Rude Awakenings: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 2)

Part One: One Week in September; Chapter One: Al, Sunday

The ringing of Al's cell phone woke him from a troubled sleep in which he dreamed he was trying to rush home on a Skytrain that was travelling all the way from somewhere in the middle of the United States, but first he had to pack his bags and track down a child he apparently had, and he was frantically trying to locate her, he was pretty sure it was a girl, although he didn't know her name, and in the middle of his frantic search he'd walked into a fabulous bakery and was captivated by the selection of doughnuts, cinnamon buns and muffins, all of his favourite baked goods. The roller coaster of emotions left him feeling exhausted upon waking, and as he felt for his phone, the ringing of which must have contributed to his vague feeling of urgency, he noticed the arm reaching for it was encumbered by a weight resting on it. His eyes cracked open, and he blurrily sought the identity of the weight.

It was morning, he was pretty sure, but the diffuse light through the blinds suggested it was very early in the morning. He needed to turn on a light to get a good look at who was in his bed, but he was sure at least that it was a who; his cat, Samson, was too fuzzy to be the weight on his left arm. He felt smooth skin, silky hair and moist lips exhaling regularly, breath tickling the hairs on his arms.

Rachel, he thought, smiling. He reached his right arm around the body and drew it to him, feeling naked skin against his, and it was then that he noticed the body was too small to be Rachel's, too compact, and that it didn't smell like Amarige by Givenchy, Rachel's perfume, but some fruity aroma that was also pleasing. The erection that had been building withered immediately on the realization that this was not his wife. 

A groan escaped from the lips of the person in his arms. "Five more minutes," a woman's voice slurred. "Need more sleep." Definitely not Rachel's voice, which had imprinted itself on his soul since he'd first reunited with her over two years ago. 

It was a voice he recognized, however, and dread filled him as he put that voice together with the size of the body that was still in his arms, and his dread grew when he discovered that his erection was returning, because she also felt pretty damned nice in his embrace, and he didn't want to examine what that meant right now because he had bigger things to worry about, like the fact that he couldn't remember how she ended up in his bed in the first place, or the fact that she had a husband who was twice as big as he was and would murder him if he found them like this, or, most worrying of all, the fact that he had no idea where Rachel was if she was not in his bed.

The phone continued to ring, and he thought that if he answered it he might get an answer to one of those worries, but when he reached his right arm to where it rested on the night table, glowing with activity, the woman in his embrace wrapped an arm around him, and he felt her small breasts against his chest as she nuzzled her face into his neck, rolling her head off his left arm and returning some feeling back to it. She felt very, very good against him, and now his erection was brushing her leg, and he still hadn't reached his phone.

"Mmmm," she purred sleepily. "Morning, lover."

Finally he grabbed his phone, but it stopped ringing before he could answer it. The light from it was still bright enough to illuminate the face of the woman in his arms, though, and confirmation of his suspicions arrived just as the phone informed him that he'd missed a call from Rachel.

"Um..." he stammered. "Uh, Lauren, I think you need to wake up."

Her hand trailed down to his erection, wrapped around it, and for a horrifying moment he thought he was going to ejaculate then and there, but then something must have made Lauren realize something was wrong, because she took a quick breath and opened her eyes, and she mercifully released him, and blinked up at him, and by the light of the phone he could see her examining him and the circumstances in which they found themselves.