Perfect Regret ( BOOK 2) (5 page)

He was the epitome of everything I chose to stay away from. But right now, with him leaning into me, my heart still feeling the after effects of a world class bludgeoning, I forgot about why he bugged the shit out of me.

“What’s ridiculous?” I asked, clueless to his point, my nose filled with a scent that was at once unfamiliar but also absurdly tantalizing. Garrett smelled like musk and man and it was a total turn on.

In point two seconds the twisty thread of undeniable attraction took hold. I wasn’t expecting the way my hormones took over all rational thought. This was new. And at the moment, I kind of liked it.

My eyes were drooping a bit and I was having a hard time focusing on what he was saying. Mostly because I was suddenly and inexplicably horny.

Garrett cocked his eyebrow at me; as though he were picking up on the crazy amount of pheromones I was suddenly slinging his way. He looked amused but there was a heat in his eyes that I knew was for me alone.

He leaned in further until his lips were next to my ear and the warmth of his breath teased the hair at my neck. “All of this.” He gestured to the party around us. “I get tired of it all, you know? Sometimes I wish these people would just disappear.”

His words surprised me. “Well, why do it then? Why continue to have these things if you don’t want to?” I asked, genuinely curious.

Garrett pulled back and I was irrationally bereft at the sudden space between us.

He drank the rest of his beer and promptly opened another one. I recognized in him the same drunken looseness that I was currently feeling. The pair of us were a hot mess. Two sad drunks, feeling sorry for ourselves.

He sighed and looked at me again. His blue eyes were red and unfocused but in my current state of inebriation, I swore that he saw me better than anyone else ever could. Yes, alcohol clearly unleashed my inner poet. The hyperbole going through my head was completely over the top.

“It’s what everyone expects of me. And I guess I’d rather have people around than be by myself,” Garrett replied finally. I found myself nodding, understanding all too well this need to live up to some sort of twisted expectation you had for yourself. He was making a scary sort of sense right now.

After that we sat together in silence, watching the partygoers and drinking more beer. Finally after what felt like an hour, but was most likely only a few minutes, Garrett got to his feet and held out his hand. I looked at it as though it were a snake about to bite me.

Garrett chuckled, obviously finding my response funny as hell. He inclined his head toward the staircase behind him. “Come on. Let’s get away from all of this. So we can hear ourselves think.” His suggestion seemed, in that moment, to be totally logical.

But I caught the underlying meaning behind his words. Garrett Bellows wanted to have sex.

With me.

Oh crap. Did I want to have sex with him?

I drank in the sight of his chest (he had lost his shirt totally by this point), which was ripped and toned. I wanted to wrap my hands around his biceps and squeeze with all my girlie might.

Oh yeah. I could imagine what the rest of him looked like. I could almost taste the anticipation of getting him naked on my tongue. The edges of a tattoo wrapped around his side, disappearing behind his back. It looked like words in a script that was impossible to read at this distance.

I wanted to read it. I wanted to lick it. I wanted to eat this man whole with a side of screw me senseless.

So yep, Riley Walker was having sex tonight.

Garrett’s eyes were hot pools of lust as they regarded me steadily and I felt myself flush. My inhibitions were noticeably absent and I for one was glad to see them go. Because I wanted to get my freak on with this fine specimen of male standing in front of me.

Looking up into his pretty blue eyes I put my hand in his and got unsteadily to my feet. I almost fell as I stood and Garrett’s arm was suddenly around my waist, holding me upright. I could feel his erection poking my thigh as he held me.

Time to take a ride on the Garrett Express all the way to Fuck Me town.

“Yeehaw!” I yelled a little louder than I intended to. People looked over at us and I should have been mortified by my scandalous lack of morality. But I was down with some One Night Stand action.

Garrett cocked his eyebrow and bit down on his lip as though he were trying not to laugh. He’d better not laugh at me, or I’d have to knee him in the balls. Which would be a pisser since I wanted to suck those sweet pieces of man meat into my mouth and make them my bitch.

“I think someone is ready to get ridden,” I purred. At least it sounded seductive in my own ears. Most likely I sounded more like Betty White than Jenna Jamison, but who cared.

