Chapter 23: That’s the Spirit

Chapter 23

That’s the Spirit

Real life didn’t intrude for the rest of the day, and I didn’t rush it.

Having an alpha mate turned out to be pretty fucking fantastic. For one, I didn’t have to walk anywhere anymore, it seemed like. He carried me to the shower, washed me in the least efficient way possible—I mean, tongue baths worked for cats, but did it actually get you as clean as soap? I doubted it, not that I complained—and then carried me back to bed, where he got me even dirtier. At length.

For another, I didn’t need to feed myself. Drew ordered pizza, put on a pair of pants just long enough to collect it at the door, and then brought it to me in bed. I wouldn’t let him actually hand-feed me, even though he tried, but—pizza. Without even getting out of bed.

The list would’ve been a lot longer if he’d given me time to think about it.

He didn’t.

But the sun finally rose on the next day, and I blinked my eyes slowly, adjusting to the light. We’d ended up in the bed I’d started in because the sheets were a little less thrashed, but we were still nested in a heap of rumpled blankets and disarranged bedding, my head on Drew’s chest in lieu of one of the actual pillows.

Most of those were on the floor by now anyway.

Our tangled limbs probably looked more like some kind of human/octopus hybrid, given how inextricably we’d wrapped ourselves together.

I made a mental note to look up whether wereoctopi existed, and then realized I’d rather not know.

More blinking. It was taking me forever to wake up, probably because I’d been woken up approximately every hour the night before, usually with Drew’s head between my legs. Either head, actually. There had been some of both.

When I tipped my head back onto his bicep and peeked up at him, I found him gazing down at me with the kind of smile on his face that made him look even more like a magazine cover.

And it was all for me.

I smiled back, forgetting to worry about my snarled bedhead or flushed face or gummy eyes. Or whether I’d drooled on his chest.

Because no one who looked at me like that would care.

“I think it’s time for another shower,” Drew said by way of good morning, in the tone of a man who really meant “I think it’s time for me to fuck you in the shower.”

Not that I’d objected the day before, or even the night before—if the hotel went bankrupt from its water bill this month, we were responsible—but…

My face must have given something away, or maybe the bond pulsing softly between us, because Drew kissed me on the forehead and said, “Nothing goes in your ass for at least twelve hours, promise.” He paused. “Except my tongue. Other than that.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “I’m glad you have rules in place for my ass, Drew.”

His own eyes gleamed, a little bit alpha and even more pure wickedness, and he rolled me over and underneath him, propping himself up and looming over me. One hand slid beneath me, and he squeezed a generous handful. “I own you, remember? It’s mine. You’re mine.”

My breath caught. And I almost spread my legs and told him to fuck me again anyway, because yes, he did own me, and I’d agreed to it and wouldn’t take it back for anything—even if he’d let me.

The thought that he might not let me even if I wanted to sent a little frisson down my spine, half anxiety and—half something else that made me clench my abdominal muscles and squirm.

“Fuck,” Drew said suddenly, and pulled his hand away, shoving himself up and bouncing off the bed. “Okay, so a lot more than my tongue’s going in you if you keep looking at me like that. Shower? I’ll suck you off until you scream?”

I nodded, and he swept me up and carried me off, making me laugh and protest before the screaming started. If we had any neighbors in the hotel, I hoped they had earplugs.

But by the time we’d gotten out and I’d toweled off, I’d woken up enough to know this couldn’t last.

We couldn’t lock ourselves away in this hotel room forever, and not only because if we didn’t get clean sheets and towels the room would become a biohazard. My parents were only a hundred miles away. The cops who wanted to arrest me were only a hundred miles away, too. Ditto Clayton, the guy who might or might not have been my boyfriend.

My taste had definitely improved. At least amnesia had one silver lining.

“I guess we’re not going back to bed?” Drew asked, resigned but slightly hopeful all the same. Like if he could convince me, he would.

I shook my head and tossed the damp towel on one of the beds—the linens were a lost cause anyway. Drew’s eyes lit up at my nudity, but I backed away quickly and grabbed a clean pair of boxer briefs out of my bag, and he laughed.

“Worth a try,” he said over his shoulder, and bent down to get his own clothes…okay, no, no, getting dressed.

We finally packed up and made it out the door twenty minutes later, Drew leaving a couple of hundred-dollar bills tucked under the phone on the desk, and we were on the road with coffee another twenty minutes after that.

A few miles out, the road met the coast, and I was practically plastered to the window at my first sight (that I could remember) of the ocean. Sunlight glittered and glanced off of every ripple, islands lay all mysterious in the distance, and birds swooped around.

It was fucking gorgeous, and I rolled my window down and let crisp, salt-laden air whoosh around my face and blow my hair in all directions, laughing over my shoulder at Drew when he asked me teasingly which of us turned into a wolf, again, and did I have my tongue hanging out?

I’d grown up in surroundings like this, apparently. I’d probably seen this stretch of coastline a hundred times.

But today it got to be brand new, filtered through the fresh perspective of Drew’s grin and his hand on my knee while he drove. And that made me smile.

My parents would be brand new to me too.

That thought made me slump back in my seat and try not to throw up the latte I’d been drinking.

“It’ll be all right, babe,” Drew said, and took my hand, wrapping my fingers in his and squeezing.

I didn’t believe him, but I appreciated the effort. And it did help that I wasn’t doing it alone.

***

An hour and a half after leaving the hotel, we pulled up in front of a generic apartment building in the Southern California beach town where I’d gone to college. Aside from a general “this looks like a postcard” kind of familiarity, I didn’t recognize anything. The palm trees and red and purple bougainvillea everywhere and the tile roofs didn’t spark anything in me besides the discomfort of not feeling at home when I knew I ought to.

