Golden/Too Bright [Sunburst Hotel & Casino]
Characters/Pairings: soft!dark Curtis Everett x curvy Millennial female!reader Word Count: 4.9k Summary: The casino manager at Ari's hotel resort has his eye on you from the moment you step into Sunburst with a large bachelorette party in tow, and he knows you're trouble. The good kind of trouble he shouldn't entertain.
Content/Warnings: one-night stand; grumpy Curtis; explicit smut (unprotected vaginal intercourse, clitplay, creampie), semi-public sex, corruption kink
Author Note: Standalone story that takes place at Ari's Casino. This was an idea I had originally concocted and thought I would get ready for the Hoes for the Holidays fest last December, but didn't, but a quick tweak from off-season December booking to off-season February booking, and here we are. Enjoy the ruin...
This is dedicated to my fellow type-A planners.
Curtis first sees you in the lobby of the hotel. You’re one of a gaggle of girls in matching attire—nine of you with pink track suits with white racing stripes and one in white with pink stripes. A bachelorette weekend.
Curtis snorts and rolls his eyes.
This is the wrong hotel to base a wild bachelorette party out of.
And you’ve clearly recognized your mistake as he observes you talking to one of the front desk agents checking in your party.
The lobby is a sea of sensible shoes and pastel windbreakers. Curtis can clocks eight mobility scooters parked in a neat row by the afternoon tea station, their owners trading stories about aching hips and grandchildren with alarming volume. The carpet is a repeating motif of fuchsia and turquoise shapes, gaudy enough to induce motion sickness, but your posse’s coordinated outfits actually fit right in with the loud colors.
The desk agent keeps assuring you that yes, the hospitality suite is set up for her use, yes, the adjoining rooms are stocked with extra towels and there’s a “cake station” in one of the suite per the reservation notes, but underscores that this is not a “party hotel,” and he has to enforce “quiet hours” after nine p.m.
You nod and sign the forms, clearly trying to pretend this is fine, undoubtedly trying to imagine how you’ll keep ten women entertained in a glorified bingo hall after the sun sets.
As the casino manager for the resort, Curtis was in the upper management meetings when its owner Ari Levinson discussed the deep discount weekends throughout January, February, and March to try and lure snowbirds back in to the senior-citizen-focused resort property. The weekend before Valentines had been discounted even more than most of the others.
He smirks from across the way when he sees you grimace as the agent hands you the keys and informs you that breakfast runs from five to eight am, the bar closes at nine pm, and so does room service.
Curtis can see the frenzied look behind your eyes even from this distance. You’re clearly a type-A planner, so this kind of fuck-up is beyond comprehension in your book. There’s an urban breed of young woman who attacks leisure with the zeal and logistics of a military campaign. He respects that, technically. He saw it frequently at the hotels he was at before this one. And he can already see it in the crisp way you take the key cards, the sharp nod as you gather your flock and herd them toward the elevators. You never glance down at your phone once, fielding the complaints, concerns, and chaos that’s threatening to erupt with unflagging optimism. You’ll Uber out—which had been the plan from the beginning for some of the elements of the itinerary, get food delivered after hours—which would probably be better than room service anyway, and a resort of senior citizens means none of you will have to deal with frat boys or finance bros trying to hit on any of them while you’re all here at the hotel home base at least.
Curtis will not admit that he might be a little bit impressed.
You’re going to end up being trouble for him at some point, he can just feel it.
By two pm the next day the casino floor is a festival of carnage, the slot machines screaming under the barrage of your bridesmaids. Your group is easy to track, a showy spectacle of sequins and synthetics trailing through the baccarat pit, martinis sloshing as conversation ricochets off every surface. The youngest of your group—twenty-two, maybe—already has a paper wristband for the “Mocktail Mania” crawl, and her phone out, live-streaming the chaos to a social media audience. Curtis counts five times you are stopped to take selfies with someone’s grandma. The grandmothers are loving it. They circle your orbit like you’re the new floor show, poking at your feathered headbands and laughing when some of you teach them the choreography to one of the latest viral TikToks.
