Rock Hard

“You’re good?” Dalton asked.

“I am. Let’s get out of here.”

He shook his head with amusement and wandered back over to his motorcycle. A few moments later, he was revving the engine, I pulled out of park, and we were on the road.

Of course, Jeremy appeared to watch me drive off, following Dalton’s bike.

Dalton’s mystery locale took us down the major roads, but I couldn’t particularly tell where we were going. For a moment, I thought he was driving us towards the nearby mall – but he made a crucial last turn before the road pointed us straight to the parking lot. Instead, it wrapped through a neighborhood nearby, redirecting us towards a nearby, major shopping avenue.

I was starting to get amused with this.

After all, I had no idea what he had in mind.

A few moments later, he made a turn down a small road. I followed him, realizing that it extended back behind all the stores and the local cinema, taking us towards the new, lavish hotel that had been built back there.

Oh, this is going to be interesting, I smirked.

We parked in the massive parking garage, and he led me towards the elevator. We barely spoke a word to each other until the lift was moving downward towards the lobby.

“…A hotel,” I observed.

“What, is that a problem?” He raised an eyebrow. “Not a fan of hotels?”

“It’s a bit… forced, isn’t it?”

“Just wait,” Dalton chuckled. “I don’t think you’ll have a problem with the arrangements I have in mind, even if they were a bit last minute…”

I bit my tongue, sincerely interested to see where he was going with all of this.

We stepped off at the lobby, wandering over the front service desk. A young, cheery clerk with fluffy ginger hair and cute makeup greeted us.

“Checking in?”

“Yes. The reservation’s under Dalton Carlyle,” he casually remarked to her, as if there was some special weight to this that I just didn’t understand.

The front desk clerk ran the name. After a second, her eyes bugged out. “Ah, yes. You were our last-second reservation, weren’t you? My boss mentioned something about this… could you possibly wait a moment? I want to check on this before I hand the keys over.”

“Certainly,” he replied, clearly unperturbed by her surprise. Personally, I wasn’t sure I knew what was going on, and I kept drifting my attention from one of them to the other.

“Excellent. If I could have you step aside, I just need to make a quick call…”

We did as we were asked, in case other guests were to come up behind us and require immediate attention. Meanwhile, the clerk lifted a telephone receiver and dialed in three buttons, waiting for the line to pick up.

“Yes, I’m calling about the Carlyle reservation from today… yes, they’re here now… I see… are you sure?... No, I understand, I just wanted to… mhmm… yes… okay. Thanks. I’ll let them know.”

She disconnected the call and waved us back over. “Right. Sorry about that, I just wanted to check on the preparations first. I’m afraid that they were running a little behind schedule, but I’ve been given the all clear to let you through. Let me assign you your keys…”

The clerk took a moment to run our door keys through the system, and quickly assembled a folder of reading material, hotel rules, and assorted information for us.

“Now then, you’ll be in Room 4B. Let’s see… I’ve got the wifi password right here, written up here at the top…” She quickly pointed out the information with a fingertip, “and beneath that is the code you type in to request room service. If you have an emergency, please type in Pound Sign, One into the phone, and wait three to four seconds. That should be on a sticker on your phone but, you know, just in case…”

We quickly signed the liability and reservation forms she presented to us, and the clerk smiled chirpily at us.

“Excellent. Welcome to the Rasidion Hotel, Mister Carlyle and guest. I hope that you do enjoy your stay, and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you need anything at all.”

“Splendid,” Dalton smiled, taking the folder. “You’ve been a delight. I apologize for any inconvenience in my reservation tonight.”

“I’m just happy you managed it,” she shrugged happily. “It was canceled early this morning. You usually need to book that a month in advance, unless you’re one of our Premiere Club guests…”

“Maybe it’s my lucky day,” he smiled, and we departed off down towards the elevator. After a moment, he keyed in the top floor, and we began the ascent.

