Broken Wings (Dark Legacy #1)(35)

As much as I hated to admit it, suddenly the roiling in my stomach was no longer arousal. It was something else. Something significantly less sexy.

“Shit,” I said, swallowing frantically. “Beck, you need to stop.”

He flashed a look at me, confused, but didn’t even so much as slow. “What? Why?”

“Beck, seriously. You need to stop right now.” One of my hands gripped the arm rest for dear life while the other held the seatbelt away from my body, like that could stop what was about to happen.

He must have seen something in my face—possibly sheer terror and total lack of blood—that made him click that I was being serious and not fucking around.

Shifting down gears as quick as he could without hurting his car, he slowed from the insane speed we’d been traveling. I pressed a hand to my mouth. He wasn’t stopping fast enough. Oh god. Shit. Fuck. Please don’t let this happen.

The car came to a stop on the side of the road and I frantically opened my door and threw myself out—except I hadn’t undone my seatbelt. The black fabric strap did exactly as it was designed to do, locking up and throwing me back into my seat.

Horror rolled through me, and my stomach rebelled.





My head pounded like a bass drum, and I rolled over in my plush bed with a groan.

Why?

It was the pained, desperate mental cry of all hungover girls, wasn’t it? Why did I drink so much? Why didn’t I use better judgement? Why?

The sour tang of vomit reached my nostrils, and I gagged. Oh my god. Not again.

Scrambling as fast as my stiff, sleepy limbs would carry me, I ran into the attached bathroom and cradled the toilet bowl as I dry heaved. Apparently there was nothing left inside me to come out. What the hell had happened?

Peeling myself off the marble floor, I used the wash basin to pull myself up and peer at my bedraggled appearance in the mirror.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

My makeup was smeared halfway down my face and my hair looked like something seen on the wife of Sasquatch, with a crusty patch of vomit dried into the ends.

Worse. I was practically naked. All I had on was the little black lace thong from the night before. Where was my bra? My dress? Wait, I hadn’t been wearing a bra under that dress. Rubbing my face with my hands, I frantically tried to remember the night before. After the tequila and the dancing and the drive home...

Oh shit.

Beck’s car. I threw up in Beck’s Bugatti!

Groaning, I sunk back to the marble floor in a puddle of shame. I vomited in Beck’s goddamn million dollar car. He’s going to murder me and rightfully so.

But then what happened? My memory was totally blank, and that made me feel even more ill. Had I passed out on the side of the road in a pool of my own vomit?

“Jesus fucking Christ, Riley,” I muttered, dragging myself back to my feet again. I still needed to use the basin for balance because the room was dipping and swirling something awful.

Cold water would help. I turned the faucet on and splashed my face a few times before giving up and staggering over to the shower. My hair desperately needed washing anyway.

“Ugh, gross.” I cringed at my image reflected back at me from the full length mirror directly outside the shower. It was not a pretty sight, and I could only hope the steam would obliterate my own image soon.

Just as I squirted a handful of shampoo into my palm, something caught my eye in that narcissistic shower sex mirror.

“What the fuck...” I mumbled, peering down at my body to find the unfamiliar mark. My hair was everywhere so I pushed it over my shoulders to get a better look at my chest.

Sure enough, there was a small, blue pen ink drawing on the side of my left breast.

“Mother fucker!” I screamed when I saw what it was. A fucking butterfly drawn mere inches away from my nipple. If there had been any question about who took my dress off, Beck had made sure I damn well knew it was him.

Dripping water everywhere, I stomped back into my bedroom in search of my phone. That fucker was about to catch a piece of my mind for this invasion of privacy. It didn’t faze me that I didn’t have his number. A man that arrogant would have put it in my phone, I had no doubt. He probably installed a tracking device too.

Finding it on the bedside table, plugged into the charger, I snatched it up and paled. It seemed Beck had also taken the liberty of changing my clock to twenty-four hour time because the numbers thirteen thirty flashed at me.

Thirteen thirty. That meant I had thirty minutes until this jet was scheduled to leave on some mysterious Delta mission which I was supposed to be partaking in.

Well, fuck it. I didn’t want to go anyway.

But something wasn’t sitting right... I stared at my phone a bit longer. Beck had changed the clock to twenty-four hour time and turned my phone on silent. Why?

Suspicion burned in my belly. That fucker turned my phone on silent so I would sleep all day, then made sure I would see the time and know I’d missed the flight when I woke up. Which meant he didn’t want me to go.

“Sebastian fucking Beckett. When are you going to learn?” I shook my head, tossing my phone on the bed and hurrying back to the shower. I had a flight to catch in thirty minutes.





11





My borrowed car came to a screeching halt beside the shiny white Cessna at fourteen hundred hours exactly.