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No Tiger in the Bathroom
SO I’VE GOT THAT GOING FOR ME…
No Clue Where I Am…
48 Hours Pre Wedding-gate
Bed sheets twisted about my body like a straitjacket. I shivered, skin clammy and damp with chilled sweat. Despite the cool air I was roasting. Was I sick?
I tried to kick my foot free of the covers. Hale grunted when I accidentally nailed him in the shin with my heel. It was hotter than Satan’s taint in this bed and I was having a Hades-grade-hot-flash.
Frustrated, I tussled through a middle-aged cage fight with the blankets and winced when pain lanced into my skull. Then my stomach sloshed and I stilled, covering my mouth and unsure what my body planned to do next.
Something wasn’t right, so I sagged back in defeat. Ugh.
Blankets one, Calamity zero.
My brain buffered until I realized what this was. The world’s most unpleasant surprise…a hangover. Right.
Hangovers were sneaky little fuckers. Souvenirs acquired through intoxicated decision-making, therefore always showing up unexpectedly. But if you want the truth, life’s basically one long line of surprises, and in my thirty years I’ve never been prepared for a single one. So why start now?
Hello, I’m Calamity Rayne—fiancée of very grownup and powerful billionaire smoke-show, Hale Davenport. No clue how I got here or how I somehow managed to out-Darwin the bazillion other women who dreamt of waking up in my circumstances. I can only blame sheer luck, vagina magic, and the sporadic twist of fate.
My stomach gurgled and I groaned. Moaning hurt, and based on the throbbing in my skull, today would be another day passed on the struggle bus.
I was afraid to open my eyes. Was it normal for a bride to feel like a washed-up hooker days before her wedding? My fermented organs pumped through whatever sludge poisoned my insides as I tried to think of anything that might help.
God, thinking fucking hurt.
Arm partially numb, I blindly dragged a hand over my face. Long gone were the ideals of waking up like the polished, slightly tussled, beauties shown in the movies. That shit was pure fiction.
The reality was terrifying. Sweat-kinked hair, morning breath rank enough to make roadkill run again, an empty belly packed with toxic gas, and the gunked-up remnants of yesterday’s makeup caked in the corners of my Venus flytrap eyes. This nightmare wasn’t even neighboring the zip code of slightly attractive. I needed to get out of this raging inferno of a bed and wash the sweaty stink off me.
“Hale…” I groaned, nudging the scalding body beside mine and grimacing at the flammable scent of my breath.
How Prince Charming inexplicably wanted me above every other fair maiden in all the land was beyond me. It wasn’t like I ever pretended to be more than the hot mess that I was. If there was such a thing as fixer-upper kink, Hale would be president of the club because, bless his overbearing, bossy heart, the man loved my catastrophic soul to a fault.
Long gone were the expectations of perfection. Poof. Vamoose. Hale knew exactly what he was marrying the moment he slipped that Victorian doorknob of a diamond over my unmanicured ring finger. He not only accepted the real me, he adored her—stubbled legs, unfiltered, profane blatherings, raging insecurities, and all.
Why? Because we were in love. L-O-V-E, love. I’m talking Jane Austen-grade desire with a dash of obsession and a heavy-handed dose of power. I could wake up looking and smelling like death because Hale could handle it.
Our bond ran deeper than some namby-pamby sort of lusty newlywed champagne. We were a potent, Russian-grade, punch-you-in-the-face-good-morning kind of love vodka. Tough. Resilient. The real deal.
Which was why I had no problem elbowing his scalding body off of me.
“Oomph,” he grunted as my arm shoved against the unmovable slab of muscle suffocating me.
Unlike normal mortals, Hale didn’t stink like roadkill or regret in the morning. No. He smelled of fantasies and authority, sort of like the cool air of a bank that pumped James Bond-level pheromones through the ductwork.
Hale was a God. A walking aphrodisiac. A painfully beautiful masterpiece of perfection the paparazzi adored and gold-digging whores slobbered over on the regular.
The competition was fierce, and I should be forever grateful he even looked twice at a girl like me, which I was—trust me, I was—but at the moment I needed oxygen more than gratitude. I shoved him again, disentangling his roped limbs from my overheated body, and his grip tightened.
“Hale, I can’t breathe.” He clung to me like an octopus trying to crack open a clam. “You’re a thousand degrees.”
I needed water. Preferably a hose.
The lashes of my eyes seemed glued shut with some sort of expired horse paste. He cinched our bodies tighter, the length of Prince Everhard—a.k.a. his porn-tastic dick—wedged against the crevice of my ass cheeks. Morning sex was fun and all, but my head throbbed with what could only be the post-effects of a lobotomy gone wrong, so there would be no bumping stinkies this morning.
