Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 157491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
“You can’t go around accusing a member of the peerage…” No words, just gurgling now.
“Tell me or I’ll put you in a fucking hole.”
That’s all I hear as all the lights go out.
6
Isla
“Oh God,” I groan, rolling over in my bed. Wait. Not my bed, I realize, as my hand hangs over the side. I roll the other way and curse because it feels like my brain is loose and rattling around inside my cranium. “Oh no,” I add, trying to peel my eyelids apart.
“Oh good. You’re not dead.”
“Debatable.” I push up onto my elbow with a groan, slowly coming to understand a number of things. I’m in my old bedroom. I’m naked under this sheet. My head currently weighs about three hundred pounds. And Tamsin is still not a morning person. “Death might be preferable.” My throat is so hoarse. I sound like an eighty-year-old with a lifelong twenty-a-day habit. My throat is also swollen, I discover with a dry swallow. “Why am I naked?” I twist to peer at the flowery quilt and discover I’m not completely naked as my bum cheeks begin to uncomfortably chew my knickers. These are more the get-you-into-bed kind of underwear than the comfortable-in-bed kind.
“You’ll note I am not.” Curled in the fireside chair, Tamsin makes a small flourish to indicate last night’s outfit. “I’m going to call these my Florence Nightingale pants from now on.” She sits straight with a wince.
“They’re the pants you had on last night,” I answer dully.
“And you managed not to vomit on them, which is also the answer to your ‘why am I naked’ question.”
“I vomited?” I repeat, appalled. “I didn’t have that much to drink.” Did I? At least, I don’t think I did.
“You don’t remember anything?”
I shake my head, regretting it immediately as I find I need to use my hands to stop the rattling. Tamsin makes a wolf-whistling action with her mouth, but without the actual sound because that’s not part of her skill set.
“It’s nothing you haven’t already seen,” I mutter, picking up the edge of the dropped sheet. We lived together at university, and there might’ve been the occasional mad dash from the shower after forgetting my towel. “God, I feel like I have the flu and a hangover. Noticing the glass of water on the nightstand, I gulp half of it down. “The boat,” I say, returning to our earlier conversation thread. “I remember the boat and getting wet.” Which would account for the flu-like feeling, I suppose. “We got here, and I desperately needed to pee.” And then I remember Niko, here in this room. Heat pools in my center as I remember his dare. His playful confidence. I was looking for him and… and what?
“That’s all you remember?” Tamsin’s tone is unexpectedly tentative.
“Giles, I think. I saw him on the stairs,” I add more certainly. “He’s one of my brother’s friends.” Was I with Niko?
“Ah, the elusive brother again.”
“Didn’t we see him?”
She shakes her head. “I’ve yet to make his acquaintance, though I did meet your new friend.”
“Giles?” I ask, my head muddied.
“He is not much of a friend.” Her expression turns grave. “The prick drugged you.”
Her words settle like a stone in my stomach. “No, that can’t be.”
“Terrible hair and a florid complexion? He drugged you, Izzy.”
“I still have my underwear on.” Sickness swills through my insides because, as a first reaction, I think it’s a valid one. It’s not just a knee-jerk reaction, a thoughtless denial, because we all know the tales. The woman who was drugged only to have good friends who realized in time. Worse still, that friend of a friend who wasn’t so lucky, who wakes up semi-clothed and in unfamiliar surroundings with no recollection of what had passed. And now I know that feeling, even though I’ve been lucky enough to have the intervention of friends. Not that it stops me from feeling confused. Frightened. Ill. Which Tamsin seems to understand immediately.
“You’re safe, sweets. Nothing happened because the bastard was caught half-dragging you up the stairs.”
“Did you find me?” My heart aches and swells with gratitude, but she’s already shaking her head. “Dex?”
“No, it was the man with the expensive taste in jackets who is not your brother.” The explanation is accompanied by the lift of one taunting brow. With a wrinkled nose, she glances in the direction of the bathroom. “You probably owe him thousands because no dry cleaner will touch his jacket after what you did to it.”
My hand rises to my throat, though not in confirmation of vomiting, more in shock. Niko found me. He saved me. Saved me twice last night
“Hence the deep throat thing you’ve got going on.” Her fingers flutter over her own throat. “It might’ve been worse,” she adds brightly. “It might’ve been sore from the rape-y kind of deep throating.”