Kaci

Light bled through my eyelids, and the pain in my head was like an open wound, as if someone had cut off the top of my skull. The sound of running water offered an encore of sandpaper against my exposed and vulnerable gray matter.

I groaned as I pushed myself upright on something soft, and the sound of my own voice made me want to cry.

“Kaci? I’ll be out in a minute.”

My eyes flew open. Direct sunlight speared my brain straight through my optical nerve, and at first, all I could do was blink tears from my eyes as I waited for them to adjust.

Then the room came into focus.

A long gray couch. Gray carpet. A coffee table littered with clear plastic cups. A wall of windows, with the drapes pushed all the way open to reveal the Las Vegas strip…

Las Vegas.

Justus Alexander.

Kissing, and talking, and…drinking?

I had vague, blurry memories of pouring something clear into my soda. Several times. There was an alcohol-scented stain on my shirt.

What the hell? I tried to stand, but my legs were tangled in the covers. My bare legs. Shit.

Frantic, I kicked the covers off—it took several tries—and didn’t exhale in relief until I saw that I was still wearing my underwear.

The bathroom door opened and Justus stepped out wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs stretched across a defined V of muscle below a set of abs that would have made any enforcer proud. He snapped his toothbrush into a plastic case, then tossed it into his open backpack. “Good morning.”

Justus didn’t look hung over. In fact, he looked…great.

He pulled me close and kissed the corner of my mouth, and my hands went automatically to his bare, hard chest, as if they’d been there before. As if they remembered something my mind did not.

“You okay?” He frowned down at me. “I’m so sorry about last night. I had no idea the drinks would hit you that fast.”

“So much for shifters having trouble getting drunk, huh?” I was afraid that anything else I said would reveal how little I actually remembered of the night before. Which was pretty much nothing but the half-empty bottle of vodka siting on the coffee table and…walking down the strip, holding hands with Justus. And not necessarily in that order.

“Yeah. So, it turns out that if you weigh a hundred pounds and you drink quickly—”

“One-ten,” I corrected him, running my hands through the crow’s nest that had grown on my head overnight.

“—and you’ve never had a drink before, except one little mini-bottle on the plane, you can actually get drunk pretty easily.” He brushed hair over my shoulder and stared down into my eyes, as if he were assessing me for a concussion. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Headache,” I managed, as I glanced over the room, hoping to trigger more memories of whatever we’d done.

“Oh. Yeah, just a sec.”

Shoes, sticking out from under the couch. Open, presumably empty soda cans standing on the bathroom counter, visible through the doorway. Pants, hanging over the back of a chair. All of it evidence of a night I couldn’t remember.

“Here.” Justus pressed two tablets of Tylenol into my right hand. I set them on my tongue, then took the bottle of water he offered and swallowed them. “You should drink all of that. Then several more.”

I drained the bottle of water while he stepped into his jeans, mostly for the chance to think back over last night without being expected to speak. I remembered the plane and the taxi ride to Caesar’s Palace, and I remembered eating noodles alone at a restaurant in the casino. But the rest was a blur.

“Justus?” My hand shook as I set the empty bottle on the coffee table. “What happened last night?”

He looked up, alarm flickering behind his beautiful gray eyes as he buttoned his pants. “You don’t remember?”

“Not everything.”

He waved one arm at the empty cups and the vodka bottle. “We were celebrating.”

And suddenly I did remember.

He was sure the tribunal was hopelessly stacked against him, so he was going to run. And I was going to go with him. After he won some money playing… “Poker!”

Relief washed over his face. “You do remember.”

“I remember that you were playing, and I was eating. So…” I glanced around at the evidence of our celebration. “You won? Crap, what time is it?” I patted my butt for my phone, but both my jeans and my phone were noticeably absent. “What time is our flight? Are we going to make it?”

“Kaci…” Justus took my hand and led me around the coffee table to the couch. “Sit down. Drink some more water. See if you can remember anything else.” He looked really worried.

“What? Did we already miss the flight?”

“No.” He cracked open another bottle and handed it to me.” Kaci, we weren’t celebrating…poker. I lost most of my money. You don’t remember that?”

“No.”

“I was up two hundred thousand dollars. Then I looked up and saw some guy hitting on you in the restaurant.”

