Sweet Recovery (Ex Ops Series Book 4) (5 page)

I thrashed my arms around a bit, thinking there was no way they could truly be stuck together, but all that accomplished was smacking myself in the face.

Ouch.

My brain was sluggish, and I couldn’t force myself to think of why that might be. I tried to remember last night, but the act of trying sent sharp pains throughout my entire head. That meant there was no thinking allowed right now … because …

Ouch again.

Improvising the best I could without hurting myself any more, I turned on my side so one ear was flat to the mattress and pulled my hands to rest over my other ear to muffle the banging noise.

If that was Dexter knocking on my door, I was going to throw something at his head the moment I figured out how to unstick my hands. Then again, that would need to be later … much later, like after ten more hours of sleep later.

Pulling my knees up, I curled into a ball and tried to go back to sleep. Despite the rough sheets under my face, the odd sensation that stomach was actually trying to erupt out of my body, and the fact that my head felt like it might explode, I was warm, dry, and ready for a power nap to beat all other power naps.

If only whoever was still banging away would stop…

It probably was Dexter. He was a big enough jerk to just stand there and keep knocking until I gave in and did what he wanted. Well, I wasn’t giving in this time. I didn’t care who he was, who my father was, or if the Pope was outside my door, waiting for me. I was going to sleep, and they could all go far, far away.

Thump, thump, thump.

Irritated, I grumbled, “Go away.”

Thump, thump, thump.

“I said, go away!” This time, I yelled, or at least, I thought I had yelled, but it sounded more like the badly pitched croak of someone dying. Funny, because with the way I felt, dying might be the easier option at the moment.

Thump, thump, thump.

“
Oh, big daddy! Do me harder!
”

Wait … What?

Springing up in the bed, I managed to get my eyes open even though they felt as if there were fifty-pound sandbags on them and looked around. Nothing I saw made sense. This wasn’t my room. Where the heck was I? And how in the heck had I gotten here? Most importantly, where was a bathroom? Because my bladder suddenly wanted to burst.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, panicked and wanting to sprint away from this unfamiliar place, and ended up flat on my face on a carpeted floor that looked like it hadn’t seen a good vacuum in ten years.
Gross.

My arms were pinned underneath me, so I pulled them up and out until they were in front of my face … tied together by what looked like a blue T-shirt.

What the fudge?

Craning my head down, I looked to the feet that had failed my first attempt of escape and found a black T-shirt had them tied tightly together. I could wiggle my toes, but that was about it.

Good gravy! Just what had I gotten myself into here?

I was used to waking up hung over or still drunk, but waking up tied up? That was a new one for me and definitely not good. Not good at all. I needed to get out of here as fast as I could. What if I had been kidnapped by one of my father’s enemies? There was no telling what they might do to me to send a message to him.

Scrunching my body up like an inch worm, I did my best to wiggle my way to the wooden chair a few feet in front of me. I could probably use it to pull myself up to a standing position.

It took me about a million years too long, causing rug burns on my knees and a serious fear about having a potty accident, but I finally made it. Too bad I spent the next few minutes flopping around like a fish out of water, trying to pull myself into a sitting position on the creaky old chair.

By the time I finally made it halfway up, knees to the floor and bent over with my hands holding the back of the chair and my torso resting on its seat, the room’s air conditioner suddenly kicked on. An arctic blast filled the room with a horrid, moldy smell, and it sent my spinning stomach into overload. It took everything I had not to puke all over the chair.

But that offensive smell wasn’t the worst of it. No, sadly, to my dismay, there was more, as in a direct cold draft hitting me straight on my butt … my
bare
butt. Goose bumps popped out onto my goose bumps while I frantically tried to figure out where the hell my undies had gone!

Holy crap, had I been raped?

I wiggled from side to side, rubbing my inner thighs together, looking for any clue I could find, but I found nothing at all. There was no sticky residue that might have been left by a man, no soreness of long unused muscles being abused.

A huge wave of relief washed over me, and my determination to get out of this hell hole returned with a vengeance.