As the afternoon progresses, you steer the group through the different offerings, trailed by the loyal, the hungover, and the barely-standing. Curtis has to admire the logistical ballet—how you are already distributing twenty-dollar bills with the distracted authority of a treasurer. But he has his eye on you. Appreciated novelty though you may be to the elderly now, Curtis will not hesitate to remove your party from the floor if the menagerie becomes a menace of any kind.
It’s a slow-motion collision of generations. The old folks can’t get enough of you. They beam when your group slips them pink satin sashes and inserts them into group photos, suddenly elevating a routine Tuesday into a major life event. There’s a sashay in the step of Mrs. Eileen, age ninety and proud, as she wheels between slot rows with a feather boa loosely looped around her neck, cackling at the iPad screen her great-niece uses to stream the dance party to “the internet.” Other regulars, in their lavender and beige, sprout out of their seats to offer tales of their own honeymoons, their own marriages, sometimes their own bachelorette shenanigans.
Curtis sees it all from the security desk, which gives him the best vantage on the mayhem. He’s supposed to be finishing paperwork—new vendor contracts, a proposal for replacing the bulbs in the chandelier above the poker room—but he ends up using most of his monitor’s real estate to watch your group’s progress via the security camera split-screen. There’s a method to your madness, he realizes. You’re not just leading the mob. You’re scouting. By three, you’ve had a chat with the cocktail waitresses, a run-in with the barback, and some sort of exchange with one of the off-duty pit bosses. Curtis catches the pit boss’s face on camera, a fleeting, sheepish look as he hands something off to you. At first, he thinks it’s a comped drink voucher—usual for a weekend like this, no crime in it. But you pocket it without showing anyone, flash a lopsided grin, and move on.
You’re working an angle. Maybe it’s the luck of the tables, maybe you’re just collecting stories for your war chest, but he’s suspicious. And it’s his job to be.
Midway through a routine sweep of the floor, he’s making his way toward the back of the penny slots when Curtis makes his decision and threads through the crowd to intercept you. The rest of your group is already deep in the throes of minor chaos—someone in pink is doubled over laughing, two are engaged in a mock arm-wrestling match on a cocktail table, one is arguing with a cocktail waitress about the correct way to say “appletini.” As he closes in, he sees that you’ve parked yourself on a padded bench between the keno machines, legs crossed, phone in hand. You’re texting, or maybe orchestrating something else, but you notice him before he can make the first move. For a second, your expression tightens—he braces for it, the guilt, the deer-in-the-headlights—but instead, your face breaks into a lopsided, almost grateful smile.
“Just the man they told me to talk to!” Like you’re greeting a friend, or long-lost co-conspirator. “You’re Curtis, right? I was told you’re the guy who can get things done around here.”
Curtis is momentarily wrong-footed. This is not how it’s supposed to go. He was coming to find you, he was ready to deal out a polite warning, a thinly veiled threat in customer-service-ese, not this.
But he nods, lips pressed into a neutral line. He waits for the ask, already rehearsing the tight, professional shut-down. But you beat him to it, voice sliding straight into business.
“It’s about the bar,” you say. “We’re not looking to cause problems, really—we’ll keep it down, we’ll clean up after ourselves, we’ll tip everyone at least twenty percent, cross my heart.” You put your hand over your heart for emphasis. “Is there any scenario where the bar could stay open after hours, for us for a special event?” You don’t even glance at the chaos in your wake. “Like, a couple hours. Just for my group. Is there a form for that or something?”
It takes him a second to recalibrate, but he does. “That’s not my department,” he says, definitive. “That’s Ari’s call. The owner.”
You nod, but you don’t miss a beat. "That’s what I heard, but someone said when Ari’s on vacation, you have final say. Figured it couldn’t hurt to ask."
He keeps his expression as flat as the casino carpet. "Ari’s out until Monday, and I can’t sign off on something like that. Sorry. Policy." He crosses his arms, which usually signals an end to this sort of conversation.