I frowned at him. “You lost your money because some guy hit on me?”

“No.” He chuckled. “You shoved him, and he fell over a table, and security escorted him out. It was awesome. But then I realized I didn’t want to be playing poker while you were eating alone. So I doubled down, like an idiot. That would have been enough to get us out of here and hold us over for quite a while.”

“But then you lost.”

“Yeah.”

Damn. “Then…what were we celebrating?”

Justus took my hand again, and I expected him to intertwine my fingers through his. That was the best memory I had of the night before. Other than the kissing.

Instead, he lifted my hand into my own line of sight. Sunlight glinted off something shining on my…

“Holy crap!” I snatched my hand from him, staring in utter shock at the ring—no, two rings—on my fourth finger. My ring finger. “Is that…?”

“It matches mine.” Justus held up his own left hand, where a platinum band encircled his ring finger.

“We’re married?” The words sounded like nonsense coming from my mouth. Yet…

“You don’t look happy. There wasn’t much of a selection at three in the morning, but we can get you a different one soon, if you want. You can design your own. Titus knows this place that—”

“How was there any selection of wedding rings at three in the morning?”

Justus shrugged. “It’s Las Vegas. There are actually a couple of twenty-four-hour jewelry stores.”

“And we… Wait.” I closed my eyes and the fingers of my right hand found the rings on my left and began twisting them. Now that I’d noticed them, I couldn’t unnotice them. “How did we go from you losing two hundred thousand dollars to us getting married? I still feel like I’m missing a big piece of the puzzle here.”

“It was for the money.”

“The money you lost?” How was it possible that the more I learned, the less I understood?

“No, the money I’m going to inherit. I get my first lump sum when I turn twenty-five, or when I get married. Whichever comes first.”

“You…!” I opened my eyes, and the glare from the ring made me want to close them again. But I scowled at him instead. “You didn’t tell me that. You said twenty-five. You never said married.”

“I told you last night, Kaci.” He sounded…wounded. “Last night you were happy about this.”

“Last night I was drunk! Evidently. I can’t even remember—” My focus snapped to the bed, where the tangled mass of covers made me want to cry. “We didn’t…?”

Please say we didn’t.

I wanted to remember my first time.

Justus followed my gaze to the bed. “Oh. No, you were drunk. That wouldn’t have been…” He cleared his throat. “You threw up. Then you fell asleep.”

“Without my pants.”

“You did that yourself. You were…eager. But then you passed out.”

“Oh my god.” I buried my face in my hands, and the ring felt cold against my scalding cheek. “Alcohol is the devil.”

“Kaci.” Justus pulled my right hand away from my face and held it, but I kept my eyes squeezed shut. I couldn’t look at him. Not knowing that I’d evidently begged him to sleep with me. To free the poor, man-eating tabby from her virginity. At three in the morning. Drunk on vodka. “Kaci. Look at me.”

Finally, I opened my eyes. But tears filled them almost immediately, blurring his face.

“Kaci. Oh, please don’t cry. I would never have touched you while you were drunk. No matter what you said you wanted. I—”

“Aaaghhhh!” I pushed him away and stood. “You’re just making it worse. No girl wants to hear that she got married while she was drunk. That she begged for sex, then didn’t even get it. Not that not remembering it would have been any better.”

“Wait, you’re mad because I didn’t sleep with you?”

“No!” I grabbed my pants from the back of the chair they were hanging from and leaned against the wall while I pulled them on with angry, jerking motions. “And yes. I’m mad about everything, Justus. All the things. This is all wrong.”

I was never one of those girls who dreamed about her wedding day. By the time I realized I’d be expected to marry a tom, I already knew that none of them would be interested. I also knew, thanks to Faythe and the glass ceiling she’d shoved her way through, that I wouldn’t be forced into marriage with someone who didn’t love me.

But as much of a relief as that understanding was, the knowledge that I’d probably spend my entire life alone kept me from truly celebrating the feminist victory Faythe believed she’d passed down to me.

“I don’t understand, Kaci.” Justus stood as I buttoned my pants. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what I did wrong. I mean, other than the charges I’m facing.”

