Something unreadable flickered in his eyes. Amusement, yes, but threaded with a hint of something darker, sharper.
“Then you’ll have to settle for wanting me instead. And Princess?” His voice dropped to a growl. “When you finally admit it, I’ll make sure you never want anyone else.”
This was what falling felt like, terrifying and inevitable and exactly like flying.
I tried to twist free again, but his grip on my wrists only tightened, the sinew in his forearms flexing with the motion. The knee between my thighs shifted upward, enough to remind me exactly how trapped I was.
And how much I craved him every waking moment, and even more in my dreams.
“This isn’t going to work.” I didn’t like how breathless I sounded.
“You mean this?” He rolled his hips the smallest fraction, a deliberate, maddening motion that sent sparks of unwanted sensation skittering down my spine.
I bit my lip to keep from reacting.
“Yes,that.” It took force on my part to make the words come out steady.
His grin widened, oh, so knowing. “It’s already working, Minx.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Call me that again and?—”
“You’ll what?” His face was so close I could see the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, still damp from the bath I’d interrupted. “Stab me again? Perhaps you should consider less personal forms of retaliation if you want me to stop imagining them as foreplay.”
“I hate you,” I hissed, even as my body betrayed me, arching beneath him.
“Liar,” he whispered against my throat. “Your pulse is racing.”
“That’s fear.”
“Is it?” His thumb found that racing pulse point, stroking up and down. “Because it feels like something else entirely.”
This man was lethal in ways that had nothing to do with kingdoms and everything to do with the way he made me forget why I should care.
As silence stretched between us, I became acutely aware of the steady rise and fall of his chest against mine, the heat rolling off him, the way his hair fell in loose strands around his temples.
The way his cock twitched between us.
“You’re not walking out of this room with all your answers tonight,” he finally said. “But youwillwalk out knowing I didn’t kill her.”
His grip eased, one hand slipping from my wrist to trail, maddeningly slow, down the length of my arm.
The shift in weight gave me my chance. I snapped my knee upward, aiming for his cock. He caught the movement with his thigh, laughing under his breath.
“I should’ve known you’d keep fighting,” he said. “It’s one of the things I adore about you most.”
“Release me.”
“I will.” His voice softened again, though it lost none of its certainty. “But you’ll think about this. About me. And when you do,” he leaned close enough that his lips brushed the edge of my ear. “you’ll realize the most dangerous thing in this court isn’t my secrets,Princess, it’s what you want from me.”
“What are you going to do with me now that you know?”
“What I did with Addie.”
My gasp betrayed me.
“I. Did. Not. Kill. Her.” His gaze bored into mine. “I mean it. One of my patrols came across a group attacking her carriage. They rescued her and brought her here. She told me who she was, unlike some princesses I know much too well.”
“You don’t know me at all.”
