Jameson Hotel - the Dark Suite Series: Parts One, Two & Three (4 page)

“I’m worried about you, Jules, stay and talk
to me. I want to know more about this situation. Tell me about the guy. What’s
his name?”

She watches the guest step out of the pool,
wrap a towel around her waist then walk away, giving us some privacy.

“It was over a year ago and I shouldn’t have
brought it up, forget it. I feel like I threw it in your face to punish you...”
She starts to leave and my heart sinks to the bottom of the pool. My mouth
won’t open to call her back, and at this moment it’s very clear that this woman
weakens my soul. I’m obsessed with her every word, movement, and breath. She
can’t disappear.

“Wait.” I walk up to her and place my hand on
the curve of her hip, looking into her eyes with an apologetic expression on my
face. Something inside of me wants to hold her, and another part can’t wait for
her to leave so I can find this guy and rip his head off. I hide that
conflicting split and try to get the information I need. “I blew up in there,
as usual, you know that about me, but I’m dead serious when I say I want you to
stay. I’ll keep my cool.”

“Another time,” she says.

I exhale and ask a final question. “Tell me
where you met this guy.”

She pulls a set of car keys from her purse
and stands before me with a straight face. “He was my boss at Mountain Bread in
town. I worked the morning shift with him until that crap happened. Then I
quit. And if I were smart, I would’ve learned from that mistake... I shouldn’t
fall in love with the man I work for.” She turns away and walks along the
pool’s edge to the side gate and disappears around the building, on her way to
the employee parking lot.

I take one last leisurely walk around the
pool and look up at the dark windows of my suite, then at the fully lit private
suite on the opposite end of the hotel. There aren’t supposed to be any lights
on and I’m bothered that my instructions are being ignored. A silhouette
appears for a brief moment, then the lights go out and the figure dissolves
into the darkness. It better stay that way.

I’m a protector. Most people think I’m an
uncaring, self-centered man, but the reality is I live my life as a guardian
over my family and friends. I took on that role at a young age because neither
one of my parents ever did.

I was engaged when my father approached me
with an extravagant offer to work for him in his porn company. I already had a
decent job in my hometown of Philly and didn’t want to relocate my fiancé away
from her family, but I also wanted to make the big bucks to support her,
especially since I had just knocked her up. I visited my dad on and off in
Vegas, learning the in’s and out’s of his business, and then he gave me an
opportunity to run one of his remote locations from home. For a while it was
simple and honest work, developing and managing online porn sites, but then I
started attending some of his private parties and got sucked into his world.
They were intense and like nothing I’d ever experienced, with an overabundance
of drugs, booze, and naked women hanging on my arm. No one knew I was Paul’s
son except for his bodyguards. My porn name was Marcus Wild, and after a while
I fell so deeply into his company I ended up becoming one of his biggest online
stars whenever I visited - sleeping with both men and women, and cheating on my
wife. My childhood and teens were spent with a mother who was mentally ill and
abusive, and my twenties were spent hanging around a father who taught me how
to kill and expected me to stick my dick into anything and everything that
moved.

Heck, I hope the next generation of
Jamesons
isn’t this fucked up.

I check on my staff in the kitchen, front
desk, and my head security guard, letting all of them know about the two new
guys I hired before taking off to my suite.

Dayne’s
not coming back tonight. He knows I’m on
guard and he’ll want to ask more questions about his father’s suicide and my
sister’s whereabouts before he takes action. He’s also the type of man who’ll
punish my family without veering off path, meaning he’s not going to take
anything out on my staff or Julia. He won’t complicate what he came here to do
by involving random victims. It’s just not his style. He wants answers and to
settle some asinine ongoing conflict with my family. And hell, for all I know
he could be on his way to my sister’s home in St. Louis. Her husband owns a
wine bar, the only one in the city, which makes them easy to find. But I know
for a fact she’s been counting the years, months, and days of
Dayne’s
release. She’s prepared.

I type my code into my keypad and enter my
suite, tossing my jacket over my dining room chair and mixing myself a scotch
and soda before heading into my office.

Someone in this town is about to meet his
maker.

