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Stephanie rose, and closed the curtains, and went back to bed The events of the day kept going through her ht

Grant was here

And she would think about her cast again, and how pleased she had been with the few intense hours she had spent working with Doug, Drew, Suzette, and Lena

Then Clay Barton had arrived In the night, her eyes closed atteain the on eyes Like pinpoints of red-gold light in the ebony of the shadows

Tossing and turning, at last she slept

But only a few minutes were restful

Grant was here

She drea, and she thought that they couldn’t be, because the doors were closed The breeze was drifting over her She was lying naked on the bed, and she could feel the air, as if it were part of an erotic seduction She tried to tell herself that it was ridiculous, she had on a long T-shirt, she athed in cotton, but still…

The air against her flesh was cool, and she wasdrapes; every inch of her skin see, touching And there was the man in the darkness, and by the shape, she was certain that she knew him, knew him so well

Grant was there

Broad-shouldered, a leanwith slow, sinewed ease, co toward her Sleek and bronze, fluid and sensual, the pad of his step silent across the roo over her held her spellbound, and she wouldn’t begin to protest…

not at all, she would be waiting, anxious for the liquid energy and spiraling heat that would come with his touch

Grant… or soile, and the darkness hid the face, but there was a se…

He reached the foot of the bed Crawled there, crouched, with that saers slid along her calf, and the pure, searing e the flesh of her leg, teased beneath her kneecap Her liainst hers with slow, sure solicitation and she was powerless to move There was darkness nohere the drapes had appeared to billow As if soe…

But she couldn’t concentrate on it, couldn’t remember to think, or even allow the rush of fear to touch her, because the sensation now streah was like a flow of lava, and she knehere it was coer evoked was almost more than she could bear

She wanted to reach out and touch the ers into it, feel the warmth and power of the body, and the life within the man, but she couldn’t rown to a desperate fever pitch, and if the surge did not coreat, sweeping cape It would engulf the urgency that eclipsed all else She writhed where she lay, still unable to make her limbs move She tried to whisper his naether, that there was so, no matter how cataclysmic their passion could be…

Closer, oh, God, yes… closer

Then…

So, as if it were perfectly natural for someone else to be present at the crux of such an erotically intimate moment

No… you must be careful, you don’t knoho he is, the shadow is rising behind him, come to me, come with me, listen to me…it’s here, in the past…

The man at her side was Clay Barton

But then, the seduction between her legs beca…

Stephanie awoke abruptly, catching the screalass doors were closed The draperies were still The rooone to bed, in the soft, old, worn cotton T-gown She was shaking, and bathed in sweat

"Damn!" she breathed aloud, and she knew, of course, that she had been drea

She flushed, juht, and doused her face with cold water

And then, in the light, the whole thing see up here!" she said aloud She walked back into the bedroom The shadows there then seeht And despite the fact that the drea, and it was ridiculous to think that she’d really felt anything at all or that anyone could have been in her cottage in any way, shape, or forhout the place

By then, she was feeling really silly, but she wasn’t quite ready to go back to bed She made a cup of tea, and turned on the television There was an all-nightlike MTV or VH1 Curling into a chair, she watched the ain, it was in the chair, with every light in the cottage on, and a rock rhyth her mind