Chapter 25
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
MAISIE
It feels like I got hit by a truck. Or a train. Or at the very least, something really freaking large.
My mouth is so dry it feels like it’s filled with quicksand, and my God… Everything. Hurts.
I’m either already dead or extremely close to it.
Groaning, I peel one eye open, immediately snapping it back shut when the light nearly blinds me from how bright the room is.
Wait…
I snap up, forcing my eyes open. My gaze flicks around the room, and I realize I’m not at my apartment.
And then it all comes flooding back.
In absolutely painful, horrifying waves that make me want to actually die, not just feel like I am.
Getting drunk for the first time at the club. My twenty-first birthday, which somehow ended up with… Wilder picking me up. Len threatening him within an inch of his life.
I flop back down onto the mattress and squeeze my eyes shut so I don’t do something stupid like cry.
Holy shit.
The email.
Telling him I don’t care about his dick.
God, why was I even thinking about his dick?
Groaning, I pull the pillow from beneath my head and press it into my face, letting out a muffled scream.
I’m so embarrassed I want to disappear. Forever.
I. Am. Mortified.
I can’t believe I emailed him, and then he picked me up, and…
Throwing the pillow off, I sit up and look down, quickly realizing that the fuck-me dress that I decided to wear last night is gone, now replaced by an old, worn, discolored hockey shirt that is missing pieces of the letters.
Lifting the front, I inhale. It smells like Wilder.
Everything in this bed smells like him. The sheets, the comforter, his pillow.
It’s so inherently masculine that my pussy throbs, a reaction I never thought I’d have just from smelling someone.
But it does. He smells so good that I could scream.
Then I remember why I’m wearing his T-shirt in the first place.
Oh. My. God.
No. I didn’t… I didn’t.
I distinctly remember the toilet bowl and spending what felt like eternity face down in it while he… held my hair, rubbed my back. I vomited, and he saw every single moment of what is no doubt the most mortifying thing that’s ever happened to me.
My embarrassment doubles, and just when I think that I can’t possibly feel any worse, I hear the sound of a deep rumble coming from somewhere beside me.
Did he…
I peek over the side of the bed and find a shirtless Wilder sprawled out on the floor, face down, asleep on a pillow.
My breath stutters when I eye the expanse of ink on his back, clinging to the taut muscles that ripple as he shifts in his sleep.
God, he’s so fucking hot.
The tattoos just make him feel more dangerous, even more so than he already is to my stupid vagina. The ink makes him even more intense, and I want to know the stories behind them. To trace them with the tips of my fingers while he tells them to me, explaining the reason behind each one.
Then I can’t help but imagine digging my nails into them as he moves between my thighs.
There’s a part of me that can’t even believe that he took care of me the way he did last night.
Most of the night is strung together in out-of-focus pieces, hazy and a little fuzzy, but I do remember how patient he was, how careful and attentive.
A side of him I’d never seen before and wasn’t sure existed, and of course, I was too out of it to truly enjoy it.
I’m never drinking again.
Once was more than enough for me, and if this is how I feel after?
I don’t need a repeat to know that I’m good.
Panic rises in me when I hear Wilder stirring again on the floor.
The thought of him seeing me like this, my hair probably a tangled mess and sticking up in a hundred different directions, in last night’s club makeup and with gross vomit/morning breath?
I will actually die of embarrassment. No, literally, I will die.
It’s bad enough that the man saw me throwing up repeatedly, probably also all over my dress, which is why I’m assuming he changed me into a T-shirt.
That’s a whole new level of humiliation that I was not prepared for.
I’ve got to get out of here before that happens.
I throw the covers off me and swing my feet to the floor, wincing when it creaks loudly beneath me as I stand. More carefully this time, I tiptoe across the room, attempting to be as quiet as I possibly can.
“Sneaking out, Maisie Delacroix?”
I freeze when the sound of Wilder’s sleep-heavy, raspy, too unbelievably hot voice echoes around me.
Busted.
It should not sound that sexy, hearing him say my name that way. Voice all gravelly from sleep, like it’s coming from the deepest part of his chest.
I’m silent for a moment as I try to collect myself before turning back to him, my cheeks already heating.
