What I think or don't think is
irrelevant anyway. As you've been so at pains to remind me, you've bought me. I
get it. I'll be the image of the doting society wife, don't you worry, but if
you think for one minute that I will let you threaten the people I love, then you
have got another think coming."
She'd gotten up from her chair during
her impassioned speech and now stood in front of him. With her hands on hips,
her face flushed, and her whole body trembling in outrage, she looked utterly
stunning, even in her ill-fitting ensemble of clothes, and he shoved his fists
in his back pockets to stop himself from crushing her to him and kissing her
senseless. She'd likely make him sing soprano if he tried, and giving in to his
body's urges would just confuse the issues in hand.
She wasn't experienced enough to
accept sex for what it was. A mere physical transaction to leave him and his
bed partner well sated. The few women he allowed himself to indulge with knew
the score. He offered them hot sex and nothing more, breaking off the
entanglement as soon as it wasn't mutually beneficial anymore to either party.
He treated them well, but he never made his affairs public knowledge, and he
certainly never allowed his emotions to get involved. Not that they'd ever been
in danger of getting employed. Not until little Miss Alice here. She made him
look at himself, and he didn't like what he saw.
"If you don’t mind, I would like
to go to bed now." She looked up at him, defiantly staring him down, and
when he was going to say something she put her hand up. "Spare me any more
insults. You can't have anything else to say to me, and I'm not hungry. Please
send my apologies to the cook."
"I hope your appetite will
improve, little Alice. I don't want you wasting away." He smiled to take
the sting out of his words, and she rolled her eyes.
"Don't worry, I shan't. I'm sure
that eventuality, too, is going to be covered in the contracts Percy is drawing
up. I get the impression neither you nor he are ever leaving anything to
chance. It's been a long day that's all. I am allowed to sleep, I take
it?"
The sarcasm stung, and Lakota stepped
back to allow her to pass.
"Let me ring—"
"No need, I can find my own way
to my gilded prison." Alice interrupted him and strode out of the room
with all the quiet dignity that seemed ingrained in very being. It left him
staring after her. An uneasy feeling settled in his gut at the thought of being
married to her for the next twelve months. As much as it would solve his
current problems, it would create a host of new ones. The ache in his groin was
an unwelcome reminder that marriage to his very own Alice in Wonderland would
test his patience to the limit.
Chapter Three
Alice swatted the insistent fly
buzzing in her ear away. Cocooned in Lakota's arms she sought to rekindle the
erotic fantasies playing out between them, but it was no use. The dream slipped
away until it was nothing but a wisp of smoke, the insistent throbbing between
her legs and her sweat-slicked body, the only physical evidence of the erotic
dream her phone had wrenched her out of.
Disoriented in the complete darkness
of her room, Alice fumbled for the phone. She groaned out loud when it
clattered the floor. Face up, it danced like a demented gnat, and a stone
crashed onto Alice's chest, obliterating any left-over arousal, when she read
the lighted display.
There was only one reason her mum
would call her at four AM in the morning. Heart pounding in her throat she
scrambled out of bed, and went down like a sack of potatoes. With the sheet
twisted around her body she had no way of saving herself, and the air whooshed
out of her lungs. Tears sprang to her
eyes and she struggled to sit up. The buzzing sound stopped, and, plunged into
pitch darkness again, Alice couldn't see a thing.
"Fucking hell."
The curse echoed around the still
room, and the phone started buzzing again. The dim light from the
Kevin J. Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, June Scobee Rodgers