one
Carina – Now
Lightpiercedmyskullthrough my closed eyelids. My brain was being carved out by icepicks, an incessant throb like the second hand ticking around a clock, except with blunt force trauma involved. It was as if someone was using a sledgehammer to drive the icepick into my head.
I was flushed and freezing at the same time. The air-conditioning blew cold air over my naked body, but the heat source wrapped around me was at inferno levels. No, wait. There were two heat sources.
What the fuck?
I blinked open my eyes and immediately slammed them shut again. The only thing I’d seen during the millisecond I’d managed to keep my eyes open was a bright blue sky through the window. The drapes were clearly wide open because not even sheer curtains muted the light.
I tried to put the pieces together, but my memory was hazy. I remembered being at my best friend Sophia’s house. She got the call that her father had fallen and broken his hip. It had signaled the end of our plans for a girls’ trip to Vegas. I remembered Sophia telephoning her son, Jacques, to update him. He’d insisted that I go to Vegas, and he’d join me. We could see the shows and get the massages I’d planned with his mother. I remembered flying in, meeting Jacques and his roommate, Travis, who’d come with him.
Then… nothing.
Why was I naked? Who was I lying between? It had to be Jacques and Travis. Surely it wasn’t anyone else.
Jacques had booked the hotel. When we’d arrived and seen the room, I’d immediately offered to book another one. At least no one would be sleeping on the floor, or the sofa. Jacques had waved off my concern, telling me we’d only be there to sleep. Apparently, he was okay with the three of us sharing the one bed.
Maybe with the three of us in the bed, I’d gotten hot… and completely stripped off in my sleep. That was too farfetched for even my hungover brain to believe.
But that’s what it had to be.
I couldn’t possibly have slept with them. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world for me to have done that—not because they weren’t gorgeous. They totally were.
But friends didn’t sleep with their friends’ sons.
At least I better not have.
I catalogued my body. I had one hand tucked under my pillow, the other tangled in short, spiky hair. I cracked my eyelids open just enough that I could see and looked down. Travis. His face was buried in my boobs—it was a wonder my double-H’s hadn’t suffocated him. His arm was wrapped around my waist. His shoulders were broad, tattoos decorated his chest and arm, and his narrow waist framed a sexy-as-hell, tight, round ass that was currently on full display to my wandering eyes.
I was horrified but relieved at the same time—at least I knew who I was with. But it also meant that Jacques was behind me. I didn’t dare check whether he was naked too.
I inhaled slowly, and the smell of sex permeated my senses. Fuck. This wasnotgood.
Jacques had his hand on my hip, and he was pressed up against me, every inch of his long, lean body tucked into my back.
Maybe we’d all been hot. Maybe the air-conditioning wasn’t working, and we’d all stripped off. Maybe it rained and we all got wet.
Shiiit.Panic filled me. God, surely I wasn’t so stupid. Please let me not have been that imbecilic.
If we’d had sex, I wouldn’t be sore. There had never been one occasion in my twenty-year marriage that I’d been sore after sex.
But I was. Every inch of me ached.
Thank goodness.
It had to be just a hangover.
I breathed out a sigh of relief. I’d never been so grateful to be suffering self-inflicted pain in my life. From my hair follicles right down to my toenails and everything in between, it all ached. My hands and arms were tired and heavy, as if I’d done a hundred pushups—heck, even ten would probably break me—but it definitely wasn’t from sex.
It’d never been like that before.
It definitely wouldn’t be like that with them.
My legs and hips were sore too. A memory flashed in my mind’s eye of walking the Strip, the three of us loaded up with shopping bags.
I could have cried. I had no rational explanation for my nakedness, but the ache in my muscles was easily explainable. Exercise—punishment disguised as healthiness. It ranked equally with kale, wheatgrass, and coriander on a scale of bleh.
