Ruined (Barnes Brothers #4)(25)

“What did you have in mind?” she asked.

***

He woke up smiling.

That wasn’t normal for him, at least not in a good, long while.

He also woke up with a miserable headache and a taste in his mouth that was too familiar. That was normal. Except . . . he hadn’t had anything to drink in . . . hell, a week? He tried to think back, but his pounding head made it hard.

He’d stopped drinking, though.

He’d decided he was done.

Clearly, he’d slipped.

“Okay,” he muttered. “So I just straighten myself up and start over. First, by dumping the booze.”

His voice sounded unusually loud and he swept out his arm, half expecting to find somebody there with him.

That would have been . . . nice.

Yeah. That would have been just fine.

But the bed was empty.

He wasn’t sure what he was reaching for. That dull headache began to pound a little harder and he grimaced, pinching the bridge of his nose. He really should have tossed all the booze out like he’d planned.

Slowly, he sat up and looked around.

The sheets were smooth under him. It donned on him then that he was naked. Once upon a time, that wouldn’t have surprised him at all. The past few days, since he’d been sober more often than not, he’d fallen back into his habit of stripping to his skin before he collapsed on the bed.

When he spent the night—or the day—drowning himself in booze, he barely had the sense of mind to make sure he didn’t fall flat on his face, much less get out of his clothes.

But he’d done it last night.

Eyes falling on the clock, Sebastien grunted in disgust. It was almost noon. He didn’t remember much of anything after he’d gotten started reading those articles about himself, Hanson, and Monica, then decided to grab a bottle. That had been a little after noon, because he’d made himself a sandwich not much before then.

He’d lost almost an entire day.

So much for heading down to San Francisco to see his parents. Blowing out a breath, he rubbed at his face and gave himself another minute to sit there and process and jog his still half-fogged mind into action.

Shoving upright, he took a minute to make sure he was steady, and then headed into the bathroom. First thing—empty his bladder. After he washed his hands and splashed water on his face, he dug out a nearly empty bottle of ibuprofen and tossed four back. He followed that with two glasses of water.

While the painkillers got to work in his system, he started the hot water for a bath and went to grab something quick to eat. Food. Water. Bath. The headache would be at tolerable levels within an hour.

He went to dump the scraps from the sandwich on his plate and paused. A rainbow of glass glinted up at him from the recycling bin next to the trash. Empty bottles. He counted and stopped, turning around to look around the kitchen. He didn’t remember dumping out the alcohol.

“You wouldn’t, you dumb ass.” He lost pretty much everything after he drank enough—that was why he’d been drinking so much over the past year anyway, and if the headache he had was anything to go by, he’d had drank way more than enough yesterday.

A nagging thought settled in the back of his mind and he went back to the fridge, tugging it open and staring inside. The vodka he’d put in there was gone. A few things he knew he hadn’t bought were in there. Fried chicken, potato salad. A thermos he knew well by now—Marin had been bringing food to him for almost a year now, like she worried he’d stop eating if somebody wasn’t there to feed him.

Hell, it was possible she was right.

“Okay, so she came by and saw you piss-faced drunk.” He groaned, wondering if he could kick his own ass. “Again.”

He needed to call her and apologize but the thought of doing so made the headache worsen.

Yeah, he’d call.

Apologize.

But not yet.

First he was going to go soak his sorry ass in the tub and see if he couldn’t ease the headache into tolerable limits.

***

Slumped in the water, Sebastien’s lids drooped shut.

Thoughts drifted away and he was happy to let them do just that. Thinking was overrated and more trouble than it was worth, really.

Water slapped against his chest.

His mind went hazy.

When the haze went from near-blank to fantasy, Sebastien barely noticed, although it wasn’t much of a surprise that the fantasy centered on Marin. Everything seemed to center on her.

She moved against him, her mouth on his, as hungry as his own.

Her hands tangled in his hair while his cupped her ass.

She rode him and with every passing second, the movements went from lazy and hungry, to driving and desperate until it was just as much war as lovemaking.

Under the water, he closed his hand around his cock, echoing the rhythm in his daydream.

She brought him to a hard climax while in reality, Sebastien grunted, arching up and driving his cock into his fist.

As the water carried away the semen, Sebastien lifted his lids and looked around. He had a good idea what he’d been dreaming about earlier, and why he’d woken with a smile on his face.

Something Marin had said or done had set him off and he had probably spent the entire night getting off in memory of it.

“Hell, I hope she left before I said anything to her.”

***