His violet eyes were hot on me, his silent presence potent.

My breath caught.

My lower stomach clenched against the burst of tingles between my legs.

“Logan?”

He placed a hand slowly on either side of my hips and leaned forward until his face was so close to mine our lips were almost touching. A fierce hunger flashed across his face, and I gasped, feeling arousal shoot through my body.

He wanted me.

Suddenly he grasped me by the nape of the neck and hauled me against him. His mouth captured mine. I instantly melted into him and wrapped my arms around him, my fingers pressing into the muscle beneath his hot skin.

His kiss was hard, demanding, almost punishing, and I reveled in it. Logan groaned, the reverberations causing my nipples to tighten in reaction, and I shuddered. My reaction ignited something inside of him, and he shoved me roughly onto my back before hauling the covers off me. I stared up at him in aroused astonishment as he tugged on my pajama shorts. He slid them deftly down my legs along with my underwear and then he was braced over me, nudging my thighs apart as he stared down into my eyes. Logan’s hands encircled my wrists and he pinned my arms above my head as he pressed his jeans-covered erection between my legs. “Grace,” he whispered hoarsely, the word filled with need.

“Logan,” I pleaded.

His right hand left my wrist to draw down his zipper. He shoved his jeans low enough to release his erection and then returned his hand to my wrist to pin me to the bed.

Suddenly I wasn’t underneath him. I was across the room, watching him glide his body into a woman. Was it me? Was I having an out-of-body experience?

The headboard rattled against the wall as Logan fucked me toward climax.

“Logan, oh God!” a woman I recognized cried out, and I tensed.

It wasn’t me he was with.

I felt sick. Terrified.

No!

“No!” I cried out, my head jerking up from my pillow.

My eyes adjusted to the dark.

It was a nightmare.

Just a nightmare.

“Grace.” The mattress shifted beneath me, and light suddenly poured into the room. A second later Logan was braced over me, his concerned gaze on my face.

I immediately burst into tears.

“Jesus,” he muttered as he pulled me up into a sitting position so he could wrap his arms around me. “What’s this?” he asked, tucking my head under his chin.

I shook my head, trying to control the tears. I didn’t want to tell him. The whole nightmare screamed of my insecurities, and I still wasn’t sure enough of our relationship to know that it wouldn’t send him running for the door.

“Hey,” he said, his voice low and soothing but also firm. “I talked to you about my nightmare. I trusted you. Trust me, Grace. Please. I can’t stand to see you cry.” His arms tightened around me, and he whispered hoarsely, “I don’t want to lose you.”

I turned my face from where it was pressed against his chest so I could speak. “It will freak you out.”

“You didn’t run from me, and what I had to say wasn’t easy.”

When he put it like that, there was actually really no comparison between what bothered us in our dreams. Mine was a distasteful, hurtful family drama. His had been death and guilt.

I suddenly felt very small and foolish. “Now you’re really going to think I’m an idiot.”

“Just tell me.”

I sucked in a huge breath, my stomach fluttering with butterflies. “I had this dream about you before anything happened between us. Before we were even friends.”

“Okay.”

My cheeks flushed. “It was a sex dream.”

“Really?” He sounded extremely pleased with himself.

“If you must know, it disturbed the hell out of me at the time.” I sniffed haughtily.

He grunted. “I’m sure it did. I’m surprised you could look me in the eye afterward.”

“It wasn’t easy.”

I felt him shake with laughter. “Okay… so tonight’s dream?”

I tensed again, and he felt it, his arms tightening around me. “It was the same dream to begin with… but just as you’re about to…”

“About to?”

“Come inside me,” I muttered, still not quite sexually forthright enough to say the words without a little bit of modest embarrassment. “Suddenly I was across the room, watching on. I thought at first I was having some sort of out-of-body experience, but then the woman cried out and… I saw who it was.”

Logan was tense now. “Who was it?”

I shook my head, feeling sick all over again with the memory. “My mother.”

“Jesus Christ,” Logan bit out immediately.

I pulled away from him so I could look him in the eyes. “I know you wouldn’t betray me like that. That’s not why I’m crying.”

He cupped my face in his hands, his eyes dark with worry. “Why are you crying?”

“Because I finally feel like there is a chance I could be really happy… and I thought I had let go of them long ago, but these past few months…” The tears spilled down my cheeks. “She has cancer, Logan. She hasn’t asked for me. My father hasn’t. And it was his pattern, you know… Whenever she hurt me, I’d do something rebellious. I’d decide I was dropping out of high school and he’d suddenly fly home from a business trip to tell me how proud he’d be if I graduated top of the class. And it worked. He manipulated me. Made me believe that he actually cared. And then she’d hurt me again and I decided I wasn’t going to a top university. Community college would do me. Dad would come home, give me presents, sweet-talk me, and suddenly I was going to Oxford. Then she hurt me again and I changed my mind and accepted University of Edinburgh. Dad didn’t mind too much since it was still a good school, but he came back to try to change my mind.