Charlotte Otker's arms closed around Jocelynn like a wave breaking over a sea wall, sudden and fierce and impossible to resist.
Jocelynn went stiff. Every muscle in her body locked at once, her shoulders pulling up toward her ears and her hands freezing at her sides as the warmth and pressure of another person's body pressed against hers. The reaction was involuntary, rooted somewhere deeper than conscious thought, in the place where weeks of flinching from Owain's touch while forcing herself to endure them for the sake of the act she had to maintain.
That reaction had only gotten stronger since her days in the dungeon, where every touch served only to degrade and humiliate her, reminding her of how helpless she was before the men who bound her in shackles and chains.
