Free Before Her Billionaires by Julia Kent Page A

minty flavor. Her body flushed and her eyes searched the dark room, seeking answers.
    “We adore you,” said a new voice, deep and filled with a sensual growl that made her entire body shiver , the epicenter of this tectonic shift between her legs. Her hand groped to find the body attached to that voice, encountering hard, rigid muscle, arms with veins that stood out like a rope, like a lifeline she must grab and hold on to for dear life.  
    A nd just as her eyes found a shaft of light that illuminated the room just enough to see their faces, to focus on the very man (men?) who gave her so much pleasure, she woke up to a cold, empty room, her heart racing, pulse flying like a supersonic jet, a cold sheen of sweat soaking her breasts, her cleft, her soul.
    “No!” she cried out.
    Not again. Pounding her fists on the unsympathetic mattress, she hit two, three, four times, her thin cotton nightgown stuck to her loose breasts, her hair flying with the force of her anger.  
    Again.
    These dreams invaded her mind most nights, slinking in like a snake, like a mist that moved and permeated, filling in the cracks of her subconscious. Heart pounding, clit throbbing, she burst into furious tears, starting an ugly cry that made her ribs ache, her throat hurt so much she thought she was choking, the sound of weeping as intimate as the touch of those warm hands from her dream.
    But not nearly as satisfying.
    The glow of the red numbers from her alarm clock infiltrated her brain. 4 :44 a.m. It was nearly the same time every night, like clockwork (ha ha). A s she took in a shaky breath and her neck stopped spasming, she rubbed her eyes over and over, as if she could massage into them some sort of message that could permeate her brain.
    What that message was, though, she didn’t know. Something. Anything. Indistinct and uncertain, it was a message. The universe was trying to tell her something, and it involved two men, two mouths, four hands, and a lot of need.
    Sighing, she pulled the tangled sheets off her legs and looked down, pink painted toenails chipped, her feet wiggling with restlessness. A cup of chamomile tea would be her nighttime companion, it seemed.
    And not those two men.
    Two. It started out as one, a guy who resembled her ex...boyfriend? Ex-cheater? Ex... something . Ryan had been the guy she’d dated, the guy she thought she would have a future with, the guy who turned out to be married.
    Already married.
    So was he a cheater, or was she ? When he broke up with her he’d flung his marriage in her face, telling her it was her fault she had been with him, that she had made him stray, that she had been at fault for his infidelity. I n the warped way that she allowed the world to work sometimes, she’d actually believed him for a short while. She’d apologized. She’d begged him to forgive her.
    And even after her best friend, Josie, had spent a long weekend de-programming her and making her see what a manipulative asshole Ryan had been, she’d dreamed about him.
    What a slippery animal the unconscious can be. It’s your best friend, your worst enemy, your confidante and your nemesis. The unconscious keeps you going at night and shapes your social instincts during the day.  
    And deep in the dark hours of the middle of the night, it arouses you to no end with dreams of a love life that would make anyone blush.
    That cup of chamomile wasn’t going to make itself. Heaving herself off the bed, she took a few steps on shaking legs, thighs running together under the thin cotton of her nightgown. The throbbing between those thighs only intensified, a deeply irritating feeling that wasn’t going to abate.
    Laura made a mental note to replace the batteries on her vibrator—it had stalled out on her the other night, sputtering to a dead halt just when she’d needed it most, making her cry out with a hoarse sound she’d last made during sex with Ryan, when he’d finished first and rolled over.
    And you couldn’t just