You tap your nails against your phone. Then your smile turns even sweeter. “But, if you were, hypothetically, going to green-light it for, say, a very harmless group of out-of-towners,” you lean infinitesimally closer, “is there any way we could make that happen?” And you put a gentle hand on his forearm, a brief brush, just for a moment.
Instantly, Curtis’s nostrils flare, and for all of three seconds, his veins surge with hunger, with the urge to press you up behind a row of these machines, and—
“No,” he insists.
None of that.
His sharp refusal has you shaking your head, seemingly coming back to yourself as well. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that,” you say, and the apology is so barefaced, it almost startles Curtis more than the hand.
You cross your arms, too, hugging yourself in that way people do when they’re recalibrating. “Sorry,” you repeat, “I didn’t mean to…” A vague gesture. “Honestly, that’s not even my style. I’m just—” You look away, jaw flexing. “This whole weekend was supposed to be perfect. I planned it for months. I thought I booked the right hotel, but it turns out the other ‘Sunburst Resort’ is forty miles south. The one with the rooftop bar and the infinity pool. Half the girls already want to murder me. The other half are just… really, really chill about it, which makes it even worse somehow? So, yeah. I just wanted to pull off one thing for them. Still make this weekend special.” You look at him then, straight on. “But I get it. You’re just doing your job.”
Curtis feels his jaw loosen, but he’s not going to lower his suspicions completely or make concessions. He should walk off, should leave you to the swarm of friends and the memorializing of catastrophe into just another party story. And yet…
“It’s not like your girls are having a bad time,” he says, jerking his head toward the havoc at the penny slots. The bride is wearing a plastic tiara and howling with laughter. Someone else is eating maraschino cherries straight from a glass. The bridesmaids might as well be background extras in a movie about senior living remixed for social media. “You may even be single-handedly responsible for the most fun anyone’s had here since the pandemic.”
You give him a look that’s both relieved and incredulous, like maybe you’re not used to being let off the hook. “I guess I’m just projecting,” you say, and your smile does a weird, sidelong thing. “I need it to be good more than they do, you know?” You glance down at your phone—probably to check for incoming fires—and then back up. “I appreciate you not making this into a whole thing.”
He shrugs. “I just know how much worse it can get,” he says. “And I’ll take your rowdy bachelorettes over the Texas Hold ‘Em AARP tour any day.”
“But it’s still zero on the after-hours?”
He shakes his head, and you nod in your polite resignation.
Textbook good girl.
Women in the first halves of their lives are an almost-never kind of occurrence at this place, but it’s not as if he’s never interacted with them before.
But it’s how good you are, how perfect you try to be that’s ignited some itch in him over you. He wants to hold all your attention in his hands for a minute and suffocate it in pleasure, see if he could get you to relinquish the reins of control and let whatever was corked tight inside uncork, explode, run rampant.
Because where he can see you’re spirited in your pursuit of control and perfection, he’s cool, calm, collected in his.
But you’re the last thing he needs.
He clears his throat. “The hospitality suite’s got a fridge,” he offers, voice at half-volume, trying to avoid the path between of being too helpful. He doesn’t want to give the impression that he’ll soften. “If you tip our concierge Lloyd, he’ll stock you with the good stuff. And some of the stuff he shouldn’t.”
You blink, and then give him a real smile. “Thank you.” Your voice is warm with those two words, and, fuck, if now he doesn’t want to get you saying thank you for other reasons.
Again, no. He won’t go there.
You start to say something else, but he’s already pivoting away, put an end to the scene before he can get any more entangled. He doesn’t need to continue looking into your soft eyes, doesn’t need to think about how wide they’d if he stuffed his—
He growls and then barks at one of his pit bosses to keep an eye on table seven, and stalks off toward the cage to count down the afternoon drop.
At 10:17 PM, Curtis is on his way out, mind already shifting to the leftovers and whiskey sour waiting for him in his shoebox apartment.
He freezes, pivots.
Music. Laughter. The unmistakable warble of Abba at full throttle, the chorus punched with off-key shrieking. All of it coming from the bar that was supposed to be closed over an hour ago.
Curtis marches through the swing doors and right into a riot.
