I had a full day at work tomorrow and I needed to be up early enough so I could swing by the gym before I went into my office.
I had also agreed to have drinks with a fellow attorney after my final court appearance of the day. It was a semidate I had already rescheduled twice, so I couldn’t reasonably back out again without looking like a complete jerk. Doing any of that on a few hours of sleep was less than ideal, but I was getting used to running on fumes lately. I, too, was having dreams that woke me up in the middle of the night, that left me shaken, heated, and too wound up to stay in bed.
Only my dreams weren’t terror inducing—they were good. Oh, so fucking good. They were better than good. They were the best dreams I had ever had. Hell, the dreams were better than any kind of actual sexual experience I had ever had while wide-awake. They were the kind of dreams that had me jerking up from a dead sleep while I panted and sweated. I woke up twisting in my sheets and touching myself because the man that starred in each and every single one of them was nowhere around.
Control was everything to me, and Zeb Fuller made me want to lose it even when he was sound asleep in his own bed all the way across Denver.
I’d paid him a fortune to turn this broken-down, sagging, sorry excuse for a house into a stately, soaring, and magnificent home, and so Zeb had his hands all over my real-life dreams, not just my naughty midnight ones. He had finished the last of the remodel a couple of weeks ago, and ever since I found myself missing the sounds of hammering, drilling, and the rumble of his deep voice. All the dirty, sexy things I secretly wanted him to do to me were chasing me into dreamland, making for rough mornings and some serious dark circles under my eyes. I was pale anyway, so there was no hiding the evidence of Zebulon Fuller’s effect on me.
It was stupidly simple. I had a crush that I couldn’t shake, and it terrified me.
It made me feel off balance, unsure, and so damn sexually frustrated I wanted to pull out all of my long, blond hair by the roots just for a distraction.
I swore softly as a piece of glass slid across my fingertip when I bent down to usher the mess into the dustpan. I stuck the bleeding digit into my mouth and grunted in annoyance at myself. I had learned before I could walk that showing any kind of emotion was a weakness, a fatal flaw that would end with you in tears as the victor stood over your broken, weeping form with a look of pity and disgust on his face. I shouldn’t have jumped when Poppy startled me. I was supposed to be made of more glacial stuff than that. I didn’t react to anything—ever. Poppy was still staring at me with wide-eyed curiosity, so I pulled my finger out of my mouth and wiped it on the yoga pants I had worn to bed.
“I was having weird dreams, too. I thought a glass of wine would help put me back to sleep.” My tone was frostier than I meant it to be, but old habits were hard to break. My coolness was habit and it was armor.
She shifted her weight a little and again I was reminded of a timid woodland creature always ready to flee from danger. She was so pretty, so delicate, and no one should have had to endure the things this young woman had been through in her short lifetime. Poppy Cruz was only a few years younger than my own twenty-eight, but when her amber eyes assessed me with a knowing that felt ancient, it seemed like she was aeons ahead of me in both life and experience. Even though I had been raised by a father who was a tyrant, and had had to put my mother, who loved him and tried to please him right up until her last breath, in the ground before I was old enough to drive. My formative years had been spent trying to live up to standards I could never reach and mourning the loss of a woman I loved and loathed equally.
“You’ve had a lot of sleepless nights since Zeb finished all the work on the house. You seem . . . unsettled.”
I wanted to roll my eyes in exasperation with myself but held it back. I shouldn’t seem any way to anyone. My cracks were starting to show and that unnerved me to no end.
Was “unsettled” another word for horny enough to climb the walls? Because if so, then yes, I was most definitely unsettled. And I felt ridiculous for it. I’d never had the mere thought of a man distract me or cost me much-needed shut-eye before. I was supposed to have more restraint than that.