HORIZON MC Read online

  “I’m kind of into delayed gratification,” I said, another lie. I was the exact opposite, in fact.

  “Oh, like edging.” Katie nodded sagely.

  “I have no idea what that — did you say ‘edging,’ as in lawn care?”

  “No, ‘edging’ like delaying your orgasm.” She smiled, struggling with her helmet. I helped her unbuckle it, then held it for her. She seemed to be doing all she could, holding herself up. “The more you delay it, the sweeter it is, in the end. I’ll try anything with you.”

  I swallowed hard. “Just tell me which room is yours so we can get there.”

  “Are you going to take me right here in this parking lot?” She lifted her chin, provocative, and nearly tripped over her own two feet, off-balance. “You think anyone would look out their window and see us?”

  “Probably the night manager in the office,” I said. “I’m not sure there’s anyone else here right now but us…and him.”

  “Up to giving him a show?”

  “You’re the one I’m planning on giving a show,” I said. “But we need to get in the room, first. Remember what I said about taking my time, about my tongue”

  “That one. It’s that one.” She pointed definitively to a room or close to one of them, anyway and I took her at her word, helping her navigate the parking blocks and the lip of the sidewalk.

  “What about a key?” I asked her. “Please tell me you have a key.” Though I was not above asking the night manager for help. He’d seen it all, I was sure, though probably not Ace Black refusing to sleep with a woman that he had strange and sincere feelings for. That would be something new.

  “Pocket,” Katie said, smacking her thigh and stumbling around. Maybe I should’ve left her in her helmet so it could protect her if she did tumble to the ground. I brought her close and tried not to wince as she licked a long stripe along my cheek, which was apparently my reward for successfully locating the room key in those skin-tight jeans. God, I had to stay strong. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I was going to have to find a way.

  I got the room open and the light turned on and was moving to shut the door behind us when Katie gave a single gag and puked down the front of herself.

  “Oh, thank you, Jesus,” I breathed. “It’s going to be okay, Katie. Everything is fine.”

  “Fuck,” she groaned, and puked again before I could half-yank and half-carry her to the bathroom.

  “You’re okay. Do what you have to do. This is just fine. I promise.”

  She tried to say something, but it came out as another gush of vomit, this time, thankfully, into the toilet.

  “Get all of that nasty tequila out of you, go on,” I encouraged her. I ran cool water over a washcloth and filled a hotel-issued glass with cold water, pondering whether she would be up to brushing her teeth. Maybe the front desk would have little bottles of mouthwash. That would be even easier than brushing her teeth.

  I reached over her and flushed the toilet before mopping her face with the washcloth.

  “You doing okay?” I asked, rinsing the cloth again. “Want to try a little bit of water?”

  She flinched and then puked again. I wished I could’ve said I was surprised at the sheer volume of liquid that came out of her, but I’d been there before. I’d seen it before, too. Part of the perks of working as a bartender now, and as a cop back in the day. I’d probably seen just as much as the night manager of this motel, and probably even more.

  “I think we should take a rain check on what we came here to do, don’t you?” I asked innocently, but Katie was too far gone to answer, rocking back on her heels for a second, her eyes squeezed shut.

  “There’s one good thing about all of this,” I said, mopping Katie’s face again with the damp washcloth.

  She groaned, and I pretended that she’d said “what?”

  “You’re not going to remember a single moment of tonight,” I said, smiling grimly. “At least, I hope you won’t. You seem like you take a lot of pride in yourself that’s not an insult, that’s a compliment. It’s always good to meet people who take pride in themselves. You’d be surprised to learn just how many people these days have self-esteem issues. It’s disheartening, it really is. Think you can drink some water?”

  I didn’t wait for a response on that one, either. I tipped the glass against her lips and celebrated the fact of actually getting some liquid in her mouth, but then backed away quickly as she spurted some more vomit. It was less, now, even as she continued to gag, and I knew she was on the other side of things.

  “Now’s the time to think about getting you cleaned up,” I said. “And there isn’t going to be a good way of aw, shit. You threw up in your hair. It’s fine. I’ll fix it.”

  Really, she had thrown up on everything, but that was almost acceptable compared to the alternative. I really and truly hadn’t brought her back here to have sex with her, and it was like some kind of divine intervention that she had started getting sick when she did. I was fresh out of ideas on how to avoid getting intimate with her; though I had to admit that this whole situation was a little intimate, me playing nursemaid with Katie in the bathroom. I’d held back girls’ hair before when they puked, but something about this interaction felt a lot more intimate than the times I’d experienced something similar before.

  “You’re not going to like this,” I told her, surveying the wreckage that were her clothes and hair. “And I’m not going to like it, either, because I don’t like vomit and there is vomit everywhere. And I don’t want to take advantage of you, and this kind of seems like taking advantage of you.”

  But her clothes were destroyed, and I seriously doubted she would think I’d been doing her any favors if she woke up in the morning with all of it dried and crusted to every surface.

  “Can you put your arms up for me?” I asked her gently. “I’ll get you out of this messy shirt, if so.”

