Read If the Shoe Fits for Free Online Page B

world seemed a lighter place, somehow.
    Her father’s punctual arrogance aside, it was well after nine and she had ordered her breakfast to be delivered to her room at eight thirty. She reached over to the hotel phone on the far bedside table, getting a wonderful whiff of Devon as she made her way past his side of the huge bed. After being patched through to the kitchen via the main switchboard, the housekeeping staff apologized for the delay and said her breakfast would be up in about fifteen minutes. She didn’t want to antagonize her father endlessly so she called his room next to see if he wanted to go ahead without her.
    “Hi, Dad, it’s Sarah.”
    “Hello, Sarah.”
    “Hi, Dad. Probably best if we begin the day anew, don’t you think?”
    He grunted his reluctant agreement.
    “So… Hi, Dad! The breakfast order I placed last night went astray so I’ll be ready and down in the lobby around ten. If you and Jane want to head into the little town now, I can catch up with you a bit later on…”
    They went through the motions of a perfectly courteous conversation and Sarah almost laughed at how hard it was for her father to refrain from making some comment or inquiry about her… overnight visitor.
    “All right, then. Sounds great,” she continued in her best deadpan business voice. “I’ll see you two in the lobby in half an hour.”
    With that done, she slid down off the high bed and walked into the bathroom to shower and get ready for a few hours of sightseeing and antiquing with her stepmother and father before she headed over to Dunlear to be with Bronte before the ceremony. Sarah noticed several used condom wrappers in the bathroom trash bin and thanked her stars that one of them had been the responsible adult last night (and in the middle of the night and earlier this morning), and she chided herself for being so flighty.
    Now that she was a promiscuous adult, she needed to get with the program.
    She felt tender everywhere when she stepped into the scalding shower. She cleaned herself from head to toe with meticulous care, realizing that her skin was still responding with a heightened sense of tactile awareness: the water was particularly silky as it sluiced down her back; the washcloth was thick and rough as she dragged it across her stomach and under her breasts; the muscles of her inner thighs and backside were sore in a way that somehow served as a wonderful reminder of their unaccustomed use.
    Sarah felt her insides start to ramp up, her nipples were taut, and a slight throbbing tension was beginning to build between her legs. Her eyes began to close and then she shook herself briskly.
    “Get ahold of yourself,” she said aloud, with the disciplinary tone of an impatient schoolteacher.
    She turned the shower temperature as low as it would go and realized she had always been under the sexist misapprehension that only men used cold showers to stifle those tawdry urges. She turned off the water, toweled herself with brutal efficiency, brushed her hair as if it needed punishing, and whipped on her clothes as quickly as possible. The housekeeper knocked a few seconds later and came in with a steaming, glittering, sterling silver breakfast tray.
    Sarah fought the impulse to treat every sip of coffee as if it were the most delicious sip of coffee she had ever tasted, nor would she allow herself to dwell on the fact that the croissant was, quite certainly, the best, flakiest, buttery-est croissant in the history of pastries. She forced herself to shove the food into her mouth as matter-of-factly as possible, then wiped at her mouth with the soft, linen napkin. She gave in to the harmless desire to rub the edge of the napkin across her lower lip, just once or twice.
    Or so.
    So what if it vaguely reminded her of someone’s cool thumb trailing across her lips? And so what if her jeans were starting to feel a little warm in the crotch?
    For God’s sake! she scolded herself impatiently, and threw the napkin