Page 61 of Roses Are Dead
Slowly, I rolled to one side and tried to breathe through the urge to hurl. The only thing that kept me from emptying my stomach was the acute understanding that if I did, it would hurt more.
I needed something cold to lean on.
Almost as if I’d conjured it, a wet cloth pressed against my head.
“Take it slow.” Wolf’s voice registered.
And there was something wrong about that. It should be someone else’s voice. My memory was fuzzy, but there were at least two times in the haze that I remembered Rose’s voice, and her gentle touch, not Wolf’s sledgehammer mitts on my skin. “Take it off.”
I rolled until I was on all fours. The floor was cooler than the mattress, and I hugged it, trying to find a position where, if I puked, the vomit would land somewhere I wasn’t.
“Here.”
A cold steel pan bumped my cheek.
Just what I needed.
What felt like an hour later, I finally rolled to my back and tried to open my eyes. The slicing pain returned and throbbed through every inch of me I could muster into motion. The rest of me was a grungy graveyard of confusion. “What the fuck happened?”
“You were roofied.”
I squinted at Wolf’s silhouette. The lights were off in the room, thank the Gods, but the hallway lights were too bright. “By who?”
“Remember that hooker who gave Baldy crabs last year?”
Could I possibly vomit more? Naw. But my head spun. Or the floor did. “Monica?”
“That’s the one.”
“Bitch.” I felt my junk. Pants on, zipper up. Nothing funky going on down there. Good.
“You’re cool. Rose played bodyguard for you most of the night. By the way, she’s worse than Tits when it comes to people getting taken advantage of.”
A memory drifted through my head along with a wave of heat. I’d kissed her. And it was awful. Not the whole kissing her part, but the rest of it. The reason why I’d done it. The force I’d used to make it look like we were an item. Her lack of response. The terror in her eyes when I pulled away… Sweet Freya, I’d fucked up.
“Where is she?”
“Tits?”
If I could have opened my eyes, I would’ve glared at him. “Rose. Roishin.” I’d fucked that up, too. I’d begun to shorten her name like we were friends or something. “I need to apologize.”
“She’s crashed in my office. Under guard.”
Oh, hell. She should be safe and free here, not a prisoner. “Why?”
Wolf made some noises as he shifted. “Because she pissed off just about everyone last night.”
Great, another headache to deal with. “How?”
Wolf grunted. “Let’s start with putting hands on me.”
That I had to open an eye for, just to see if he was joking or serious. If he was joking, that was one hell of a bluff.
He wasn’t joking, and told me as much. “She did.”
I tried to stop the brain stew in my head from sloshing. “And?”
“And, she made Ma monitor your blood pressure until four A.M. Sprout was pissed.”
