Page 115 of Iris
What’s it been? A day?
I look around.
I’m alone. And thirsty. I clamber to my feet and pull one of the soft blankets around my naked, bruised and marked body.
Exhaustion hits me in a wave and my legs almost crumple. I might be out of the woods with the heat, but I’m not all the way through. I’m both lead and boneless but my throat and tongue demand slaking to stop that ache.
So I try to focus, pushing my tangled hair out of my eyes and stagger to the door.
It’s not locked.
I turn the handle and wobble like a drunk up the stairs. The hall I’m in is narrow, but I know it. There are the stairs to the rest of their home, and the short part of the hall to the bar. I can’t face the stairs and the bar has water.
I push into there, and it takes me a few moments to adjust to the light. Not a lot, but more than in the basement.
The bar’s empty, and I glance at the mirror where the bottles are and nearly shriek at my banshee-like state.
I fumble for a glass and grab the gun and hit the button named water, filling it to the brim and then gulping it down.
Better, I sag against a stool.
Where are they?
They must be upstairs. No way would they leave me.
I breathe in the clean air, and it holds the faintest scent of cigarettes, cigar smoke, spilled beer, but over that is lemon from whatever they use to clean it. And the scarred tables gleam black.
It’s nothing like the leather and berry scent imbued with the musk of sex in the nesting room. And somehow I need that. So I turn and stumble out, down the stairs again, and as the light from the open door streams in, it catches on two bottles.
I’m still thirsty.
I close the door, drop the blanket and basically crawl to them, dragging other blankets with me. There’s a lamp that I turn up so the room glows a golden hue to the orange it was before, and I pick up the water and sip it.
Then I almost knock over a glass, reaching for the bottle of whiskey.
Not caring it’s straight, a part of my mind latching onto I’m still in heat, the dregs, anyway, and the booze is going to help knock me out. I fill up the glass and down it, sputtering. Then again.
A heat spreads similar in a way to the aftermath of sex, where things are languid, warm, fuzzy. And then my stomach rumbles.
The last thing I want to do is face more stairs. Climbing the stairs from the basement to the ground floor took a lot. I don’t want to go searching for a kitchen. And why haven’t they come looking for me? You’d think they know I’m awake, like I know Xavier’s moving about on the top floor, even though I can’t hear him, I can feel him like he’s in my marrow.
But I spy a package of crackers. Salty, plain, and I rip into the cardboard and then the foil, stuffing a handful into my mouth.
After a while, I slow down my little round table of eat, drink water, drink whiskey, and repeat. My stomach’s full and my eyes can’t stay open.
I snuggle down, and in my head I call out,Where are you?
But before I get any kind of reply, the world fades to dreams.
Blue eyes are on me when I wake.
My heart skips a beat, and in the golden light his tattoos come alive. The scar somehow softened.
Good. You’re awake. Better?
I rise to my knees and crawl to him, the flick of fire in those blue depths lick at my clit. “I’m good. I think. Sore. You and Killian were gone when I woke.”
He smiles and nods next to me, and I pick up the mini, the screen is slightly cracked but it works.
