If I’d only stripped naked in the privacy of my room, that was a win, I guess. I really didn’t need to be racking up public indecency charges in my favorite playground on earth.
I pulled my other arm out from under the blankets. My limbs felt heavy, like gravity had been dialed up.
In my mouth, my tongue felt thick and dry, the taste metallic.
My stomach felt unsettled, not quite sick (thank God), just vaguely offended.
Had I even eaten?
I had fuzzy memories of a light lunch.
Then… nothing.
Somewhere down on the street, a fire truck’s sirens screamed, making my shoulders lift up near my ears to try to muffle the sound even as my headache ratcheted up.
Another pathetic whimper escaped me as I curled into a tight ball and let myself wallow in my misery as time warped, stretching and constricting.
Minutes passed.
Or hours.
I had no idea.
I drifted in and out of sleep, only rousing enough to grumble about the light, about my headache, about the wrung-out feeling inside.
Until… something.
I couldn’t tell you what it was, only that it finally snapped me awake, eyes reluctantly opening to look at the bed.
There was an immediate feeling of, well, wrongness.
The nightstand looked wrong.
And there were floor-to-ceiling windows where there shouldn’t be, the late morning sun streaming in.
My brows pinched as I turned my head, taking in more windows. Three walls of them. I was surrounded, except for the wall where the giant bed was situated.
The bed was wrong too.
A little too long, too wide.
Too… unfamiliar.
My heart lurched.
I shot up in bed.
Way, way too fast.
The room tilted, spun, took me along for the ride.
“Ugh,” I whimpered, pressing my palms into my eyes, willing my stomach to settle back down.
It was right then that I felt something strange, something cold pressed against my eyebrow.
Something on my finger.
The fourth finger on my left hand.
