Saving from Monkeys (2 page)

"So you don't remember
anything
about last night?" He asked slowly so I didn't miss the emphasis on 'anything'. I felt my spine stiffen with unease and gingerly poked my sore brain again only to come up with the same blank. "You don't know why you came over here? You've really got nothing?" Elliot pushed, sitting up straighter and suddenly looking extremely interested in my answer.

Somewhat taken aback
by his intensity, I watched him carefully as I confirmed that, yes, I really had nothing.

A moment passed during which he seemed to be assessing whether I was telling the truth or not. I don't know what his conclusion was, but a slow smile spread across his blandly good-looking face until he was flat out grinning at me, showing all his orthodontia-assisted straight teeth. Needless to say, I found this seriously unnerving.

"Cut it out and fill me in as you obviously seem to know," I said grumpily, feeling the more exposed for not knowing what had gone on last night, even though he was the naked one.

"Not a chance," he laughed.

"What? Are you serious?" I asked, watching his face and seeing that, despite the big smile, he was. "That's...that's awful!" I spluttered. "You can't do that. That's completely…" I tilted my head to one side and eyed him suspiciously as he continued to look ridiculously pleased at my amnesiac state. Well, as pleased as the severely hung-over can look. "Why are you so glad I don't know? What did you do to me last night?"

His
smile faltered and there was a weird pause before he said, in a carefully neutral tone, "What are you suggesting?"

I was mystified by the change in him, but then, as I finally caught on to what he thought I was accusing him of, I
let out a frustrated sigh. "Oh, calm down," I said dismissively. "You're many things, Elliot Sinclair, but a rapist is not one of them."

"What a ringing endorsement," he said sarcastically
and then, when I continued to look at him pointedly, he continued, "Fine, you want to know what happened last night? Here it is, you turned up, we cleared out my liquor cabinet," he nodded his head in the direction of a disturbing cluster of empty bottles by the side of the bed, "and then I rocked your world. Three times. What more is there to know?"

"
Um, everything," I snapped. "Like, why did I come here in the first place?"

He snorted
again. "Don’t ask me to fathom your motivations, Rox. Budge up, I need a slash."

"No!" I said incredulously. "
No, I will not 'budge up', you have to tell me everything that happened last night."

"No I don't," he said dismissively, putting his hands on my waist and pushing me gently
to one side so he could get off the bed and move past me towards the bathroom. "I'm not the one who got so drunk I've blacked out last night, this one's on you."

"Oh
, you sanctimonious...!" I yelled after him, stopping as my head pointed out that it was still very sore and that such loud noises didn't do it any good.

All I got in reply was a soft chuckle and then the sound of him starting to relieve himself.
Charming.

Tears of confusion and outrage suddenly pricked at my eyes and I blinked furiously, trying to clear them before Elliot returned and laughed at me some more
.

It was just that
I'd never even
remotely
been in this position before, and it was freaking me out. To think there was a period of several hours simply missing from my memory was horrible. I could remember saying goodbye to my roommate, Abigail, as she went off to her waitressing job, and looking forward to a rare afternoon and evening on my own, but after that there was nothing but emptiness.

I allowed myself another moment to wallow in discomfit and then
made a big effort to pull myself together. There was no going back in time, I told myself crossly, I'd done what I'd done so I suppose I just had to deal with it. Irritating as Elliot undisputedly was, there was no way I would have been unsafe with him, so I held no real
fear
over what had gone down last night, just a whole bucket-load of curiosity.

It would come back to me, I continued to reassure myself; things would remind me of what had happened and it would be fine. I was not going to beg Elliot for information. At that
point, wrapped in a sheet and with a seriously ugly hangover, my pride was already taking a beating; I couldn't sacrifice more of it.

I found my clothes crumpled by the side of the bed and pulled them on quickly, noting that they were the track pants and tank top I'd been slouching around in back at my room. Although I looked all over the poncy, minimalist flat
, I couldn't find a bra, jacket or even socks of mine. The only other thing that belonged to me was the pair of sandshoes jumbled on top of each other near the door. I'd left my place in a hurry then, not bothering to do anything but tug a pair of shoes on. I logged that piece of information away, seeing it as the first of many puzzle pieces to come.

Determined to find some more clues, I shot a hasty look over at the bathroom where it sounded like Elliot was now brushing his teeth, and started to prowl around.
There honestly wasn't much to prowl through, though, it being a studio flat everything was pretty much out on show. After a desultory check through his DVD collection (wisely avoiding the box marked ‘games’ in the back corner as it most certainly contained porn) and a quick look under his couch, I spied a small desk tucked into the corner. Elliot's laptop was perched perilously on top of a pile of his uni books and there was a filing cabinet nestled underneath.

I gave a cursory glance to the corkboard hanging above the desk, noting the various photos of Elliot and his rich buddies wasting their parents' money in a variety of unsanitary looking ways, but then focused on the cabinet. Out of the top drawer I could just see a crumpled corner of paper that, in my
girl-wonder-detective frame of mind, looked like it had been shoved there in a hurry. My curiosity piqued, I reached over to pull it out. To be honest, I couldn't see how it could relate to my current situation, but I always did enjoy a good snoop, it had been the major perk of working alongside my mum at the Sinclair household.

"Rifle around in
these
drawers all you like, Rox," I felt something soft land on my hair and reached up to pull down a pair of cotton boxer briefs, "but try and stay out of the others."

