Preston’s words trailed off when he saw that Chandra had closed her eyes, while her chest rose and fell in an even rhythm. “Chandra,” he said softly, “did you fall asleep on me?”
“No. I was listening to you. Champagne always makes me drowsy.”
“We can stop now if you want to.”
Chandra smiled, but didn’t open her eyes. “Do you mind if we don’t move?”
Shifting slightly, he settled her into a more comfortable position. “We can stay here all night if you want.”
She opened her eyes. “No, Preston. I’m not ready to sleep with you.”
Preston twirled several strands of her hair around his finger. “I wasn’t suggesting we sleep together. The bedrooms on the second floor are for my guests.”
“Where do you sleep?” Chandra asked quickly, hoping to cover up her faux pas. Preston had kissed her twice and she’d assumed that he wanted to sleep with her. If she could have, at that moment she would’ve willed herself totally invisible.
“Here on the chaise. The sofa converts into a bed, but half the time I end up sleeping on it instead of in it.”
“I hope you have a chiropractor.” Preston’s height exceeded the length of the sofa by several inches.
“I happen to have one on speed dial. Sitting for hours in front of a computer takes a toll on the neck, back and shoulders.”
“You should practice yoga or tai chi,” Chandra suggested. “I find it works wonders whenever I have trouble sleeping.”
Preston was hard-pressed not to smile. Chandra had just given him the opening he needed to delve into her dreams without letting her know he’d read and committed to memory what she’d written in the journal he’d found.
“What would keep you from sleeping?” he asked.
“It’s usually anxiety or a very overactive imagination.”
“What do you have to be anxious about, Chandra?”
She exhaled an audible sigh. “A couple of weeks before I was scheduled to leave for Belize, I discovered I couldn’t sleep. I’d go to bed totally exhausted, but couldn’t sleep more than one or two hours. My dad, who is a doctor, offered to write a scrip for a sedative, but I refused because I didn’t want to rely on a controlled substance that could possibly lead to dependency.
“I was losing weight and when I ran into a friend from college I told her about my problem. She was on her way to a yoga class so I went along just to observe. I joined the class the following day, and also signed up for tai chi.”
“How long did it take for you to get rid of your insomnia?”
Chandra stared at the vivid color on her toes. “It took about two weeks. By the time I’d arrived in Belize I was sleeping soundly, but then something else happened.”
Lowering his head, Preston pressed his nose to her hair, inhaling the sweet fragrance. “What happened?”
The seconds ticked, bringing with them a comfortable silence. “I began dreaming.”
The admission came from a place Chandra hadn’t known existed. Her dreams were a secret—a secret she never planned to divulge to anyone. She’d recorded her dreams in journals, believing she would one day reread them. She’d thought about publishing them under a pseudonym, because some of them were more than sensual. They were downright erotic.
“Were they dreams or nightmares?”
“Oh, they were dreams.”
Preston smiled. Her dreams had become his nightmares because they’d kept him from a restful night’s sleep. “How often did you dream?”
“I had them on average of two to three a week.”
“Whenever I dream I usually don’t remember what they were,” Preston admitted.
“It’s different with me,” Chandra said. “Not only do I remember, but they were so vivid that I was able to write them down.”
“What do you think triggered your dreams?”
“I don’t know, Preston.”
“Are your dreams different, or all along the same train of thought?”
Chandra didn’t know how much more she could divulge about her dreams before Preston realized that she was sexually frustrated, that it had been years since she’d slept with a man. And she didn’t need a therapist to tell her that she’d used her dreams to act out her sexual fantasies.
“They were the same,” she finally admitted.
“That sounds boring, C.E.”
She rolled her eyes. “My dreams were hardly boring, P.J.”
“Do you want to tell me about them?” Preston whispered in her ear.
“No!”
Preston fastened his mouth to the side of her neck. “Why not?”
Chandra shivered slightly when Preston increased the pressure along the column of her neck. A slight gasp escaped her parted lips with the growing hardness pressing against her hips. It took Herculean strength not to move back to experience the full impact of Preston’s erection.
“What are you doing, Preston?” Chandra questioned, not recognizing the strangled voice as her own.
Closing his eyes while swallowing a groan, Preston tried to think about any and everything except the soft crush of Chandra’s buttocks pressed intimately to his groin.
“I’m committing your scent to memory.”
Chandra closed her eyes. “I’m not talking about you nibbling on my neck.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Pascual would never hump Josette.”
“I’m not humping you, baby. This is humping.” Preston gyrated back and forth, pushing his erection against her hips.
Waves of desire swept over Chandra like a desert sirocco, stealing the breath from her lungs and stopping her heart for several seconds. The sensations holding her in an erotic grip were similar to what she’d experienced in her dreams. Her breasts were heavy, the area between her thighs moist and throbbing with a need that screamed silently to be assuaged.
The man who came to her in her dreams was a fantasy, a nameless, faceless specter she’d conjured up from the recesses of her overactive imagination, but Preston Tucker was real, as real as his heat and arousal.
“Please don’t move.” Chandra was pleading with him, but she was past caring, because if he didn’t stop then she would beg him to make love to her. It was one thing to fantasize about making love with a faceless specter and another to have an actual live, red-blooded man simulating making love to her.
Preston went still, but there was little he could do to still the pulsing sensations in his groin. He didn’t know what it was about Chandra Eaton that had him so lacking in self-control. He’d wanted to rationalize and tell himself it was because of her erotic dreams, but he would be lying to himself. He’d told Chandra that he liked her. The truth was he liked her and wanted her in his bed; however the notion of sleeping with Chandra was shocking and totally unexpected.
“What were we talking about before you decided to hump me, Preston?”
The soft, dulcet voice broke into his reverie. “We were talking about your dreams.”
“Even before that,” Chandra said in an attempt to change the topic. Preston had asked what she’d dreamed about, and how could she tell him that her dreams were all about sex, that they were continuous frames of R-and X-rated films with her in the leading role.
“We