Page 12 of Dare to Love Me

Then—

Oh.

His gaze flicks downward.

To where Spencer is suctioned to me.

For one hot, messy second, something flickers in those icy blue eyes. Heat.

His chest heaves under that crisp white shirt, Adam’s apple bobbing like he’s choking down something feral and downright filthy.

Then—bam—it’s gone. His eyes wrench away from me like I’m a skid mark he can’t bear to look at, darting to the row of leather-bound books across the room.

“Spencer,” I hiss, shoving his head away with enough force to qualify as assault.

Spencer yelps, tumbling off the bed in an undignified heap.

I scramble upright, lunging for the duvet, but the king-sized monstrosity refuses to cooperate, stubbornly tangling around my legs.

“Give me your doctor coat,” I snap at Spencer, who is blinking up at me from the floor, dazed, possibly concussed.

Oh god, oh fuck, it’s Edward bloody Cavendish—the most terrifying man I’ve ever met—standing in the doorway, witnessingthis.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I screech.

Edward’s face is a slab of granite. “Me? I should be asking you that.”

I huff, yanking the fabric higher up my chest. “Don’t you know it’s rude to barge into people’s bedrooms like some kind of pervert?”

He tugs at his tie, grimacing like he’s swallowing razor blades, the motion pulling his shirt tight across those sculpted shoulders. “I’mthe pervert in this scenario?”

There’s too much happening here.

Too fucking much. I’m in hell, and it’s got mahogany furniture.

Spencer, the useless sack of limbs, hauls himself off the floor. He turns to face our uninvited guest, his face glistening with the evidence of his doomed muff-diving mission, and lobs a bombshell so massive my soul tries to eject itself through my tits.

“Shit, I’m so sorry, Uncle Edward.”

. . . Wait.

Wait.

I freeze mid-duvet-wrestle. My eyes ping-pong between them in horror.

“UNCLE?” Surely, I’ve misheard. “Is this some kind of sick joke?”

Edward’s icy stare shifts between us, taking in every humiliating detail.

Normally, I can barely manage a coherent sentence around this man, even when I’m dressed and not flashing my bits. But this? This is beyond redemption.

Spencer, the moron, just stands there, his dick swinging under that ridiculous oversized doctor coat, while I flail against the duvet, desperately trying to twist it into something resembling a toga.

Edward clears his throat—not a subtle “excuse me” kind of sound.

No. This is the sound of a man trying to dislodge an entire chunk of disgust from his windpipe.

He bends down, pinches my discarded dress between his thumb and forefinger, and holds it up like a used condom some degenerate left on his pristine floor. “I assume this is what you’re looking for?”