“You son of a bitch!” Luc launches himself at me, and I’m so horrified I don’t even bother to try to defend myself.

Don’t let me have slept with Cam last night.

Don’t let me have slept with Cam last night.

Please, please, please, by all that is holy, please don’t let me have slept with Cam last night.

“God, you guys are loud. Isn’t anyone allowed to sleep in around here?” As her whole face finally manages to make its way out from under the covers—making her voice a lot less muffled than it had been—I nearly collapse in relief.

Not Cam. Some girl whose name I don’t know and whom I don’t remember at all. But not Cam. At the moment I’m inclined to be thankful for small blessings.

Luc must figure it out at the same time I do, because he comes to a screeching halt a couple of feet from my bed.

“Who’s this?” he asks as he looks down at the redhead, who I have to admit would be pretty cute if she didn’t have enough mascara smeared under her eyes to make her resemble a raccoon.

“I have no idea.”

“Nice,” he says again, rolling. “How much fucking weed did you smoke last night, anyway?”

“A lot,” says the girl next to me, shoving her hair out of her eyes as she sits up. What she doesn’t do is keep the sheet tucked around herself, and since she’s naked, Luc and I get treated to a view of a pretty spectacular peacock tattoo—not to mention a fairly nice pair of breasts. “I’m Stacy. Z and I met at Brewer’s last night. He taught me how to do body shots.”

“I bet he did.”

I close my eyes and fight the urge to bury my head in my hands. I have no idea who this girl is or how she got into my bed, though it sounds like a shitload of tequila shots might be responsible for both.

Goddamnit.

“Hey,” she says, squinting up at Luc. “Aren’t you Lucas Bradford?”

“I am.” He eyes her warily.

“Awesome! I get to meet Z Michaels and Lucas Bradford all in the same twenty-four hours. How cool is that?”

“Pretty cool,” Luc mutters.

“I know, right?”

Okay, so this girl is either still drunk or incredibly stupid, because she’s not catching any of the shade Luc is throwing her way. Which is kind of amusing considering he’s not exactly being subtle. It’d probably be completely hilarious if my head didn’t feel like it was being slowly, torturously ripped off my body.

“Do you think we can close the damn drapes?” I ask for the second time.

“That depends,” Luc answers.

“Do you want to climb in?” Stacy asks, pushing the covers aside and scooting closer to me so that Luc could climb in next to her. “I’ve always wanted to have a threesome.”

“All right, then.” I roll out of bed on the other side. “Sorry, Stacy, but I think it’s probably time for you to get going.”

“Already?” She pouts in what I’m sure she thinks is an attractive manner.

“Yeah, already.” I grab my jeans and search through the pockets for my wallet. When I find it, I pull out forty bucks and hand it to her. “Call a cab to come get you.”

“But we haven’t even done it yet! After we got back here last night you just weren’t into it, so you promised we could do it this morning.”

Oh, thank God. I close my eyes against the sun and the relief that swamps me. I don’t know why it seems like a big deal when I’ve done it hundreds of times before, but I am suddenly, intensely grateful that I didn’t spend last night fucking this girl who I actually can not stand in the light of day.

“That’s not going to happen,” I tell her after a second. “You should take the money.” At first it doesn’t look like she’s going to, but after Luc turns down her offer of a quickie, she grabs the cash and reaches for her phone.

I start toward the bathroom with a vague plan of being violently, disgustingly ill.

“Hey! Where are you going?” Luc demands, getting in my way. “This is your mess.”

“I’m going to puke. You’re welcome to join me if you’d like.”

He snarls his disgust, but he lets me pass as he heads over to the bed to help Stacy find a cab company.

It’s just one more reason he’s been my best friend since kindergarten.

After a shower that makes me feel at least partially human, I drag myself out of the bathroom to find that all traces of Stacy’s existence have been wiped out of my bedroom. Her clothes are gone, and so are her shoes, her purse, everything—including her.

I breathe a cautious sigh of relief. Though I don’t know she’s gone for sure, with any luck she’ll have left the premises sometime during my twenty-minute puke fest or half-hour shower.

On the nightstand next to the bed is a cup of black coffee and two painkillers. I take them both, so desperate for the relief that I don’t even care that I’ve probably scalded my throat for life.

I drag my jeans on and think about walking downstairs, maybe getting some breakfast. But just the idea takes more effort than I’m capable of, so I lie back down in bed and stare at the ceiling. Except now that I’m awake and mostly sober, I can smell her in my sheets, a combination of tequila, pot, jasmine, and something else that turns my stomach all over again.

Suddenly I can’t take it for one second longer. I bound to my feet and rip the black sheets off my bed. I take the pillowcases off, the comforter, everything, and kick them into a ball near the door. Then I sink back down on the edge of the bed and just sit there, my head in my hands.

That’s how Luc finds me a few minutes later. “Rough morning?” he asks in a voice that isn’t exactly sympathetic.

“You have no idea.”

“Oh, you might be surprised. Come on. I made breakfast.” He turns and walks back out the door, and for long seconds I think about not following him. About staying right where I am. But what the fuck good will that do? The drapes are open, the covers are gone, and I’m wide awake and sober—which, if I’m being honest, totally sucks.

When I get downstairs, there are two huge bowls of cereal on the table along with a gallon of milk. Breakfast. Right.

“Is Stacy gone?” I ask, walking to the coffeepot and pouring another cup. It’s shaping up to be a five-cup morning.

“Yeah. No thanks to you. That chick was like a fucking octopus.” He shoves a bite of Cheerios into his mouth. “Every time I thought I had her under control, she’d grow another arm and grope me somewhere else. I’m pretty sure by the time I got her out of here she’d violated me in ways that are illegal in twenty-seven different countries.”

“Sorry about that,” I say with a wince. Now that I think about it, I’m feeling pretty damn violated myself. What the fuck was I thinking, getting so drunk that I brought home some woman I don’t even recognize? Sleeping with a stranger is one thing. Doing it when I’m too wasted to even know what I’m doing is totally another. And bringing her back to my house—letting her spend the night in bed with me when I don’t actually sleep with anyone, ever—is totally fucking nuts.

Just thinking about her in bed with me makes me a little crazy, which only makes the pressure inside me worse. Like it’s been fucking building and building since the moment I walked out of Ophelia’s apartment and—

Shit. I cut the thought off before it can even form. I knew the girl barely twenty-four hours. She’s just another girl, just another resort bunny who’s here for a season and then gone. There’s no reason to let her get in my head and fuck with me like this. No need to pay any attention to her. No need to take anything she said seriously.

Except she was being serious when she said all that shit to me. When she told me she was willing to fuck me for the express purpose of driving me away. She wasn’t being cruel, wasn’t throwing shit out there to hurt me. She was telling me the truth. She’d actually been willing to have sex with me just to get me to go away.