Midnight Temptation

Chapter Two: Room 712

Mia didn't sleep.

She lay on her side of the bed until the sky turned grey, her phone face down on the pillow beside her, the photo burned into the back of her eyes. A woman in a black coat. A hand on the door of Room 714. Her face, caught in the light.

Does Johan know where his wife sleeps when he's away?

She'd typed a reply a dozen times. Who is this? What do you want? Leave me alone. She'd deleted every one.

At six, she gave up, showered until the water ran cold, and stood in the kitchen in Johan's old rugby jersey, watching the kettle boil without seeing it.

At 6:14, her phone buzzed.

Her heart lurched so hard she nearly dropped her mug.

Johan. Morning skat. Meetings all day, will call tonight. Love you x

She read it three times. Then she typed back, Love you too. Good luck today, and hated how easily her fingers found the words.

At 6:20, she called Daniel.

He answered on the first ring, his voice rough with sleep. "Mia?"

"Someone saw us."

Silence. Then the rustle of sheets, the creak of a bed. When he spoke again, he was wide awake. "Tell me."

She told him. The corridor. The photo. The number she didn't know. By the time she finished, her voice was shaking.

"Send it to me," he said.

She did. She heard his breath go out slowly when it came through.

"Daniel, if Johan sees this..."

"He won't." His voice was low and steady, the same voice that had told her not yet in the dark last night, and she hated how much it calmed her. "Don't answer it. Don't block it. Go to work. Act normal. I'll be at your place tonight."

"You can't come here. The neighbours..."

"Mia." A pause. "I've been coming to your house every Sunday for eleven years. Nobody's going to look twice at my car in your driveway."

She closed her eyes.

"Eight o'clock," he said, and hung up.

---

The day crawled.

She sat at her desk and stared at spreadsheets she didn't read. She checked her phone every four minutes. The unknown number stayed silent, and somehow that was worse.

By seven, she'd changed her clothes three times. She told herself it didn't matter what she wore. They were going to talk. Make a plan. That was all.

She was still telling herself that when she opened the front door at eight and Daniel stepped inside, and she saw the way his eyes went to the thin cotton sundress clinging to her hips.

The red one.

He shut the door behind him without a word.

"We need to talk," Mia said.

"We will."

"I mean it, Daniel. Someone has a photo of me. Someone knows."

"I know." He walked towards her, slowly, and she backed away without meaning to, past the couch, past the dining table where they'd shared a hundred Sunday lunches, until her hips met the cold granite of the kitchen counter. "And I'm going to find out who. But right now you're shaking."

"I'm not."

He took her hand and held it up between them. Her fingers were trembling.

"You are," he said softly.

He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. Then the inside of her wrist, right where the cuffs had marked her, the faint red line still there under the skin.

Mia's breath stuttered.

"This is a terrible idea," she whispered. "This is Johan's kitchen."

"It's your kitchen." He set her hand on his chest. Under her palm, his heart was beating just as hard as hers. "You chose every tile in this room. I watched you do it. He picked the braai and nothing else."

He wasn't wrong.

"Daniel..."

"Tell me to leave," he said, "and I'll go. I'll sit in my car and make calls until I find out who sent that photo. I won't touch you."

His hands rested on the counter on either side of her. Not touching her. Waiting.

She should have said it. One word. Go.

Instead, she curled her fingers into his shirt and pulled his mouth down to hers.

It wasn't the slow, teasing kiss from last night. It was hungry and messy and desperate, her fear and his anger crashing together, his hand fisting in her hair, her teeth catching his lower lip. He lifted her like she weighed nothing and set her on the counter, and the cold stone against the backs of her thighs made her gasp into his mouth.

He swallowed the sound.

His hands slid up under the red dress. Up her thighs. Over her hips. He found nothing but skin and stilled.

"No panties," he said against her lips. It wasn't a question.

Heat flooded her face. "I told myself we were only going to talk."

He laughed, low and dark, and the sound went straight between her legs. "Liar."

