Grace Unchained

17: Normal

Several days later, Grace woke up in Marcus's bed and found him still asleep. This was unusual: so far he'd always been up well before her, working on his laptop at the massive desk in the attached office. She'd never considered herself a late riser, but by seven a.m., on most days, Marcus had already been up for hours.

She was clothed, for once, or nearly so: a pair of panties and a soft V-neck tee shirt amounted to a lot of clothing for her, lately. She'd spent most of a week lazing around his house, pampering herself in his gorgeous bathroom and reading books while he worked. At night they ate dinner and shared a bottle of expensive wine, falling asleep sticky and naked, twisted in Egyptian cotton sheets.

For Grace it was akin to going on a heroin bender: never in her life, despite her erstwhile—and apparently short-lived—career as a sex worker, had she spent so much time pursuing nothing but personal pleasure. She'd studied hard at Princeton, hoping to go after a graduate degree. She would have a glass of wine or too on the weekends, but she'd always disappointed the friends who wanted her to greet the sunrise with them.

At first she'd worried that she would be in Marcus's way—a burden. But it soon became clear that what she considered an incredibly decadent, leisure lifestyle was just business as usual for Marcus. Twenty-five percent of the time he worked incredibly hard, sometimes spending hours Skyping and sitting in on video conferences, sometimes staying up to all hours of the night taking notes and reading over reports. The other seventy-five percent he appeared to basically be on vacation, contentedly lounging in the lap of luxury that his wealth provided him. It was refreshing, in a way, how unabashed he was about it: he didn't try to apologize for what he had or try to downplay it.

She looked at him, his face turned toward her on his pillow, his back and shoulders above the covers. She didn't know what she was doing. She was starting to feel scarily comfortable around this man, at ease in a way she never remembered feeling before. She thought she might be starting to like him, which scared her even more. She didn't have room for this in her life right now. And even if she did, who was he? Who was she to him? She didn't dare indulge in speculation: getting lost in the fantasy of living happily ever after with a man like Marcus was just that, a fantasy. She might as well daydream about Prince Charming. This wasn't Pretty Woman. Men like Marcus Lowell didn't marry hookers.

Marry? Where did that come from? She looked away. She wasn't thinking straight. That was the problem with Marcus, in a nutshell. She couldn't think around him. He fogged up her brain, disrupting its normal functioning like some kind of exotic radiation. She'd only gotten to where she was by relying on hard work and hard thought. Marcus got in the way of both. He was beautiful, though, she found herself thinking, despite the anxiety that came with the thought.

"What's wrong?" asked Marcus. She turned back to see his deep, green eyes open and considering her.

"Nothing," said Grace reflexively. "Well, no, everything." She sat up and threw the covers off of herself. "I've stayed here too long. I can't believe how much time I've wasted just...lying around."

"I'll take that as a compliment to my persuasive abilities," he said wryly. Grace realized what she'd said, and hurried to apologize.

"I'm sorry, that came out wrong. I didn't mean—"

"It's fine," he said. "I know what you meant." He sat up, the sheets falling away from his smooth chest, and she felt a twinge of desire warm her panties. She ignored it.

"It's just...I've got a lot of things to figure out," Grace explained, "and the longer I stay here, the worse things are going to get." She couldn't ignore her problems forever. Even though staying with Marcus made the burdens she'd been dealing with seem trivial. He made her burdens seem...surmountable, somehow. It wasn't his money, though he could likely have solved all her family's financial problems with the change he dug out of his couch. He made her feel safe. Just being around him made the world stop spinning.