The lobby air was cold and smelled of chlorine from the nearby pool. Kristen’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Relax, superstar. I’m not handing out flyers.”

Robin’s voice was low, a tight wire. “What do you want?”

“What we had. Before your little girlfriend showed up.” She took a half-step closer, her perfume—something sweet and cheap—clashing with the hotel’s sterile scent. “It was just a fling, right? You said so. So let’s have another fling.”

“It’s not happening.”

“Is she going to be happy?” Kristen asked, her head tilting. “When she hears how you ate my pussy in your bed while she was on a plane thinking about you?”

A cold spike drove through Robin’s gut. “Are you blackmailing me?”

“I want some time. Like a sidechick.” She shrugged, the movement casual, predatory. “You know how it works. You give me that, and I shut my mouth. Easy.”

“It’s not possible.” He started to turn. “Some other time.”

Her hand darted out, her fingers brushing the front of his jeans where he was still soft, untouched by her. The contact was electric, invasive. He grabbed her wrist and shoved it away, his own grip trembling. “Don’t.”

She didn’t flinch. “Just a blowjob. For now. Right here, there’s a service closet. Five minutes. Then you go back to her, and I disappear.” Her gaze was flat, transactional. “Or I go upstairs and knock. Your choice.”

The hollow space inside him, the one he’d been trying to fill with bourbon and stage lights, yawned wide. It was a math problem. A cost-benefit analysis of his own ruin. The silence stretched, filled by the distant ding of an elevator. He felt the weight of the room key in his pocket, the imagined weight of April’s trust. It was no contest. The emptiness was heavier. “Where?” he heard himself say, the word ash in his mouth.

Her room was two floors down, a mirror image of his, but stale, the air thick with spilled vodka and her cosmetics. She didn’t speak. She pushed him to sit on the edge of the unmade bed and went to her knees, her hands working his belt, his zipper. He watched, detached, as she freed him. He was limp, unresponsive, a testament to his own disgust.

Kristen didn’t seem to mind. She leaned in, her breath hot. She didn’t use her hands. Just her mouth. Her tongue was a flat, wet pressure against his softness, then a pointed probe. She took him in, shallow, working him with a practiced, relentless suction. He stared at the ceiling, at a water stain shaped like a continent. A part of him observed, clinical: *This is the price. This is what you’re worth now.*

But his body, traitorous and starved for any sensation that wasn’t guilt, began to respond. The heat of her mouth, the slick slide of her tongue along his thickening length, the obscene, wet sounds—it worked on him. A low, unwanted heat pooled in his belly. His hips gave a tiny, involuntary jerk. He felt himself hardening fully in her mouth, the blood rushing in a wave of shameful compliance.

She felt it too. A hum of satisfaction vibrated against him. She took him deeper, her throat relaxing, and the world narrowed to that vacuum seal of heat, to the pressure building at the base of his spine. He didn’t touch her. His hands fisted in the cheap bedspread. His head fell back. He let it happen. He let the sensation obliterate the look on April’s face when he’d kissed her to hide this room, the sound of his lawyer’s voice, the phantom scent of his son’s hair. It was just this. Friction and release. A mechanical solution.

When he came, it was with a choked-off grunt, his body bowing as he spilled into her mouth. The pleasure was sharp, bright, and immediately followed by a wash of such profound self-loathing that his vision went spots. She swallowed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she sat back on her heels. He was already soft again, shrinking from the air.

“See?” she said, standing up. “Easy. I’ll keep in touch.”

He dressed in silence, his fingers clumsy. He didn’t look at her. He walked out, the door clicking shut behind him, sealing the encounter away. The hallway carpet was too bright. His own room was three floors up. Each step felt like wading through tar. He pushed the keycard into the lock, the green light flashing.

The suite was dark, quiet. The hum of the air conditioner was louder here. Then he saw her. April was in the sunken marble tub in the center of the room, lit only by the city’s neon glow bleeding through the sheer curtains. She was naked, submerged to her ribs, her head resting against the rim. Her eyes were closed. Water droplets jeweled her collarbones. She was so still, so perfectly serene, a painting of innocent waiting. The ghost of Kristen’s mouth still on him, the taste of betrayal like metal on his tongue, curdled into something else. A frantic, clawing need.

He was hard again in an instant, a brutal, aching resurgence that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with erasure. He needed to fuck the memory away. He needed to mark this, her, as his, to prove something he could no longer name.

April’s eyes opened. She saw him standing there, his jacket gone, his shirt untucked, his expression a mask she didn’t recognize. A small smile touched her lips. “Hey,” she whispered.

He didn’t speak. He crossed the room, his shoes loud on the marble. He didn’t kiss her. He reached into the water, his hands finding her hips, and hauled her up, water sluicing off her body in a loud crash. She gasped, her hands flying to his shoulders for balance. “Robin—!”

He turned her, bending her over the cool, wet edge of the tub, his palm a firm pressure between her shoulder blades. Her back was a long, smooth curve, water dripping down the cleft of her ass. He fumbled with his jeans, freed himself. He was throbbing, angry. He didn’t touch her to see if she was ready. He just pushed.

The entrance was a tight, burning resistance for one blinding second—she was not ready—then his cock sank into the shocking, slick heat of her. April cried out, a sound of surprise and pain, her nails scraping against marble. He didn’t stop. He set a punishing rhythm immediately, each thrust a deep, jarring impact that shook her body against the tub. The wet slap of their skin filled the silent room, a brutal counterpoint to the gentle hum of the air conditioner. He gripped her hips, holding her in place, driving into her as if he could reach through her and purge the last hour from his cells.

Her cries softened, melted into low moans. Her body began to arch back into his, to meet him. She was adapting, accepting her own heat blooming around him. This only fueled him. He fucked her with a single-minded intensity he’d never shown her, a side of himself he’d kept leashed, wild and untamed. He was trying to get lost. He was trying to become nothing but this motion, this sweat, this feeling of her clenching around him. He was trying, with every brutal, perfect thrust, to forget.