Five-Star Mistake – Chapter 2 – Off The Clock
The welcome reception is held on a terrace that the brochure calls “sunset-facing” and that I would call “facing the only direction the sun physically sets,” but I’ve stopped correcting brochure language out loud.
Mostly.
I’m two minutes in, cocktail number one still cold in my hand, when I spot him already there – not looking for me, or looking like he isn’t, which on a man like Marco I’m starting to suspect is a skill rather than an accident.
He’s talking to someone from his agency, nodding at the right moments, and I watch him clock the door the second I walk through it.
He doesn’t wave.
He lifts his glass about two inches, like a private toast nobody else at this reception is invited to.
I lift mine back.
It takes forty minutes of professional small talk – a marketing coordinator asking if I’ve “had a chance to experience the wellness circuit,” a competitor politely fishing for which properties my agency’s actually going to book – before he finds his way over, drink in hand, expression doing that thing again where the smile is arriving before the words are.
“You survived the scallops,” he says.
“Barely. I had to be talked down from filing a formal complaint.”
“With who? The chef?”
“The ocean. For letting itself be associated with that.”
He laughs and something in my chest does an unhelpful little flip that I choose to ignore in favor of my drink.
We fall into it easily after that, the two of us drifting slightly apart from the group without ever officially leaving it, trading commentary on everyone and everything: the guide’s increasingly poetic room descriptions, the couple from the German agency who’ve been photographing literally every canapé, the fact that “wellness circuit” is doing an enormous amount of work for what is, structurally, a hallway with some diffusers in it.
“Nine years of this,” I say, “and you still find it funny.”
“Nine years of this,” he says, “is why I find it funny. You stop laughing, you start believing the brochures.”
“And that’s the real tragedy.”
“That’s the real tragedy.”
The sun does its brochure-approved thing, dropping orange and dramatic behind the water, and the reception starts thinning into the smaller, looser version it always becomes by hour two – agenda gone, name tags forgotten, everyone just tired enough to be honest.
The group that’s left has migrated down to the beach bar proper, sand under the barstools, and somehow Marco and I have migrated with them, closer together than the terrace ever technically allowed.
“Tell me something,” he says, turning his glass slowly on the bar top, “that isn’t about hotels.”
“That’s a big ask on a hotel trip.”
“I have faith in you.”
I think about it – actually think, which surprises me, because I’ve spent the better part of eleven hours performing a version of charming that runs on autopilot.
“I used to want to be a pilot,” I say. “Then I found out the training’s longer than most marriages last, and I decided selling other people plane tickets was close enough.”
“That’s either very practical or deeply sad.”
“Can’t it be both?”
“It can absolutely be both.”
He looks at me for a second longer than the joke requires.
“I wanted to be an architect. Now I sell the buildings other people designed and pretend I know why the atrium works.”
“That explains the room inspections.”
“How?”
“You keep checking the ceilings.”
He looks genuinely surprised, the first unrehearsed thing his face has done all night.
“You’ve been watching me?”
“Occupational hazard.”
“Apparently.”
I file that away – a small, satisfying win. Something I noticed that he didn’t hand me.
“You’re competition, technically,” I say. “I should probably not be enjoying this as much as I am.”
“Technically.” He leans in slightly, enough that I catch what he’s wearing under the sunscreen and salt air – something warm, expensive, deliberate. “I promise not to steal your commission.”
“That’s very generous of you.”
“I’m a generous man.”
“Is that so?”
“Ask anyone.”
“I don’t know anyone here except you.”
“Then you’ll have to take my word for it.”
I should say something clever back. I have several options queued up, actually, a whole rotation of them, and instead what comes out is quieter, less armored than anything I’ve said all night:
“I might.”
Something shifts in his face – not smug, not smirking, just aware, like he heard the change too and isn’t going to make a joke about it, for once.
“Walk with me,” he says.
Not quite a question.
I take another sip and look toward the water.
“You coming?”
This time, I’m the one who walks first.
The beach bar is loud enough behind us that nobody notices when we leave it, sand cool and strange underfoot after a day in hotel-lobby shoes. The water’s a black shifting line somewhere to our left.
Neither of us is talking about hotels anymore.
The beach path ends at the elevator bank, where the air conditioning hits like a slap to the face.
By the time the mirrored doors slide shut on his floor, the polite distance we kept on the sand has completely dissolved.
He turns the keycard in the lock, pushes the door open, and doesn’t even bother to turn on the main lights.
“Very atmospheric,” I say, leaning against the doorframe as it clicks shut behind us. “Is this the ‘authentic ocean energy’ room?”
“Shut up,” he laughs, stepping in close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his chest.
He reaches out, his fingers catching the edge of my waist, pulling me over the threshold. “I’m off the clock.”
“You’re never off the clock. You’re an architect, remember? You’re probably evaluating the ceiling height right now.”
“I haven’t looked at the ceiling once since you walked into the bar.”
He kisses me before I can formulate a proper comeback, and any intention I had of maintaining my sharp, exhausted-competent front evaporates.
It starts with a laugh against my mouth – a brief, shared joke about the absurdity of the day – but then Marco shifts his weight, his hands sliding up to frame my jaw, and the joke dies instantly.
He isn’t just charming. He’s annoyingly good at this too. He leads with an easy, practiced authority that should irritate me, but instead makes my breath hitch in my throat.
He maneuvers me back until the backs of my knees hit the edge of the mattress, his mouth moving down the line of my throat with a dark, deliberate patience.
“Marco -“
I reach for his shirt, my hands less than precise, tugging at the buttons until the linen parts.
I try to pull him down, to take control back, but he just chuckles – a low, rumble against my collarbone – and pins my wrists loosely above my head with one hand.
“Patience,” he murmurs. “We have all night, and I intend to do a very thorough inspection.”
He knows exactly what he’s doing.
It isn’t frantic, and it isn’t clumsy. He uses his weight to anchor me, his free hand tracing a slow, agonizing path down my ribcage, over the flare of my hip, and slicking beneath the hem of my dress.
My brief attempt at a witty refusal devolves into a sharp gasp as his fingers find the center of me, completely drenched and already warm.
He doesn’t rush. He shifts his hips, settling between my thighs, his mouth taking mine in a heavy, possessive kiss that smothers the high, embarrassed noise I make.
He changes the angle, his thumbs pressing into the sensitive dip of my waist, pulling me up against him as he uses his hand with excruciating, rhythmic precision.
The laughter is entirely gone now.
The room is heavy with the sound of my ragged breathing and the friction of skin against skin. He works me over until I’m squirming beneath him, my fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders, completely wrecked by the sheer, unhurried skill of it.
When the tension in my chest snaps and I spill over, shuddering against him, he just holds me tight, kissing the sweat-dampened hair at my temple, a quiet, satisfied murmur against my skin.
He doesn’t let me retreat into sarcasm. He just turns us over, pulling me flush against his chest as the room settles back into silence, leaving me breathless, entirely undone, and forced to revise my professional assessment of Marco considerably upward.
I wake up before my alarm, which never happens, staring at a ceiling that is absolutely not the one in my own room.
I don’t wake him yet.
Mostly because I’m comfortable. Partly because I have three hours before breakfast inspection.
And just a little because I’m curious whether Marco is as funny before coffee as he is after three cocktails.
He’s asleep on his back, one arm thrown over his eyes against the strip of light coming through the curtain gap, entirely unaware he’s being evaluated.
I’ve inspected worse rooms.
I’ve definitely had worse work trips.