Moonbound

Chapter one

Celeste

I couldn't stop looking at the clock.

4:50. Ten minutes stood between me and the weekend, and I was doing a terrible job of pretending to work through them. My cursor blinked in an unfinished spreadsheet cell while my brain ran somewhere entirely different down a hallway, through a hotel door, into a night I'd been quietly rehearsing in my head for two days straight.

It had started with an accident. A few nights ago, buried in a deadline, I'd emailed my boss a report at some ungodly hour and gone to close out of the browser except Alan's inbox was still open on the second monitor, the one we technically shared for bill-splitting purposes and definitely did not use to snoop. I wasn't a snoop. I want that on record. But my eyes have never once in my life failed to catch a subject line, and this one said Your Reservation is Confirmed in a font I recognized from exactly one boutique hotel three blocks from his office.

He hadn't mentioned it. Not a word. Which meant only one thing: he was planning something, and I was going to let him have his surprise right up until the moment I decided to steal it back.

He'd texted earlier, at 5:30, might run a little late, words that, translated correctly, meant the surprise was in motion, act normal. So, I would. I'd swing by the apartment, throw together an overnight bag, dig out the one piece of lingerie that still fit exactly the way I remembered, grab a bottle of something cold on the way, and beat him there. Let him be the one walking into a surprise for once.

It had been two weeks since Alan and I had so much as kissed past hello. Two weeks of him coming home late and me falling asleep before he did, of two people living in the same apartment as polite roommates who occasionally split rent. Tonight was going to fix that. I could already picture it low light, the coat falling open at exactly the right moment, five years of steady, comfortable love turning, for one night, into something with a little more static in it.

"EEEEEKKK!"

The sound came out of me before I could stop it, half squeal, half laugh, and it was loud enough that Jackie's head appeared around my office door two seconds later, eyebrows already up near her hairline.

"You okay in here?"

"More than okay." I was already half out of my chair, mentally cataloguing everything I needed to grab on the way home bag, lingerie, the good perfume, not the everyday one. "Alan booked us a hotel for tonight. It's supposed to be a surprise. I wasn't supposed to know."

"But you know."

"I know."

"So what's the plan?"

I told her. The early check-in, the bag, the pose I had very specifically imagined coat open, nothing underneath, draped across the end of the bed like something out of a magazine ad for a life I apparently thought I was living.

Jackie's mouth fell open, slow and complete, like a drawbridge lowering.

"Too much?" I asked, though I already knew the answer and didn't especially care.

"Celeste. I feel like you're not going for steamy romance here so much as direct-to-streaming erotic thriller."

"Probably fair." I grabbed my bag off the back of my chair. "But it's been two weeks, Jackie. Two. I am owed a little drama."

She threw both hands up in surrender, laughing. "Okay, okay ... go get your mojo back. But you will be texting me every detail tomorrow morning, first thing, I mean it."

"Yes, ma'am." I gave her a mock salute on my way out the door, and for once the elevator ride down felt too slow, like the whole building knew I had somewhere better to be.

By the time I let myself into the apartment, my hands were already moving faster than my thoughts. Gray blazer off, tossed over the back of a chair. Blouse unbuttoned as I crossed the hall toward the bathroom, running the shower hot enough to fog the mirror before I'd even finished undressing.

The water hit my shoulders in long, insistent lines and rolled down my spine, and for a full minute I just stood there and let it work the tension out of muscles I hadn't realized I'd been carrying all week the deadline, the late nights, the low simmering ache of missing my own boyfriend under our own roof. I lathered up with the lavender and eucalyptus wash I kept for exactly this kind of night, worked it over my skin until the whole bathroom smelled like a garden after rain, and rinsed off feeling something close to reborn.

I dried my hair fast, did a smoky eye that made the blue in my eyes look almost silver under the bathroom light, and pulled on the sheer pink teddy underneath a white v-neck blouse cut just low enough to matter, black leggings, boots I could actually walk fast in. Perfume on my wrists, on my throat. One last look in the mirror ...good, very good ... and I was out the door with a small bag over one shoulder and the hotel's address memorized from an email I definitely hadn't been supposed to see.

The train ride downtown took twenty minutes, which felt like two. I got off at the right stop, walked three blocks past window displays I didn't actually see, and arrived at the entrance to Le Château with its stone columns and heavy bronze door looking exactly like the kind of place designed to make ordinary nights feel like the opening scene of something.

"Good evening, can I help you with something?"

The man at the front desk had a smile that was, unfortunately, a little too practiced.

"Hi, yes ...my boyfriend, Alan Hines, has a reservation. I was hoping to check in early. Surprise him." I gave a small shrug, going for innocent.

