Page 20 of Single Malt

Freedom

I was hot.

Like I was sleeping next to a heater. And covered by a heavy electric blanket.

None of which made any sense.

Aline and I did have the heat up at night, but never this high.

That was when my brain woke up enough to register that I could hear someone breathing.

Shit.

Everything came flooding back, and my eyes flew open.

Sure enough, I had a muscular arm around me and a hand resting on my breast. I didn’t need to see the small spots of scar tissue to recognize that Brody was the man in bed with me. Besides the fact that I now remembered every amazing second from the moment I’d stepped into his hotel room, I’d never had another lover who’d left my body with such a pleasurable ache in every part of me.

Lover.

No.

That wasn’t a word I used because, to me, it implied some semblance of a relationship. Someone that was more than a one-night stand.

Except that’s what Brody was because I’d fucked him three times.

Well, spent three different nights with him. Two nights and an afternoon. And the second one barely counted because it’d been just a quickie in a car. Or maybe it just evened out with the amount of time we’d spent fucking last night.

I was spiraling. Not into a depression, but the bunny trail chasing thing that my brain did when I didn’t want to face something so my mind just focused on nitpicking details on which to fixate.

I needed to leave.

Right now.

Holding my breath, I managed to roll out from under his arm without waking him. I moved as quietly as I could as I picked up my clothes and headed into the bathroom. I wasn’t going to spend much time cleaning up, but I didn’t want to look like I was doing the walk of shame, even though that was exactly what I was doing.

And I hated myself a little for it.

Then I hated myself morebecauseI hated myself for it.

Dammit.

I’d never been ashamed of my sexual habits, and I’d always told myself that I’d never let anyone shame me either. Men could fuck whoever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and it rarely reflected negatively on them.

People’s opinions regarding women were better than they had been even five or ten years ago, but a woman walking through a hotel lobby early in the morning while wearing the same outfit she’d worn the night before still received disapproving looks, especially in a nice hotel like this.

“Fuck them if they can’t handle it,” I muttered to myself as I smoothed down my hair.

Butterflies fluttered in my stomach as I opened the bathroom door, half-expecting Brody to be awake and asking why I was leaving so early. Except he was still dead to the world. I was tempted to linger in the dimly lit room, let myself have a last look at the gorgeous man sprawled out on the bed. Sheet bunched around his hips so I could see the bare skin of his back, but only the swell of his ass under the fabric.

He had a really nice butt.

He shifted on the bed, and I hurried out of the room before he could wake up and see me. We hadn’t talked about whether or not I was staying the night, but I was fairly certain neither of us had planned on sharing a bed until morning. I knew I sure as hell hadn’t.

At least I’d driven, I thought as I stepped out of the elevator. I kept my gaze focused on the door, my expression as blank as I could make it. The valet who went to get my car didn’t say a word other than “good morning” and then ran off at a good enough clip that I went into my purse to pull out a bigger tip than I usually gave out for non-restaurant services.

The sun came up as I drove, the sky turning from that dull blue-gray of a pre-dawn sky into the brilliant orange and pink that took over everything for those minutes before the sun was up and a new day began. If I had been coming from anything else, I would’ve enjoyed it more.

The times I’d stayed at Dr. Ipres’s house and had driven home early enough to see a sunrise, I’d always loved seeing the colors and the different ways they spread out depending on cloud cover and even pollution. Today, I only registered it in the vaguest of ways, my senses caught up with the sensations my brain was trying to identify.