers who know each other inside out, and have learned all the tricks that best tease and stimulate. It’s something instinctive and primal: two people who will, in all likelihood, never meet again taking advantage of an unexpected opportunity to fuck each other’s brains out. The fact that Lauren should be downstairs, keeping an eye on the deserted lobby, instead of sprawling over this bed, half-dressed and with her juices running down her thighs, simply adds extra spice to the occasion.
The point of Jackson’s tongue flicks over her clit, before his lips home in on the tender bud, sucking with just the right amount of pressure. Sensation slices through Lauren’s body, so strong it almost causes her knees to buckle. This man knows just what he’s doing, pushing her with almost indecent haste towards orgasm. When he laps at the entrance to her arse, sliding a finger up into her pussy at the same time, she has to bury her face in the overstuffed pillow and yell out her pleasure, so as not to disturb the guests in the neighbouring room. The windows might be triple-glazed to keep out the noise of aircraft, but the walls aren’t quite so thick, and she doesn’t want to have her name added to the roster of shame, along with Mr Stocking and the body-paint couple.
When the convulsions of her orgasm finally die away, Jackson spins her round. His towel has come off somewhere during the proceedings and his rigid cock pokes up from the trimmed-back hair at his crotch, inviting her to admire it. The smooth, cut length is magnificent, and she stretches out a hand and makes a circle of finger and thumb around it.
Her fist pumps his shaft, back and forth in an unvarying rhythm. Jackson’s eyes close and he surrenders to the feel of her fingers. She wanks him to the point where beads of juice glisten at his crown, then holds him steady as her lips plunge in a wet O over the crown and down. Fresh out of the shower, he tastes clean, with just a little hint of lemon verbena soap. Lauren would have preferred him to be riper, the scents of his journey still lingering on him, but, undeterred, she gives herself up to the task of pleasing him the way he’s just pleased her. Swirling her tongue round in lazy circles, she lets herself be guided by the hitch in his breathing that tells her he’s already tensed himself against coming. Whatever he’s doing to prevent himself spilling too soon – thinking about his tax return, worrying whether he’ll oversleep and miss his connection in the morning – it seems to be working, as she laves him from root to tip, sucking and tasting every last gorgeous inch of him.
When the pleasure appears to become too much for him, he pulls away, with more than a little reluctance. Lauren sits back on her haunches, watching as he picks up his glass and takes a swig of watery vodka. He offers her some, but she shakes her head. She might have broken so many rules tonight, but she still knows better than to drink on duty.
Somehow, among all the pocket debris on his bedside table, Jackson finds his wallet and the condom lurking within. As he puts it on, Lauren catches sight of herself in the mirror. Above the waist she still looks respectable, even if her hair is coming loose from its neat ponytail, but beneath it she’s bare and uninhibited, sex open and shiny-wet from Jackson’s oral attention.
He dishevels her appearance even more, tugging open her jacket and blouse so he can free her tits from the cups of her bra. She thinks she sees a jacket button go flying across the room to land under the dresser, where it will no doubt be vacuumed up next time the room is cleaned. Assuming the cleaners bother to vacuum beneath the furniture, that is. It wouldn’t surprise her at all if the odd corner is cut from time to time, even in a four-star establishment like this.
Jackson distracts her from her musings by grabbing her legs and pulling her forward, so her arse is positioned right at the edge of the bed. He stands between her parted thighs, smiling down as he enters her with one easy thrust. The thick, condom-clad bar of his cock pushes her walls apart, filling her to a point that’s almost, but not quite, too much. Her lips are spread wide, stretched so that her clit is more prominent, more ready to receive stimulation.
‘You like that?’ Jackson asks, holding still and letting her get used to the way he feels inside her.
All Lauren can do is nod. She does like it, very much indeed. And if he’s even half as good with his cock as he was with his mouth, she knows she’s in for the ride of her life.
Sure of her comfort, her consent to what will come next, Jackson thrusts hard, shunting Lauren a little way across the bed. Unsatisfactory thread count or not, the sheets feel good beneath her bare arse, cool and soft.
He grabs her cheeks, partly so he can haul her on to his crotch and partly, she suspects, because he just likes their soft fullness in his hands. Everything that’s happened tonight has made it very clear that Greg Jackson is an arse man. Her bare tits bounce indecently with every stroke. It’s far from the most dignified fuck she’s ever had, but as he bangs into her over and over, she doesn’t give a damn. He’s so long that the head of his cock is hitting a place inside her most of her lovers have never reached, and the feeling is almost shocking in its intensity.
Lauren moans, lost in bliss, no longer caring if her cries wake whoever’s sleeping next door. Let them complain; it’s not like there’s anyone down on reception to take their call, after all.
He continues to piston into her with measured strokes, steady as the ticking of a grandfather clock. Each one sends powerful shards of feeling through her clit, her belly, her tightly clenched arsehole, winding her whole body in a web of sensation. What Jackson is doing to her is so unbelievably good she wants it to last for ever, but she knows that’s not possible. She’s racing towards another orgasm, and the way he’s humping and grunting, hips moving to a jerky, frantic beat, she knows Jackson’s almost there, too.
Another thrust, deeper and harder than before. He’s losing his rhythm, his composure, and the veins are standing out like thick cords in his neck.
‘Oh, my –’ That’s the moment when the tension breaks, like water rushing over a dam, carrying her down and down. She drags Jackson with her, the spasms of her vaginal muscles milking his orgasm from him. When it’s over he withdraws from her pussy’s possessive clasp and slumps, spent and ready for sleep, on the bed beside her.
She untangles herself from his embrace and reaches for her underwear where it lies, tangled up with her tights, on the bedroom floor. ‘That was fantastic, but I’d better get back downstairs,’ she tells him as she dresses, tucking herself in and making herself look respectable once more. ‘There may be other guests who need me.’
Jackson gazes at her with pleasure-glazed eyes. ‘I shouldn’t really tell you this,’ he replies, ‘but there was absolutely nothing wrong with the hairdryer.’
‘Then why on earth …?’
He’s all too eager to spill his guilty little secret in the afterglow of good sex. ‘I work for the website Undercover Traveller. We book into places all round the world and claim to find fault with things, to see how the hotel deals with our complaints, and whether we’d recommend them to people looking for somewhere to stay.’
Lauren should be annoyed at the way he’s tricked her, but she can’t find it in herself, not after he’s fucked her so beautifully. ‘Oh, really? And how do you feel you were dealt with on this occasion?’
He grins that slow, sexy grin of his, takes her hand and plants a soft kiss on her palm. ‘To my absolute satisfaction, Lauren. To my absolute satisfaction.’