His Every Desire

Chapter 23

She hurried through the main lobby. There wasn’t another soul in sight, save for the two front desk clerks who waved her goodbye.

Outside, posted against one of the tall, Romanesque columns holding up the reception area, Mr. Hayes waited for her silently. When she finally saw him, after almost walking past without a second look, her heart sank. She didn’t want him to find out like this. There wasn’t even enough time for her to process what Gordon told her, let alone enough for her to find the right words to say to him.

She could only imagine what he thought, seeing his girlfriend come out of another man's hotel room late at night. There was really only one thing he could think and it broke her heart.

"What is going on, Tracy?" His voice was soft. There was a pain there that made her throat tighten.

She stopped a few feet away from him and lowered her head.

"We need to talk," she said. “There's some things you need to know.”

He swallowed hard and nodded, eyes dark and sad. The two walked to his car silently and got in. As soon as the door shut, he turned to her.

"Why are you here?" The calmness in his voice surprised her. If their situations were reversed, she would have been screaming by now.

"What do you know about John Tice?" she asked, unsure of where to begin.

“What does John Tice have to do with you being at Gordon's?” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair while his eyes closed. “Why would you do this me?”

"Gordon has been spying on us and giving the information to John Tice." She put her hand on his knee, hating the way he flinched at her touch. “I went to find out why. Nothing more. I wasn't with him.”

“You weren't?” Relief flooded his features, though it was quickly replaced by shock. “But, John Tice? What does Gordon have to do with him?”

“I don't know,” Tracy replied. “All I found out was that Tice hired him. That pretentious fuck has been watching our every move and relaying it back to Tice. There's something going on and I don't like it.”

Mr. Hayes looked genuinely shocked by her accusations. He turned away slowly and roared the engine to life. He shifted into drive and guided the car out of the hotel’s parking lot, his brows furrowed as he considered her words. She let him think.

Finally, he asked, "Why? Why would Tice use Gordon? What does he want?"

"I don’t know. I don’t think that even Gordon did,” Tracy replied. She put her hand back on Mr. Hayes' leg and let out a silent sigh of relief when he didn't pull away again. “Gordon didn’t plan on becoming a part of all this. He was just a tool."

"Tool or not, Tice is a dangerous man.” Mr. Hayes shifted the car into a higher gear, his hands light on the steering wheel as he drove. “He has a lot of power and money. Influence. This information is concerning.”

What could she possibly say to that? She sighed and looked out the window. Everything seemed like a blur, a giant smudge.

“I want to tell you exactly what happened up there,” she said after a moment. “I want you to know everything.”

Mr. Hayes glanced over at her, the streetlamps catching his eyes. “Okay.”

She proceeded to tell him how Gordon offered her a drink at his place, and how she had gone with him to find out his secret. She told him just how she tied Gordon up. She told him where Gordon touched her and what she had allowed, hating the way his jaw tightened. But she told him all of it. The phone number, the slap- all of it. She didn't want there to be any secrets.

They rode in silence for the fifteen minutes it took to get back to the Hayes estate after that. By then, it was almost four in the morning and all the inside lights were dark. Tracy had to feel her way through the foyer and up the stairs. The whole way, Mr. Hayes stayed close behind her with his hand placed lovingly on the small of her back.

Once inside the massive bedroom, Tracy ki

cked her shoes off blindly into the darkness. Mr. Hayes went into the bathroom and flicked on a small light, flooding the room with a soft, yellow glow. He watched her carefully as she stripped off her dress and cast it aside almost angrily.

"So how did you find out about him?" he asked. His face was masked in shadow.

Tracy froze. She couldn’t tell him about her dreams, about the visions of Gordon's crescent-shaped scar that broke everything wide open. And, yet, she hadn’t considered what she would say when confronted.

"I'm not really sure," she said honestly. "There just was something that wasn’t right, so I went and found out what. Something about him recently was off. I just had a feeling I couldn't trust him."

Mr. Hayes raised his eyebrows.

“Plus, he started hitting on me. Asking me to come to his place without you. I couldn't let that stand,” she added. “I'm yours and I want to stay that way.”