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“Alec.”
The sound of his name on her lips spoken in such raw desperation pierced the veil of sleep. Alec’s mind tried furtively to cling to the fantasy as it slipped through his fingers like grains of sand, but then he woke to the sound of rustling and the feel of a warm body pressed against his own.
One that could only belong to Lottie.
Alec’s eyes shot open. His arm was flung possessively around her waist and hiships—Christ, he was practically grinding them against her backside.
He immediately pushed away from her and fell directly onto the floor, landing on his back in a room-shaking thud. Alec stared up at the ceiling in a daze as his heart still pounded from the turns of his wicked mind.
After a moment, Lottie poked her head over the side of the bed and blinked sleepily. “Are you all right?”
He let out a relieved sigh. Thank God she had slept through his attempted ravishing. “Fine. I…I must have had a nightmare.”
Lottie stared at him. “You were asleep?”
Alec shot up off the floor. “Youweren’t?”
Her brows rose in shock and she sat back on her knees. He took in the deep flush on her cheeks and lips, and in the early-morning light the rosy tips of her nipples were just barely visible beneath her sheer cotton chemise. Alec’s fingers twitched and he turned around as his cock began to stir again, as if he was nothing more than a randy schoolboy. But wasn’t this the very stuff of a schoolboy’s dreams? Alec pressed a hand roughly against the front of his trousers and took a calming breath as an unsettling thought came to him: Hadanyof it been a dream?
He whirled back around. Lottie hadn’t moved from her place on the bed—and still looked freshly tumbled.
“Alec,” she murmured. Her voice, husky from sleep, sounded exactly as it had in his dream; like the very devil herself was calling to him. But if Alec took so much as a step toward her now, it would be all over. He would not stop until he wrenched everything from her, from them both. Lottie had no idea how deep the rot inside him went. Not a clue. And he needed to keep it from her.
I imagine I will like anything you do.
Alec ignored the throbbing between his thighs and raked a hand through his hair.
“I’m sorry if I—I violated you in any way,” he said. “This is entirely my fault. I should have slept on the chair.”
She reared back in confusion.“Violated?”
Alec let out a desperate huff and placed his hands on his hips. Her reaction was not helping matters. She should be mortified. Outraged. Disgusted. Not—nothurt. “Well, what else would you call it?”
“You didn’t force yourself on me,” Lottie insisted. “I thought you meant—” she began, then seemed to think better of it and shut her mouth.
“What?” he demanded, his voice tight with anxiety. “Did I say something?”
God damn it, if he had spokenanyof it aloud, and if she questioned him on it now, he would fall apart.
Lottie’s eyes widened. She hesitated, wetting her lips, their fate on the tip of her tongue, but then she shook her head. “No. You didn’t.”
Alec let out a sigh, but the relief was cold comfort. Barely a taste of her, and it was already miles better than anything he had experienced.
He turned his head away. “Then for God’s sake I wishyouhad.”
Lottie winced at the anguish in his voice. She didn’t know which felt worse: his worry over her reaction, or his very palpable regret for havingtouchedher in the first place, however briefly.
Though Lottie’s heart had begun to pump with furious anticipation when Alec’s arm had slowly wrapped around her waist drawing her firmly against him and offering a tantalizing tease of what lay beneath his clothing, it was nothing compared to the pure joy that had burned through her when he murmuredmy love. But the utter horror that crossed Alec’s face shortly afterward made it clear that he certainly hadn’t been dreaming of her.
“It was nothing. Really. You were obviously asleep and it was a momentary indiscretion. There’s no need to make this into more than it was,” she said stiffly. If he had so easily brushed her off last night, she could do the same now. “Icertainly won’t.”
Alec blinked slowly. “Forgive me,” he began. “I didn’t realize it was of such little consequence to you.”
Lottie clenched her hands against his bone-dry tone. “Well, I’m certainly not going to give in to aswoonbecause your penis pressed against me for twenty blasted seconds.”
Lottie had never said the wordpenisaloud before. To anyone. Not even herself. She was rather proud not to have stumbled over it. “Yes, Idohappen to have a basic knowledge of biology,” she railed on in the face of his obvious shock, masking her hurt with impudence. “And in case you weren’t aware, women are just as prone to desires of the flesh as men are.”
Alec collected himself enough to shoot her a murderous look. “I am quite familiar, I assure you.”
