What the hell was going on in that room next door?
The doors that could turn the two hotel rooms into adjoining rooms were closed and locked, but the noise filtered through them as if they were tissue. “Yeah!” a male voice shouted. “Do it!” Loud laughter erupted.
Sloane frowned, punching her pillow into a different shape beneath her head. She buried her face in the pillow, squeezed her eyes closed and tried to ignore the noise.
Another male voice hooted and more laughter assaulted Sloane’s ears.
Oh my God. Could this day get any worse? She clenched her teeth. She willed sleep to come back but it ignored her, and she opened her eyes and stared into the dark hotel room. Crap. She was wide-awake. Now, all she could hear was the noise from the other side of the wall.
Sloane flung back the covers and approached the door. Leaning in, she listened. She heard several male voices, all loud, obviously drunk, and a lot of laughter. She leaned her forehead briefly against the door and considered calling the front desk to complain.
Surely this wouldn’t go on much longer. The clock on the bedside table said 1:20 a.m. She padded across the carpet and slid back into bed, then pulled the pillow over her head. It helped, but she couldn’t get any oxygen. She adjusted it and focused on her breathing.
She needed sleep. She really needed sleep. She’d been working late every night this week and had been sleeping in a strange bed, displaced from her home by the bathroom reno from hell. On top of that, she’d been called into the CEO’s office at five o’clock that afternoon. A meeting with the CEO at five o’clock on a Friday was never a good thing.
Just because a new client had done a drive-by visit that afternoon and found their creative team sitting on the floor playing with LEGO bricks rather than working on their ad campaign, Joseph Huxworth, CEO of Huxworth Packard, one of Chicago’s top advertising agencies, had flipped shit. And she was the one he’d picked to fix things.
She replayed their meeting in her mind, her frustration resurfacing. But he was the boss.
And she’d worked too hard to get where she was not to deliver exactly what Joe asked for.
She groaned and flopped onto her back. A loud burst of male laughter from the other side of the wall had her body tensing even more. Now the clock said 3:05 a.m. Christ. They were still going at whatever it was they were doing.
That was it. She needed to sleep and for what she was paying for this damn hotel room, she deserved to sleep. She threw back the covers again and climbed out of bed. She stomped across the room, then paused at the door that separated the two rooms. Curiosity about what the hell they were doing had her listening. Now she could hear a female voice.
One female voice and several male voices. Sloane couldn’t make out many actual words, although the woman did seem to be giving the men instructions.
Then she heard, clear as anything, “And then you can come on my tits.”
Sloane’s eyes popped open wide, then closed briefly. Oh sweet loving Lord.
She listened more intently. Yes, there were at least four or five male voices, and only the one very distinct feminine voice. Oh my God. What was that woman doing in there?
“Do you just do this for bachelor parties?” one of the male voices asked.
Sloane thunked her head against the wall. A bachelor party. Of course. She couldn’t quite make out the words of the woman’s reply.
Her stomach knotted up a bit, thinking about a lone woman in a hotel room with a bunch of strange men. God. She supposed this was what this woman did, but holy hell, she was putting herself at incredible risk.
For that reason only, Sloane continued to strain her ears to hear what was going on. Okay, and maybe a little prurient curiosity. Still she couldn’t make out many words, just a lot of hoots and hollers and laughter, and “the bachelor should go first” (oh dear God, first at what?). She heard the woman give a little shriek but then laugh and issue what sounded like more instructions, as if they were playing some kind of dirty game.
“Why do you even have your shirt on, dude?” a male voice asked quite clearly, his question followed by more indistinct talk.
God, she was so tired. She did not want to listen to these