Page 55 of Freed
A strange shiver runs through me then, like the dream itself has gone still.
And slowly, painfully, consciousness begins to pull me up from the dark.
The first thing I notice is heat.
The second is that the heat is real.
My lashes flutter open, and for one disoriented second I don’t understand what I’m seeing. The room is dim, washed in gray London light leaking around the curtains. The bed is warm beneath me. My cheek is pressed to bare skin.
Bare skin.
My stomach drops.
I go completely still.
Oh God.
I’m sprawled half on top of Lorenzo.
One of my legs is tangled with his. My arm is draped across his stomach. My hand is curled against his chest like I put it there for comfort. Beneath my cheek, I can feel the slow, steady thud of his heartbeat. And beneath my stomach he’s hard.
Mortification hits so hard it burns.
I jerk back so fast I nearly tangle myself in the blankets and fall off the bed. Lorenzo’s hand shoots out on instinct, catching my waist before I can pitch sideways.
That only makes it worse.
I suck in a sharp breath and stare at him.
He’s awake.
Of course he’s awake.
His dark hair is mussed from sleep, his jaw shadowed, his bare chest warm beneath the sheet twisted low around his hips. But it’s his eyes that ruin me—dark, alert, fixed on me with an expression I can’t quite read.
Not amusement or anger but something far more dangerous.
I wrench out of his grip and scramble backward until my spine hits the headboard.
“Oh my God.”
My face feels like it’s on fire.
Lorenzo pushes himself up onto one elbow, watching me carefully. “Elizabeth?—”
“No.” I drag both hands over my face, wanting to disappear inside the oversized hoodie I’m still wearing. “No, absolutely not. We are not talking about this.”
The corner of his mouth shifts.
“You were asleep.”
I drop my hands and glare at him. “Thank you for that deeply humiliating clarification.”
His gaze moves over my face, lingering just long enough to make my pulse trip. “You didn’t know what you were doing.”
That should make me feel better. It doesn’t. Because fragments of the dream are coming back to me now in broken, awful flashes. Warmth. His name on my lips. Need curling hot and soft through my body. And the plea. Heat floods me all over again.
I stare at the blankets like they personally betrayed me. “Did I say anything?”