DEPARTURE

I
t’s rare for me
to leave my hotel. I have everything I want and need in there, a warm bed,
liquor and food, and a woman who I believe professed her love for me last
night. It’s paradise compared to jogging in the cold along one of the southern
Lake Tahoe trails, watching my breath float into the early light while my
cock’s a shrunken head hiding beneath my sweats.

I pull back one of
my black leather gloves to check the time. Six o’clock. No one’s out this early
except for one lone soul about fifteen feet ahead. We’re just two men out for a
little exercise on a frigid morning.

“I’m a troll,”
I sing softly.

He turns his head
while keeping his pace and then after sensing a threat, speeds up.

“I’m getting... really hungry... for a nice
sam-widge
,”
I hum with quickening steps.
“I’ll roll
you... and I’ll fold you... in a big...
foldy
roll.”
My
sentences break apart as I run faster to catch my prey.

He sprints ahead but
the trail ends, leaving him with a split second decision to turn around and
face me, or head into the pines.

“I’m... a troll.”
I’m quicker, bigger, stronger, than this
little shit.

My switchblade juts
from my hand, my heart pumps and blood rushes through my veins, extending my
dick. The hunt always causes an erection...
I love this
feeling... the kill... fuck
,
I’m in
. My blade
slips inside his warm gut and blood coats his sweatshirt. It’s like penetrating
a virgin.

“Uh,” he huffs with
wide eyes and an open mouth.

I bring him closer
and sing despondently while he takes his final breaths.

“I’ll eat...”
My knife jerks upward and twists.

“You up...”
Pulling out, he falls to the ground.

“For supper.”

Rot in Hell, you dumb fuck.

MORNING

T
hat was a
masterful morning. It’s been years since I’ve had good reason to take a man
down, and from start to finish, it played out without a hitch. I truly believe
ridding the world of scum is a good deed. It’s not wrong to kill a man who’s
hurt others or who has the potential to harm again. I’m a vigilante for those I
hold dear and it was the right thing to do. My greatest strength is to defend
and protect, and Julia’s one lucky woman to have me around.

The guy’s name was
Roland Lorne, manager of Mountain Bread, avid fisherman, skier (both water and
snow), only child to William and Stacy of Carson City; a Republican in his
early thirties, with a love for ‘Star Trek, Big
Titties
,
and Beer.’ That’s what I found on Facebook after scoring his name from the
Mountain Bread website. The moron also posted his daily run, including a map,
distance, and the time of the day he jogged, open for the entire world to view.
I’ve tracked a few people this way and it’s usually the ones with low IQ’s or
inflated egos who leave their profile settings public. I knew I had the right
guy, plus, he never deleted the
selfie
of Julia and
him from their first date over a year ago, along with the twenty other women
since then.

After he was dead I
found a slim wallet zipped in his back pocket, put blood on it, and jogged the
two miles back to town where my Tacoma was parked. The jog was the most
difficult part. The sneakers I wore were a pair left behind by one of our
guests and they were a size too small. I set them, the wallet, and the bloody
blade on a bench in the small downtown park, close to a homeless guy who was
sleeping under a blanket by a tree. I waited in my truck until he got up,
watching with a grin as he found the items.

It was like he read
my mind. He opened the wallet first and got blood on his hand, wiped it clean
on his shirt then placed it in his back pocket. Then he opened the blade, wiped
the blood from that onto his sleeve and pocketed it as well. The sneakers were
too small but he wore them anyway then packed up his blanket, put his old shoes
in his backpack, and walked off.

Fucking brilliant.

The homeless are
usually the first to be questioned in this town and if he gets charged and sent
to prison, he’ll have free meals and a warm bed for twenty-five years. That has
to be better than eating rotting table scraps from dumpsters or ending up
frozen to the sidewalk on a minus twenty-degree winter night. Others may
disagree, but this slaughter seems like a win-win for all. A dickhead’s never
going to hurt another woman, a homeless guy is finally going to get taxpayers
to take care of him, and I get the girl.

Goddamn, I feel
amazing.

Even without the
bum, South Lake Tahoe’s traffic count is fifteen thousand cars a day with
people on their way to California or headed in the opposite direction to the
casinos, not to mention the daily influx of tourists who stay the night and
then disappear come morning. I bet at least two killers drive through these
parts on any given day.

I mean, other than
Dayne
Rosen and me.