  She flailed a little, which told me she was either trying to comply or get away from me, so I took a deep breath and went for it, managing to smear even more puke in her red hair.

  “Halfway there,” I said, flushing a little to discover she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her nipples pebbled in the cold of the bathroom, and I lunged over the tub to start heating up the water. “You’re going to stand for me, now, right? So we can get these jeans off and get you into the shower so we can wash that hair?”

  Katie responded by reclining on the floor, just missing plopping down in the throw-up shirt I’d removed from her. I unlaced her boots and tugged them off, popping her socks inside each shoe. Her toenails were painted gold, and the color made me smile for some reason.

  “That’s a pretty pedicure,” I said. “I’m going to get those jeans from you, now, if you don’t mind.” It was a struggle since they were a skinny cut. Then, another struggle. Her panties could stay on for the time being, but they’d have to come off in the shower. Should I just slip them down now and be done with it, while she was in the perfect position to do so? Or should I grapple with them when they were sopping wet from the shower? I made a quick decision and even quicker work of it, trying to look at it from as professional a standpoint as I could manage.

  When was the last time I had a fully nude woman sprawled out in front of me with no intention of making love to her? I couldn’t think of a time, and I was glad. The novelty of it made this whole thing a little easier.

  “Shower time, before that vomit dries in your hair,” I told her, hauling her up and over the lip of the tub. Katie didn’t so much as wince as the warm water sprayed over her, and her eyes stayed shut as if they’d been glued. I knelt beside the tub, trying to keep her in an upright position so I didn’t inadvertently waterboard her, and squeezed some shampoo on her head, working it into a lather and picking out the clumps of vomit in her hair.

  “That’s better, right?” I asked her, not expecting or getting a response. “You’re going to feel so much better in the morning.” I already knew it wasn’t going to
be feasible getting any liquids or medicine in her, let alone helping with the foul taste she’d probably wake up with. As long as she didn’t ruin her gorgeous hair with crusty upchuck, I believed she would be happy enough.

  When I was finally satisfied that Katie was as clean as she was going to get, I turned the water off and swaddled her in towels to try and preserve the warmth from the water. I did my best to dry her off before lifting her from the tub and carrying her to bed.

  “I’ll just tuck you in right here, and then I’ll be out of your hair,” I told her. “You can sleep this off and forget about everything.”

  She looked so peaceful, the covers around her, a towel protecting one of the pillows on the bed from her sopping hair. Then I remembered that it was creepy to watch people sleep, and busied myself with cleaning up the rest of the hotel room. I cleaned the puke near the door with handfuls of tissues, then washed Katie’s shirt and jeans in the sink with the bar of motel-issued soap. Everything went down the drain smoothly enough, though I considered informing the night manager that a little drain de-clogger might be in order for maintenance the next day.

  I checked on Katie throughout my cleaning, making sure she stayed on her side, that she kept sleeping. Just in case, I brought the trash can from the bathroom to her bedside, positioning a box of tissues and the glass of water beside her on a table.

  Besides the mess she’d made coming in to the room, the place seemed pretty tidy. I was generally messy in hotels, stuck in a kind of limbo between visiting and not feeling at home. I rarely unpacked my suitcase or utilized any of the drawers or closet, but Katie’s backpack was empty on the luggage rack in the corner of the room. I gingerly slid one of the drawers open to find a meager collection of unmentionables along with a laptop. What did she do for a living? Was she a writer? Would I find the answer, along with more about her, if I powered it on, tried to see if there was a password?

  I shook my head and eased the drawer shut. She didn’t deserve to have me in here snooping on her life. I knew her name was Katie. I knew I cared for her. And that was all that was necessary right now.

  “My work here is done,” I said. “It’ll all just seem like a bad dream for you in the morning, Katie. I’ll be going, now.”

  She whimpered in her sleep, and the resolve I’d been so proud of crumbled. Katie just looked so small and fragile and pale in the bed, even against the white sheets, that I started inventing all manners of reasons to stick around for the night. I was tired, after all. It was already past closing time at the bar, and I didn’t want to face anyone and tell them that I’d spent the night on vomit duty instead of exorcising the demon of Katie Kelley from my system. I wanted to be here in case she got sick again, or needed something.

  I wanted to keep her safe.

  I turned off the lights, then stepped out of my jeans they were damp from the cleaning, after all. I slipped beneath the covers, next to Katie, cradling her body against mine.

  “Poor baby,” I murmured against her damp hair. “You’re going to feel like absolute shit in the morning.”

  At least it wasn’t going to be me.

  I drifted to sleep listening to the sound of her deep breathing, feeling better than I had in a long time, warm beside her.

  Chapter 5

  “Fuck. Me.”

  I blinked awake to see Katie blinking down at me, the sheet clutched around her body.

  “Are you asking?” I wondered, clearing my throat and trying to wake up properly enough to assess if I was threatened and needed to hightail it out of there.

  “Tell me… Goddammit.” She risked dropping the sheet to pinch the bridge of her nose. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “You’d know better than me where to start,” I told her. “You’re the one who showed up at the bar already drunk.”

