d he felt her to be entirely present in the moment with him, abandoning herself wholesale to pleasure.
To him.
“Do you remember to whom this room belonged now?” he asked from behind her, his voice echoing off the bare walls in the mostly empty room. She’d accused him of manipulation and lying when she’d realized he’d purposefully kept her from entering this room. That was before he’d told her the truth of her identity.
He was glad when she started slightly and turned her head, meeting his stare. Since Alice had come to Castle Durand, there were a few times when she’d go utterly still in his presence, and he’d seen the ghosts of her past flicker eerily in the depths of her eyes.
Is that what he was to her? A ghost?
“Was it Addie Durand’s room?” she asked slowly, her low, hoarse voice causing his skin to roughen.
His heart knocked uncomfortably against his sternum, even though he knew his appearance remained calm. No matter how hard he was trying—no matter how much he understood—he couldn’t entirely adjust to Alice’s distant, disconnected attitude about what he’d told her about Adelaide Durand.
He nodded and stepped toward her. “It was originally Addie’s nursery, and it had just been remodeled for her before she was taken. Are you remembering?” he asked her again cautiously.
She shook her head adamantly. Her short, dark hair was growing some. Her spiky bangs fell into her eyes. She stuck out her bottom lip and blew up on them to clear her vision. The uncontrived, potently sexy gesture distracted him.
Just like almost everything about Alice did.
“I don’t remember anything,” she said.
Despite her quick, firm denial, he wasn’t entirely sure he believed her. “Then why did you come here?”
“I was curious,” she replied, her eyebrows arched in response to his quiet challenge.
“And how did you guess this was Addie’s room?”
She shrugged. “You tried to keep me from it. And it’s the most ideally situated in the house, so large and airy …” She faded off, glancing around at the ornate crown molding, the bluish-silver silk wallpaper and the enormous bay window with a built-in, curving cushioned bench that looked down on the gardens, and the sharp drop-off of the dune to Lake Michigan. Because it was night, only their reflections and that of the chandelier’s glowed in the black glass. The room was nearly empty, only a few of his personal items remaining from his recent occupancy. He saw Alice’s neck convulse as she swallowed. “You and Sidney had suggested how the Durands prized Addie so much, always giving her the best. I just guessed it’d belonged to her. And to you. Alan Durand prized you, as well,” she added, once again meeting his stare.
Slowly, she spun to face him. She wore only the fitted T-shirt she’d had on last night during the storm and a semi-transparent pair of white cotton panties. Instinctively, his gaze dropped over her, trailing along her elegantly sloping shoulders, the full, thrusting breasts that stood in such erotic contrast to her slender limbs and narrow waist and hips. His gaze lingered between her thighs. Alice dyed the hair on her head to an obscuring, near-black color, but her true shade was a dark red-gold, a combination of her father’s blond and her mother’s auburn. He was reminded of that yet again as he spied the triangle of light brownish-red pubic hair visible beneath her thin panties. Despite the tension of the moment, he felt his sex flicker in arousal. There was something about the contrast of Alice’s tough-girl strength and her potent vulnerability that lit a fire in him, something elemental and strong. The paradox was singularly powerful.
He dragged his gaze to her face.
“It must be strange for you, thinking of me living in Addie’s room. Here. In the Durand’s house,” he added, taking another step toward her. It struck him that he was often approaching Alice like he might a half-wild animal forced into some domestic confine, highly aware that she might bolt at any moment.
He was determined to catch her, no matter what move she made.
She shook her head. She wore not a trace of makeup. Without the heavy eyeliner and mascara she often wore to obfuscate or intimidate—or both—her dark blue eyes looked enormous in her delicate face. Jesus, what he’d experienced when she’d walked into that office last May, so awkward and yet so defiant in her inexpensive new interview suit. The truth had slammed home, jarring him, rattling him to the center of his bones, even though he’d taken great pains to hide it. He had seen those eyes before.
But even if it had been the first time Dylan had ever seen her, he suspected he might have been nearly as shaken. No wonder she’d been drawn to the eye-goop. Her eyes would draw men with the noblest intentions.
And the foulest.
“No, it doesn’t seem strange to me at all. I can see you in this room.” Her chin tilted and her eyes sparked in that familiar defiant gesture. “You moved out of it because of me, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know what to expect. Sidney thought we should cautiously expose you to the surroundings,” he admitted. Sidney was familiar with Adelaide Durand’s history and had been friends with Alan and Lynn. He’d brought his psychological expertise to bear on Alice’s unique situation, once Dylan had finally tracked her down after nearly two decades of searching. It was Sidney who had suggested bringing her to the estate under the pretense of hiring her as a Camp Durand counselor. In that scenario, Dylan could keep an eye on what she recalled and how she would react, monitor her for signs of trauma. If not him personally, then the two Durand security employees Dylan had hired to watch her could do the job.
“I was familiar with Addie Durand’s habits,” he began slowly. “There are a few rooms that I worried might be more likely to trigger something … undesirable. This one. Alan and Lynn’s suite. The den, the original living room … and the dining room. With few exceptions, the entry hall, the kitchen, the terrace gardens, and the media room have been extensively renovated, so I didn’t worry as much about that. Most of the other rooms here weren’t used much—either by the Durands or by me, so they weren’t of any concern.” He hesitated.
“I never imagined you’d inadvertently find your way into the dining room that first night you arrived here at the castle. Or the woods and stables the next day,” Dylan told her, choosing his words carefully. Alice had made it very clear to him that while she would discuss the details of Addie Durand, her kidnapping, and Dylan’s part in the tragedy, she wouldn’t talk about Addie and herself as if they were the same person. The recent revelation still seemed too overwhelming for her to assimilate. Currently, they were treading on dangerous ground.
Her eyelids narrowed slightly, and he knew he’d made some kind of misstep, despite his caution. “You suspected I was going to be in your bedroom, even before I came here? And so you moved suites, in order not to trigger any …” She faded off uncertainly, aware she was skimming close to the fire. Her defiant expression made a quick resurgence. “I thought you said that you hadn’t planned for anything sexual between us … that it just happened that morning in the stables?”
“That’s true. And since you seem to need a reminder, you’re the one who seduced me, Alice,” he said with a hard, pointed glance meant to quash her suspicion immediately. It didn’t work. He mentally damned her defensive posture and angry expression and closed the space between them. Satisfaction went through him when he took her into his arms, and she pressed her front against him.
“If that’s what you want to call the first three seconds of our being together. It was all you after that, baby,” she grumbled under her breath.
“I didn’t hear you complaining.”