The bachelorette party is there, of course, but they’re not alone. At least two dozen seniors are crammed into the bar's banquette, drinks in hand, some already mid-dance on the sticky faux-wood floor. Eileen’s signature feather boa is now a communal scarf, being passed from neck to neck. Someone’s great-uncle—he recognizes him from the slots—has his tie around his forehead like a Rambo bandana, and is doing shots with two of the bridesmaids. The bride is slow dancing with someone’s grandma. The DJ booth is unmanned, the playlist hijacked by a phone plugged directly into the sound system, which is blaring “Dancing Queen” at top volume.
And, somehow, Ari Levinson is behind the bar himself, slamming a bottle of tequila on the counter with a theatrical flourish.
Ari who’s not supposed to be back until Monday.
Curtis wades through the bedlam, dodging an emerging conga line, and slides behind the bar next to Ari.
“You’re supposed to be in New York,” Curtis says, voice low but edged.
Ari just flashes a golden grin. “I have a private jet, and Eileen called me personally,” he says, as if that explains everything. “Said if I didn’t make this bachelorette party’s dreams come true, she’d never forgive me.”
Eileen was their wickedest widow slash beloved queen of the resort, left with more money than god, and stayed at Sunburst in one of the penthouse suites that was essentially hers every other weekend at this point.
Curtis feels the corner of his mouth twitch. “So you’re bartending now?” Curtis asks, monitoring the controlled chaos.
Ari shrugs, “Back to my roots.”
Curtis locates you instantly, perched at the end of the bar, not in the fray but close enough to referee. You’re in a pale knit mini-dress and white sneakers, another outfit to match the rest of the bridal party. There’s a highball glass in your hand, the liquid inside nuclear red and fizzy. Cherry garnish. Shirley Temple. He snorts—of course.
You’re running the spectacle, but not running wild. Your head is tipped just so, like you’re listening for the precise moment the party will veer from beautiful disaster into regrettable territory. The instant it would go too far, you would be there to drag your girls back.
His stare must be a laser, because you catch him immediately, and your face bursts wide open with a smile. Not just a little polite, thanks-for-your-help smile—a full, flashing, not-even-a-little-bit-sober beam. You’re off the barstool and striding toward him before he can look away.
You reach him in an instant, and before he can ask what you need, you blurt, “I just wanted to say, thank you! I never dreamed of anything this big, but it’s bigger and better than I could have hoped for!”
Curtis knows how to field gratitude—he does this every day, nodding his way through the bland, forgettable compliments of winners and losers. But this, the way you lean in, smiling like you’ve just hit the jackpot, tips something loose in him.
“This wasn’t me. It’s Eileen you have to thank for all of this. She’s a force of nature,” he says.
You turn and look for her in the crowd, but Curtis can still hear you. “She’s a fucking legend,” you say, soft, reverent.
Curtis doesn’t let it sit. He leans in, close enough you have to tip your chin up to meet his eyes. “You looked like you were eager to thank me, though,” he says, and the words are so direct, so specific, that your eyes widen.
Curtis’s mouth shifts into a smirk, and then his hand is at your elbow, guiding you up and away from the bar with a grip a shade firmer than necessary. Not a gentle graze, but a serious claim. He doesn’t say a word—just nods to Ari, who raises his tequila bottle in salute, and then steers you through the riot of bodies and then around a corner to a masterfully hidden set of stairs. Privacy to ascend to the dark kingdom of the VIP lounges.
Curtis badges a golden door open and you step in, a little ahead of him, a little breathless, and something dark in him revs at your wide-eyed reaction as you look around, soaking up every angle. You turn in a slow circle, taking it in, the perfectionist in you surely already clocking the amenities, the escape routes, the places where a control freak could retreat if she suddenly needed to.
The room is a jewel box with velvet seating, a mirrored bar with bottles for a hundred moods, and outside the glass doors, a crescent-moon balcony that wraps around the entire level, cantilevered over the revel below. The sound comes up through the floor, dull and distant and thrilling.
Curtis closes the door behind them with a soft click, then flips a switch that kills the ugly ceiling lights and bathes everything in a pinky-purple glow.