  She squinted at me. “What? I was at the bar?”

  “Wow.” I gave her a slow clap in lieu of a round of applause. “I, Ace Black, legally and ethically do not want to even ask you how you got there if you can’t even remember doing so.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Katie sat heavily in the ratty armchair by the desk. “If this isn’t the worst day of my life, it is definitely in the top three.”

  “We didn’t do anything, if that’s what you’re implying,” I said, ignoring the spike of indignation that rose inside of me.

  “You don’t have to lie, and you’re under no obligation to make me feel any better.”

  “I’m not lying,” I said, sitting up and blushing a little, remembering that I’d kicked my jeans off before climbing in bed last night. Damn. I never thought I’d see the day when I was actually embarrassed the morning after, even if nothing had happened.

  “You’re in your underwear, and I woke up naked and hungover,” Katie said. “I’m not stupid.”

  “No, just prone to drunken blackouts,” I said, trying to regain some of my dignity. I’d been a gentleman, dammit, and being insulted was the thanks I got?

  “Thanks for the reminder,” she said, sarcastic.

  “You want to know what happened?” I asked, feeling brutal since she was right in the middle of emotionally brutalizing me. “Okay. You showed up at the bar. You were happy to see me. You were already drunk, but you made me keep pouring you shots. I got you to promise not to take your bike back to the motel when you wanted to leave, but Katie”

  “How do you know my name?” she demanded, her face white as the sheet she clutched around her naked body.

  “I checked your ID, at the bar.”

  “What? I’d been drinking there for days.”

  “Why do you hate the idea of me knowing your name? You know mine, after all. I don’t think there’s anything super terrible about Katie. It suits you.”

  “Did I tell you anything else?” she asked, her voice shaking as she tried to keep it light.

  “Only that you wanted me to fuck you six ways till Sunday.”

  She gaped. “I did not.”

  “You wanted me to take you in the bathroom at the bar, but I convinced you to wait until the motel, so I could get you home safely. You talked briefly about…what was it called? Edging?”

  “What the fuck.” Katie hit her forehead with a tightened fist. “What the fuck.”

  “It was because I told you I was into delayed gratification, because I didn’t want to sleep with you,” I said.

  “That’s what I’d call insult to injury,” she muttered, looking away.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” I said quickly. “I would, under any other circumstances, be really into you. Be completely up for it. But not when you were so drunk last night. And acting…out of character.”

  “You don’t even know me well enough to understand if I’m acting out of character,” she said, exasperated.

  “I know I don’t. That’s why I didn’t, why I couldn’t…”

  “I do, however, know enough about you to understand that you were acting out of character by not sleeping with me,” she said. “Why didn’t you fuck me last night?”

  “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t do it.”

  “Why? I told you I wanted to do it, apparently. Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I want to know you better,” I said. “I want to know whether you’re truly acting out of character. I want to know more than just your name. I want to…goddammit, I have feelings for you. I care about you.”

  Katie’s face had frozen in a mask of fury and horror. “Get out. Get out of my room. Now.”

  I pulled on my jeans. “What did I say wrong? Isn’t that something women want to hear from men? No?”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “I’m going.”

  I grabbed my boots and stepped quickly out the door, resolving to put them on out in the parking lot rather than risk the considerable ire of Katie by delaying my departure even a few seconds more.

  I was ready to make my escape, striding toward my motorcycle, boots on feet, when the door opened behind me.

  “
Um, Ace?”

  I turned, hating myself for the surge of hope that shot through me. Katie had thrown on an oversized T-shirt, but I couldn’t be sure what she was wearing under it… Ugh, why did I care? I just wanted to get out of there.

  “You, um, don’t happen to know where I might’ve left my purse last night, do you?”

  “I was a little bit preoccupied with you last night, not your belongings,” I said pointedly. “You vomited like two gallons of liquid. It’s not around your room anywhere?”

  “Not that I see,” she said, sounding sheepish. “And that would explain the taste in my mouth. And almost the damp clothes hanging up over the shower rod.”

  “You puked down the front of yourself, as soon as we got into the room,” I said. “I just rinsed them out really quick, after I got your hair washed.”

  “You…washed my hair.”

  “Which also had puke in it.”

  I looked at her, her head lowered in shame, and softened a little. She’d piled her red hair in a messy knot on top of her head, and that big T-shirt practically screamed “property of an ex-boyfriend.” It nearly hung to her shapely knees, and I again tried not to guess if she had shorts or panties or anything on underneath it. There was no point in guessing. Guessing would only lead me to trouble, and I just needed to go.

  “Would you look in your car?” she asked, plaintive.

  “You mean on my bike?”

  “Bicycle?”

  “Motorcycle.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Wouldn’t be on that,” she said, rubbing her face. “Would it.” It wasn’t a question. It was a flatly put assumption, like she had already resigned herself to the fact that she would never see her purse again.

  “I’ll check at the bar,” I offered. “You might’ve left it there. You were drunk enough.”

  She sighed and her shoulders sagged. “Don’t even bother.”

  “I don’t mind, and it’s no bother.”

  “It won’t be there.”