Page 1

Chapter 1

Molly Graham-Bishop

Some sleeps felt like minutes. Others, years.

Molly woke to loose, lazy limbs and a meteorologically significant pressure system inside her skull. Joints like jelly, thoughts a dense fog. She refused to open her eyes, cheek pressed into a downy pillow.

She was nothing more than candle wax dripped between bedsheets, warm enough to stay softened. Relaxation was a rarity in her tension-powered body, one that not even a blooming headache could ruin.

For the sake of languid limbs and a cozy bed, she could put off her incredible weekend to-do list a little while longer. No matter that she had a cram session scheduled with her Research Methods study group. And the groceries she desperately needed to grab, lest she live another day on past-their-prime bananas and her dwindling supply of trail mix. And the several chapters of leisure reading she’d promised herself she’d make time for.

Her mattress shifted, weight displaced. An arm wrapped around her middle from behind, a solid body lining itself up against her back.

Whatever luxuriant warmth had been softening Molly’s body froze.

Had Simon made the drive over for the weekend?

The arm around her middle pulled her closer. Elegant fingers danced across her bare stomach, exposed by a disheveled sleeping shirt. Then, a mouth against her skin. Lips pressed to the muscle stretching between the base of her neck and her shoulder joint, shooting a frisson of heat down her spine. A sense of comfort began coaxing softness from her again.

“It’s too early to be thinking that loud.” A low voice floated against the back of her neck.

Not Simon’s, but familiar enough in an uncanny way to burst panic bright behind her ribs.

“Oh, no you don’t,” the man said, tightening his hold. “It’s far too early for productivity. I plan on keeping you in this bed for at least another hour. And I was promised waffles.”

Molly thrashed, tearing herself from his grip and out of the bed. Eyes finally open, brain fully drenched in adrenaline, she noticed for the first time that this room, this bed she’d woken up in, didn’t belong to her.

She staggered back, disoriented. Unfamiliar furniture. Unfamiliar walls. Unfamiliar sheets. Unfamiliar clothes on her own body. And an unfamiliar—or perhaps too inexplicably familiar—man in the bed looking up at her with wide, icy blue eyes and a mouth dropped open in what looked like preemptive question.

“What the fuck?” Molly breathed.

Aster Bishop—Aster Bishop—was staring at her from between deep-navy sheets. And she had very few thoughts left in her head besides screaming obscenities and boatloads of fear. Boatloads enough to fill shipping yards, entire harbors.

Bishop’s pale blond hair was mussed, and he lay shirtless—a bewilderingly compelling sight—sleep rumpled, and looking equally as confused as Molly felt.

Her temple throbbed with a flash of pain. Sucking in a breath, she winced as a jolt of vertigo spun her vision.

“Molly? Are you okay?” Just hearing Bishop’s voice had Molly backing further away, tripping into an armoire.

Her eyes rolled at another crack of pulsing pain, stronger than before. It ripped a panicked laugh-cry from her throat. So much pain roared inside her skull that she literally couldn’t think straight, nothing left behind but inappropriate laughter.

What other option was there when staring at Aster Bishop’s half-naked form cautiously rising from a bed and looking at her as if she’d lost her mind?

Maybe she had.

There was no conceivable series of events that made waking up in his bed a possibility.

She was still laughing. A feeble, unhinged sound barely a step away from crying. What explanation was there for the fact that she remembered nothing of whatever events led to this bedroom? Each possibility jumping the queue to catch her attention was worse than the last.

Bishop crossed the room, ignoring her panicked order for him to stay away. Her knees buckled, brain on fire.

Distantly, she heard “Mols?” Fingertips digging into her skin, hands trying to hold her up. It was a nickname she didn’t know, laced with concern she had no reference for.

Whatever else Bishop said fell away.

Her last half-aware observation, framed by rapidly darkening tunnel vision, was that Aster Bishop had a very nice face when he wasn’t scowling at her.

Bright lights.