“Well then, let me see if I can explain this in asshole-friendly terms.” I glanced around the room in search of my socks, until I realized I hadn’t worn any. My shoes were slip-ons. “Yes, as the world’s only unwanted tabby, I am lonely and pathetic in a way that no one else on earth, as far as I can tell, will ever truly understand. But I was used to that. I was dealing with my emotional shit through a regimen of sexually unsatisfying human hookups that—at least so far—hadn’t gotten anyone hurt. Then you came along, and you were exciting, and funny, and so, so pretty, and—”

“Why do your compliments feel like bullets, Kaci?” Justus looked hurt.

“—and you were interested in me. You kissed me like you wanted me, when we both know you could have any girl in the whole damn world. And I thought you meant it. I thought we were the same, except for the fucking trust fund. Then I wake up this morning and find out that we’re married, even though I don’t remember saying ‘I do.’”

“I might have a video.” He reached into his pocket for his cell phone, but came up empty. “The wedding package came with one, but I don’t know if they’ve sent it yet. I can check my—”

“That is not the point!” Though my memory loss was at least point-adjacent. “What I’m saying is that I was falling for you. I was going to run away with you. Then you got me drunk and married me just to get your hands on your fucking money five years early.”

“Four years and—”

“Do not say four years and ten months,” I snapped at him. “Do not say four years and ten months!”

“Kaci.” He reached for me, but I pushed him back again, and I hated myself for noticing how hard his abs felt. How gray his eyes were. How sad his beautiful mouth looked.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Okay. Look, I’m not touching you.” He backed away from me, his hands in the air as if I had a gun on him. “Just listen. I didn’t marry you for the money.” He frowned and shook his head. “I mean…we did get married for the money, but we did it together. So we could both get out of here. We’re going to the island, remember? I didn’t get you drunk so you’d marry me. I didn’t even know you were drunk until you got onto the coffee table and started imitating the thunderbirds who took you hostage.”

“I did not—” But then the memory slammed into me like a slap to the face. I’d stood on the table with my arms bent like wings, flapping them and squawking, after I’d told him how terrifying it was to be ripped from the ground by a giant bird, then flown over the earth with my feet dangling over the treetops.

“Well, whether you knew it or not, I was drunk. And now I’m married.” I scowled at my shoes as I stepped into them. “How the hell can I be old enough to get married, but not old enough to gamble? If they’d let me into the casino last night, none of this would have happened.”

“Kaci, I’m so sorry that you can’t remember. But it’ll come back. I’ve been that drunk a couple of times, and the memories came back after a while.”

“I don’t want to remember making a fool of myself, Justus.” I grabbed my backpack and stomped into the bathroom, where I grabbed my toothbrush and dropped it into my bag.

“That’s not… You were never a fool.” He followed me into the bathroom. “You were funny, and adorable, and sexy enough to make me really wish you weren’t drunk.”

“Don’t think about me being sexy.” I glared at him in the mirror. “I don’t even know what I mean by that, but…don’t think about me like that. This isn’t real. We’re not married.”

“Yes, we are. Will you please stop packing for a minute? We need to figure out what we’re—”

“No!” I pushed past him into the bedroom. “Justus, this is not real. We didn’t even…” My focus landed on the bed and stayed there. “We didn’t even have sex. Wait a minute.” I dropped my backpack on the floor and ducked to check under the bed. “There was this movie I saw where a guy had his marriage annulled because…” There was nothing under the bed. The bed was built over a box, which must have made vacuuming the hotel room much easier.

“I saw that. He got an annulment on the grounds that his marriage was never consummated. But Kaci, I don’t think that’s a real… What are you doing?”

“Looking for my cell.” I grabbed the edge of the comforter and ripped it from the bed in one motion. Then I shook it, snapping it like a kitchen towel. But no phone fell out.

“You had it last night. You decided you wanted to take a one-way cruise, instead of a flight, because you’ve never been on a boat.”

“Don’t—” I exhaled slowly, trying to stop the flood of embarrassment that washed over me with every new detail about Drunken Kaci’s humiliating late night performance. “Just stop telling me what I did, okay?” I already knew I was dumb enough to fall for a rich, beautiful con artist. I didn’t need the recap.

“Fine. But I don’t think non-consummation is actually grounds for an annulment. I think that’s…fiction.”

“It’s not.” It can’t be. “Where the hell is my phone?”

