Carefully she pushed herself to a sitting position. She couldn’t see out the window because of the light-blocking curtains, but a lamp in the corner cast warm light over the wood floors and rumpled bed. There were red stains all over the sheets. Blood? No, too light for that. She’d studied enough blood splatters to know. Ew, had she thrown up? She had done microscopic investigations of vomit in her classes to determine a victim’s last meal and other crime scene variables. The sample wasn’t consistent with vomit in either texture or smell, which convinced her it was a juice stain.
The ache pulsed at the front of her head as she tried to remember the night before. The humiliation over Saxby’s rejection washed over her again. Please, not that far. Meeting him as her near-perfect match, no, didn’t need to go there either. She’d left the Connections Club and gone to one of the bars, had a drink, and met Tim, who’d invited her to the toga party. She clearly remembered dancing with him, then the creep grabbing her boobs on the dance floor. That anger was followed quickly by gratitude at seeing Saxby giving the guy a hard time.
Forget him!
And then…things got fuzzy after that. She saw flashes of the night, like a strobe light illuminating a face here, a sign there, but nothing that answered the question foremost in her mind: What the hell did I do last night?
At least she’d made it back to her room. She glanced down at herself, wearing only a bra but still in her pants. Sheesh, she hadn’t even changed into her nightie.
According to the clock on the dresser, it was only six in the morning. That’s why she was so tired—bone tired. She was about to slip back into sleep when the rain abruptly cut off. Not rain, but a shower. The walls were obviously paper thin; she could hear the patter of the last drops coming out of the showerhead and hitting the tub floor as though it were right there in her room.
The screech of the metal rings across the shower rod shot her to a sitting position, which sent the room spinning again. She braced herself as her heart pounded. That sound was in her room. Her gaze flew to the light seeping out from beneath the closed bathroom door. A shadow moved inside, and she heard the swish of a towel.
Someone was in her room! She found her shirt tossed over the back of a chair. Oh, God, she’d had sex with someone and couldn’t remember. The shame of that was a tidal wave. She’d wanted to be wild, yes, but with full memory of it.
She eased out of bed and wobbled to the chair as the room shifted like a ship on the ocean. What a terrible feeling, knowing someone was in her bathroom but not who it was! Someone comfortable enough to shower and, by the sound of it, brush his teeth. What kind of guy took advantage of a drunken woman? Was it that boob-grabbing Tim? She wrestled her way into her shirt. Anger was much more comfortable than shame, and fired by it, she snatched the door open.
The gorgeous blond guy dressed in nothing more than a towel wrapped tight around his hips was a stranger. He had just dropped his toothbrush into a glass and looked as surprised to see her as she was to see him. His sea-green eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to say something.
“Who are you?” she blurted out, “and why are you in my room?”
Steam wafted toward her in a warm, fragrant cloud as he turned toward her. Vaguely, oddly, she thought of a sun-drenched day, a honeyed voice whispering in her ear. She blinked, bringing herself back to this startling moment. To the stranger standing half naked in front of her with a tattoo on one of his biceps. She didn’t bother with trying to figure out what it was. The bulbs over the sink highlighted hints of red in short blond hair that was still damp and mussed from towel-drying.
“I’m Sax—uh, Saxby, the guy you met on the plane. And technically, this is my room.” He took a step toward her, but his towel began to slip and he had to grab the corners.
She stumbled back, catching a glimpse of the creamy skin at his pelvis and muscular thigh before he cinched the towel closed again. “Get away from me.”
“Jennessy, it’s me. You know, the nice guy…well, the nice guy who turned out to be not-so-nice and then was nice again last night, which you probably don’t remember.” He followed her into the room.
“You are not that jerk who lied to me about having a girlfriend. You look nothing like him.” Except for the shape of his eyes, she realized.
He glanced down at himself. “No, I suppose I don’t. I thought I had a couple more hours to figure this out. You were dead to the world just a short while ago. If I’d known you were going to wake so soon, I would have stayed in bed with you.”
