Page 15 of Rogue

Rescuing two women in two days and then satisfying each of them didn’t leave much time for sleep, and he was damn tired.

Chapter Three

Plan

Dree

Sunlight bouncing off the sunny yellow walls glared on Dree’s face and stabbed her eyes, so she squeezed them more tightly shut.

The DJ from the night before at the Buddha Bar had crammed the nightclub’s enormous speakers inside Dree’s skull and turned up the pulsing bass to full volume.

Her shoulders were sore.

So were her boobs.

Not to mention between her legs.

She might have a hangover, too, but that guy, “Augustine,” had beenamazingin bed. She had been well and truly fucked. Last night wasexactlythe sort of thing that she’d needed to draw a bright line in the sand between her old life and her new one. She’d needed a fantastic night with a gorgeous,gorgeousman whom she’d never see again.

She was never going to see him again, right?

He had left during the night,right?

Dree held her breath, and despite her hangover, she squinted and rolled over, hoping like hell that he had done as she’d asked and taken off during the night.

The other side of the bed was empty. The sheets were rumpled, and the pillow lay askew.

Oh, thank goodness.Dree did not need to explain herself to anyone in the light of day just then. Her life was a godawful mess. Putting it back together was going to take a hell of a lot of work, and she didn’t need some hanger-on bugging her for ass while she was trying to deal with it.

Besides, she had a “Bucket List” to attend to. She had a hundred more things she wanted to experience in Paris before she caught that plane in four more days.

She swung her legs around and hopped down to the floor, smiling a little at the edge of the bed.

Her legs wobbled as she tried to walk. Man, Augustine had gone at her so hard last night that she might have sprained something. She should have stretched before a marathon like that. Her muscles had locked up so tightly when she’d comethat second timethat tears had leaked out of her eyes and she’d thought she might get a migraine.

It had beenspectacular.

Augustinehad been spectacular, and as a part of a last, hedonistic few days before she changed her life, he had been perfect.

She could limp around Paris and do the next couple of things on her napkin-based bucket list with a grin on her face.

The plan had been one night, and then he would leave.

She was not going to feel bad about it.

Even if she kind of wanted to see him again, hear him talk again, and lick his hard, hot skin again.

But no.That was not the plan.

She would stick to the plan.

She stumbled to the kitchen area and chugged a glass of water straight out of the tap, then another. Dehydration was the enemy. Getting over a hangover migraine required water.

Back in nursing school, she and her friends had given each other the ultimate cure for a hangover: eight hundred milligrams of ibuprofen, a liter of lactated Ringer’s saline solution delivered intravenously, and ten minutes of breathing pure oxygen. In half an hour, that would entirely cure even the worst hangover.

Damn, she really needed an IV and some O2just then.

A can of coffee grounds stood beside the coffee maker, and she thanked St. Augustine and all the other saints that the B and B had supplied her with coffee. Last night, after she’d gotten off the plane, ridden the subway, and found her room, she’d just kind of dumped everything and thrown on her one good dress to go to the Buddha Bar in a fit of blind rage and despair.