Justus picked up one of the pillows and shook it out while I pulled the top sheet from the bed. Nothing. Then he picked up a second pillow, and my phone fell out of the case.

Oh yeah. After I’d given up finding a cruise to the Lost City of Atlantis, I’d tucked my phone beneath my pillow so I wouldn’t lose it.

Damn it.

“Here.” He tossed me my phone, and I caught it one-handed.

“It’s dead.”

“Use my charger. It’s plugged in on the desk.”

I plugged my phone in, then retrieved my toothbrush from my bag and brushed my teeth while I waited for my cell to accumulate enough of a charge to power on.

This is no big deal, Kaci. Lots of people did stupid things in Las Vegas. That was why what happened there stayed there.

When I emerged from the bathroom with my wet toothbrush in its case, Justus had thrown all the empty plastic cups and soda cans into the trash, and my phone screen was lit up.

I sank into the desk chair so I could research annulments while it continued to charge. And as it turned out, there were several grounds for having a marriage annulled, one of which seemed to be tailor made for our situation. “Lack of consent!” I shouted as I stood in triumph.

Justus looked up at me from the duffle bag he was digging through. “You consented, Kaci.”

“Yes, but lack of consent includes the lack of mental capacity to consent, and that includes the states of either insanity or intoxication. Both of which could be considered accurate in the case of a drunk eighteen-year-old who marries a guy she hardly knows.”

“Current behavior aside, you’re perfectly sane. And you weren’t drunk yet when we got married. They wouldn’t have performed the ceremony if you had been.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “The video came through, if you want to see for yourself. I can forward it to you. What’s your email address?”

“Don’t you think that’s an odd question to have to ask your own wife?”

Justus frowned. “Do you want the video or not?”

“No.” He wouldn’t offer to send it to me if I looked drunk in the footage, and if it wouldn’t get me out of this marriage, I didn’t want to see myself falling for the guy who used me to get at his inheritance early.

I turned back to my phone.

“It won’t work.” Justus pulled a clean shirt over his head, and I tried to pretend I was relieved not to have to look at his chest anymore. “I already looked. Non-consummation isn’t grounds for a legal annulment.”

“Wait…” I kept reading, until a phrase popped out at me. “Yes, it is. There.” I unplugged my phone and handed it to him.

“That says impotence.” He shoved my phone back at me. “I am not impotent.”

“It says we can ask for an annulment if one partner intentionally concealed impotence or an unwillingness to consummate.”

“I’m perfectly willing to consummate.” He grabbed the hem of his T-shirt. “Should I take this back off? We can consummate this bitch right now.”

I plugged my phone back in and rolled my eyes at him. “As romantic as that sounds, I’m not willing to consummate.”

“And I’m not willing to request an annulment over that. You take as much time as you need.” He dropped into the nearest chair and draped his arms over the sides. “When you’re ready, I’ll be here.”

Anger burned like hot coals beneath my skin. “I’m not going to be ready, Justus. We are not staying married!”

“Then divorce me.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Just wait until my inheritance goes through.”

“Are you admitting you don’t want to be married to me? That you only did this because of the money? Because that qualifies as fraud or misrepresentation—a perfectly good reason to annul, according to the internet.”

“No, Kaci. That’s not what I’m saying. I know you don’t want to believe this, but you married me willingly. Sober and in good cheer.”

“Why would I do that? I hardly know you.”

His eyes closed. Then he opened them again and pinned me with a piercing gaze. “Last night, you knew me. And I knew you. Last night, you and I walked down the strip and looked at all the lights. We ate lobster and rack of lamb at Le Cirque—turns out you don’t like lamb. And we talked for hours.”

“You’re saying I married you because you fed me French food?”

“Just listen. Last night, it was like we fell under some kind of spell. I was here last year for a friend’s bachelor party, but I wasn’t really very impressed with the place. I thought it was smelly, and gaudy, and way over-hyped. But everything looked different when I was with you. Everything was new, and it was all magical.”

I rolled my eyes. “Anything that isn’t cows and oil wells—”

“—is magical to a girl from the farm.” His smile actually looked nostalgic. “You said that last night too. But my point is that we had fun together. It felt like we could probably have fun together on a regular basis. Last night, spending forever on the beach seemed like not only a possibility, but a good idea. So we did something crazy. Something impulsive. Something that seemed like the only way to get what we both wanted. And we both wanted it, Kaci. That forever on the beach. So we picked out rings and got married. Then we came back here and we drank to celebrate—which turned out to be a mistake—and we kissed for an hour straight—which I will never in my life regret, no matter how this turns out.