“In bed with me?” She nearly choked on those words. “You…me…we…” She could only gesture to the bed, her words turning into a hoarse squeak.
He narrowed his eyes as he clearly tried to interpret her stutters, then shook his head. “Oh…no, not in bed in bed. I was just holding you. ’Cause you wanted me to.”
She kept moving backward, until she hit the edge of the mattress and sank down on it. Which was just as well, since her legs were still wobbly. “I don’t understand.” She looked at the suitcase on the floor with more clarity. It wasn’t hers. Nor were the wrinkled business shirts still packed inside or the shorts that obviously belonged to a man. “You are not the man I met on the plane. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m calling security.”
He held out his hands, which flexed biceps she was sure the man she’d met on the plane didn’t possess. This man worked out, regularly sculpting his pecs and abs on weight machines. “No, don’t do that. Hold on a sec.” He smoothed his hair, slid on the wire-rimmed glasses, and grabbed a can of hairspray out of the bathroom. The stream he shot left a brown streak on his hair, the same dull shade of Saxby’s hair. Then he grabbed a container and showed her the brown contacts in the wells. “I’m the guy you met on the plane, I swear.”
Was she still dreaming? Caught in that terrible sleep one gets when they’ve had too many drinks and never sink into a steady REM pattern? She stared at his face, trying to superimpose Saxby onto this guy who could have been on the cover of one of her romance novels. “I don’t understand,” she said again, rubbing her hands over her face. “How did we end up together? Why do you look different? And how did my shirt land over there if we didn’t do anything?”
He ducked his head. “You took it off. I tried to stop you, honest, but you were too fast.”
Shame washed over her again. “Please tell me I wasn’t coming on to you again. Ohmigod, that was embarrassing enough the first time.” But a humiliating picture was forming in her mind. She’d gotten drunk, spotted Saxby, maybe thanked him for standing up to Tim on her behalf, then threw herself at him. He’d taken pity on her, bringing her back here, fending off her advances—“Oh, God,” she squeaked, burying her face in her hands.
Saxby knelt down in front of her, anchoring the towel at his hip. “No, it wasn’t like that. Well, not exactly like that.”
Another groan escaped her. “If I die right here, will you promise not to tell anyone?”
“Ah, darlin’, don’t be embarrassed. Look at me. Come on now, look at me.”
Slowly, she raised her eyes to the lure of his soft voice. That honeyed voice she’d heard in her head a few moments earlier. He gathered her hands in his big, calloused ones. “It wasn’t your fault. You were drugged.”
It took a second for her brain to put logic with that statement. “Drugged?” Her entire body tensed, and her gaze shot toward the door. “You drugged me? To what, get me back to your room?”
His hands tightened on hers, as though he sensed that she was about to bolt. “Darlin’, I didn’t have to drug you. I could have had you, remember? Take a breath and relax.” She took a deep breath, as he’d instructed. “Good girl,” he said, giving her a sense of déjà vu. “How much of last night do you remember?”
“It’s perfectly clear up until I left the toga party. I felt a little buzzed, but not much more than that. That jerk I was dancing with…you gave him a hard time about grabbing me, didn’t you?”
He was still holdi
ng her hands, still kneeling in front of her like a suitor of olden times, the bent thigh peering out between the towel’s edges. He lifted one shoulder. “I might have threatened to crush his boy parts.”
She almost laughed at that. She did smile at the notion of him standing up for her. “Thanks for defending my honor. Though it probably got trashed later in the night.”
“You were fine.”
Did she want to know what she’d done or said? The shirt lying on the chair was a big clue, the one she’d taken off.
“Let me throw on some pants, and I’ll explain.” He pointed at her. “Don’t move, y’hear?”
It was really more of an order than a request, but she was riveted to the spot. She wasn’t going anywhere; she had to hear this.
