Page 10 of One Wild Wish

CHAPTERTHREE

RACHEL

I attempted to peel my eyes open, but my lids were dry and gritty. The movement sent bursts of pain through my body. Everything ached—my head, my back, my calves all throbbed in unison. Maybe I’d been hit by a Mack Truck, or bulldozed by a derailing train. Possibly dropped from an airplane to test if girls dumb enough to follow strange men into bars could withstand the plummet to Earth.

The light streaming through the window made me wince, another sharp stab slicing through my temples. I fought the urge to melt back into the mattress and blinked. Or tried, at least. My eyelids were glued to my contacts.

A few thousand blinks later, I rolled my tongue around my gums. My mouth was thick and stale, like I’d eaten one of Ainsley’s vegan desserts.

As I took in my surroundings—the unfamiliar ceiling, the too-soft mattress, the closet with more clothing on the floor than on the hangers, the large body beside me—the dryness in my mouth amplified, sourness following. I clamped a hand over my lips to prevent the violent reaction churning in my gut from decorating the floor.

Some heavy swallowing and a few breaths through my nose later, the feeling subsided, but not the horror. I was as stark as naked got, and from the looks of the tattooed back beside me, so was my bedmate. Too embarrassed to glance Bad Boy’s way, I assessed my aches and pains, and the tenderness between my thighs. Sex had definitely happened.

In this bed. With me. And that man.

Hopefully that man.

For all I knew, there could have been other players involved.

Lying as still as possible, I racked my brain, desperate to remember details of the evening. I squinted hard enough to increase my headache, but only snippets came back.

Mespilling wine? Us on the floor?

I was pretty sure laughing happened, too, but no images of his body hovering over mine resurfaced, or of him pushing into me, or me riding him, or us ripping off each other’s clothes. I had no idea where his apartment even was.

At least the night of the Dildo Incident, I didn’t black out. The recollection was hazy, but I remembered traipsing down the street with Ainsley and Gwen and dragging them into a sex shop. We cackled at the toys, and some sections of time were blurry, but the part with me running out the door, waving a massive dildo, screaming, “I have a penis,” was kind of hard to forget.

For the life of me, I couldn’t remember the details of my night with Bad Boy.

I didn’t know his name. That part was clear, along with my one-night-stand rules that had led us here. So was sitting in the bar, him all know-it-all about his wines, pushing me to drink what he deemed acceptable. As was the masculine energy radiating off him as he’d promised to relax me with one touch. A touch lost in translation courtesy of Reckless Rachel.

How many drinks did we have? Did I have an orgasm afterward? Multiple?

God, I hoped we used condoms.

Gingerly, so as not to wake the guy who may have been a Hall of Fame Fuck, I slipped out from the covers and stood. I nearly fell back down. Pain. Lots of pain tightening around my scalp, and tenderness on my tailbone. More pain than my twenty-first birthday and the ten million tequila shots. My tongue felt swollen. I teetered, and the room swayed. When I remembered my naked body, I got over my nausea and hauled ass into the bathroom.

Where I promptly saw four condoms in the trash.

Four.

A rush of pride swelled at the sight. I totally rocked Bad Boy’s sex world. But those condoms hadn’t necessarily come from us. Not all, at least. He’d seemed honest in the bar, admitting he’d taken a number of women to bed. That bed. The bed I’d slept on. Naked. I shivered, suddenly itchy all over. Remembered games of catching cooties as a kid had me wrinkling my nose. That I could remember.

But not fucking Bad Boy four times.

I splashed water on my face, but it did little to dull my headache or sober me up. I was still drunk as a skunk. Where did that saying even come from? Was it because my breath stunk? Because I could clear a room with one word?

I grabbed Bad Boy’s toothpaste and used my finger to scrub my tongue and teeth and gums, all the while eyeing his meager toiletries: razor (which clearly hadn’t been used in a while), shaving cream (ditto), and a toothbrush. My sink with its plethora of moisturizers and eye creams had girl written all over it.

I sucked back as much water as possible and grabbed a towel from his hook. The blue cotton was clean and plush. It smelled like leather and clove and a hint of musk. I might never recall what went down between Bad Boy and me, but my regret over the situation ebbed. At least I’d done something fun. Something out of character.

Something to start my twenty-seventh year with a bang.

Unfortunately, my attraction to him brought with it painful memories, too. Of my time with Gabe, which led to my father’s last words, forever saved on my phone.

I shook my head. This was just one night. One wild fling. Nothing more. Except an uncomfortable feeling welled up, and something hazy niggled at me. One of those blurry memories, linked to the birthday wish maybe—my resolution to find a fulfilling career—but the source of my dread remained obscured.

Clutching the towel around my chest, I shrugged off my worry and eased open the bathroom door. I tiptoed into the bedroom. My clothes were strewn over the hardwood floor, as though we’d been harried and frantic to remove them, and the sheets were a mess. God, I wished I remembered what had happened. My gaze cut to Bad Boy, one last peek before leaving and never seeing him again. This time I looked.