He leans against the door, arms crossed, blocking the exit with a casual, unignorable presence. “Not quite the rooftop bar you wanted, but it has its advantages,” he says.
You drift to the balcony railing, which overlooks the bar and a slice of the dance floor below, packed with the intergenerational party. He comes up behind, close enough that you must feel him, but he doesn’t touch you yet.
After a minute, you say, “So this is the VIP suite.” You sound breathless, lighter than you probably want to.
Curtis makes a noise of affirmation. “Should be for high rollers, but turns out ours come here to be in the crowd, not above it.”
You lean on the railing, looking down. “I’ve never been in a VIP anything.” You smile, but it’s tight.
“We should make it an experience you’ll never forget then, shouldn’t we?”
He leans in, sets his palms on either side of you, bracketing your ribs, caging you in as you grip the balcony. He can see you’re nervous, the first crack in your facade.
Curtis wants to see what happens if you let go—just a little. See if he can shake something loose in you that won't snap back into shape. He wants to see how far he can make you unravel, if you’ll trust his control, indulge in surrender, let him break you.
He sets his hand on your hip. A test. He feels you tense, feels the nerves shudder through your spine as you take a deliberate breath, all the way to the bottom. Your hands grip the balcony railing, but you tilt your head just enough that he can see the hint of defiance in your profile. Not fear—just the need for a reason to surrender.
He gives you one.
His lips graze your ear, and he pitches his words low, dangerous. “You know you want to let go,” Curtis says. “You don’t have to run the show every second.”
He waits for a protest. Instead, your voice comes out soft, “What if I don’t know how?”
Now, that is interesting.
And perfect.
Curtis doesn’t hesitate. He puts both hands on your hips, sharp and possessive, and pulls you back against him. There’s no space between your bodies, just the heat and the thud of his heart against your spine and the point of his cock, already hard, pressed up between the small of your back and your ass. The party below blurs out of focus. His lips drag a line from the curve of your ear to the side of your throat, the scruff on his jaw catching and scraping against your skin. He doesn’t bother with sweet nothings, just fills your world with the shudder of your own breath and the slow, insistent sweep of his palms up and under the hem of your dress.
“I’ll show you,” he growls, and you shiver in his hands but don’t resist.
Curtis lifts the skirt up over your hips, slow and sure, not for seduction but to test you, to see if you’ll stop him. You don’t. You’re trembling, but it’s the good kind—a shudder up your spine, a breath snatched and held tight. He likes that. He likes that a lot. He skims his hands further up and under, finds the smooth curve of your ass, finds the edge of your panties and tugs them down with a single, practiced motion, just far enough to bare you.
You twist to glance back, half shy, half incautious, and your voice comes out husky, nothing like the chirpy, put-together party leader from the lobby. “Is this…okay?”
He smirks. “Doesn’t matter if it’s okay, as long as you want it,” he growls, teeth grazing the juncture at your neck.
Then he’s undoing his own belt, one-handed, and you’re already melting into a perfect arch, braced and bent, just how he likes. Curtis is not a man for pleasantries. He likes efficiency, wants results, but something about you—this fine-tuned girl with the power stance and nervous little quiver—makes him want to prolong this, draw it out like the last hand at the table.
It’s a dangerous place to do this, up here and not so far from view, but that’s the point. The wide glass gives a perfect god’s-eye view of the casino, and below in the bar anyone who glances up might see a silhouette, but not a face. That risk turns the air inside electric. He wants to see how far he can push you, if you’ll crash out as a good girl or revel in coming to heel.
There’s no buildup. He doesn’t tease, doesn’t check in, just pushes forward and fills you in a single, breathtaking lunge. You choke out a surprised noise, probably loud to your own ears but lost in the spill of music and laughter that pulses up from below. He keeps going, not giving you time to adjust, not gentling his pace, just claiming you over the balcony with the force of a man who’s been starved.