The muscles of his back flexed and tensed as he bent over and dug a pair of athletic shorts from his luggage. He pushed the bathroom door closed behind him, though it bounced back open. For a reason she couldn’t fathom, she watched through the opening as he dropped the towel and pulled on the shorts. She would have never, in a million years, guessed that the oversized shirts hid that physique. The way he walked was even different, his shoulders straight, back tall. His hips had a nice swagger as he came back and dug through his suitcase for a white tank top. And yes, she sat there and watched him put it on, obviously still loopy since she was doing it so blatantly.
Thankfully he was all business. He leaned back against the dresser across from her, his arms loosely crossed in front of him. “So you stomped off the dance floor and then what?”
“I vaguely remember talking to people.” She tried to make sense of those strobe flashes of memories. “I have a hazy memory of bumping into a bush. That must have been after I was drugged, because I apologized to it. A woman laughed, one of those high-pitched screeches. What drug was it? Nothing like heroin, I hope.” The questions bombarded her. “Is that why I feel like crap? Why I can’t remember anything?” She smacked her lips. “Why my mouth tastes like I was out grazing?”
“The grass taste is my doing.” He gestured to the cup on the nightstand with green and red residue at the bottom. “I had you drink a mixture of juice, supplements, and a greens powder to help your kidneys clear the drug out of your system faster. Here.” He poured her a glass of cranberry juice. “Drink this to take the taste out.”
She swallowed the tart juice, which did help.
“No, it wasn’t anything addictive like that,” he said in answer to her earlier question. “You were given ketamine, a date rape drug, akin to roofies, ecstasy, and GHB. But instead of knocking you out, it breaks down your will. You’re at the mercy of whoever’s giving you orders.”
Date. Rape. The horror of those words chilled her down to her marrow. “Someone gave me a drug…to rape me?” The word rape rasped off her tongue, and she wrapped her arms around herself. “And he wouldn’t even have to fight me. I would just go along with whatever he wanted. We have to go to the resort manager. The authorities. Someone.”
“It’s not quite that simple.” He inhaled, releasing the breath as he looked at her. “If I tell you everything, you have to promise to keep it confidential. You’ll cause me a heap of trouble if you blow my cover.” A little Southern accent crept into his voice just then.
“Cover? Are you a cop?”
“No. I work for a private agency that does investigations, surveillance, that sort of thing.”
She straightened. “I can give you my professional assurance that I won’t blow your cover. I am a cop. Well, sort of.”
“You’re a cop?”
“Don’t look so shocked. I’m going to be working in the Investigations Division of the Pekin Police Department. After my father was killed while responding to a domestic dispute, my mom made me stop trying to solve thefts at my high school. She made me promise I wouldn’t be a cop like my dad. I love solving crimes, making the world a better place. So I compromised and went to school for forensics. I’ll be joining my dad’s police department as soon as their CSI guy finally retires. Which should be any week now.” It was nice to see him surprised for a change. “You said you were going to tell me everything. So spill.”
He pulled the chair closer and sat down across from her, his arms resting on his thighs. “Several women have reported to U.S. authorities that they thought they’d been drugged and raped during their stay here. Unfortunately, they remembered nothing, hadn’t been processed with a rape kit, and too much time had elapsed to check their urine for the drug. The Department of State realized that for every woman who reported her suspicions, there were probably a dozen more who were too ashamed to come forward, or maybe didn’t even know they’d been drugged. It’s a party resort, after all. People do get so drunk that they black out. The agency I work for…let’s just say we investigate outside the boundaries of the law. Quietly. I’m here to gather intel, document it, and turn it over to people who can make it an official investigation.”
“That’s why you warned me about watching my drink,” she said, the realization hitting her. He had been a nice guy after all.
He gave her a soft smile. “And why I couldn’t act on your invitation. I needed to be the kind of guy so desperate for a hookup that I’d buy drugs. As much as I wanted to take you up on that kiss, I couldn’t. And it killed me, Jennessy, really killed me, to turn you down. But spending my time here with you would have compromised my façade.”
