Lacybourne Manor(71)

He simply stared at her but the intensity in his eyes was quickly fading to something much less hard and far warmer.

“I get somewhat,” she hesitated, fighting for the right words, “Out-of-control if someone touches me there for any length of time.”

“Does this happen often?” Completely gone was the intensity and in its place was something entirely satisfied and more than a touch amused.

“Never quite like this,” she confessed, his hand on her face had relaxed and she looked away again. “But no one else had done it so,” she hated to say it but there it was, “well.”

He kissed the exposed line of her throat (but not before, out of the corner of her eyes, she caught sight of his mouth twitching) and he murmured against her skin, “I’ll have to remember that.”

“I shouldn’t have told you.”

He lifted his head and, there it was, right there in front of her, his lips were twitching. “You don’t think I would have discovered it eventually?”

“No one else has,” she informed him, straightening her head to look at him again.

And that was when she saw his eyes start dancing with hilarity, absolutely dancing. At that look she lost all embarrassment and became instantly grumpy.

“Then they weren’t very good at it, I’d already suspected. You jump and moan every time I touch you there,” Colin told her.

Sibyl grunted with ill-humour.

“Or lift your ass to meet my hand,” he continued informatively. “I was already intrigued.”

“Thanks Colin,” she gritted between her teeth. “You can stop talking now. I think I have the picture.”

He grinned at her before his head dropped to nuzzle her neck.

Then he suggested, “Let’s talk about your dream now, shall we?”

Her body went rigid.

She could not, under any circumstances, tell him about her dream.

She could provide an entire list, even in writing (if he were to require) of every sensitive spot on her body (behind her ears, the skin underneath her br**sts, and so on).

But she could not tell him about her dream. She could not tell him she’d seen him in her subconscious before she’d ever even met him. He’d think she’d lost her mind.

This meant she was going to have to lie to him.

And Sibyl hated lying. It wasn’t a very nice thing to do and she wasn’t at all good at it. One could get caught up in lies but Sibyl always got caught up in them. She was too absentminded to remember what she’d said, she always had been.

“It was nothing,” she muttered, trying to blow it off.

“It was enough for you to kick me, rather forcefully, in the shin and drive you from the bed and the across the room.”

Her eyes rounded at this news. “I kicked you?”

Colin nodded.

“Did I hurt you?”

“Surprised me, I was dead asleep when it happened.”

Without her volition, her hand went to rest on his waist.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly and she meant it.

His body became quite still as he watched her face. He seemed captivated by something there, so much so he was lost in whatever it was.