This is exactly what I wanted to avoid.
Furthering my already surmounting embarrassment.
“Uhm… yes. No. I mean, I was just going to get an Uber and head home.”
His brow arches. “In that?”
I look down and bite back a groan. Shit.
I’m very acutely aware, suddenly, that I’m wearing only his T-shirt and nothing else. Not even panties.
Exactly what I taunted him with last night and how I ultimately ended up in his bed.
Wearing his T-shirt and nothing else.
A bolt of thrill moves through me, me being pantyless and wearing his clothes, but I push it down, keeping my face a mask of indifference. Cool. Unaffected.
“Right. Could I get my dress back? Or maybe… borrow a pair of sweatpants? I’ll just be out of your way in a second. Thank you for last night. I appreciate you taking care of me.”
Wilder lifts himself off the floor and turns toward me.
Holy shit.
Seeing him shirtless fully in the bright morning sun makes my mouth run even more dry.
It’s the first time I’ve seen him shirtless, aside from the day he changed in his office, and that was over before I could truly get my fill.
My God, the man is… beautiful.
His torso is covered in the same style of ink as his back, haunting images that seem to dance across his skin as he slowly walks over to where I’m standing.
I can’t stop staring.
Admiring the wide expanse of his chest, the chiseled rows of abs along his abdomen, the thick line of dark hair that trails from below his belly button into the waistband of his sweatpants.
I’m not sure what’s sexier… that happy trail or the defined lines of his V that disappear into the waistband with it.
I can’t believe I had sex with this man.
I can’t believe that this man is the one who held my hair last night while I puked my guts out.
I manage to finally lift my gaze back to his face, where a smug, amused smirk tilts the corner of his lips, his dark brown eyes slightly lighter in the warm morning light.
“Did you say something? Sorry,” I mumble.
Wilder chuckles, and it surprises me how much I love the sound of it.
As easy as it is to be caught up in him, his smell, his clothes, him in general… my mind flits back to the email I sent last night. To the other day in his office when I felt so easily discarded.
I don’t want to be that girl. I don’t want to feel that way again.
Right now, I’m embarrassed—mortified, actually—that he, of all people, saw me that way last night. More vulnerable than I may have ever been with anyone before, including Lennon, the closest person to me.
“Do you know where my phone is? I’m going to call an Uber, and we can honestly just pretend that last night never happened. Obviously, something we’re good at.”
“You’re not taking a fucking Uber home, Maisie.”
My chin lifts. “Actually, I’m going to do whatever I want to do, Coach. You’re not my boyfriend, nor my daddy, so you don’t get a say in anything that I do.”
His eyes darken. “Another thing we’ll discuss when you’re not being a little brat.”
He has no idea how much of a brat I can be, but he clearly brings this out in me. This snarky, brazen side that makes me want to fight him at every turn, to push him, taunt him, drive him crazy.
“It’s not a good area, and I’m not letting you get into some strange fucker’s car, barely dressed,” he adds, his jaw tense as his eyes bore into me. “I’ll take you home.”
“You’ve done enough. I didn’t expect any of this, and I really hate that I was so drunk and acted the way I did, okay? I just want to go home and forget it ever happened. I know you didn’t sign up for this, and you made it perfectly clear where you stand. With me.”
I feel small as I say it. Childish. I cross my arms over my chest and chew the corner of my lip, avoiding his gaze.
He’s in front of me before I can even blink, tipping my chin with a finger, forcing my eyes to his.
“How about you stop telling me what the fuck I’m thinking?”
My breath hitches.
What is he talking about?
I wasn’t the one who yet again shut things down, the one who is hot and cold. That’s him.
I know exactly what I want, and I haven’t been shy about communicating it.
“Get dressed. I’ll take you home so you can shower and change.
And then…” He trails off, his jaw ticking before he continues.
“We’re going to have a conversation, Maisie, and you’re going to listen to every fucking word that I have to say before you open that pretty little mouth to talk shit to me and then storm off before I can respond. Yeah?”
I manage to keep it together, white-hot arousal shooting through my veins, heat pooling in my belly at how gravelly his voice has gone, from the pure dominance in his words.
It’s so hot that I realize something may actually be wrong with me.
“Fine.”