Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
And I liked it.
Chapter Nine
Kate
A shrill ringing jerked me awake.
And awake was not the best thing to be at that moment.
Awake was the most terrible thing to be.
My head pounded, and that ringing seemed to be coming from the depths of hell, rebounding off my skull which currently felt like it was made of very fragile glass. My throat burned with thirst, and the room was spinning.
“What is that?” I cried out.
The arms around me tightened. “Phone,” a sleepy voice grunted. “Yours.”
I reached blindly to the side table I very vaguely remembered placing my phone on last night.
Though I could’ve just let it ring, lapsing back into delightful unconsciousness, I had no option to do that—I was a mother with a daughter halfway across the world. I needed to be accessible at all times in case of emergency. Realization jerked me wide awake, and I launched up to grasp the phone before it stopped ringing.
“Hello?” I greeted urgently, my heart already thundering in fear.
“Where the bloody hell are you?” an accented voice asked over the phone.
I blinked, not completely calming down but feeling relieved it was not Violet or some French speaking official on the other end of the phone.
“Who is this?” I asked, falling back on the bed.
“It’s bloody Julian!” the voice exclaimed. “And I’m at the café, battling the throngs of caffeine hungry people. I’m about to bloody throttle someone, so you better get your ass here soon.”
I opened my mouth to tell him that I most certainly would not be there soon because I was currently dying of a hangover, but I got a dial tone on the other end of the phone.
“He hung up on me,” I muttered, throwing the phone down on the bed.
Swiss’s arms went around me to pull me back to my previous position, on my side with my back against his front.
His scent and warmth soothed me, though I was feeling incredibly unwell.
“Want me to kill him?” he offered.
“Not just yet,” I sighed.
“Well I may just have to anyway,” he grunted. “What fuckin’ man is calling you first thing in the mornin’?”
My skin prickled with fear, though it was a lazy kind of fear, unable to wade through all of the fuzz of the hangover. “It’s not first thing in the morning,” I refuted, picking up my phone to glance at it. “It’s almost ten.”
“Which is first thing in the mornin’, considering when we went to bed.”
I did not remember what time it was when we made it to his room last night, but I knew we did not go to sleep when we did. A thrill ran through me at the blurry images of what we did in this room in the wee hours of the morning.
My body ached with the evidence of it.
“It’s Julian,” I answered his question.
“The guy from the coffee shop?”
“Uh huh,” I groaned. “He wants me to go there. To make coffee.”
I opened my mouth to explain how and why me making coffee at the café made sense, but the story seemed too long, and I didn’t know whether I was capable of telling it without throwing up.
I had not been this hungover… ever.
“I do not feel good,” I exclaimed, burying my head into the pillow.
A low, throaty chuckle was the first sound this morning not to pound against my head. It was somewhat of a salve. “I would imagine,” Swiss muttered, voice still thick with sleep. “You were wasted last night, baby.”
My stomach dropped. Not with nausea, though that was swirling in there too. Cold dread momentarily paralyzed me.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
Swiss’s arms went tight around me before he moved me very gently to my back.
He propped himself up on his elbow. I squinted up at him because I was not brave enough to open my eyes all the way yet. I didn’t trust the dim sunlight coming from the curtains not to burn my retinas out. I also did not want to see the expression on Swiss’s face.
“Why the fuck are you apologizing, Countess?”
I slowly creaked my eyes open.
The light did in fact sear against my eyes, but I focused on Swiss. He did not look disgusted or furious with me. He did not look like he was planning on kicking me out of this bed or out of his life.
“Because I was drunk,” I answered slowly.
“So was I,” he shrugged. “So was everyone. It was a party. And you’re sexy as fuck when you’re drunk.” His hand moved under the covers, down my bare stomach, in between my thighs.
I let out a gasp.
“And you fuck like a wildcat when you’re drunk,” he murmured. “We’ve established that I like control when I’m fuckin’, but even I wasn’t brave enough to go against you last night.” He leaned down to kiss my neck.
My body forgot about how hungover it was.