He pushed the straps off her shoulders, and the dress fell to her waist. The kitchen lights were bright and merciless. There was nowhere to hide, and for the first time in years, she didn't want to.

He looked at her the way he had last night, like she was something he'd been starving for.

"Lean back," he said.

She did. Her palms flat on the granite, her back arched, her breasts bare to him. He took his time, kissing down her throat, over her collarbone, his mouth closing over one n****e and sucking until she whimpered, then moving to the other. His fingers traced slow circles on the inside of her thigh, higher, higher, never quite where she needed them.

"Please," she breathed.

"Already begging?" His thumb finally brushed over her, one light, wicked stroke, and her hips jerked off the counter. "That was fast."

"Daniel."

"Say it properly."

"Please touch me."

He sank to his knees on the kitchen tiles she'd chosen, hooked her legs over his shoulders, and put his mouth on her.

Mia cried out. Her hand flew to her mouth, then into his hair, holding him there as he licked her slowly, deeply, like he had all the time in the world. Her other hand scrabbled at the counter and knocked over the sugar bowl. Neither of them noticed. He slid two fingers into her and curled them, and the world narrowed down to his mouth and his hands and the bright white kitchen lights blurring above her.

She came hard, her thighs shaking around his head, his name spilling out of her again and again.

He didn't stop until she was pushing weakly at his shoulders, oversensitive and gasping.

When he stood, his eyes were black. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, unbuckled his belt, and pulled her to the very edge of the counter.

"Look at me," he said.

She did.

He pushed into her in one slow, deep stroke, and they both groaned. He held still, buried inside her, his forehead against hers, breathing hard.

"Every Sunday," he said roughly, "I sat at that table and watched you in this kitchen. And I thought about this."

He drew back and thrust again, harder, and the counter jolted under her. A glass rattled in the cupboard.

"Every single Sunday, Mia."

She wrapped her legs around him and held on.

He took her hard and deep against the counter, one hand gripping her hip, the other braced beside her, the kitchen filling with the sound of skin on skin and her breathless cries. She dug her nails into his back through his shirt. He hissed and drove into her harder. When she came again, clenching tight around him, he followed with a low, broken groan, his face pressed into her neck.

For a long moment, the only sound was their breathing and the hum of the fridge.

Then Daniel laughed softly against her skin. "You knocked over the sugar."

She looked. A white drift of sugar spilled across the counter and onto the floor.

Mia started to laugh too, helpless and shaky, her arms around his neck. For one sweet, stupid moment, she forgot about the photo.

Her phone buzzed on the counter beside her.

They both went still.

Slowly, Mia reached for it. Daniel didn't move away. He stood between her legs and watched her face as she turned the screen over.

The unknown number.

A new photo.

This one wasn't from a phone. It was a security camera still, the Marlowe's gold logo in one corner, a timestamp in the other: 00:07. The same corridor. A man in a navy blazer, laughing, his arm around a slim blonde woman as he slid a key card into a door.

Room 712.

Two doors down from hers.

Mia's blood turned to ice.

She knew that blazer. She'd ironed it on Sunday night and folded it into his suitcase herself.

Johan.

Johan, who'd been on a flight to Cape Town. Johan, who'd texted her landed safe at one in the morning. Johan, who'd been forty feet away from her the entire time.

"Mia?" Daniel's voice sounded very far away. "What is it?"

She couldn't answer. She just turned the phone so he could see.

She watched the colour drain from his face.

The phone buzzed again in her hand. A message this time.

Your husband never got on that plane, Mia. Neither of us is as stupid as he thinks. Coffee tomorrow? The Bean Bar, Rosebank, 10am. Come alone. I think we can help each other.

Underneath it, a name.

Carla.

Mia knew that name too.

Carla Pretorius. Twenty-six years old. Blonde. Johan's personal assistant.

The girl he'd brought to their braai last month, the one he'd called "basically a kid sister."

To be continued...