Right now, I was Riley Walker Sex Goddess! And I wanted to play a few rounds of Mr. Wobbly Hides the Helmet!

Garrett shook his head and I wondered if he’d tell me to get lost. Crap, if this guy, of all people, rejected me, I think I’d have to put myself out of commission forever. Being told no by the guy with zero standards would be the worst insult imaginable.

Maybe I could just yell “gotcha” and then run out the back door.

Yes, that was a good plan.

But instead of kicking my drunk ass to the curb, Garrett took my empty beer bottle from my hand and dropped it in the trashcan as he led me out of the room and up the stairs.

I was going to do this.

I was going to have sex.

With Garrett freaking Bellows.

And I was going to enjoy it. I was going to have orgasms and slap his tight little ass until he made walking the next morning impossible.

This all made one hundred percent perfect sense as I followed him away from the party. Away from Maysie, who would be wondering where the hell I had gone. Away from any semblance of rational decision-making.

Because I was getting laid.

Yee-Haw!

I
was being smothered! I literally could not get air in and out of my lungs. My brain was fuzzy. My head felt like it was being clenched in a vice and my eyes were having a hard time adjusting in the pitch-blackness.

Where the fuck was I?

I tried to sit up and realized that the reason I was having such a hard time drawing breath had to do with the heavy, sweaty male form lying prostrate over me.

And did I mention this male form was NAKED?

Oh God! I was NAKED!

I tried to roll from underneath the unidentified man but all I got for my efforts was to be squeezed even tighter against the hot, sweaty, NAKED guy.

I flopped back down on the bed, trying not to freak out at the feel of a very erect penis digging into my hip. Because it was quite obvious that I had engaged in drunken, monkey sex with my current bed partner.

And what was even more messed up was I had no idea who he was. My brain just couldn’t compute who I would have found myself in bed with.

Sober Riley wanted to kick Drunk Riley’s ass!

I couldn’t make out anything about him in the darkness. But his hair was tickling the hell out of my nose and I was trying really hard not to sneeze and blow snot all over him and thus making this awkward and mortifying experience all that much better.

The guy mumbled something in his sleep and he nuzzled his face into my neck. I was a rigid block of stone. I needed an escape plan.

Like two minutes ago.

But one thing was for sure. Whoever ambiguous sex dude was, he smelled good. We’re talking really, really good. Like musk and man and sort of outdoorsy. The smell twinged my memory. As though I should remember who smelled like a hot lumberjack.

But I couldn’t give a shit if he smelled like chocolate and vomited up hundred dollar bills, I had made a decision last night based on too much alcohol and a bad case of rebounditis. And that made my feelings about the current situation bordering on hysteria.

I glanced over at the alarm clock on the small bedside table. It claimed to be five-thirty in the morning. Entirely too early to be up under normal circumstances. But this was anything but
normal.
Because I was living in morning after hell. And that was about as far from my
normal
as one could get.

Mr. Stiffy rolled his hips, grinding his ever-present erection into my side again. And Riley Walker Junior, who had been happily slumbering between my legs, began to stir.

Go back to sleep, you wanton slut!
I screamed silently at my insolent vagina. She and I were
not
in agreement as to the best way to handle this.

Because even though my brain couldn’t remember my night of lust, other parts of my body obviously had crystal clear memories of it.

Once mystery guy settled back into sleep, I started the futile process of trying to wiggle out from underneath him. My hands pressed into surprisingly smooth and hard skin and I flattened my palms against a seemingly muscular chest in an effort to budge the massive amounts of man pinning me to the bed.

Even in my moment of self-mortifying disgust, I was pleased that my bed partner appeared to have a nice body. Glad to know that even in my drunken psychosis I could still be called on to pick a guy with a nice set of abs.

Get a grip, Riley! As if his body matters when you’re trying to walk of shame out of here!
I scolded myself harshly.

After a few minutes, I grudgingly realized I was stuck. My ass wasn’t going anywhere. And now I had to pee. My bladder was being pressed painfully by the guy’s weight.

Ah, fuck it!

