than an alcohol flush. How do you feel? Nauseous? Fatigued? Any abdominal pain?” He fired off the questions like he was a doctor.
She thought about it. “Horny.”
He went still, so still she couldn’t hear him breathe. “What?” There went that strangled noise again.
Golden warmth—the good kind, not the kind burning her skin—melted and trickled throughout her body, sensitizing each nerve ending as it flowed past.
“I went to my first erotica book club meeting tonight.” Her eyelids drooped. It’d been a long day, but she didn’t want to stop talking yet. She wanted Sammy to stay for a while longer. “It was a good book. They had this scene where the couple has sex in his office. He blindfolds her with his tie and fucks her up against the glass—one-way, so people outside couldn’t see them, but she didn’t know that. She hated it but loved it, and she screamed so loud he had to cover her mouth with his hand so the rest of the office couldn’t hear her.”
The warmth in her lower belly pulsed as Olivia pictured the scene in her mind.
She’d been wrong—she could hear Sammy breathing. Loud and ragged, like he couldn’t draw enough oxygen into his lungs.
“Fuck.” He yanked his hand out of hers so fast Olivia would’ve stumbled had she been standing. “Go to sleep, Olivia.” Every inch of his muscular frame radiated tension. It filled the room, pressing into her eyes and causing her lids to droop further.
Her body was primed and hungry for touch, but her mind was ready to knock the hell out.
“I don’t want to go to sleep yet. I want—” A huge yawn interrupted her train of thought. “I want—” Another yawn.
What did she want? A lot of things. But at that moment, there was one thing she desired most.
“I want you...” Olivia’s voice faded as she lost her battle with exhaustion and sleep overtook her.
Chapter Thirteen
Olivia woke up in hell.
An army of jackhammer-wielding assholes slammed against her skull in a torturous rhythm so loud she could feel her brain rattle. Her throat burned, and her stomach sloshed in a way that brought yesterday’s dinner dangerously close to the surface. She needed to run to the bathroom before she upchucked all over the beautiful sheets in Sammy’s guest room, but lead weights pinned her limbs to the bed.
She wanted to close her eyes and drift back into slumber, where her aches and worries would disappear, but in the dim recesses of her mind, she realized it was Wednesday. She had to go to work.
The thought of getting up—much less dressing, commuting to the office, and spending the entire day at her desk, staring at her computer and fending off inappropriate come-ons from Logan—made her want to die.
You can do this, Olivia tried to say, but the words didn’t come out, so she settled for a silent pep talk instead.
On the count of five. One...two...three...four...five.
She rolled onto her side. She’d moved, which was good. But she was still in bed, which was bad.
Her stomach gurgled, and Olivia would’ve thrown up had it not been for sheer force of will.
Hell. No.
No way was she puking all over her room. The smell of vomit lingered, even after you cleaned it, and the room was her sanctuary. She refused to taint it.
Olivia stared at the drawn shades—if she closed her eyes, she might not open them again for the next, oh, twenty hours—summoned every ounce of willpower she had, and lurched off the bed.
Success!
Now all she had to do was make it to the bathroom.
“Fuck,” she rasped, her voice sounding sick and scratchy to her own ears.
After an eternity, Olivia managed to half-stumble, half-lurch her way across the hall into the bathroom, where she promptly hurled her guts in the toilet. Just when she thought it was over, another wave of nausea overtook her, and she resumed the disgusting exercise.
Sweat slicked her skin, hair stuck to her face, and her throat felt like it was scraped raw by razor blades.
She wasn’t sure how long she knelt there, puking out the contents in her stomach, but in the middle of her misery, she felt someone—obviously Sammy, because they were the only people in the house—gather her hair back from her face. It reminded her of her party days, when she, Farrah, Courtney, and Kris would take turns holding each other’s hair while they threw up after drinking too much.
Maybe that was the problem. Olivia remembered only bits and pieces from last night, but she knew