When I got back to
my suite, I burned my black leather gloves, then turned on the driveway
security cameras before relaxing on the sofa for a moment with a glass of juice
and a piece of dry toast.

And now, I’ve been
unable to wipe the grin from my face for hours and I’m too fucking wired to
sleep. All I can do to waste some time is take a hot shower to loosen my tight
muscles then try and get my ass moving for the day.

I stand with my
hands pressed against the marble tiled wall with my eyes closed and the water
streaming down my face. “I’m a badass, Dad,” I whisper. “A fucking badass, just
like you always wanted.”

“You have the face of a pansy,” my father scowls while
gripping the back of my neck, forcing me to stare into the bathroom mirror.
“Look at yourself, a fucking blonde haired, blue-eyed, replica of your mother.
I don’t even think you’re mine.”

A tear rolls down my cheek that I quickly
wipe away. “You never say these things to Sophie,” I whimper, starting to feel
sickened by my appearance.

“Your sister’s beautiful. She came out with
dark hair and chestnut eyes like me. A badass. The Jameson genes are evident in
her. What happened to you, Mark? You look like a fucking sunflower.” He clutches
my chin and lifts my head so I can’t turn away. “How the fuck are you going to
survive being such a pretty boy? Men will call you a faggot.”

“Dad, stop,” I whisper. “You’re hurting me.”

He smacks the top of my head and backs away.
“Look in the mirror and say you’re a badass.”

“I don’t want to,” I murmur.

“You need to toughen up on the inside, or
maybe I should break your nose so don’t look so feminine. That might help.”

I put my hand over my face in defense and he
laughs.

“Oh, my little
Marky
.”
He shakes his head. “Your eyelashes are longer and darker than a woman wearing
thick mascara and your lips look like they have a coat of pink lipstick on
them.”

I turn to the mirror with a furrowed brow and
scrunch my nose at my reflection.

“Better. Now make a fist and say you’re a
badass.”

“I’m a badass,” I whisper.

He laughs and calls me a loser under his
breath. “Sophia, come here,” he calls out. “Sophia!”

A moment later my little sister pokes her
head through the bathroom door and giggles.

“Hey, kiddo. Are you tough?” my father asks.

She raises her arms, pretending to make two
muscles, tightens her lips and yells, “Me badass!
Rarrr
!”
Then runs off in laughter.

“That’s my kid,” he mutters, with a second slap to my head as
he leaves me alone to face my reflection in the mirror.

My Calvin Klein face
ended up making my father a shitload of money when I was one of his porn stars,
and his constant verbal abuse turned me into the mean-tempered asshole he
wanted, but I never pleased him enough to be called his son.

And he wouldn’t be
proud of me now, either. Not if he found out I killed a guy because of a woman.

He’d say,
Really Mark? It was over pussy? What the
fuck’s wrong with you?

I wrap a towel
around my waist and put a fresh bandage on my knuckle, but avoid the new mirror
my maintenance team installed yesterday.

A text came in from
Jules while I was in the shower - an unnecessary apology.

Sorry ‘bout last night. Didn’t mean to make
this all about me. Do over?

I
text her back.
Need you here. Come talk to me.

Twenty minutes.
She responds.

My growing erection
twitches under the towel. I can’t wait to touch her, smell her, slip my fingers
inside of her and lick her pussy.

Two pieces of pine
are placed on the fire and my window shades are closed. The room is
comfortable, quiet, and warm. I
do
plan on having a conversation with her, but I know we won’t make it past my
living room if I decide to kiss her, and I think she may be deserving of a kiss
today.

I keep a watchful
eye for her from my office cams, checking on the rest of the hotel as I wait.
One of my pool boys is netting the Aspen leaves from the water, a few people
are eating lunch, and a woman sits alone at the restaurant bar, which won’t be
open for a few more hours. She’s either an alcoholic or looking for solitude.
The lobby’s quiet, checkout’s over, and check-in’s not for a while. All is
well... wait... for Christ’s sake.

I zoom in on the
staff parking lot and see Julia’s car. She’s in the back seat with her feet in
the air, slipping out of a pair of jeans and into her work clothes. For a
moment, I think she’s screwing around with some asshole, but after fixing her
shiny blonde hair in the rear view mirror, she steps out with a towel and a
small bag... alone. I follow her with the cam to the pool changing area, where
she walks into the women’s room.