Wiggling my way up the chair, I finally got my butt situated on the seat. Then I bent over and started picking at the bindings on my ankles with my still bound hands. It didn’t take long for me to get aggravated. What kind of knots were these? Boy Scout knots?

I was frantically tugging at the fabric now, relishing the small tearing sounds, when finally, the fabric gave way and peeled away from my legs.
Hallelujah!

Looking down at my bound wrists, I quickly debated trying to get those undone, too, but decided against it. There was no telling how long it had taken me to get to this point. I needed to hurry up and get the heck out of here!

Sprinting to the room’s door, I had my hands out, in reach of the handle, when it turned on its own. The movement froze me in place as fear took over to the point that I couldn’t breathe.

Glancing around, I saw there was no other way out. The windows were all shut, and I would never be able to get one open in time. I was trapped. Dread filled my body, and all of a sudden, I could hear my high school biology teacher talking about a mammal’s fight or flight response. As my entire body started shaking with adrenaline, there was no doubt in my mind which way I was going to go.

Fight, it was.

Stepping back until the back of my legs hit the shabby-ass nightstand, I leaned forward a little and readied myself for my attack.

As soon as the door cracked open, flooding the room with bright sunlight, I ran forward, trying to get as much momentum as I could.

I might be little, but I could be mighty.

The door continued its path to opening as a large man’s shadowed shape took form in the doorway, his hands full of bags. It was all I could see with the sun blinding me, but what I had caught was good enough for me. If his hands were full, he might not be able to throw them up to stop me.

Before I knew it, I threw all of my strength and weight forward, landing my shoulder into his midsection in the best tackle a girl my size could give a dude twice her size.

The sound of his guttural “
oomph
” was music to my ears as we tripped and fell backward together out of the room and into the bright sunshine.

I tried to bring my hands up between us to cushion my fall, but it didn’t matter since large hands locked on to my shoulders, securing my body against his bigger one as he took the brunt of our fall. My breath was knocked out of me when we finally landed, but that couldn’t have been nearly as bad as the man who had softened the blow for me.

Not that I cared about him. If he were hurt, it meant I could get away, which was exactly what I tried to do the moment we settled.

I shoved at his body with my bound hands, trying to push up, as I did my best to get my legs untangled from his and underneath me.

I had almost made it to my feet when the sound of my name being shouted by the man stopped me cold.

It wasn’t that he knew my name … It was his voice. It was so familiar yet different from all of my dreams, a voice I had never thought in a million years I would ever hear again.

It was Lucas’s voice.

Slowly bringing my face up to look him in the eyes, I saw angry eyebrows pulled down over achingly intimate hazel eyes.

My heart stopped dead in my chest. I would know those eyes anywhere. They haunted me in my dreams and stared out at me from every other man I looked at. They were the same gorgeous green and brown gaze that had watched me silently while I drew underneath my favorite tree. They were also the same green and brown orbs that had stared at me angrily the morning after we had slept together.

They were the one pair of dazzling eyes with such unique shades of jade, forest green, and pecan brown with gold flecks I had never hoped to see again.

They were Lucas’s eyes.

My vision swam in front of me as I went lightheaded, and my stomach churned with a vengeance. I couldn’t have stopped what happened next even if I had wanted to.

After seeing Lucas Young for the first time in five long years … I threw up all over him.

Lucas

“Dammit, woman! How many times are you going to puke all over me?”

I could tell she was confused and scared, so I probably shouldn’t have yelled at her, making her flinch away from me, but a man could only take being covered in vomit so many times in twenty-four hours before he lost his shit.

Ginny sat back, no longer sprawled all over me but sitting between my spread legs, instead. I pulled myself up slowly into a sitting position, cringing at the way her vomit slid down my neck, underneath my T-shirt, and onto my chest.

I had been through basic training, special forces training, and war … and I couldn’t think of a damn thing that felt more disgusting than that slimy shit that was currently coating me. And that was really saying something since I had been covered in blood more than once.