“Hey!” I yelled, shoving the dude’s shoulder. He grunted and tightened his ironclad grip around my waist. If he didn’t get off me in about ten seconds, he was going to wake up in a very wet bed.

I leaned in close and moved some hair away from his ear, making a concerted effort to
not
notice how soft and silky it felt between my fingers.

“Wake up!” I yelled and then smacked the back of his head for good measure.

Yep, that did the trick.

The guy bolted straight up in bed. “What the fuck?” he growled and leaned over to flip on the lamp. And it was then that I got my first glimpse of my one-night stand.

“You have GOT to be freaking kidding me!” I screeched, hurriedly pulling up the sheet to cover my entirely too naked breasts.

Garrett Bellows ran a hand through his shoulder length blond hair and blinked at me in confusion. “What the hell is your problem?” he asked, scrubbing his face with his hands before dropping back onto the bed. My eyes drifted down the length of his very toned and obnoxiously nice body until they stopped and honed in on a very prominent part of his anatomy that I only too recently felt pressed intimately against me. And Mr. Veined and Throbbing was at attention and on very prominent display. I swallowed thickly as images came swimming back through my hazy memory.

Garrett kissing me as though I had been the air he breathed. Garrett softly touching me an then laying me out on the bed I now found myself in. I closed my eyes and could see him over me as his weight pressed me into the mattress.

I shivered uncontrollably. Shit, shit, shit!

I opened my eyes and sneered at him, throwing a sheet over his lower half. “Cover yourself up, will you?” I snarled, leaning over the side of the bed and finding my shirt from the night before. I quickly pulled it over my head and felt better at having a barrier between Garrett and my skin.

Garrett had lowered his arm and was watching me. He didn’t look angry by my attitude. He didn’t appear to be hurt in any way by my obvious dismissal of him. This was both a relief and strangely disappointing.

He seemed only thoughtful. Curious even.

What the hell?

“Where are my pants?” I muttered under my breath. I got out of bed, trying not to die of total embarrassment as I flashed Garrett a pretty picture of my ass while I bent over to retrieve the rest of my discarded clothing. As I finished getting dressed, I grumbled, I cursed, and I otherwise fumed at my total idiocy.

And Garrett freaking Bellows didn’t say a damned thing. He just lay there, watching me, as though he found me supremely entertaining.

“Do you know where my keys are?” I asked him, hating that I had to talk to him at all. I would rather have left with my head hung in shame, never to reveal my night as Miss Skankalicious to anyone ever.

Garrett pointed across the room. “You dropped your bag when we came in here last night. I’m guessing you’ll find them in there,” he remarked dryly. He stood up and I was treated to another view of his body. And my body tingled in response.

My eyes fell onto the tattoo on his side and words floated through my brain.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

Where the heck did that come from? My chest pitter-pattered painfully for some unknown reason.

Time to shut this crap down here and now.

“I just need to get out of here,” I said more to myself than to him but he heard me loud and clear.

“Why the rush?” Garrett asked, cocking his eyebrow. His blasé nonchalance prickled my already testy nerves and reminded me of why he annoyed the shit out of me. People that laid back drove me crazy.

“No sense in wasting anymore of your time. I think we’re done here,” I spat out, glaring at him. I knew I was being horrible but I was mortified by my behavior.

Riley Walker does
not
get so drunk she blacks out.

Riley Walker does
not
have sex with a guy she barely knows; particularly when said guy was one she could barely stand.

And apparently Riley Walker was
now
talking about herself in the third person. Hello insanity!

Garrett pulled on a pair of sweat pants and lifted my purse. I grit my teeth as he crooked his finger in my direction. “You want it, come over here and get it.” He was messing with me. Trying to make me more uncomfortable than I already was.

Well screw him!

Wait… I had already done that…Ugh!

I snatched it from him, making sure not to touch him as I did so. More flashes flooded my brain.

His lips. His hands. The way he said my name right before he kissed me.

What I wouldn’t give for another bought of alcohol-induced amnesia right about now.

Garrett’s eyes heated for a moment, as though he could read my mind. His gaze slid down the length of me and then came back up to meet my eyes where they cooled slowly. His mouth, entirely too pretty to be a guy’s, set into a firm line and for a second, I felt a flash of regret.

