The Rider List: An Erotic Romance Read Online Free Page A

Adam Lewis. She apologized for not telling me she’d already given him the key.
    “Good thing he wasn’t coming out of the shower or something,” she says, darting her eyes back and forth, as if to not so subtly indicate that she’d like to catch him doing just that.
    “Yeah, it was,” I say, and I almost bring up the questions he asked me but decide not to.
    I bring her up to speed on the events of the day and she settles in for her night shift.
    When I first started here, I worked the overnight shift, but only for two nights. Jim had wanted me to do it just for the experience. Which was good, because if the permanent position I had interviewed for had been an overnight shift, I wouldn’t have been able to work here at all.
    I get home earlier than usual and start making dinner. Mom rushes out the door just as Sophie is coming in from a long, hard day at the pool and doing whatever else it is that girls her age do.
    Sometimes I hear her talking to her friends and I’m glad I’m over ten years older than she is. I tell her dinner will be ready in twenty minutes. She mumbles something as she walks down the hall and I hear her bedroom door close.
    I live at home with my mom and my eleven year-old sister, Sophie. Mom is a nurse who works the overnight shift Wednesdays through Sundays, which means I’m responsible for Sophie on those nights. So in a way, my day job of looking out for people continues when I get home.
    But only for those nights. Monday and Tuesday nights are like my weekend.
    I’m working this resort job because it was available after graduation. It’s not my dream job. I’m still hunting for that, or at least a ground-floor opportunity.
    My social life right now consists of my best friend, Stacy, who happens to call as I’m cooking.
    “Next Tuesday, you and me. And Trent, of course. Beers on the rooftop. No backing out.”
    That’s her opening line. An order. I’m used to it. She’s only joking with that tone, and it’s part of who she is. Stacy moved here from New York when she was thirteen, and despite being in the South for nine years, she hasn’t lost a bit of her blunt attitude.
    The accent is mostly gone, though. Her personality is a far cry from what I was used to, growing up—softer spoken females, slow and deliberate, congenial even when they probably shouldn’t be—but we’ve been best friends since the day she walked into our eighth grade homeroom and sat down next to me.
    “Why would I back out?” I ask.
    “You did last week.”
    “I was tired. It was my, what…fourth day on the new job? I’m on my feet and running around all day. I don’t get to sit down all day like you do.”
    Stacy is a paralegal. From what I’ve gathered, there’s a lot of reading and typing and paper-shuffling, which involves sitting down for the majority of the day.
    “Don’t make my job sound so glamorous,” she says. “Are you fucking kidding me? I’d give anything to work at a beachside resort.”
    “Mine isn’t so glamorous, either.” I tell her about the couple in Bungalow G who screwed like rabbits all week.
    I want to tell her about Adam, but I can’t. It’s against company policy to talk about guests, and even though I’ve just told her about the couple in G, telling her about Adam would be different. Especially since he specifically asked me about discretion.
    I open the oven and pull out the baked chicken, placing it on top of the stove. “I really need to get out and do something.”
    “Yes, yes you do! Shit. Hang on a second.” I hear her saying something to Trent, her boyfriend, then she’s back. “Jesus, we’ve lived here two years and he still doesn’t know where we keep the potato peeler.”
    “He’s peeling potatoes?”
    “I’m making him do it. Anyway, you need to get out. And not just do something, but do some one .” This is standard bluntness for her. “Remember, you’re talking to your best friend. I know how long it’s been—”
    “Yeah, yeah,