Category: IST

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“Let her in,” I said. “It’s her holiday too.”

Priya gave me a look I couldn’t quite read, pulled the towel back round herself and unlocked the connecting door.

Rosie came through it like a weather system. Blonde, curvy, twenty-nine, barefoot in a green satin slip with a bag of crisps in one hand and a bottle of rose in the other. She stopped dead when she saw me.

“Well,” she said. “Hello.”

“Booking error,” Priya said. “He’s Liam. He’s harmless.”

“He doesn’t look harmless.” Rosie sat down on the bed right beside me, close enough that her thigh pressed mine, and poured rose into my empty whisky glass. “He looks like he was about to get very lucky before I barged in.”

Priya went red. I went redder.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” Rosie said. “We’ve shared everything since we were eleven. Clothes. Flats. Hangovers.” She leaned across me to steal one of Priya’s crisps, her breasts brushing my arm, and stayed there a beat too long. “Not men, though. Never tried that one.”

The room went very quiet.

Priya looked at Rosie. Rosie looked at Priya. Something passed between them that had clearly been discussed before, probably in the spa, probably after prosecco.

“Well,” Priya said slowly, “it is a holiday.”

Rosie’s hand was on my knee. Priya’s hand was on my other knee. And both of them were looking at me.

→ I tell them yes, both of them

→ I admit it’s Rosie I can’t stop looking at

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I shook my head, very slightly. Priya smiled against my mouth.

“Rosie,” she called, without taking her eyes off me. “I’m asleep. Go to bed. Tell me everything at breakfast.”

A pause. Then, muffled through the door: “You’re not asleep. You’re never asleep at midnight.” Another pause, longer. “Oh my God. Is there a man in there?”

“Goodnight, Rosie.”

“Use protection! There’s some in my washbag, I’ll leave it by the door!” A rustle, a thud, a cackle, and the sound of Rosie’s own door closing on her side.

Priya buried her face in my neck, shaking with laughter. “I am so sorry. She’s the worst.”

“She sounds great.”

“She is great. She’s also the worst.” She lifted her head. The laughter was still in her eyes but something else was there too now, darker and slower. The towel was gone. She was naked in my lap, warm and still damp, her nipples tight and dark, and she took my hand and put it on her breast like she was showing me where something was kept.

“I want this,” she said. “Just so we’re clear. I’ve wanted it since you held up that stupid key card.”

I kissed her throat. She arched into me with a sigh.

Then she glanced past my shoulder at the balcony doors, the city lights glittering beyond the glass. “Or,” she said, with a wicked little look, “we could take this outside. Seventh floor. Nobody can see.”

→ I lay her down on the bed and take my time

→ I follow her out onto the balcony

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“I’d love a cup of tea,” I said.

Esme’s office behind reception was tiny, with a kettle, two mugs and a CCTV screen showing an empty lobby. She made the tea strong, the way I like it, and we sat knee to knee on two office chairs and talked.

She was thirty-three. She’d run hotels in Lisbon and Edinburgh and had been here two years. She liked the night shift because nobody shouted at her after three. She’d read every book in the lost property cupboard.

The tea went cold. We kept talking.

At half past three she put her mug down and looked at me for a long moment.

“I’m not allowed to do this,” she said, “so I’m only going to do it once.”

She leaned in and kissed me. Slow, warm, tasting of tea. Her hand rested on my chest. Mine found her waist. It went on long enough that the CCTV screen started beeping because nobody had touched the keyboard.

She pulled back, flushed, and smoothed down her uniform.

“Go to bed, Mr Byrne,” she said. “I’ve got a building to run.”

I slept in the penthouse alone, with a stupid smile on my face.

At checkout she’d gone off shift. But the bill came in an envelope, and on the back, in neat handwriting, was a phone number and four words.

Day off next Thursday.

Ending 16 of 16: The Night Manager. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I took the key, said goodnight to Esme and went upstairs.

