Chapter 1

• Megan's eyes opened to the pale daylight of winter. She looked toward the window, knowing the sun would be hidden behind a mist of white clouds, and was struck by the sight of heavy crimson drapes instead of the sheer, gray roller blinds that were fixed in her apartment. Somehow she had failed to immediately notice that she had woken up in an unknown location. Everything felt, not just off, but wrong.
• As her heart jolted, Megan squeezed her eyes shut and cataloged the series of strange sensations.
• Her body wasn't nestled in the malleable material of her memory foam mattress, and she didn't smell the warm, spicy scent of the aftershave she typically splashed on before bed.
• The mattress beneath her aching body was much stiffer than she was accustomed to, and the too-soft pillow cushioning her face stank of liquor, cigarettes, and sweat.
• Megan couldn't remember whose bedroom she had landed in. Had she stayed at Emily's apartment? No, Emily's bedroom definitely did not have floor-to-ceiling windows, hardwood floors, or exposed brick. Whoever lived here had more money than Emily could bring in as a part-time bartender, part-time aspiring dancer. But then whose place could it be?
• Her only remaining memory was doing a final shot with a mystery man as the clock struck midnight, and the sound of cheering voices as she had initiated a bruising, hungry kiss. Everything after that existed only in a void.
• Megan had no idea why her body was throbbing in a painful yet thrilling way, or why short blips of sexual imagery—like stolen stills from a pornographic movie—kept tumbling to the forefront of her mind. She had once heard that blacking out was practically a rite of passage for young, party girls, but she had never felt particularly young, she had never been much of a party girl, and this lack of memory was too frightening to transform into a story that she would ever recount wistfully to friends.
• She opened her eyes wider, kept them on the ceiling, and felt around on the bed beside her. Her fingers brushed someone's back, and she leapt to her feet.
• The man who slept beside her was very pale, very unconscious, judging from his low snores, and very naked. He was lying facedown, and even barraged with regret, confusion, and an intense hangover, Megan admired the silky black hair brushing against blood-red pillows and contrasting with smooth, alabaster skin. The man had a strong back—tattooed with an expansive set of tattered, black wings—muscular thighs, and a perfect ass. A sheet haphazardly covered the rest of his body.
• He was certainly attractive, whoever he was.
• A measure of relief sailed through Megan, but it collided with a more stalwart wall of condemnation and paranoia. She had never had a one-night stand before. Never had sex with a stranger. And there weren't even...
• Megan's breath caught as she grabbed what looked like her panties from the floor and yanked them up, commencing a frantic search for some sign of safety. The room was so carelessly tended to that she didn't know where to start. For what appeared to be a relatively expensive apartment, the place was a mess.
• Clothing was strewn across the gleaming hardwood floors, bottles and an ashtray full of cigarette butts littered a metal side table, and tech magazines were stacked precariously on the windowsill. Nowhere amid the mess did Megan see a used condom or a wrapper.
• The seizing panic took over, and Megan was hovering over the man with a hand on his shoulder before she could stop herself.
• “Wake up,” she said.
• “Mmm.”
• The sleep-clogged voice sounded familiar. Megan's eyes narrowed, and she shook with more vigor.
• “It's—” Megan checked the clock, a metal thing that was more art deco than utility. “—after eleven in the morning, and we need to talk.”
• “Fuck, Megan, chill out.”
• Megan's brows snapped together. “Who…?”
• She grabbed the man's forearm and pulled him up before rolling him over to expose the wide mouth, high cheekbones, and piercing blue eyes of Oliver Thompson .
• “Oh my God.”
• Oliver smiled sleepily and tried to grab the band of her underwear, but Megan staggered back.
• “We slept together! Us?”
• “Who else would it be?” Yawning, Oliver smoothed his hair away from his face. “Don't tell me you don't remember any of it.”
• “Oh God.”
• “Maybe you do remember. You were saying that a lot last night too.”
• Megan's face was aflame as she looked wildly around for the rest of her clothes. “This isn't funny, Oliver This is—I can't believe—why did you do this?”
• “Pardon?”
• She spied the hem of her black slacks in a crumpled pile by the bedroom door. Her navy button-down was hanging from the doorknob, but several of the buttons were missing.
• “I was wasted. I must have been incoherent—”
• “Trust me, you were coherent.”
• “—and yet you took me to your house—”
• The bedsprings creaked as Oliver sat up. “Hey, you begged me to bring you here. You paid for the cab.”
• “—and proceeded to sleep with me, despite the fact that I was way too intoxicated to reasonably consent to… to whatever it is that we did,” Megan gritted out. “And despite all of that, it doesn't appear that you had the common sense or decency to use a condom. I swear, if I get anything from you, I'll kill you.”
• Megan jerked on her ruined designer shirt and cast a baleful glance in Oliver's direction. His expression threw chilly water over her fury. In his pinched lips, intense eyes, and balled hands, she could read anger and maybe even a little hurt.
• "Are you done?" he asked coldly. "Or are the rapist accusations going to keep coming?"
• "I didn't say—"
• "You may as well have said it." Oliver swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood facing her, completely naked and unashamed. She had no idea how he could stand to be so vulnerable while embroiled in an argument. "Are you really trying to wash your hands of what happened by using the drunk cop-out? Because it's really not my job to test the BAC of every nearly forty piece of ass who begs me to fuck them. Especially not when they're coherent enough to tell me in graphic detail just how hard they want it. You may not remember what happened, but you weren't passed out. You were pretty goddamn energetic, actually."
• His hips slammed against her harder, his dick driving into her ass steadier and deeper, until the head was nudging against her sweet spot– the image flashed in Megan's head.
• Her hands clenched around the torn shirt, but a spasm went through them. "I don't even do one night stand."
• With his head cocked, Oli crossed his arms over his chest. "You sure? You fucked me first, rode me like a horse I might say and you milked my dick with that ass during three of them. Right before you begged me to shoot inside you."
• Mouth going dry, Megan looked down at the tattered remains of her outfit. Each piece was unsalvageable. Why had she even dressed up for Emily's party? Whom had she been trying to impress?
• The image of David and Susan popped into her head, and her stomach curdled. Stupid question. How could she forget the answer? Forgot who she was trying hard to impress? To make them believe she didn't care?
• "Megan."
• "What?" Her voice was sharp, but she did nothing to temper it. "Where are we? I need to get out of here."
• "Just calm down."
• "I'm quite calm, considering the circumstances."
• "Christ, Megan. You had sex with a programmer, not a serial killer. I get regularly tested if that's what you're worried about. Why don't you tone down the indignant panic and cut me some slack?"
• Megan didn't want to cut him slack. She didn't want to do anything for him. She needed out of this apartment and into a cab, to return to her home with her belongings.
• She wanted to sink beneath the water in her three-foot-deep bathtub and pretend the previous night never happened.
• The humiliation of wandering alone at a party full of couples, of watching David pour himself into someone else, and then of weeping like a fool while desperately kissing Oliver in the hallway. That last damning memory was enough to make her never want to cross paths with him again. She couldn't even look him in the eye.