Not for our night together. But for the way I was treating him. He didn’t deserve to be shitted on because I was feeling like a fuck up. I opened my mouth to apologize, a Riley Walker first, when he beat me to the punch.

He walked passed me to the bedroom door and opened it wide. He gave me a cold smile. “Oh, we’re done here all right.” Garrett ran his fingers down the side of my neck and I couldn’t help but notice the way his face softened a bit before he went in for the kill.

“It was fun, but I won’t be signing up for round two. You can leave now.” His grin was as brittle as broken glass and I felt my face flush red in a mixture of humiliation and gnaw-through-his-jugular rage.

To hell with the apology!

I leaned up on my tiptoes, my hands gripping his shoulders. My lips hovered near his and I smirked inwardly at the hitch in his breathing. “Well it’s a good thing you were entirely forgettable then,” I whispered, licking my lips slowly and chuckling as Garrett’s eyes dropped to my mouth.

“Now get the fuck out of my way,” I bit out, moving away from him. Garrett blinked, his eyes becoming once again glacial cool and he gestured me out into the hallway and then proceeded to slam the door behind me.

Well that went well,
I thought as I made my way as stealthily as possible out of the house. There were a few people passed out on the couch in the living room, a guy snoring on top of the pool table. I could hear voices in the kitchen, recognizing Cole and Mitch. I scurried out of the house as fast as my little legs could carry me.

I remembered that Maysie had most likely came and looked for me last night. Crap! She must think I was dead in a ditch somewhere. Or worse. She could know that I spent the night at Garrett’s house! How was I going to explain that one?

I was abducted by aliens and just now escaped.
No. How about
I was playing a riveting game of Scrabble and lost all track of the time?

I was done for.

Bad mistakes were Maysie Ardin’s MO, not mine. I felt like a miserable failure on all fronts. I was hung-over and ashamed. Not a good combination when you felt like throwing up all over your shoes.

I practically ran to my car and got inside. I started it up and was then compelled by some masochistic urge to look one last time toward the house. Curtains moved in a second story window and I knew that I saw the unmistakable outline of Garrett against the glass.

Crap, there it was again.

Regret.

And as I drove away from Garrett’s house, I wanted desperately to leave that unfortunate feeling behind but it took up quiet residence in my heart. And I feared it wouldn’t let go anytime soon.

My mind was a mess of hazy recollections from the night before and the memory of Garrett’s face when I essentially told him to fuck off. Man, I had been such a shrew.

I could remember talking to him on the couch last night. Being with him must have made some crazy sort of sense at some point.

I shook my head and turned on my radio, hoping the sound of angsty chick rock could drown out the remnants of my guilt.

My phone chirped from inside my purse. Digging it out, I glanced at the screen, feeling an encroaching sense of dread as I saw the number of missed calls and texts from Maysie.

Was it too late to make a run for it? Maybe I could head to Mexico and assume a secret identity. That way I could avoid the morning after explanations my roommate would be expecting.

So I took my time heading home. I stopped at McDonald’s and got myself a coffee. Then I decided I needed a few magazines. And while I was at it, I needed to fill my car up with gas.

And you know what, a lovely scenic drive on the back roads of Bakersville was just what the doctor ordered.

I had successfully prolonged the inevitable for a whole hour and a half. It was almost eight when I finally pulled into the apartment complex parking lot. I cut off the engine and sat there for a while.

Why was I so scared to go in and face Maysie? It could be because I felt like such a hypocritical loser. I was notorious for dishing out advice, telling my best friend how she should be living her life. Laying into her when she makes choices I deemed irresponsible. And yes, I had judged her for it. I hated that I had, but it didn’t change the fact that Judgmental was my middle name.

And here I was coming home, wearing the same gross clothes I had worn last night, still smelling like Eau de Garrett.

I finally headed toward the apartment. Just as I put my key into the lock, the door flung open and a very angry Maysie stood before me with her hands on her hips.

She grabbed me by the arm and yanked me inside, slamming the door behind me. She took in the sight of me, noticing my current state of disarray. Her eyes narrowed as she processed what my arrival this morning meant.