I chucked the pants away in disgust and whirled around to see Elliot leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. I was relieved to see he'd at least pulled some jeans on, even if he had just thrown his underwear at my head.

"I wasn't rifling," I said snootily...and completely untruthfully. "I was just looking around to see if anything jogged my memory because
someone
won't tell me what happened last night."

"Yeah, yeah," he said dismissively, clearly bored by my continued complaints. "H
ere." He crossed to the fridge and retrieved a bottle of water before passing it and a pack of painkillers across to me. "Do you want a lift back?"

I downed a couple of pills and knocked them back with the water before eying him suspiciously over the rim of the bottle.
What was with the sudden nice guy act? Did he think he could charm me out of pestering him about last night?

I was all set to refuse his offer, but then I saw a way to glean a bit more information and I asked carefully, "Why? How did I get here last night?"

His smirk told me he knew exactly what I was doing, but he clearly decided to throw me a bone as he replied, "You ran."

"I
ran
?" I repeated, mentally tracing the path I must have taken between my dingy residential hall room and his swanky off-campus flat. Wow, that was a really long way; I must be fitter than I thought.

"Yeah, you obviously couldn't wait to get your hands on me," he said
, as if he was anxious to get a high score on the ‘obnoxious meter’ that morning. "So, do you feel up to the return jog this morning?"

I really, desperately wanted to tell him
yes, but I was well aware that my body was starting to, embarrassingly, point out that you didn't have sex three times in one night without getting a few aches here and there on top of my hangover. Yeah, come to think of it, I wasn't sure I could walk back across the
room
, let alone campus.

Ah
, geez.

"You know I'm not," I said through gritted teeth. "And so, yes, I would like a lift back." I bit at the inside of my cheek in frustration and then added inelegantly, "Please."

I wasn't looking at him, but I could
feel
his smirk.

We were silent as we got in the lift and travelled down to the car
park; he'd kind of taken the wind out of my sails with the whole 'giving me a lift home' trick. Obviously his intention.

As we emerged into the garage, I automatically looked around for Elliot's unbelievably expensive car. I even readied myself to start thinking of all the things I could have done with the money that had been spent on just one vehicle, as I always did, but I couldn't see it. In fact it looked like Elliot was heading towards a nondescript red sedan.

That couldn't be...

I didn't finish the thought as it was
made redundant by the small beep and flash of the lights as Elliot remotely unlocked the unfamiliar car.

"What's this?" I demanded as I crossed over and tapped a hand on the exceptionally ordinary boot. That it even
had
a boot was weird, the car Elliot had been given for his 18th birthday was extremely passenger and luggage unfriendly. When I'd commented on it he'd said that there was room for his wallet and a girl and he had no need for anything else. Yeah, revolting, hey?

He looked at me steadily. "My car," he said flatly, although there was the tiniest flicker of what looked like satisfaction at the corners of his mouth.

"No it's not," I disagreed. "Your car is a tiny, evil looking silver thing that cost as much as some people's houses. I was there when you got it; you actually looked at your mother like you didn't hate her for a whole 10 seconds, that's not something I'm likely to forget."

The flicker flashed into a full on smile, but then it was gone and he was poker faced again.
"That one's gone. I got sick of everybody scratching it."

He got in the unfamiliar car and I forced myself out of my stunned stupor and into the passenger side as he started the engine with a roar.

"But you loved those scratches," I continued, knowing that I was pestering, but needing some answers about
something
that morning. "You called them jealousy scars."

"Yeah
, well, I guess I just wanted a change then." He sounded almost rehearsed in his nonchalance and I was about to start analysing that as best I could with my sore little brain, when we sped out into the sunlight and both visibly jerked with the affect it had on our hung-over selves.

With the sun stabbing into my eyes
, there was no way I could think properly and so I abandoned my scrutiny, clenched my jaw and said only, "I don't understand anything about today."

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and then jerked back round to stare out the front windscreen, no snappy comeback forthcoming, which was weird for him.

There was a heavy silence in the car.

After a few moments I started to shift awkwardly in my seat as aches and pains in my nether regions started to make
themselves known in a very demanding way. I wasn't the Virgin Mary by any stretch of the imagination, but last night had been a first for me in a while and my body was clearly not reacting well to getting back into the saddle. The most frustrating thing, however, was that the discomfit was accompanied by a sort of warm glow, like you get after exercising. To think that Elliot Sinclair was responsible for a warm glow in my pelvic area was just plain-

My thoughts were cut off as he suddenly remarked, "There's a hoodie on the backseat,
you should put it on."

"Huh?" I blinked uncomprehendingly
. "I'm not cold."

"Yeah?
Well your nipples don't agree and all that bouncing about you're doing is making them kind of distracting. I don't want to crash and die just because you were in so much of a rush to get in my bed last night that you couldn't spare the couple of seconds to put a bra on."

I
moved so fast I wouldn't have been surprised if there was a cartoon-like 'whoosh' noise as I spun round to grab the aforementioned jumper and yank it over my head. My face flamed a vicious red and I kept the hood up to hide my furious embarrassment, although I was sure my blush had heated the car up a couple of degrees anyway.

"I wouldn't worry about dying in a car accident, Sinclair," I said through gritted teeth. "When I finally get around to killing you, rest assured it'll be a lot more creative than a fender bender."

This seemed to amuse him, but before I could find some way to punish him for being such a jerk, we were pulling up in front of my residential hall and another consideration took top spot.