The night was still and quiet. There were a million stars in the night sky. Alice wasn’t sure if it was her sharp anticipation in seeing him or if she was getting used to his silent nocturnal movement in the dark woods, but unlike most nights, when he surprised her, she turned to him just before he touched her back. Instead, his hand slid along her T-shirt and cupped her shoulder. Alice stepped toward him and went up on her tiptoes, both her hands pressed against the solid wall of his chest.
She found his mouth in the darkness unerringly. Her kiss was hungry; she held nothing back. All the feelings that she’d been stifling found an outlet in that kiss.
It only took him a split second to get over his surprise at her attack. Then his arms were closing around her, and he was joining in that wet, wild kiss.
After a delicious moment, where Alice felt her toes curling in her tennis shoes, she reluctantly came up for air.
“I’m still mad at you for keeping things from me,” she breathed out against his lips.
“Exactly how am I supposed to know what to tell you and what not to tell you, when you send me so many mixed messages?”
She bit her lip, unable to answer his question as concisely as he’d asked it.
“I know I’m sending mixed messages,” she conceded. “What else can I do? I’m confused.”
“Understandable.”
“But you shouldn’t have treated Thad like that,” she whispered. “You’re far too protective of me, Dylan. I’m an independent person. I always have been. I don’t want to live in a cage.”
A breeze caught the tops of the trees that surrounded them, making them sigh softly. It suddenly struck Alice that she was having this conversation with him in the pitch black, where she couldn’t see him. Maybe that made it easier, somehow. When she looked into his deep, magnetic eyes, she sometimes lost herself.
“I respect that,” he whispered stiffly after a moment. “And I still don’t think you should be giving anyone carte blanche with your loyalty, but I do understand that Schaefer has become your friend. For better or worse.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Why are you so protective of me? If you can’t stop doing it, you at least have to tell me why. It isn’t twenty years ago, Dylan.”
“Not now,” he whispered tensely. She felt his hands tighten on her shoulders and sensed he was peering into the darkness around them, searching the shadows. He really was paranoid. Wasn’t he? “All right, we’ll talk,” he said finally. “But not here. Up at the house.”
They were silent for the rest of the trip to the castle. Once they’d arrived at the terrace doors, he quietly told her to use her key to make sure it worked. It did. She disarmed the security system, too. When they reached the kitchen, he told her to go on upstairs and he’d bring them something to drink.
In Dylan’s suite, she strategically sat on the couch in the sitting area before the fireplace. She wanted to talk to him, and didn’t need the distraction of the great luxurious bed or the smoking memories of what they’d done in it on previous occasions.
Dylan entered a few minutes later. He wore a dark red plain T-shirt and jeans that emphasized his body in the exact right places. She ate up the vision of him, all big lean male, a man who was supremely confident in his physicality, who knew his power and strength, and precisely how to use it. He carried two glasses. She guessed the one with the dark brown liquid was Dr Pepper. A strange giddy feeling went through her at this evidence of mundane familiarity on his part. His favored drink was club soda with a lime twist—which he carried right now—or expensive French brandy, when he wanted alcohol. He’d never blinked once early on when she’d named her favorite unsophisticated, sugary beverage.
He set their glasses on the coffee table before the couch, reached into his back jean pocket, and plopped a box of Sweet Adelaides on the table next to her drink.
She grinned unabashedly and reached for the box. “Thanks.”
Sweet Adelaides were a Durand bestseller. Along with Jingdots, they were Alice’s longtime favorite sweets. Alice had recently learned that Marie, Dylan’s cook, kept a huge jar filled with various Durand candies on the counter in the castle kitchen. She felt shy but happy, too at Dylan’s little gift. Which was stupid, of course. She opened the box and poured a few of the caramel, peanut, and chocolate candies into her hand, giving Dylan a sideways smile.
“You really must love me if you’re willing to feed my chocolate addiction.”
He sat down on the cushion next to her and leaned back, draping one arm across the back of the couch. Alice paused in the process of popping the candies in her mouth, her hand stilling several inches below her chin. His T-shirt stretched over his wide muscular chest and lean torso. His strong, jean-covered spread thighs were a distraction, too, but it was what she read in his dark eyes that snagged her attention.
“I do.”
She’d been attempting to be light, but suddenly everything seemed dead serious. She felt her cheeks warming.
He smiled. “I know you come by the love of chocolate honestly. It’s in your genes.”
A tingling sensation went through her forearms. Slowly, she opened her palm and stared at the chocolates she held there. She’d looked at similar candies hundreds of times.
She’d never seen them until now.
A shiver tore through her. “Oh my God,” she whispered, shuddering.