Ginny’s soft, hesitant voice brought my focus from the puke all over me to her.

“L-Luca-as?” There was a slight hiccup in her cracked voice, and her eyes were glassy again, only with unshed tears this time instead of alcohol.

The sight of her scared and confused washed my anger completely away. I wanted nothing more than to hold her in my arms and tell her everything was going to be all right. I just had to get cleaned up first, so we needed to get this show moved back into our room where we could have some privacy.

Softening my voice, as if I were talking to a skittish animal, I murmured back, “Yeah, Gin, it’s me. Why don’t we go inside and talk?”

She sat there, still as a statue, staring at me as if I were a ghost. Utterly shell-shocked. Not exactly the sort of reception I was hoping for, but at least she wasn’t running away … yet. If I didn’t hurry up and get her into the motel room, she just might.

Getting to my feet, I held out the hand that was still clean and offered her help to stand up. Dazed, she took my hand with her still bound ones, and I pulled her up, making sure she was steady on her own two feet before I laid my hand on the small of her back, giving her a gentle nudge to start walking toward the doorway to our motel room.

I stopped just short of actually walking through the door myself, making sure she went through before turning around to grab my bags still lying on the ground. Any good soldier knew how to be prepared for anything. This morning’s outing had been solely to pick up whatever supplies I felt we might need.

As I walked back through the motel room door, I took a quick glance behind me to make sure no one had been watching us, finding not a soul in sight. I then shut the door with my foot.

Glancing at Ginny who sat on the side of the bed, staring at her feet like a zombie, I kept my eyes on her as I laid the bags on the dinky, little wooden table and turned around to lock the door behind me, chain, bolt, and all. It couldn’t stop Ginny from getting out, but it could help keep anyone else from getting in. There was no way to know if the two guys she had been with last night at the club would be looking for her or not.

Turning back around to face Gin, I found her eyes glued to me … or perhaps the door behind me. I could see the wheels turning in her head as she slowly came out of her shock. At least some things hadn’t changed about my girl. She couldn’t play poker if her life depended on it. She wore everything she thought or felt on her face. Right now, she was looking at me like I was a problem she was trying to solve. My instincts told me whatever conclusion she was coming to was probably not in my favor.

Taking a sidelong peek at the bags, I silently prayed I wouldn’t have to use everything in them, but I would do whatever I had to in order to keep Ginny here long enough to talk things out. This was me doing what I should have done five years ago: fighting for my woman. And I was enough of a ruthless motherfucker to do anything and everything to accomplish my mission.

Taking a cautious step in her direction, I watched as she jerked backward a bit, almost as if she had been zapped back into the land of the living. Those pretty blue eyes of hers turned shrewd and angry, telling me my fight was about to begin now. My old high school football coach had always liked to tell us that the best defense was a good offense, which meant I needed to make the first move.

Pitching my voice to what I hoped was a low, calming tone, I told her the truth. “It’s good to see you, Gin.”

She didn’t say a word, just sat there, staring at me, half in disbelief and half in anger. One of her eyebrows slowly rose up in a mocking way, and I could just hear her unspoken reply of “Really?” which meant it was still my move.

I took another small step in her direction, and she glared down at my feet in a way that made me think she was wishing she could shoot laser beams out of her eyes and burn my feet away. Maybe it was time I tried to soften her up a bit.

“You look good, angel. I almost didn’t recognize you last night.”

The last sentence brought her attention back up to my face. Her cute, little eyebrows furrowed down over her eyes, and she suddenly looked so confused. Guessed I could take that as my hint that she didn’t remember last night at all. Damn, she really had been drunk as hell.

Pulling my pocket knife out, I kept it out of her view behind my back while flicking it open. Then I took a quick step to close the distance between us, grabbed her bound hands, and used my knife to cut the shirt off her wrists in one quick slice before I stepped back out of her space. I didn’t want to overwhelm her just yet, but I did need answers if I was going to get to the bottom of last night’s fuckery. As in, why had she been at a strip club and totally wasted?