JESSA
I feel the sun slanting across my body, heating a line across my shoulder and over my face. My eyelids are tinged orange with the early morning glow.
Which is weird, because my bed isn’t directly in front of the window. And I always keep my curtains closed at night.
I roll over. My bed feels different in an unsettling kind of way, but I’m stranded in that place between sleep and consciousness. Maybe if I keep my eyes closed, I’ll drift back to sleep.
Which sounds like a great plan.
Until memories from the last few days start to sneak in.
A tall stranger on a yacht. Gray eyes that draw me in and hold me. This feeling like he’s got hooks in my chest, reeling me into him in a way I can’t escape and won’t escape and don’t even want to escape, really.
When he kisses me, I tense, my body inviting him in.
When he twists me around and traps me between the boat and his body, a soundless gasp flutters from my lips.
I want to turn around and touch him, too, but he’s got me cornered, pinned down, caged in his arms and his scent. I should be panicked. I barely even know this man.
But all I feel is need.
When I finally do manage to turn around, his arms are like steel girders around me. I look up and catch his silver eyes. He leans down to me, his lips close enough to graze against my ear, and whispers—
My eyes flash open and I bolt upright.
“Good morning there, Sleeping Beauty!” a cheery voice calls from the kitchen.
I see someone move behind the fridge and a second later, she appears with a bottle of store-bought orange juice. “Not as good as the kind I buy back home, but it’ll do. You want a glass?”
“Freya?” I ask.
She smiles and nods. “And your name is… Jessie right? No, Jenny? Janine?”
“Jessa.”
“Dammit. I’m rather horrendous with names, I’m afraid.”
I rub the sleep from my eyes, though I don’t quite manage to shake off the half-conscious dream-slash-memory I just had. “I’m impressed you even remember that much.”
She gives me an embarrassed smile. “Yeah, quite sorry about that. I must not have made a very good first impression, huh?”
“Hey,” I say sympathetically, “we’ve all been there.”
“Drunkenly knocking down a stranger’s door because you think it’s yours?” she asks, pouring the orange juice into two glasses. “Somehow, I doubt it.”
She offers me a glass and I take it gratefully. “You might not handle your liquor well, but you handle your hangovers amazingly,” I tell her.
She looks positively put-together this morning. Between the two of us, you’d think I was the one who’d been ten sheets to the wind last night. She’s wearing a white mini-dress and a thin gold chain around her neck. Her dark hair has been slicked back into a high ponytail with a few strands left purposefully loose around her face.
She beams at me. “I know. My one true talent. All my friends back home hate me for it. I can drink my weight in alcohol and still look like a daisy the next morning.”
“Now, that’s a gift.”
She laughs, but sobers up almost immediately. “I want to thank you.”
“Seriously, there’s no need,” I tell her, holding up my hand.
“No, there is,” she insists. “I was… emotional last night. I was lonely and I was stupid to drink so much.”