current soundtrack of her life. Plus, Collin made a mean cheddar and tomato egg-white omelet that, while likely not quite the equivalent of the delicacies one might find at the Peninsula buffet, would’ve reminded her why she’d made it a general habit to let him do all the cooking when the three of them lived together their senior year of college.
Wheewammawamma-BAM! Wheewammawamma-BAM!
Cameron sat up in bed and looked at the phone on the nightstand. She didn’t want to be that kind of guest that complained about every little blemish in the hotel’s five-star service. But the noise from the room next door had been going on for a long time now and at a certain point, she felt as though she was entitled to some sleep in her nearly four-hundred-dollar-per-night room. The only reason the hotel hadn’t already received complaints, she guessed, was due to the fact that 1308 was a corner room with no one on the other side.
Cameron was just about to pick up the phone to call the front desk when, suddenly, she heard the man next door call out the glorious sounds of her salvation.
Smack! Smack!
“Oh shit, I’m cooommmminnggg!”
A loud groan. And then—
Blessed silence. Finally.
Cameron fell back onto the bed. Thank you, thank you, Peninsula hotel gods, for granting me this tiny reprieve. I shall never again call your massages incredibly overpriced. Even if we all know it doesn’t cost $195 to rub lotion on someone’s back. Just saying.
She crawled under the covers and pulled the cream down duvet up to her chin. Her head sank into the pillows and she lay there for a few minutes as she began to drift off. Then she heard another noise next door—the sound of the door shutting.
Cameron tensed.
And then—
Nothing.
All remained blissfully still and silent, and her final thought before she fell asleep was on the significance of the sound of the door shutting.
She had a sneaking suspicion that somebody had just received a five-star booty call.
BAM!
Cameron shot up in bed, the sound from next door waking her right out of her sleep. She heard muffled squealing and the bed slammed against the wall again—harder and louder than ever—as if its occupants were really going at it this time.
She looked at the clock: 4:08. She’d been given a whopping thirty-minute reprieve.
Not wasting another moment—frankly, she’d already given these jokers far too much of her valuable sleep time—she reached over and turned on the lamp next to the bed. She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the sudden burst of light. Then she grabbed the phone off the nightstand and dialed.
After one ring, a man answered pleasantly on the other end. “Good evening, Ms. Lynde. Thank you for calling Guest Services—how may we be of assistance?”
Cameron cleared her throat, her voice still hoarse as her words tumbled out. “Look, I don’t want to be a jerk about this, but you guys have got to do something about the people in room 1308. They keep banging against the wall; there’s been all sorts of moaning and shouting and spanking and it’s been going on for, like, the last two hours. I’ve barely slept this entire night and it sounds like they’re gearing up for round twenty or whatever, which is great for them but not so much for me, and I’m kind of at the point where enough is enough, you know?”
The voice on the other end was wholly unfazed, as if Guest Services at the Peninsula handled the fallout from five-star booty calls all the time.
“Of course, Ms. Lynde. I apologize for the inconvenience. I’ll send up security to take care of the problem right away.”
“Thanks,” Cameron grumbled, not yet willing to be pacified that easily. She planned to speak to the manager in the morning, but for now all she wanted was a quiet room and some sleep.
She hung up the phone and waited. A few moments passed, then she glanced at the wall behind the bed. Things had fallen strangely silent in room 1308. She wondered if the occupants had heard her calling Guest Services to complain. Sure, the walls were thin (as she definitely had discovered firsthand), but were they that thin?
She heard the door to room 1308 open.
The bastards were making their escape.
Cameron flew out of bed and ran to her door, determined to at least get a look at the sex fiends. She pressed against the door and peered through the peephole just as the door to the other room shut. For a brief moment,