“Don’t be alarmed, I’m here too,” a scratchy voice said from a short distance away, and I craned my neck to see the nerdy-sexy bartender Ace sitting up in another bunk. “Morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he rasped before waving once and then crashing back down on his bed.
“Am I in Declan’s bunk…?” I asked as everything came slamming into focus, and I realized that I had just passed out cold surrounded in an unfamiliar pack. Not only was I sleeping in Declan’s bunk, but I was also doing it with my boots on, along with my dirty jeans and sweatshirt.
With a sudden surge of energy coursing through me, I sat up and blinked around the upper loft of the firehouse. Morning light filtered in from the tall windows in the brick, illuminating the massive room below the loft. In the second story, I lay on the first of four large bunks lined up against one wall. On the other side of the loft, there was a home gym with weight machines, a punching bag, and mats propped up against the wall.
“What happened last night?” I asked Ace, who sprawled across the next bunk.
“Wait…” Ace propped himself up on his elbows and peered at me through sleepy, bloodshot eyes. From what I could see, the guy was sleeping only in his boxers, and even though he was far leaner than the rest of the werewolves, the bartender firefighter had taut, cut muscles. He rubbed his forehead and lifted his brows. “How much do you remember?”
“I was with Lucas and Declan in the bathroom when I passed out cold.”
“Yeah… I missed all that. I came in after my shift at around three AM to find the whole pack panicking.”
“Panicking?” I shook my head. “I don’t remember any of that.”
“Well, Declan was clutching you in his arms and proclaiming that the demons had poisoned you, and Jasper was ready to kill Chad for having some sort of unholy orgy that brought the demons here and put you in danger. The three of them were about to go on a demon hunt. Lucas—the only werewolf among us with any medical knowledge—kept telling everyone your vitals were indicating you were in a recovery sleep, but the others were too worked up to listen.”
“I went into a recovery sleep?”
“Yeah. In the end, that’s what the official diagnosis was.”
Fuck a duck. I knew I had been pushing myself too far for too long. Werewolves only went into recovery sleep when they were seriously injured or their last energy reserves failed them. For wolves, a recovery sleep was the equivalent of taking a high dose sleeping pill and chasing it with a shot of morphine. “Please tell me I was unconscious the whole time.”
“Well, so, you were unconscious when I came in, but…” Ace gritted his teeth. “Jasper insisted that Lucas wake you up to prove that you weren’t under some sort of demon enchantment. As soon as you were awake, you told us you wanted steak. You tried to swallow it whole, so I cut it up for you and fed you at your request, and you thought it was hilarious before you passed out face down on the table.”
It was coming back to me in patches now. I could bring those clumps of steak to mind, their taste and texture as Ace put them in my mouth. “Okay… that’s not that bad. Did I suck on your fingers… because I’m kind of remembering something like that?”
He held up two fingers an inch apart. “It didn’t bother me.”
“Still, I’m sorry for putting you all in that situation.”
Waking during recovery sleep was no joke. Werewolves were usually silly and inebriated, but there had been cases where werewolves had attacked or even killed people while they were blacked out. If the recovery sleep was due to injury, that was one thing, but I’d done this to myself and put everyone here at risk.
All in all, giggling and needing to be fed wasn’t that bad, even if there was some minor finger sucking involved. “So, after that, someone carried me up here?”
“Not quite at that point, no.” Ace sat up and reached over to a shelf on the wall and pulled down a pair of glasses. He blinked owlishly through them. “The second time you passed out, you hit your head on the table, which set off a second, lesser panic. Declan woke you up that time.”
“Oh shit…” Heat rose in my cheeks as the image of Declan hunching over me rose in my mind. He’d pressed his fingers around my forehead before cupping my cheeks, asking if I was in pain as the world spun around him. Then, I’d leaned in and tried to kiss him, which he’d pulled back from. Fuck. And… now I was positive I said something to him after that, something dirty.
My face burned, and I chewed on the side of my thumbnail “Hey, Ace. What did I say to Declan, exactly? Did you hear?”
“We all knew that you were fully in recovery sleep mode.” Ace winced. “He didn’t think anything of it.”
Oh, fuck. This was going to be bad. I could just feel it.
“Just rip it off like a bandage, Ace. Just rip it off. What did I say?”
Ace gritted his teeth. “So… you said you wanted to trace your tongue over every line of his tattoos. I was right next to you, so I heard that part, though I’m not sure if Chad or Declan overheard.”
“I didn’t lick Declan, right?”
Ace shook his head. “No licking, you’re