“Why are you getting
dressed in your car?” I whisper. “Where are you coming from?”

I wait patiently
until she reappears and walks outside, tossing the bag and towel into the
backseat.

“Fuck,” I mumble,
pushing my chair away from the desk. I put on a dress shirt and hear a knock on
the door, answering it while still buttoning the front.

“Nice.” She smiles
with bright red lips. “Leave it open. Actually, take it off, the towel too. I
owe you
something
after taking off
last night, don’t you think?”

She walks in and I
lock the door, continuing to button my shirt without answering.

“Mark,” she says and
stops my hand. “Don’t give me the silent treatment, I’m sorry, okay?”

The expression on
her face is always genuine. Whether she’s in a loving mood, pissed off, or
apologetic, it’s never forced. I love that about her.

I take two soda
waters from my fridge and she gladly accepts one of them.

“We should talk,” I
say softly. “I have some questions before we fool around... if we fool around.”
I motion to my sofa and she takes a seat. I’m no longer aroused after seeing
her use my hotel like it’s a... hotel.

“His name’s Roland,”
she says. “I was hoping by now you would’ve let that conversation from last
night go.”

I play along, acting
like I don’t know anything about the guy.

“Who? The guy who
hurt you?”

“Yes.”

“Roland sounds like
the name of a pet pig,” I pause, “and I
will
let it go temporarily, but that doesn’t mean I’m not pissed about it,” as she would
expect me to be.

She nods and
whispers thank you.

“But we have other
things to discuss,” I exhale, placing my drink on one of my end tables.

“It’s alright, Mark,
I understand.”

“Understand what?” I
face her with my arm resting on the back of the sofa.

“That you can’t be
with me anymore because I have weird baggage. I don’t blame you.”

“That’s not what I
was going to say.”

“Really?” She’s
hopeful. “Then what?”

I slide her closer
and trail my finger along her forehead, temple, cheek, to her small chin, then
around to the back of her neck, bringing her mouth to mine. Her skin smells
like a fresh spritz of flowery perfume and her lips taste like peppermint. Two
kisses in less than a day... Jesus, I’m losing it.

Her hand works its
way under my towel but she sighs when she finds my cock flaccid.

“Tell me something,
Jules.” I look deeply into her eyes and my caressing hand on the back of her
neck changes to a firm grip. “Where’d you sleep last night?”

She tries to pull
back but I refuse to loosen my hold.

“What does it
matter?” She pushes my arm away and rubs her neck. “As far as I can tell, we’re
not in any sort of relationship, so I shouldn’t have to answer that question,
especially since you never open up about anything in
your
life.”

“Bullshit.” I stand
and put another log on the fire. “That’s complete bullshit,” I repeat, needing
to keep my hands occupied or something’s
gonna
break. “It matters to me and just because I didn’t want to discuss
Dayne
doesn’t mean that the rest of my life is off limits.”

“Let me repeat,” she
says assertively. “I think we have a good time fooling around with one another,
but there hasn’t been much else to make this...”

“I asked you to
dinner last night.”

“Yeah, and you got
moody and left me alone.” She crosses her slim legs and leans forward.

“So... you’re saying
you want to date, like we’re in high school or something. Hell, the last person
I dated was my ex-wife and that was over fifteen years ago. I’m a grown man,
Jules. I’m not going to...”

“So you just fuck
people? See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t get me wrong, I love
sucking your cock, Mark, and if that’s all you ever want from me, fine, but
every once in a while I see something in your eyes that tells me there might be
more to all of this. Perhaps that’s all just wishful thinking on my part,” she
says with uncertainty.

Put up or shut up
time. I should’ve done this last night.

“Everyone in this
hotel always talks about your good looks, but I notice other things about you,
like the fact that you’re a smart businessman, and when I hear you talk to
vendors and some of the guests you come across as intelligent and knowledgeable
about what’s going on in the world. A lot of people don’t give a shit about
things outside their hometown. You’re not one of them.”

“Stop,” I whisper,
losing my train of thought.

“You’re a warrior in
the bedroom.” She smiles. “A domineering fucker, but
you’ve
revealed a softer side that’s been hidden away. The fact that you care about my
past and that someone hurt me was a telling sign last night.”