Page 91 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
“No comment,” I muttered.
He laughed. “Oh dear, Iwasn-naughty!”
“I didn’t say that!”
“But you didn’tnotspeak it.”
“I…We…you know…Do you? Did you…makeme dream that?” An uncomfortable, viscid heat seeped under my armpits.Please no.This would be…theinvasionof privacy…
A soft, pacifying emotion fluttered in my chest.
“No, Pippi.” Alistair’s voice lost all its playful sparkle. It was earnest now. “I don’t…Ican’t…make you s-see dreams. Even if I can…could, I wouldn’t. Your dreams are safe.”
I exhaled, blowing some of the tension out. “Okay. Good. I didn’t think you did. But…thank you.”
He hummed, and said, in a voice nearly as hesitant as mine had been, “I also dreamed, though.”
“You did?”
“Yes.”
“Of me?”
“Yes.”
“Goodness. And you’re sure you didn’t?—”
“No. I p-p-promise, Pippi. I wouldn’t.”
“Okay. I believe you. But…huh. Interesting. Maybe there was something in the air last night? With all the magic in this place…I dunno. Can magic scramble dreams like that?”
“Perhaps,” Alistair said, in a tone that suggested he had no flipping clue but was trying to reassure me all the same.
“Hmmm, okay. NowIhave to ask, were you naughty in your dream?”
“No.” A shudder ripped through him. “Butyouwere.”
And those three little words? Spoken in that husky accent? And the shudderhe’d spoken them around?
Stars. Above.
Small, but persistent, tendrils of arousal tugged at my belly, nearly making me squirm.
A terrible human being.
That was what I was.
Jackson, myboyfriend,would worry his brains out when he found me missing, and I was getting all hot and bothered imagining what naughty things I did in Alistair’s dream.
Guilt took a big, bloody chaw out of my heart. As I hemorrhaged, lightheadedness rushed over me. My knees buckled.
“Pippi?” Alistair called when I plopped on my bum.
“I’m okay,” I said.
But I wasn’t.
Not really.