The penthouse was enormous and slightly dusty, with a view of the whole city and a bathroom full of scaffolding. I fell asleep in my clothes across the middle of a bed the size of a tennis court.

At checkout the next morning there was a queue again. And standing two people ahead of me, suitcase at her feet, was the woman from Room 714.

Priya. In jeans and a leather jacket now, sunglasses pushed up in her hair. She saw me and her face lit up.

“Firewall man!” she said. “You survived!”

“They gave me the penthouse.”

“You’re joking.” She punched my arm. “I got a free breakfast. That’s it.”

We stood in the queue and talked. It moved painfully slowly, and I’ve never been more grateful for bad service. She was funny and sharp and she kept standing closer than she needed to. When she got to the desk she turned round, took a pen off the counter and wrote her number on the back of my hand.

“I’m in Manchester most weekends,” she said. “Next time you get the wrong room, ring me first.”

Then she was gone through the revolving door with her friend, a blonde in enormous sunglasses who gave me a thumbs up.

I didn’t wash that hand for two days.

Ending 15 of 16: Checkout Queue. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I caught her hand on my belt. “Rosie. I’m sorry. You’re gorgeous. But I keep thinking about your friend.”

She sat back, and for a moment I thought she’d throw her drink at me. Then she burst out laughing.

“Oh, thank God,” she said. “So does she. About you. She texted me an hour ago.” She held up her phone: a message from Priya that just said Towel man was CUTE with three crying emojis.

Then she stood up, marched to the connecting door and banged on it.

“Pree! Your towel man’s in here. He’s being noble. Come and get him.”

The door opened. Priya stood there in a vest top and pyjama shorts, hair down, face scarlet. Rosie shoved me through and shut the door behind me.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” Priya said.

We talked in her doorway for an hour. About everything. Then she kissed me, slow and soft, her body pressed against mine, her hands in my hair. It went on long enough that my knees felt weak and my cock was straining against my trousers.

She pulled back, breathless.

“Not tonight,” she said. “I want to do this properly. Breakfast. Eight o’clock. You’re buying.”

Reception rang at one with a new room. I didn’t sleep at all.

At eight she was waiting at the window table, smiling her crooked smile.

Ending 14 of 16: Breakfast Date. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I let her pull me down.

She was all heat and noise and appetite. She pulled the green dress over her head and pushed my hands onto her breasts, big and soft and heavy, and laughed when I groaned. My trousers ended up on the lamp. She went down on me with a kind of greedy enthusiasm that made my eyes water, then rolled a condom on me and climbed on top.

She rode me hard and loud, her tits bouncing, the bed squeaking, the headboard banging the wall. The wall Priya was on the other side of. I tried to tell her. She told me she didn’t care. She came yelling my name, then made me take her from behind and came again.

We fell asleep in a wreck of sheets at two.

In the morning we went down to checkout together, Rosie’s arm through mine, both of us looking exactly like we’d had the night we’d had.

Priya was in the queue just ahead of us, with her suitcase and an expression like thunder.

“Morning,” Rosie said brightly.

Priya looked at Rosie. Then at me. Then at the room key in my hand, which said 716.

“I could hear you,” she said. “Both of you. All night. Through the wall.”

The girl at reception went very red.

“Your bill,” she said to me, “is on 714. Apparently.”

Ending 13 of 16: Caught at Checkout. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I didn’t open the door.

I don’t really know why. Nerves, maybe. Habit. Thirty-eight years of making the sensible choice, and some stubborn part of me refusing to stop now. I stood behind the door in my robe and held my breath like a teenager.

“Liam?” she said again, softer.

Silence.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Fair enough. I’ll leave it here.”

I heard the charger cable land on the carpet outside. Then her footsteps going back down the corridor, and the lift arriving with a ding.

I lay down on the bed in Room 417 and stared at the ceiling and called myself every name I could think of.

At breakfast she was sitting by the window with Rosie, a blonde in sunglasses who was clearly suffering. Priya saw me come in and gave me a small, polite wave. Not cold. Not warm. Just polite.