His eyes dipped, lingered a half-second too long on the blouse I'd very deliberately chosen, before he pulled up the reservation. "Looks like he had already checked in through our app, his key went straight to his phone. He did leave one at the desk for you, though. Room 302, third floor. Elevator's straight ahead, stairs to the left if you'd rather. Anything else I can help with?"

"That's everything, thank you."

"Enjoy your evening, ma'am. Dial zero if you need anything."

The elevator came quickly. I rode up watching the numbers light one by one, that low electric thrum of anticipation building in my chest the whole way. When the doors opened onto the third floor, the hallway greeted me with plush maroon carpet that swallowed the click of my boots, gold sconces throwing warm light against wallpaper that looked like something imported from an old French novel. Everything about this hotel had clearly been built to make people feel like they were about to fall in love, or fall into bed, or both.

Room 302 wasn't far. I slid the key card through the reader, watched the light flick green, and let myself in.

"Oh my gosh." The suite opened up in front of me a small living room, floor-to-ceiling drapes pulled back on a view of the park glowing gold under the streetlights. I crossed to the window, momentarily lost in it, before a sound pulled my attention sideways.

A rhythmic, wet squeak echoed through the hallway, cutting through the silence. It was coming from behind the closed bedroom door, a steady, driving sound that made the air feel thick.

Then came her voice, a low, honeyed purr that vibrated with raw pleasure.

"Oh yesss... right there... that feels so f*****g good, Alan."

The sound hit me like a physical blow. Everything in me went ice-cold and deathly still for a heartbeat, and then, in a sudden, violent surge, I felt a wave of heat crash over me. I didn't consciously decide to move; my body simply reacted, driven by a desperate, agonizing need to see.

The door yielded under my hand, swinging open to reveal the scene I had been too naive to imagine.

The room was dim, smelling of musk and expensive perfume. On the sprawling king-sized bed, two bodies were locked in a frantic, sweaty tangle. One of them was unmistakably Alan, his face strained with exertion, his hands gripping hips with a bruising intensity.

Straddling him was a woman I had never seen before. She was a vision of decadent curves and absolute confidence, her heavy breasts swaying with every rhythmic plunge. She sat perched atop him, her back arched and her head thrown back, owning every inch of the space. She looked like a predator who had finally caught her prey, her soaking wet p***y sliding up and down his thick c**k with a visceral, slapping sound that filled the room.

"Alan." My voice didn't sound like mine. "Are you kidding me right now? Who is this?"

He looked at me like I'd materialized out of thin air, scrambling for a sheet to drag over both of them. "Celeste ...what are you ... this isn't... I can explain—"

"Oh, I think it explains itself just fine." My whole body was shaking, and I couldn't tell anymore if it was rage or grief or both wearing the same face. "Five years of my life, Alan. Five years I'm never getting back. And this is what you did with them. We're done."

I didn't wait to hear whatever excuse he'd built. I was already moving, down the hall, down the stairs two at a time, because I refused to stand still in an elevator for even thirty seconds, through the lobby without meeting the desk clerk's eyes, out into a night that had gone dark and indifferent while I wasn't looking.

What in the actual f**k just happened?

I had my phone out and Justine's name dialed before I'd even reached the subway stairs. She picked up on the first ring.

"Hey.. did you make it? Did you guys..."

"Justine." My voice cracked right down the middle. "He was with someone else. I walked in on it. I saw it."

"He what...." A beat of stunned silence, then fury, sharp and immediate on my behalf. "That absolute bastard. Okay. Okay, come meet me, we're drinking tonight, Wild Spur, twenty minutes, don't argue with me."

I didn't argue. I barely registered agreeing before the call ended, and I was moving on autopilot, down into the subway, swiping my pass through the turnstile with hands that wouldn't quite stop shaking.

The platform was packed with Friday night crowds, the whole city funneling underground on its way to somewhere better than where it had spent the day. I stood near the edge in a fog of my own making, replaying the sound of that woman's voice on a loop I couldn't switch off, when a shout cut through the noise in front of me.

"Hey — that's my girl, man, you don't just walk up on her like that..."

I looked up in time to see a shove, a stumble, a fist connecting with someone's jaw. The crowd gasped and rippled backward, and before I understood what was happening, the man who'd thrown the punch was rushing forward again, and someone, anyone was suddenly, violently in my space, and the platform edge was under my heel instead of in front of it.

The fall lasted longer than it should have. Long enough to register the drop, the dark gap of the track bed rushing up, the sick lurch of my stomach leaving my body before the rest of me followed. I hit the concrete hard, my ankle twisting wrong beneath me, my skull cracking against something solid enough to turn the whole world white and then black.