Sugar Sweet Sin

Damsel in Distress

I wake the next day with a hangover that threatens to split my skull right open. The blare of my alarm is like a gunshot right in the brain.

I groan and roll over, slamming my hand against the screen of my cell until the horrible sound goes away. I'm stiff, and my skin is oddly both dry and sticky. The hair that flops across my face feels gross too, and it smells like the ocean. And that's when I remember everything that happened.

I leap up from the bed, then nearly fall over as the hangover vertigo hits—and a sharp pain shoots up from my ankle. I fall back on the mattress, cursing at myself. How could I forget about my injury? I lift my foot, giving myself a better view of the damage. My ankle is currently a lovely shade of purple and about three times its normal size. I remember icing it sometime between the bottles of wine last night, but I'll need to wrap it before I do anything else.

"Jack?" I call. He was good enough to bring me back to my place after the party—and he threw back a couple of drinks of his own while I drank myself into oblivion. I only vaguely remember him getting me into bed, and though he's spent a few drunken nights on my sofa in the past, only silence greets my call. He probably found his way back to his apartment. After all, he has work this morning—not to mention a serious live-in boyfriend who'd probably prefer him home in his own bed. My friend did his duty by me. I definitely owe him.

And sure enough, there's a text from him waiting on my phone. He must have sent it when he left for work this morning.

Take it easy today, Ash. I'll call you later.

Yes, I owe him. I owe him a cake the size of a horse. But first, I need to get cleaned up and back to feeling like a normal human being again.

I alternately hop and limp my way into the bathroom. I scrabble through the medicine cabinet, but there are no bandages or rolls of athletic tape to be found. I almost have a heart attack when I see myself in the mirror. I look like I was dragged behind a boat. Through a hurricane. My hair is clumped and knotted, my makeup smeared. I'm still wearing my ruined, salt-crusted dress from last night. And—I realize suddenly—Dante's jacket is still around my shoulders.

Dammit. I whip off the jacket and throw it down on the ground, glaring at it like it's some infectious fungus that attached itself to me. But it's my fault I still have it. I accepted his damn coat. I stormed out—er, was carried out—of his party without remembering to give it back. With my luck, the damn thing is probably worth a few hundred dollars—assuming it wasn't ruined by sand and seawater. As much as I'd like to burn it, I'm going to need to have it dry-cleaned and sent back to him somehow.

But clothes are the least of my worries right now. All I can think about is what happened on that beach last night—how Dante and I lay next to each other in the sand, how we almost kissed, how it felt as if no time had passed at all...

These are not good thoughts. These are not good thoughts at all.

I pull off my dress and stumble to the shower. I need to get the seawater off me. I need to get him off me. Because now that I've spent a whole night in his damn coat, I can smell him on my skin.

God, that smell...

As I lather up my hair, I try to refocus my thoughts on the day ahead of me—I was planning to spend a few hours at the bakery this afternoon testing out a new rolled fondant recipe—but my mind doesn't want to cooperate. It doesn't help that every time I twist around or bend over I'm forced to put a little weight on my ankle, which then shoots me another painful reminder of last night. Everything comes back to Dante—to the way his fingers twined with mine on the sand, to how solid and strong his arms felt around me as he carried me up the beach, to the feel of his breath against my face...