The drag of his hands, the pound of his hips, the roughness of fabric and fingers and bone—he means every thrust to bruise, to mark you with the memory of this room until you can never walk into another casino again without feeling phantom pressure on your waist. It’s insane, this surge of possessiveness, but it only twists tighter as you arch and gasp and fight to keep yourself silent, because you’re good, you’ve always been good, and Curtis can sense the struggle as you try to keep the noises caged. He won’t let you. He wants you to let go, and he’s not above brute force to get you there.
He snakes a hand up under your dress, flattens his palm against your stomach, keeping you pinned so you’re forced to stay put and take every inch. His other hand creeps up, wraps around your throat and squeezes, thumb against your windpipe—not enough to hurt, just enough to underscore who’s in control.
He fucks you, relentless, and it’s not performative, not for show, just the pure, greedy satisfaction of it. If there’s any doubt in him about whether you want this, it dies when you start bucking back into him, meet him thrust for thrust, until the friction threatens to light the air on fire.
Curtis relishes every stifled gasp you make, the way you spasm and cling to the rail as your knees start to go. There’s a pretty, wild abandon now, your hands scrambling for purchase, and for the first time you look utterly unstaged, raw and perfect. His thumb strokes your pulse, steady, both pushing to more and grounding you at the same time.
Curtis is never gentle, but he’s always attentive. He’s got enough years behind him to tell when someone is about to crash. You’re creaking, threatening to snap in his hands, hips torqued back against him, begging, desperate for more. He takes a hand off your stomach and slips it lower, finds the knot of nerves that he knows can quell your need.
He works you, deliberate and precise, until your body rebels against you, locked tight around his cock as you choke out a single, helpless sound that’s all desperation. “Good girl,” he growls, and you keen.
He doesn’t stop. He keeps punishing you through it, and even when you shudder and sob, proud spine melting into a loose, slack curve, he won’t let you slide off the edge. Not until he’s wrung you out once, twice, three times—he wants you completely spent, the sight of you ruined, breath gone jagged. Only then does he come, a savage surge he buries in your heat, hands digging in with a grip that promises bruises by morning.
He laughs—low, dark, delighted—and stays pressed against your back until he’s wrung every last bit of shiver from your muscles, still touching and tormenting the your oversensitive intimate parts, fingers still tormenting with out, cock punishing your inner walls with slow ruts while he’s still half-hard. When he lets go of your throat, he pulls your face around and bites your earlobe, hard enough to leave a mark.
There’s no clean-up, not with him, not in a place like this. He slides out, fixes your dress, puts himself together with the brutal efficiency. You stand there, trembling, breathless, stuck in place.
His cocky self-satisfaction bubbles in his chest while you stay hunched over the balcony, hands vise-locked on the rail, knuckles bleached to bone. He relishes every second of it—the way you strain to straighten up but can’t quite, the way your body fights to process what just detonated inside. He enjoys watching you flinch when he slides your ruined panties delicately back into place, tugs them up with a snap of elastic. “Gotta keep my hot cum inside your tight cunt,” he mutters, the words more ruin he knows you can’t be used to.
Then he finally guides you to the couch. You look up at him, blinking, lips only slightly parted, doe-eyed in your ruined haze. He pats the side of your head before stepping away.
He pours you both a drink, because he’s not a complete animal, and hands yours over wordlessly. You sip it. He’s got vodka, but he only gave you a flavored sparkling water. You meet his gaze. He likes the way you steady yourself on a few sips.
“Now everyone in the bridal party should be able to say they had a weekend they’ll never forget,” Curtis says a few minutes later, once you seem more settled.
You huff a small laugh. At last, you manage to say, “I don’t even know if my legs work.”
He stands, knocking back the last of his vodka. “You can stay up here long as you want.”
He doesn’t offer to walk you to your room, doesn’t linger, just brushes his knuckles across your cheek and lets himself out the suite, the click of the latch leaving you in a glittering, elevated hush. He’ll send a note to your room, leaving his number and a line letting you know he’ll ruin you more if you want him to before you leave.
🥵🥴
so, again, that happened.
I must throw out a note to @stargazingfangirl18 who was there when I imagined up this man and encouraged his development! Gave great fuel to my fire once again!!
read what happens the next morning: MORNING DEPARTURE
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