Rosie leaned over and whispered something, and they both laughed.

I took my toast and my coffee to a table in the corner and ate it in silence, overlooking the bins.

When I checked out, the girl on reception apologised again for the double booking and gave me a voucher for ten per cent off my next stay.

I put it in my wallet next to the charger I didn’t need. I still have both. I’ve never used either.

Ending 12 of 16: Room 417. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I opened the door.

She held up the charger. “You left this.”

“I didn’t.”

“I know.” She stepped inside and pushed the door closed behind her with her back. “Shut up, Liam.”

The robe came open in my hands. She was naked under it, warm from her bed, and she kissed me hard, pushing me back against the wall. Her hand went straight inside my robe and wrapped around my cock, and she made a small satisfied sound when she found it already hard.

There wasn’t time for anything slow. I lifted her onto the edge of the desk, knocking the kettle flying. She had a condom in the robe pocket, of course she did. She rolled it onto me with shaking fingers and pulled me in by the hips, and I pushed into her in one long stroke.

She bit my shoulder to stay quiet. It didn’t really work. I fucked her hard against the desk, the lamp rattling, her heels digging into the backs of my thighs, until she came clenching round me with a muffled cry. I followed seconds later.

We stayed like that, panting, foreheads together.

“I should go back,” she said. “Rosie will wonder.”

“Stay.”

“I can’t. Early train.” She kissed me once more, retied her robe and opened the door. Then she tossed the charger onto my bed.

“Keep it,” she said. “Something to remember me by.”

Ending 11 of 16: The Forgotten Charger. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“Not unsexy at all,” I said. “I’m starving too.”

So I rang down and ordered two club sandwiches, chips and a bottle of wine, and while we waited she climbed into my lap and carried on exactly where she’d left off.

My shirt came off. My trousers came off. She took my cock in her hand and stroked it slowly, kissing me, her hips rocking against my thigh. I slid two fingers inside her and she gasped and rode them, soaking wet, her forehead pressed to mine. We forgot about the sandwiches entirely.

She had a condom in her wash bag. She rolled it on me and sank down onto me on the armchair, moaning, her knees pressed into the cushions either side of my hips. We found a rhythm. It was fast and messy and wonderful, and she was close, so close, her nails in my shoulders.

Then: knock knock. “Room service!”

And the door, which neither of us had double-locked, swung open.

The waiter was nineteen at most. He stood there with a silver tray, staring at Priya’s bare back and my face over her shoulder.

There was a very long silence.

“Just leave it on the side,” Priya said, without turning round. “Thanks so much.”

He left it on the side. He left. We laughed so hard we couldn’t finish.

The sandwiches were excellent, though.

Ending 10 of 16: Room Service. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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“Forget food,” I said. “You’re in charge. Remember?”

“Oh, I remember.” She pushed me back onto the bed and straddled my hips, completely naked now, and she looked down at me like a cat with a very small mouse.

Then she took her time. A ridiculous, cruel amount of time.

She undressed me button by button. She kissed my chest, my stomach, the line of hair below my navel, then stopped and kissed her way back up again. She rubbed herself slowly against my cock through my boxers until I was gasping, then sat back and watched me squirm.

“Please,” I said eventually.

“Please what?”

“Please anything.”

She laughed, low and delighted, and slid her hand into my boxers and stroked me exactly twice. Then she took it away again.

“I told you,” she whispered. “I decide how far it goes. And tonight it goes this far.” She kissed me, slow and deep, and lay down with her head on my chest. “You can be impulsive next time.”

“Next time?”

“Shh. Sleep.”

I didn’t, for a long while. When I finally woke it was eight, the room was quiet and her bag was gone.

On the pillow beside me, written on hotel notepaper in neat architect’s capitals, was a phone number. Underneath it said:

NEXT TIME. YOUR HOTEL, YOUR BOOKING. P.

Ending 9 of 16: A Number on the Pillow. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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