Chapter One
Whoever said drinking tequila would make your clothes fall off wasn’t lying. Jude Staubman woke up and instantly knew something was wrong. First of all, he never slept naked. And he certainly didn’t share his bed with anyone else, yet here he was, in a hotel room with someone snoring next to him, and he had no clothes on.
Oh, and his head was seconds away from exploding.
He closed his eyes, hoping the spinning room and thumping headache would lessen, but instead he felt sicker than ever when a foot brushed against his. Almost afraid to see who was lying beside him, Jude cracked an eye open, then squeezed it shut.
Oh, no. No, no, no. Please, God.
Maybe he was still drunk and had moved on to the hallucination portion of the night. Or was it morning? Cautiously, he again peered at the naked man stretched out on the bed.
Fuck.
Jude sure as hell wasn’t drunk anymore, and he certainly wasn’t conjuring up the soreness of his muscles when he shifted position. It was that particular soreness that didn’t arise from too many bicep curls or leg presses in the gym.
Nope.
He winced and decided to make a valiant effort to sit up and hopefully make it to the bathroom before he lost control over whatever rumbled and gurgled in his stomach. Gingerly, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and levered the rest of his body to a seated position.
There. He was upright. And had survived.
He pushed off the mattress, and the room promptly turned upside down. Knowing he had barely a moment to spare, Jude mustered the inner strength he was famous for and raced to the bathroom, where he spent the next several minutes alternating between wishing he were dead and cursing himself for his stupidity.
How did I allow this to happen? How could I have been such a fucking idiot?
But Jude knew why. Watching his little sister, Ilana, get married the previous evening had hit him like a punch in the gut. It seemed like only yesterday he was holding her hand on their way to school or hugging her tight when she’d wake up from nightmares and their mother was too sick to get out of bed. He’d been watching out for her and protecting her, as he’d promised their mother he would. Now she was starting a new life with Doug, and he was at a loss.
Who was he, now that he wasn’t his little sister’s keeper?
He picked himself up off the floor and braced his hands on the sink, feeling somewhat human again, but winced when he gazed at his pale reflection in the harsh, unforgiving light of the bathroom.
Damn, I look like rough trade after an extra hard night.
Red marks littered his neck and chest, and was that a bite on his shoulder? He touched the red spot and hissed at its tenderness. Finger-shaped bruises marked his biceps and hips.
What the hell was I thinking?
First things first. He brushed his teeth and washed his face, starting with cold water to wake him the hell up, then hot. His lips throbbed, swollen and sore. Even his tongue hurt.
A noise from outside had him whipping around, his head alternating between spinning and pounding. He wasn’t accustomed to being off-balance. He prided himself on remaining stoic no matter what he faced in life, yet here he stood, uncertain and fearful to leave the safety of a hotel bathroom.
“Fucking idiot,” he muttered. “You’re entitled to one mistake.”
But damn it, did it have to be such a big one?
“Jude, stop hiding and get your ass out here. I have to pee.”
The edge of laughter in that voice turned Jude’s already sour stomach inside out. Here he was, obsessing over what happened, and that idiot was treating it like he did everything else in life—as if it were nothing at all. A joke. Jude lifted his chin and strode out of the bathroom.
“I was not hiding. I was cleaning up.” He tipped his head, avoiding the bright-eyed, grinning man on the bed. “Go ahead.”
How could Mason be so wide-awake and unaffected? Jude couldn’t have been the only one drunk, and the last time the two of them had faced off, Mason called him an uptight bastard who probably hadn’t gotten fucked in a year.
You showed him how wrong he was. Not only did you get fucked, you did it with him.
“Well, it sounded really ugly in there for a while. Glad to see you recovered.”
Mason sprang off the bed, and Jude averted his eyes, but not before glimpsing a nicely rounded, naked butt. When the door closed behind Mason, Jude scrambled to the dresser and yanked the drawer open. He pulled out a T-shirt and a pair of sweats, and pulled the pants on, not bothering with his briefs. At that moment, the most important thing was to no longer be naked and vulnerable.