Through the bad came the spark of sunlight. He hadn’t rejected her because he didn’t want her.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, studying her. “Your pupils just dilated.”
She wasn’t about to tell him why that might have happened. “I’m okay. Tired, dragged out, but okay. I think all that stuff you gave me, as gross as it looks, helped. So was it Tim who drugged me? And will it mess up your investigation if I kill him?”
He chuckled, rubbing his chin. “Tim is an A1 douchebag, but he didn’t drug you. I thought it might be as simple as an employee selling the drugs, but it’s not. Do you remember seeing Willie last night?”
She searched her foggy memories. “Maybe. I can hear the echo of his laugh, see a flash of his face. But that could be from earlier. Wait a minute. Are you saying Willie drugged me?”
“Willie sold you to me for the night. A ‘sure thing,’ he called it.” Sax must have known how those words would hit her because he said them deliberately, softly.
“S-sold me?”
“I complained about my sour luck. Of course, I went out of my way to be a douchebag myself. For a hundred bucks, he said he would find the perfect woman, get her in the mood, and bring her to me. When he brought you…” Sax shook his head, his jaw tightening. “I wanted to smash him right there. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done to play along. He wouldn’t admit to drugging you, just said you’d had a lot to drink and that he loosened you up.” Sax sneered.
“And I took my shirt off.”
“Look, he set you up to be in a sexy mood. And these drugs can make you uninhibited. Don’t worry about it. After you took off your shirt, I promptly tucked you into bed.” He placed his hand over his eyes. “Like this.”
His earlier words came back. “You were in bed with me,” she said. When he hesitated, as though he were weighing how much to tell her, she added, “We didn’t…”
“No. Hell, no, I wouldn’t have done that. The only thing I wanted to get into you was my concoction.” He gestured to the cup with the residue. When she was clearly waiting for more of an explanation, he finally said, “You didn’t want me to leave. So I held you while you slept.”
She swayed at the sweet intimacy, and the thought of that strong, sexy body wrapped around hers. “Oh.”
“I promise, I didn’t touch you inappropriately.”
“I believe you. And I appreciate that.” More than she could convey without getting a little mushy. She shifted to the analytical part of her brain. “How did you test me to know what I’d been given?”
“Urine test. And no, I d
id not help you do that.” He grinned. “You did it all by yourself.”
Good girl. Those words shivered through her, along with a faint memory of his finger trailing down her neck.
He dug into his luggage and pulled out an empty cup, which he handed to her. “You got pretty excited about it. I gather it reminded you of your forensics classes.”
She examined it. “I got excited about a urine-test cup? Really?”
He chuckled. “You were cute, trust me.”
“Yeah, sure.” She set it down. “What kind of evidence have you gathered so far? Other than my, er, specimen.”
“As far as hard evidence, that’s it. If you don’t mind, I’d like to record an interview with you.” After she nodded in assent, he turned on the recording feature on his phone. He set up the specifics and asked her to recite her personal information and recount the events of the night before. “Can you remember what Willie gave you? It would help to figure out the delivery mechanism. All I know is that you tasted like cherry.”
“We…kissed?”
He turned off the recording. “You kissed me, and I didn’t want to keep pushing you away. Since you wanted to kiss me when you weren’t in a drugged state, I let it stand. It was a judgment call.” He tilted his head. “Did I make the right decision?”
“My wounded ego thanks you.” After a moment, she asked, “Did you kiss me back?”
He rubbed two fingers across his lips. “Oh, yeah.” Then his pupils dilated.
She caught her breath. “I wish I could remember…” that kiss. It had been good, better than the thwarted one, she bet.
He backed up the recording. “Let’s finish the interview.” He asked her several more questions about the night, though she could remember hardly anything.
“What do we do now?” she asked when we clicked off the recorder.
He paused, his gaze on her. “I escort you to your room and let you rest. The best thing would be for you to get the hell out of here. I’ll pay any fare-change fee. This place isn’t you, and I don’t like the idea of you spending another minute here.”
Wild Nights Page 6