“What kind of a drink?”
“Champagne! See? Look how pretty it is! It’s one of the pink ones. I think it looks more festive, don’t you?”
Pamela was shoving the drink towards Ella, who took it with some reluctance. It wasn’t that she thought the drink had been tampered with, nothing like that. She had learned at an early age not to accept drinks you didn’t personally see poured, but Pamela wasn’t a stranger and she knew it was probably safe.
But she wasn’t a drinker! Even holding the glass made her feel like an imposter, like she was trying desperately to fit in but would never really be able to manage it.
“What’s the problem?”
“Nothing, it’s just...I think I’ll look silly.”
“God, you really are a headcase, aren’t you? OK, come here. Scoot over just a few steps. Look, right in the mirror, go ahead.”
Ella allowed Pamela to lead her over to a nearby mirror and stared at the girl she saw looking back at her. She hadn’t bothered to look at herself before being dragged down to the casino, and she was surprised by what she saw now. She didn’t look anything like herself, at least not the self she was used to seeing.
She didn’t look like Jen and Jen’s friends, either, but that was OK. It was good, maybe. She looked like herself but better. Her hair was done up in a chic side bun, her slim, hourglass figure poured into an emerald green dress, tight and ending halfway up her thigh. The black heels on her feet made her look only slightly taller, but they also made her posture about a thousand times better.
She was embarrassed thinking it, but she actually looked PRETTY. She looked really pretty, and if she hadn’t known any better, she would have looked at herself and thought that she belonged there. Pamela, whose face she could also see in the mirror, looked at the two of them with a kind of bored satisfaction.
“Do you see yourself? You look good, OK? You look hot, even. The only thing making you look awkward at this point is you. Take the drink. It’ll loosen you up some, maybe even let you, I don’t know, have a good time? You can’t really want to just mope around for the whole weekend, and lord knows I don’t want to watch that kind of a trainwreck.”
Pamela pushed the hand holding the drink a little closer to Ella, and after another brief moment of hesitation, she took a sip. It wasn’t nearly as sweet as she had been expecting it to be, but it also wasn’t as bad. Actually, it was kind of delicious. And what the hell, if it was going to loosen her up some so that she wasn’t such a downer, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea, after all.
So she drank the glass down, rather quickly for a girl who didn’t drink, and accepted graciously when Pamela brought her another. By the time she was on her third glass she had grown brave enough to find the bartender and ask for it herself, and by the time she was on the fourth she had lost her friends completely. She felt braver than she ever had in her life, and was actually having a conversation with a man she did not know at all. A rather boring man, as it turned out, and so she excused herself and went to fetch her fifth glass of champagne.
She should have stopped with four. It was somewhere in the middle of the fifth glass that she started to feel really weird. Because she had no real experience drinking, she hadn’t anticipated how quickly she would go from feeling like she could do anything in the world she wanted to, to feeling something a good deal less inspiring.
Suddenly, she felt woozy, like her body wasn’t moving as quickly as she needed it to. And it was hot! When they had first arrived she had been freezing, but now she felt much too hot. She had saliva pooling in the back of her mouth, too, which was a pretty reliable indicator that she was going to be sick pretty soon. She had to get to a bathroom, and sooner rather than later.
She struggled through the throngs of people on the casino floor, seemingly more and more every minute, and struggled to make it down the hallway. She was about halfway to the little sign that read “bathroom” when two men stepped out in front of her, seemingly coming out of nowhere.
They were leering at her, and even in her highly compromised state, she knew that they were bad news. Everything about them screamed bad news, especially the way they were walking towards her. They gave each other a knowing glance before basically herding her towards the wall. She almost fell into a ridiculously large potted plant, and let out a little yelp of surprise.
One of the two men responsible for her near fall reached out and caught her by wrapping his hand around her wrist and pulling her towards him rather roughly. She fell directly into his chest, causing both him and his friend to laugh in a way that sounded mean rather than jovial.
“Whoa there, darling!”
“Looks like somebody’s been having a good time, wouldn’t you say?”
“Looks like somebody’s been having a VERY good time.”
“Think we should bring her with us?”
“You bet your sweet ass I do. She looks like she’d be up for a good time. Looks pretty pliable, too, and you know that’s how I like them.”
“Stop it,” Ella protested feebly, “let me go. I need to go.”
“Ha! I bet you do sweetheart, and you will. When we’re done with you.”
“What does that mean? I don’t know what you mean?”
“That’s OK, sweetheart. You will know, soon enough.”
Ella knew that she needed to get away from these men, or else it was going to be her that would end up on an episode of Dateline. These guys didn’t have her best interest at heart, and they definitely didn’t want to show her the sights or anything benign like that. She knew she needed to get away from them, but she couldn’t make her body move fast enough.