“Then I woke up this morning, though actually, it’s already afternoon, and you were looking at me like I was Hades, dragging Persephone into the underworld.”

Tears blurred my vision again. “That’s my favorite myth.”

“I know. And you hate the Apple of Discord and the entire Helen debacle, even though they’re both basically about a woman being kidnapped by a man.”

“I told you that?” I knew without looking that my face was tomato-red.

Justus nodded. “You also have a very firmly held belief that books made into movies are fine, but movies made into books are not. And for no reason I can figure out, you hate the Muppets.”

My tears ran over.

“What’s wrong? Kaci, please don’t cry.” Justus stood and pulled me into a hug, and I let him, because it felt so good. It felt…familiar.

“I just…I want all that. I want the kissing, and the walking, and the talking, and I want to know you as well as you evidently know me, but I can’t remember it. And without the memories, this is just… I don’t know what this is. But it’s not a real marriage.” I stepped out of his embrace, as hard as that was, and wiped the tears from my face with both hands. “I have to annul this, Justus. I’ll cite my own unwillingness to consummate.”

His gaze burned into me. “So, you’re just going to let them execute me?”

“No.” Never. “I’ll testify on your behalf. I’ll…I’ll tell them what you told me about Drew.” That much I did remember. “I’ll be a character witness.”

“Kaci, the votes aren’t there, no matter what you say. And after this—after I took a tabby to Vegas and married her—they’ll probably try to kill me on the spot. Hell, Marc may swing the ax himself.”

Marc wouldn’t… Would he?

“So, you’re just going to leave? Even without the money?”

He shrugged. “Being poor in the Caribbean is better than being dead in the States. But you could still come with me. Even if we’re not married.”

“I can’t.” Damn, I wanted to. But no matter how crazy-romantic the whole thing might have seemed during a drunk night I couldn’t remember, in the sober daylight, it seemed just plain crazy. “But I’ll help you get out of the country. We can sell this.” I glanced at the ring on my finger.

But then I realized it was probably fake. If he’d lost all his money playing poker, we’d probably just snagged a cheap cubic zirconia at an all night pawn shop, or something. “I hate to ask, but how much is this worth?”

He shrugged. “Around eight thousand dollars. It was the best I could afford at the time.

I sank into the desk chair in shock, staring at my hand. At the ring. “How the hell did you afford that if you lost all your money playing poker?”

“I didn’t lose all the money. I just lost most of it.”

That explains the lobster and rack of lamb.

“Well, we can sell this to get you out of the country.” I pulled the rings off as I crossed the room toward him. “How much is a ticket to the Caribbean?”

Justus folded my fingers over the rings in my palm. “Keep it. I already bought my ticket. I bought yours too.”

“Okay.” I slid the rings back on, because they seemed safer on my hand than in my pocket. “So, I get that today’s evidently supposed to be the start of our honeymoon and all, but…any chance that ticket can be exchanged for one to Houston?” Maybe if I went straight home, safe and unharmed, I could convince everyone that I’d made Justus take me to Vegas. Which was true.

No one had to know about the marriage…

And if they were busy being relieved about my return, maybe they wouldn’t have time to chase him.

Justus shrugged. “Probably. When you get to the airport, if they won’t exchange it, call me and I’ll buy you a ticket to Houston.”

“Thanks.” I picked up my backpack and slid my phone into my back pocket. When I finally met Justus’s gaze, my stomach fluttered. Why was I suddenly so nervous? Why did I feel so guilty? “I’m sorry about…all this. Sorry that I’m evidently the most impulsive, reckless drunk in the world.”

Another shrug. “It takes two…”

“Okay. Well. Good luck. And don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone where you’re going.”

“Thank you.”

I felt like I should hug him goodbye. Or maybe indulge in one more kiss. Instead, I opened the hotel door and stepped into the hall. Then I ran for the elevator without waiting for it to close, because if I’d taken one more look at Justus…I might never have found the willpower to leave again.