Free Make Me Tremble by Beth Kery Page A

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.”
    Her eyes flashed up at him defiantly.
    “I’m telling you the truth, Alice. I didn’t plan for us to be together in the stables that morning. How could I have? I didn’t know you’d show up there. I
didn’t
plan for us to get involved that way when you came here.”
    “Then why would you worry about me being
here
 . . . in this room? Why did you pack up most of your things and decorate a whole new suite if you didn’t
plan
on us sleeping together from the first? Why else would I be in Dylan Fall’s bedroom if not for sex?” she demanded.
    Dylan suppressed a sigh. Despite the fact that she grasped his waist and lightly pressed her breasts and belly against him in a tempting gesture, her trademark wary expression remained as she stared up at him.
    “I didn’t move out because I had plans to seduce you,” he told her with an air of finality, mapping her elegant, supple spine and the tight curve of her hips with his hands. He felt his need for her mount. How would all of this have played out if this powerful attraction hadn’t been there? It was so hard to say, but he would have contrived something to bring her closer to him.
    “
Why
, then?” she insisted, undaunted by a tone that Dylan used regularly to subdue some of the most tried and hard-boiled executives in the world. Of course it didn’t faze Alice. He closed his eyes briefly. Dammit, she could be impossible.
    “Dylan?”
    “I felt like an interloper, being in here . . . knowing you were about to come to the Durand Estate.”
    “You felt like an
interloper
?” she asked slowly, looking slightly dazed by his reluctant confession. “Because this was Alan Durand’s house? Because of your history with him?”
    “Because it was no longer my room. No longer my home. Not since you came. Period.” Regret sliced through him at his harsh tone when he saw her lush lower lip quiver.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, frustrated. “It’s just that sometimes you keep pressing. And it’s hard to know when you want the truth and when you don’t.”
    “I know,” she said quickly. She, too, looked regretful. “And it’s not true, what you said. Of course Castle Durand