Page 48 of Ready For His Rule

This was a fever she couldn’t bring down. Fire, licking at her skin, she couldn’t douse.

Desire she just couldn’t write off.

She gulped down a breath. Slid her eyes shut. Prayed the black curtain over her vision would conquer the flashbacks as easily as Mia kept pounding Luke in their game.

Fail.

The darkness simply allowed the man better access to her mind. Let him invade her mind’s eye like he’d annihilated her personal space in the bedroom. Silently. Dangerously.

A torment she could no longer ignore.

“I need to grab a shower.”

Gem cracked a sleepy eye open from her end of the overstuffed couch. To her left, Ronnie was curled so deeply under a blanket in the recliner, only a poof of her strawberry strands showed. She didn’t move a muscle as Gem mumbled, “Didn’t you already do that today?”

Leave it to Gemini Fiona Vann to remember something like that, even half-comatose. Plus side? Her best friend really was half-comatose.

“I’m jittery.” Not a lie. Not one damn bit. “I’m hoping it’ll help take the edge off.”

Also not a lie—just probably not in the way Gem assumed. And that was fine. If either of her friends knew how Franzen had gotten under her skin like a million fire ants, they’d corn-feed the critters until they were the size of centipedes, then try to convert Franzen into a centipede enthusiast.

Wasn’t going to happen. The man was already clear about how much “enthusiasm” he was willing to commit to their attraction. To her at all. His flesh was willing but his stubborn, baggage-bearing mind was certainly not weak. She’d seen the weight of that baggage in his gaze—along with the obvious conclusion to that. A “casual” roll in the hay with her would drag all that bullshit out of his psyche again. He’d have to look at it all again…

She understood that. In a normal world, could even be okay with it—because in a normal world, they’d have time to develop a normal relationship…

But this wasn’t a normal world.

She was like Mia’s peach princess. Running into an impassable wall. Knowing there was treasure on the other side but trapped, unable to get to it.

Trapped…

Sometimes, the princess had to opt for a cold shower instead of the treasure.

“Hummm.” Gem’s sleepy moan brought her sights back down. Her friend squeezed Tracy’s fingertips then used her free hand to muffle a yawn. “Okay, honey. Have fun.”

With a smile, Tracy tucked Gem’s hand back under her lap blanket. Sweet, exhausted woman. There was a damn good chance she and Ronnie slept as little as Franzen last night. The evidence of their nocturnal activity was still strewn all over the dining room table. Armed with only a bunch of legal pads and short spurts on the deep internet, they’d managed to learn little beyond the information already carried via the TV networks. The hits on seven different world leaders, across just as many cities, were as horridly unexpected as they were meticulously planned—by a web of operatives deeply embedded in each country’s government. The individuals who’d turned traitor on their lands were in tight connection with each other, and had been for a very long time.

Encouraging each other…as they watched every move their targets made…

For how long?

The question was a specter in her mind, haunting every step she took down the hall toward the master bedroom.

In how many ways?

Did they know that Craig took ten minutes out of every morning to keep up a handwritten journal? Did they know he tried to keep Wednesday nights free, so he and Norene could maintain their pizza night tradition from college? Did they know that every day when he called or came by Tracy’s office, he brought a new Broadway trivia question to try and stump her?

What if they knew all of that?

What if they knew even more?

By the time she entered the master bathroom, a shiver defined her steps. Thankfully, there was a switch for a wall heater. She pushed it on before even activating the lights. As soon as all those were on—the set over the shower stall, as well as the main overheads and the vanity illumination—she finally turned and shut the door.

Staring, for a very long time, at her trembling hand against the knob.

Ordering herself to let it go.

Wondering why the hell she’d even come in here.

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