Page 18 of Ashes to Ash’s

As I watched Elizabeth tugging Ash’s clothes away, I squeezed my eyes closed against a flashback of my own experience with her. I’d been drugged too, but I’d had moments of awareness. I’d felt her touches. I’d felt her using my cock, and I’d come inside her, but even to this day, I sometimes wondered if it was something I’d wanted or agreed to. Did I? Didn’t I?

Chapter Twelve

Ash

Ihad the weirdest sex dream last night. I could only remember bits of it, just flashes, like the lights kept going out, but I knew it was still happening.

Wasn’t I with Cal? I remembered being in the bar with him. I’m sure I remembered hitting on him. Then there was sex. There was definitely sex, but it didn’t fill me with joy like I’d hoped. There was something wrong. Something weird.

“You’re awake,” Cal said, leaning over me in the strange bed, in the strange room. Everything felt off, like nothing was quite real. Were we in a hotel room? Why was nothing familiar here?

“Uh… where… we… did we?”

He looked troubled, and he was fully clothed, but when I checked myself, lifting the covers with shaking hands, I was definitely naked. My head was foggy, and everything seemed like a weird nightmare I could only just remember flickers of.

“You were wonderful, Ash.”

I knew that wasn’t Cal’s voice, because I was looking at him and his lips didn’t move, and besides… it was a woman’s voice. I sat up with a lurch, my stomach seeming to follow seconds later, only it was less sure about being upright. I was clutching the bedding to my chest, as I stared at an older blonde woman I think I met last night. She was pulling on a pair of boots, as she sat on the end of the bed, but she winked at me when our eyes met.

“What?”

Cal cleared his throat and I ignored him, because I had no idea what was happening here, but something was very wrong. She shouldn’t be here. Why was she here?

“What’s going on?”

The woman stood up, moving in my direction, and something in me was saying to get back, get away from her. She was wrong, just wrong.

She tried to kiss my lips, and I shoved back from her as a shudder ran down my spine. Nope.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

She smiled, unfazed by my reaction. “Is that any way to treat the first woman you slept with? You made me feel so good last night.” Wait. What? I felt like I was moving in slow motion as I turned to look at Cal, who stood up from the bed, and straightened his clothes.

“Your stuff is by the bed, and the room’s paid up until eleven. You have about an hour.”

“What? Wait, what the fuck is happening here?” I tried to get up, but the room seemed to shift, and my balance failed, giving me a jarring landing back on the bed.

“Elizabeth, I’ll meet you downstairs,” Cal said, waving her off. When the door closed, he turned to look at me.

“Ash, this is the last time we’ll see each other, but hopefully last night helped you get back on the right path. Men don’t belong with men. We belong with women, and last night, you made love to that woman, and it was the right thing. It’s what’s always supposed to be.”

“WHAT?”

There was no way I’d fucking do that. I didn’t even like her, so there was no way I’d have fucked her. What the hell was going on?

“Wait, Cal, please! I don’t understand.”

He shook his head sadly as he reached the door. “This is goodbye, Ash. My path was to help you find yours again, and that’s done now. Move on.”

As the door closed behind him, I sat there in stunned silence for probably half an hour, just staring at the wall, like somehow it held the answers. I couldn’t get my head around what had happened. I couldn’t make sense of it. How the hell did I end up fucking that woman? How? There’s no way I’d get hard for someone like her. No way. That drink though. That knocked me off balance, and I was pretty out of it, wasn’t I? Did I dream that? Jesus.

I looked around me, spying the phone on the bedside table. I grabbed it with embarrassingly shaky hands and pressed zero, not knowing what else to do.

“Reception?”

Jesus, what now? “Uh, how do I make a call out? It’s local.”

I followed her directions, and when my dad picked up the phone, my throat choked up and I practically gasped out my words.