“What did you do?” I asked curiously, peering at him. “That didn’t seem like any old hotel reservation to me…”

“Tonight is meant to be special,” he casually shrugged. “I called around to see if I could land a room befitting the occasion, and it just so happened that this one was open.”

“What kind of room?”

“You’ll see,” he smiled warmly.

We rode the rest of the way in silence. After a moment, the doors pinged open, and we stepped out into a particularly extravagant hotel floor. It was as if Natalie had just decided to talk her parents into buying part of the hotel. The crown molding alone looked like it went for a premium, and the décor seemed to favor crystal.

“Whoa,” I murmured to myself as I took in my environment.

“A little better than you were expecting, isn’t it?” Dalton smugly whispered into my ear. “Just wait until you see our room…”

He led me down the hall, looking for the right place. There were only a couple of rooms up here – maybe half a dozen, maximum. I could barely keep my eyes off of how the lights bounced off of the crystal and the silver, filling the entire area with a sort of otherworldly glow.

Finally, we stopped at a door marked 4B. Grasping his keycard, he squeezed my hand and slid it down the reader alongside the doorknob.

“I just want you to know that I understand what you told me over the phone earlier,” Dalton smiled. “No promises. I get it. I didn’t do all of this to break that… so, keep that in mind when you see everything.”

I nodded hesitantly.

Dalton opened the door, motioning for me to step inside… and my jaw practically dropped straight to the floor.

Arrogant Brit

Chapter 11

What I had walked into wasn’t just some decent guestroom in the middle of a nice hotel. This was the most hysterically lavish room that I’d ever been in. This was the kind of room I thought belonged in the middle of some Northern European palace, and certainly not anywhere near where I lived.

The room was decorated from top to bottom in lavish tapestries, premium antique furniture, pristine crystal décor, and lush carpeting that was soft to the very touch.

The king-sized bed that dominated the center of the main room bore a lush mattress that was probably more expensive than half of Natalie’s apartment…

A premium wine cooler, tucked away neatly into the fully featured kitchen, came stocked with ample red wine of a particularly historic vintage, at

over a hundred years old.

It even came stocked with all the amenities. The luxurious, oversized bathroom hid a large hotel shower chamber, with glass walls and a stunning array of showerheads in all directions.

But perhaps the most stunning aspect of this incredible hotel room was the view. Much like the apartment I shared with my rich best friend, the far wall offered an incredible view. However, the differences were that a) the wall was a solid sheet of glass, with expensive drapes ready to draw together for privacy, and b) the view was much better, giving a jaw-dropping glance over the city, the park, and the river nearby.

“How… how did you do this?” I asked him, barely able to coherently string thoughts together, either in my head or aloud.

“I pulled a few strings,” Dalton chuckled, watching me take in my surroundings with warm and reflective affection. “I had to pay a little more for this one, but as soon as the opportunity was available… I knew I had to have it.”

“Do you do that often?” I asked slyly.

“What’s that?” He asked, setting our to-go plates of dinner into the premium refrigerator. He quickly withdrew a bottle of red wine and a pair of wine glasses from the attached wine cooler.

“Take opportunities as they arise.”

“I don’t like to let things pass by,” Dalton shrugged, setting the glasses on the counter as he began to uncork the wine. “Call me what you will, but even before the Marines… I acted on instinct. Followed my gut. It even saved my life a few times.”

“Is that so. Like when?”

Dalton went quiet, staring into space. For a moment, I thought he was thinking about how to answer the question, but then I realized that the bottle of wine was being to shake slightly…

I took it from his hand, setting it beside the glasses, and took his trembling hand in both my own.

“Dalton? Are you okay?”

He blinked a few times.

“What? Yeah. I’m fine.”

I wasn’t convinced. “Are you… sure?”

“Yeah, just a, uh, a flashback,” Dalton chuckled as he shook his head. “Lately, I’ve been having a few flashbacks to a particular moment during my time in the desert…”