Like he can read my mind, Dean starts to laugh, the sound of it yanking my gaze back to where he’s standing at the foot of the bed. Cuffs flapping, he gives me one of those irritating smirks of his while he unbuckles his belt. “Yeah…” Buckle open, he frees it from its loops with a single hard jerk, the tail of snapping so loud I practically feel the sting of it across my ass. “That’s not happening, Princess.”
Mouth open on an indignant gasp, I shake my head before managing to sputter out, “You can’t be serious.”
Dropping the belt, he starts to pull his travel rumpled shirt from the waistband of his pants. “Oh, I assure you, Mukluk—I’m dead fucking serious.” Tail free, Dean starts to work his hands down the row of buttons keeping his shirt closed. “I’m sleeping in a bed. More specifically, I’m sleeping inthisbed. If you want to sleep on the couch, be my guest.”
Because I’m suddenly and inexplicably having a hard time catching my breath, I shift my gaze to the bed behind him so I don’t have to watch Dean take his shirt off. “A gentleman would?—”
“As I’ve been told, loudly and often, by the prissy little princess who kidnapped me—” Shirt unbuttoned, he peels himself out of it to reveal a tattooed chest and torso that is even more ridiculously chiseled than I remember. “I’m no gentleman.”
Prissy?
Did he just call meprissy?
The insult jerks my gaze back to the place where he’s standing. “I’m not—” I feel my face go up in flames when I watch him reach for the front closure of his suit pants. Turning away from him on another soft gasp, I shake my head. “I’mnotprissy,” I insist, even though I just proved myself a liar. “Just because I’m not salivating at the thought of climbing into bed with you.”
“You sure about that, Princess?” His taunt underscored by the sound of fabric sliding across skin while he takes off his pants. “You look a little flushed?”
It’s almost exactly the same thing he said to me the night we met.
You okay, Princess—you look a little flushed?
Pulling in a sharp breath, I open my mouth to say… something. Something mean. Something that will put him in his place and let him know, under no uncertain terms,exactlywhat I think of?—
“You’rereallygoing to have to stop making those sounds around me, Mills.” Suddenly close—so close I can feel the heat of his bare chest against my back—Dean lifts a hand to skim his fingers along the side of my neck, brushing the strands of hair that have managed to work themselves loose, away from my ear so he can whisper into it. “Sleeping next to you is going to be hard enough without having to hear all those little gasps and sighs of yours while wondering if they’re the same kind of sounds you’d make while taking my cock.”
He’s just baiting you, Millie.
Don’t fall for it.
Not again.
“If you hadn’t chosen Paige, that night in the Hamptons, you wouldn’t have to wonder,” I tell him, turning my head justenough to watch the firm line of his jaw snap tight when what I’m saying sinks in. “You’d already know.”
Did I just say that?
Did Ireallyjust say that?
DidI, Millie Blackwell, days after finding out the man she thought she loved enough to marry, is sleeping with her cousin, andhoursafter leaving him at the altar, just tell Dean Mercer—the walking red flag that’s been relentlessly waving itself in my face for the past two years—thathe’sthe reason we never had a chance. That if he’d stayed with me that night, instead of choosing Paige, I would have let him do anything he wanted to me?
So much for putting him in his place.
Breath held in my lungs, I wait for him to say something back. Laugh at me. Make some crack about how prim and proper I am. How he was just messing around. How I’m too easy to get a rise out of. That I need to lighten up and learn how to take a joke.
He doesn’t.
Dean doesn’t say or do any of those things.
Like that night, Dean walks away and leaves me standing here.
Alone.
Again.
“Seriously?” I ask, turning toward him on a shitty laugh of my own, relieved and disappointed in equal measure to find him halfway to the bathroom and still wearing a pair of black boxer briefs. “That’s it? That’s all you got.”
“That’s it.” The bathroom is literally just a glass box that takes up nearly the entire left side of the bungalow. I can clearly see the tiled, walk-in shower and huge, free-standing soaking tub from where I’m standing. “That’s all I got.”
“Who’s the prissy little princess now?”
