Then it came to her in a flood. Warren. He’d taken her to bed last night and she’d fallen asleep with him. His face floated through her consciousness, so precious, and it centered her.
She was okay. She was in Warren’s bed. He was holding her because he was extending their intimacy, not trying to keep her someplace she didn’t want to be. That didn’t seem to matter to her pulse. Snuggling back against his chest was a lot harder than she’d have guessed. What was wrong with her? If nothing else, Warren had always been about safety.
Lying in the dark, she stared at the ceiling she couldn’t see and tried to get her automatic reactions back under control.
“Hey.” Warren’s soft voice whispered across her shoulder. “You okay?”
She nodded. A lie. He was so wonderful, and this was all about her being damaged beyond repair. But she couldn’t breathe. The air wasn’t getting into her lungs somehow and dizziness overwhelmed her.
“Do you need to go back to your own room?” he asked.
Yes. That was exactly what she needed. Nearly sobbing with gratitude, she took the out and rolled to kiss his forehead. Then she snatched her robe and fled.
Back in her own room, she snapped on the light and threw on a pair of flannel pajamas, crawling into the bed she’d been sleeping in for the last week, ever since she and Warren had gotten married. It hadn’t taken too long to end up in his bed, though. She’d moved way too fast, caught up in the fantasy he’d pushed her to enact. Okay, he hadn’t had to push her very hard.
She couldn’t deny that she’d wanted to be with him. He hadn’t forced her in any way. Quite the opposite. If any tactic would have worked to get her out of the dungeon Bryan had put her in, letting her have at least the illusion of control was it. She wasn’t at all fooled, though. Warren could just as easily flip and start controlling all aspects of her life if he so chose. They were married, after all.
The light stayed on. It burned into her retinas as sleep evaded her. She’d screwed up by taking things with Warren so far. She was his employee and she needed to start acting like one. This job was all she had, and she’d started out intending to dazzle him with her skills. Instead, she’d let herself be seduced by things that weren’t available to her, like happiness and fulfillment.
Bryan had stolen that dream from her. Sex was one thing, and she didn’t even handle that very well. But anything else was completely off the table.
In the morning, she took a long shower and washed away all thoughts of the man who had so expertly made love to her the night before. Then she dressed in the dullest suit she owned and set up shop in the library, which was adjacent to Warren’s study. Last Saturday had been wasted on moving and getting settled. Today she had a long agenda of things to accomplish that wouldn’t get done if she sat around and daydreamed about the reasons her muscles ached so badly.
The reason popped his head into the library a little before eight o’clock. “Good morning.”
Warren’s long, delicious gaze wouldn’t let hers go, or maybe that was her fault because he was so gorgeous and so dressed and she shouldn’t be thinking about beckoning him into the library so she could strip him out of the jeans and T-shirt he’d donned in deference to the weekend.
“Good morning,” she squeaked and cleared her throat. “We have a lot to do before Monday. I’ve got meetings scheduled with the major entertainment venues—”
“Have you had breakfast?” he cut in. “Work will be there later. Come have some pancakes with me.”
“I, um…no, I haven’t.” Pancakes were her favorite. She had to spend all day in his company, anyway. Might as well get pancakes out of the deal while she tried to figure out how their dynamic had changed.
Because it had. The fact that he hadn’t readily jumped into her work discussion told that tale. He’d been hot to have these meetings for weeks because Down Under Thunder had deals with all the music festivals and such. Warren and Tilda had been planning to upend his competition’s foothold with the concert crowd.
“The dining room is too formal,” Warren announced and led her out to the terrace where more invisible hands had set up a white bistro table inlaid with shiny bits of glass that caught the morning sunlight.
Charmed against her will, she let him pull out one of the chairs for her and settled into it. Then there was nothing left to do but focus all of her attention on the man across from her.
“The meetings will be a great first step toward choking off Down Under Thunder,” she said in a rush, mostly to keep her mind centered on the important things instead of letting her gaze wander across his broad shoulders.