She couldn’t make her body and her thoughts line up and work together, and while she was trying to do so, she was being led further and further away from where she wanted to be. If they took her out of the hotel, if they managed to get her to a second location, she would be a goner. She needed to fight them off NOW. She just couldn’t seem to do it. They were too strong, and she felt so strange!
“Excuse me! Sirs, can I ask you what you’re doing?”
Ella felt the hand around her wrist tighten, the bodies hauling her alongside them tense up. An intrusion was not something they were interested in, and apparently, something they hadn’t been expecting. They continued to walk forward, and the small amount of hope this new voice had given her began to fade almost as quickly as it had come.
It sounded like there was only one guy back there, and what were the odds that he would confront two big guys on his own? He had probably done what he considered his duty as a good citizen by calling out in the first place and would now go on about his business feeling as though he had done his part. These men would carry her off, and two weeks later she would be found in a dumpster somewhere deep inside of one of the more seedy areas of town.
“Excuse me, perhaps you didn’t hear me the first time. I’ll ask again. What is it that you think you’re doing?”
“Mind your fucking business, friend, unless you want to get tangled up in something you can’t get yourself back out of again.”
“Thanks for the advice. I think I’ll take my chances.”
This is when things started to speed up, at least in Ella’s perception of things, and she struggled to keep up. The blessed intruder, who had originally been far down the hall from her and her would be captors, was suddenly directly between them. The man holding her whipped around to face him, dragging her with him and almost knocking her over again.
She felt him stiffen again, only this time something felt different. Was he afraid? Was that what it was? She thought it just might be, although it could be wishful thinking spurned on by fear and too much pink champagne. When she looked at the figure now directly in front of her, however, she thought that the fear might be a real thing. But she had no idea why! At least not for them.
She found him incredibly intimidating, but it was because he was hands down the most gorgeous guy she had ever seen in her entire life. He was tall
, at least six feet, with broad shoulders and a lithe, athletic build that for some reason reminded her of a jungle cat. His hair was longish, below his shoulders, and the color of honey sitting out in the summertime. He had it tied back in a man bun that managed to look both hipster and elegant all at the same time.
He had what looked like maybe a week’s worth of stubble on his face, the perfect amount of facial hair (in Ella’s humble opinion). His eyes were the strangest shade of gray and violet all mixed together, and they gleamed with an intelligence that was impossible to miss. He looked like a man who knew things, like he knew something important and he might use it against someone if he saw fit.
While she watched him, he licked his lips slowly, and to her it looked like a predator before pouncing on his prey. She might have been nervous had she thought that she was the prey he was looking for, but aside from stopping the men to see what they were getting up to, he hadn’t shown that he even knew she was there.
Maybe that was for the better, probably it was, but part of her wished that he was looking at her and only her. It was crazy, she had never felt that way about a strange man before, but she for sure felt that way about this one. Still, he looked only at the men who were harassing her.
“Hey man, why don’t you just shove off, OK? Just go on and leave us alone.”
“Surely, of course I will. Just as soon as you unhand that young woman. You leave her with me, and we part friends. Sound like a deal?”
“What the fuck, man?! Leave her with you? What makes you think we’re going to just leave our girl with you?”
“Because,” the man replied with a calmness that was sort of chilling, “she isn’t your girl. You know it, and now you know that I know it as well. Let her go, and everything will be right as rain.”
“And what if we don’t? What if we decide we want to hold onto her?”
“Well, then we’ll just have to see, won’t we? I’ll let you in on a little something, though, just so you aren’t caught off guard. I won’t be looking to the authorities to settle things. I believe in settling things on my own, in a more private way. Make of that what you will, but please, do come to a decision quickly. I am not a patient man. I fear that’s a virtue I never mastered.”
The men holding her actually put their heads together to whisper. They were scared shitless at this point. Even Ella could tell that, and she was plastered beyond all reason. She knew what they were going to do, and she figured the strange man tapping his foot in front of her knew as well.
She could see it on his face, as if he somehow always knew what was going to happen before it actually did. Finally, she was let go and pushed in the direction of the beautiful man. She lurched forward with not even an ounce of grace, stumbled, and landed sprawled out on the carpet.
Her knight in shining armor took a menacing step forward, and although she knew it wasn’t possible, she could have sworn she heard a low growl coming from deep in the back of his throat.
“That wasn’t very gentlemanly.”
“So the fuck what? You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”
“So, somebody should teach you some manners.”
“Yeah? And who's gonna do that? You?”
“Maybe. I really just might. You’ll just have to wait and see. Now go on, get.”