Drew shut off the engine and turned to me. “You ready, baby?”

I wasn’t, I really, really wasn’t. But it had to be done. And we’d gotten this far. We’d talked it over on the second half of the drive. Seeing my parents first might’ve been the right place to start, but I simply couldn’t face them yet. Besides, they seemed a lot less likely to know what the hell had been going on with me, in general and on the night I disappeared, than someone I’d maybe been dating and had definitely spent time with as a friend.

So we’d opted to go find Clayton first. Since it was Saturday, and still pretty early in the morning, we were hoping to find him at home. A partier like him would surely be hung over at this hour, right?

We’d also talked strategy, and Drew had suggested not mentioning the amnesia at first and letting it play out for a minute before giving anything away.

I took a deep, ragged breath and shot him my best attempt at a smile, though I doubted it’d win any awards. “I won’t get any more ready sitting here.”

“That’s the spirit,” Drew said, and opened his door.

I rolled my eyes and did the same. The building looked like any other that we’d passed on our way from the freeway, albeit a touch run-down: stucco and a few fluffy palm trees, some halfhearted landscaping with stringy purple flowers that somehow managed to look institutional. A woman about Drew’s age jogged by, earbuds in and totally ignoring us.

Otherwise, the place was really quiet, only a few distant voices and a single barking dog.

We headed up an outside staircase to find the apartment number Drew had gotten from his background check on Clayton.

I stood there in front of the door, staring down the tarnished brass number nineteen. The one hung drunkenly askew. It felt like a bad omen.

Drew reached up and knocked.

Nothing.

He knocked again.

Clayton wouldn’t be home, I realized. This was all for nothing. I’d never find out about my past, I’d have a panic attack right here, my heartrate spiking and my knees wobbling—

“All right, fuck, I’m coming,” came a muffled voice from inside the apartment, and a second later, the lock rattled and the door swung open.

The guy from the photo stood framed in the doorway, blue eyes horrifically bloodshot and black hair sticking up in clumps. His T-shirt and gym shorts combo could’ve been right out of Drew’s closet, except that it didn’t look nearly as good on his gym-rat-who-drinks-too-much physique.

“The fuck do you—” And then he stopped abruptly as his eyes landed on my face and widened into circles, his face going fish-belly white. “Fuck,” he breathed. “Oh, fucking shit.”

He stepped back and slammed the door shut in our faces—or tried to.

Drew’s arm shot out, and the door reverberated, made a cracking noise, and slammed back in the opposite direction, Clayton stumbling away holding his nose with blood dripping through his fingers.

Drew followed him in, not in a hurry, like the villain in a slasher movie. I scurried after, glancing around guiltily to make sure no one had seen us, and shutting the door and locking it behind us.

Clayton was backing up, holding his hands up in fists like that would stop Drew and cursing a blue streak.

“Get out,” he quavered, not sounding nearly as tough as he clearly wanted to.

“You going to call the cops?” Drew asked, his tone dark and vicious.

“No! I mean, there’s no need for that, right?” Clayton let out a high, shaky laugh. “I never thought I’d see—I mean, he shouldn’t have—”

Drew’s low, reverberating growl echoed through the apartment, and by the way Clayton’s eyes went impossibly wider, his fangs and the alpha glow had come out to play. A second later Drew moved so quickly he almost blurred, and Clayton slammed up against the opposite wall, Drew’s hand locked around his throat and Clayton’s feet dangling a couple of inches off the ground.

“Tell me what you know about what happened to Ash,” Drew snarled. Clayton flailed, trying to shove Drew off, and Drew shook him like a wolf would shake a rabbit, banging his head into the wall. Clayton went limp. “Talk now, motherfucker, or I’m going to fucking gut you.”

Well, shit. So much for Drew’s bright idea about keeping the amnesia to ourselves.

“Drew!” I ran to him, tugging on his shoulder, but it was like trying to shift a brick wall. “What the hell! We were going to wait and see what he had to say!”

He turned his head and met my eyes, his own full golden and his expression feral. “He stinks like fear, and the second he saw you his heartrate went into overdrive. He fucking knows what happened. That wasn’t only surprise. Was it, asshole?” He turned back to Clayton, baring his fangs right in his face. “No cops, right? Because that wouldn’t go well for you. Talk.”

“I don’t think he can right now,” I said, because Clayton’s face had started to go from ashy-gray to purple.

“Fair enough.” Drew loosed his grip and stepped back, and Clayton tumbled to the floor, huddled against the wall and gasping for air. “Now talk.”

And maybe he would’ve, but a door opened down the hall and slammed back against the wall, another guy stumbling out through it. “The fuck is going on out…here,” he finished weakly, as he reached the end of the hall and ran straight into Drew. “Oh, shit. A fucking alpha? Clay? The fuck?” And then he saw me, and we stared at each other for a second, the new guy’s face doing the same drain-of-color routine Clayton’s had. “Ash,” he whispered.

He looked vaguely familiar, and for a second I hoped I’d recovered a memory.

But then it hit me why his blond hair and square face and bulky torso rang a bell.

I’d seen him—recently, during the time I could remember, in that photo I’d found in the local newspaper.

The guy who’d claimed no one else had been there when I attacked him, when he’d somehow succumbed to my scrawny fists. And he’d been here, with someone who knew me well, the whole fucking time.

“Drew,” I said, my own voice shaking. “That’s him. The victim of that crime. It’s him! I recognize him from a photo I found online.”

Drew looked from Clayton to the guy I’d supposedly beaten up that night, and then back again. “Well,” he said grimly. “I guess we’re all going to have a fucking talk, aren’t we?”