Prologue

The lucidness of the dream defied all logic. Despite how real it seemed, Lark knew it was still just a dream. On a rainy morning when she was twenty-five, she’d given her virginity to Charles. She recalled how the pale sunlight had streaked through the window of her London flat and washed over their bodies. Her American tan overshadowed Charles’s pale English skin, and his chest felt warm beneath her fingertips.

This man entangled with her, with a firm grip on her hips as his long fingers dug into them and he thrust his hard cock into her, was not Charles.

He whispered her name like a mantra.

Lark couldn’t see him clearly, but the outline of thick hair fell across a smooth forehead. He slowed as he caught her stare. He trailed a finger down the side of her face, past her neck, over her breasts, and spread his fingers along her hip. Her nipples tightened, and she arched her back for more. His touch tormented her, soft as a whisper. He’d barely grazed her skin, but she lit on fire from that mere stroke.

His hips swiveled into hers, slow and deliberate. He reversed the course of his hands and voyaged the length of her body, setting her sensitive skin alight as his palms skirted her flesh. She trembled with unabated desire.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it feel like?” he whispered with a hint of an Irish brogue.

****

An alarm clock sounded and ripped her from her dream. She sat up and pushed sweaty hair away from her face. Charles’s heavy palm touched her lower back from where he lay beside her.

“All right, love?” he murmured, his voice sleep-ridden.

She reached to her right, pawed the snooze button, and turned the alarm off. She placed her hand over her heart and willed it to slow down. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, babe. Go back to sleep. I’m going to go run.”