Too hot. Had she fallen asleep by the pool? It wouldn’t be the first time. She loved to lie out on the lounge chair and read, but usually the maid or Tasha would wake her up before she burned. Tasha. Her heart thumped violently, and panic squeezed her throat. She opened her eyes to complete darkness and tried to move, but there was a foreign weight on her legs. “Shh. It’s okay. Go back to sleep,” Cole whispered from behind her. She felt the mattress beneath her hip and realized she was in Cole’s arms, one of them below her head and the other spread over her waist. He’d also thrown a leg over hers, effectively holding her captive. Cole DeMarco was spooning her. And she was naked. How the hell did they get here? “What happened?” she asked, her voice raspy. His hand brushed over her hip bone, back and forth, soothing her. “You fainted after the flogging, so I carried you upstairs. You woke up, mumbled it wasn’t time to get out of bed yet, and passed out again. I didn’t want to leave you, in case there was something medically wrong.
