her way to the stand and the switch to turn it on. Light immediately exploded into the room, leaving her blinking wildly as her eyes tried to adjust. Once she could see again, CJ glanced around. Her concern about her panties was immediately forgotten when she spotted the overturned glass and pool of water on the bedside tabletop. The sight made her recall the pain that had woken her up. Obviously, she’d hit the glass with her hand and knocked it over, and now water wasn’t just pooling on the tabletop, but was running over the side and dripping onto the bedroom carpet.
Cursing under her breath, CJ lurched out of bed. She had to take a minute to untangle herself from the sheet that had a stranglehold on her waist, and then she tripped over the duvet lying on the floor, but she managed to keep her feet and get to the bathroom. Snatching up the first towel she saw, CJ then hurried back to mop up the mess on the table and soak up the water that had made its way onto the carpet. Once finished, she stood and surveyed both the wood and the carpet. The tabletop seemed fine; the water hadn’t sat long enough to do damage, and she couldn’t even see where the water had gathered on the carpet anymore. It seemed to have all come out, but she’d check both in the morning to be sure no damage had been done.
The thought made her frown slightly. The glass of water hadn’t been there when she’d gone to sleep. The obvious explanation was that either Mac or Mrs. Vesper must have been in to check on her and left it.
Mrs. Vesper, CJ decided. Mac was a man and, in her experience, men didn’t think of things like that. Besides, the older lady seemed like the motherly sort and a worrier. She’d probably come to check on her on her way to bed and left the water in case she woke up in the night. A really sweet thing to do, CJ assured herself. But was disturbed at the thought of anyone creeping into her room while she’d been sleeping. Especially if she’d been thrashing around as it appeared she had been. She hoped she’d still had her panties on at the time.
Sighing, CJ briefly considered crawling back into bed and trying to return to sleep, hopefully to find her way back to the steamy dream she’d been enjoying. Unfortunately, now that she was up and had been rushing around, she was aware that her T-shirt and hair were damp and her skin clammy. She’d sweated up a storm while she slept, but knew that wasn’t why they called them wet dreams.
On the other hand, she’d never experienced a wet dream quite like this one. Usually, she didn’t remember her dreams when she woke. She might have some vague idea that she’d dreamed this or that, or have an image or two in her head, but she didn’t usually remember every minute of what had happened as she did with this dream, and she’d absolutely never woken up drenched in sweat like this either.
Maybe she was going into menopause early and it had been a hot flash, she thought.
“Yeah, a hot flash named Mac,” CJ muttered to herself. She was too young to be starting into menopause. She’d just had one hell of an intense wet dream inspired by a sexy, silver-eyed lab rat, which was the last thing she needed. It was hard enough being around the man without sex dreams taunting her with what she couldn’t have.
Sighing, she considered the mess she’d made of the bed. Or the floor around it, she supposed, shifting her gaze to the bed missing everything but one pillow. The other pillow was on the floor along with the sheet, duvet, and her panties. Muttering under her breath, she quickly grabbed up the items on the floor and tossed everything but her underwear back on the bed, then checked the clock radio on the bedside table.
It was 4 a.m. She’d slept somewhere around seven hours. That was a bit long for her. She usually only managed six hours a night. Not because she stayed up late and was woken by her alarm clock. She just didn’t seem to be able to sleep longer than five or six hours as a rule. Getting seven hours of sleep was actually an oddity for her. Probably something to do with the head injury,