The assholes got. They got fast. She could feel their footfalls hitting the floor, the way it vibrated throughout her body. She might have just stayed there on the carpet, had the man not bent down to give her a helping hand up. Now that the two bullies were gone, his attention was focused entirely on her. It was what she had been jealously wishing for just a little while before, but now that she had it, she wasn’t sure she could handle it.
One really good look at the man told her that he was completely out of her league, even when she was at her best. At the moment, she was definitely not at her best. She could feel that her expertly put up hair had fallen at least half down, and her makeup was smudged from drunkenness and tears.
Vaguely, she could remember her mother telling her that the more put together a woman looked before she started drinking, the more of a mess she looked once she got drunk. She hadn’t gotten it at the time, but now she knew that it was true. And yet, for some reason, he didn’t seem to be put off. He didn’t even seem to notice, just looked her up and down slowly, then studied her face.
“I’m sorry, I don’t believe I caught your name.”
“Oh! Ella. My name is Ella McCormack.”
“Pleased to meet you. My name is Reagan. Now tell me, are you quite alright?”
“Um, I think so. Those guys. They weren’t so nice, and they weren’t my friends. I mean, I’m not their girl. What I’m trying to say is that I didn’t know them at all.”
God, she sounded like an idiot! She sounded like an idiot in front of Reagan, the beautiful, beautiful man. Even if he was nice enough not to let on that he was picking up on it, she was well aware, and she was mortified.
Plus, to make things even better, she still felt absolutely terrible. She was so, SO dizzy and her stomach was turning miserable somersaults inside of her.
“I assumed as much. That’s why I intervened. I was hoping I didn’t take too much liberty-”
“No, not at all. Thank you, actually. I just realized I didn’t say that yet. But thank you is what I have to say.”
“You’re very welcome,” he replied with an indulgent smile, probably because she was pretty badly slurring her words, “now, why don’t you tell me where your room is and we’ll get you into bed. What do you say?”
And she showed him. Careful, mindful Ella who saw situations like this as having potential for winding up on the ID network, told Reagan which room was hers and then allowed him to escort her to it. The whole time, she tried to keep herself from prattling on and did a miserable job of it. She had no idea what she was even saying, but she knew she didn’t shut up for even a minute.
The only thing she could think about was how gorgeous this guy was, like he was straight out of a movie or something. It was the last thing she could remember thinking, in fact, before pitching forward and throwing up all over his surely expensive shoes.
CHAPTER THREE
Something was very, very wrong. This was not the way things were supposed to be, not the way things were supposed to feel. Later, she would think that she had known it was going to be bad well before she had actually woken up and become conscious of it. Her body had known, and had done its best to keep itself protected in a cocoon of sleep.
There were some things you just couldn’t sleep through, though, and this thing that had its claws in her was one of them. It wasn’t going to go away, either. It was like a pitbull who had sunk its teeth into something truly tasty.
“Oh god.”
She groaned to herself, feeling like she had been hit by a truck and wanting absolutely nothing more than to curl up into a little ball and go back to sleep. If there had ever been a time she needed sleep in her life, it was now. Ella was a smart girl (usually) and she knew that sleep was one of the best ways of restoring a body to health. She was definitely in need of some restoration at the moment. What the hell was this?
“Hangover.”
She said the word dully, listening to the way it sounded rolling off of her tongue. It seemed to bounce from wall to wall of the extravagant, perfect room and land flatly on the floor beside her. That was it. That was totally it. She was hungover for the first time in her life, and it was a bad one. Of course, she’d never had a hangover before so she didn’t have anything to compare it to, but she couldn’t imagine it being much worse.
For starters, there was the headache. Ella had always been an avid reader and for a period of time when she was younger, she had developed a bad habit of reading in light that was much too dim for it to be good for her. She had started getting terrible tension headaches, resulting in her very worried mother shuffling her off to the doctor’s office.
The doctor told her to quit the secretive rea
ding if she wanted the headaches to go away, and that had pretty much been that. Those headaches had been bad. But this one? This headache felt like someone was in the process of trying to murder her. It felt like there was an ice pick being driven through her temple, each reverberation of which hurt terribly as well.
If the headache had been the only thing bothering her, it would have been bad. Unfortunately, that wasn’t even close to all that was wrong. Her mouth tasted like an animal had crawled inside of it and died while she was sleeping, and she was thirstier than she had ever been in her life.
She was so thirsty that she felt like she would die if she didn’t get some cold water, but getting that would require her to move and she wasn’t sure that was the best idea. Her stomach was rolling inside of her, making her feel like she was on a ship or something even though she was completely still. She didn’t know if she would be able to make it to water without throwing up, and she definitely didn’t want to do that.
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