Page 84 of Unwillingly His

“Not a bit. I just needed in your father’s books, and to keep you here to keep you safe.”

“You don’t want me to be just a trophy you can laugh about with your friends?”

“Stella, you were made for great things. You were meant to be mine.”

CHAPTER 31

STELLA

He leaned down and captured a kiss, but it was soft, gentle, almost reverent.

It was wrong.

He wasn’t soft, he wasn’t gentle, and that wasn’t what I wanted from him.

I needed fire, passion, and heat.

I kissed him back, running my fingers through his hair as I adjusted my body to straddle his waist.

His arms wrapped around me, and his hands spread the warmth only he could give me over my back as he held my body to his.

Was this why I wanted him so much? Did my body know something that my mind didn’t?

I had heard that people’s instincts do not always make sense in the beginning, but they are right in the long run. Someone trusted a stranger, even though they were dirty and looked mean, and that person saved their life. Or another story of a girl refusing a date with a perfect gentleman who was in good standing with the community, just to find out later he had plans to drug and rape her. Instinct could be a powerful tool.

Could my body’s response to Lucian be a case like that? My mind had been screaming at me that this was wrong, but my body knew something my brain didn’t. Did something in me recognize that his motivations were not as simple or nefarious as I had assumed?

It made sense. I had always believed my father was a good man.

My mother had always told me my father was a good and honest man. But there were always things that didn’t add up: late-night meetings with people who terrified me, men with scars on their faces, calloused knuckles, and dressed in head-to-toe leather.

Men that my father should not have had any reason to associate with, let alone invite into our home.

If Lucian knew about them, if he knew Zeigler was circling and ready to take my fortune and leave me bloody and broken somewhere, did this make Lucian my savior?

His fortune was just as big, if not far greater, than my father’s. I wasn’t naive enough to think the money meant nothing, but I absolutely could believe that it hadn’t been his main reason for taking me.

If his intentions were strictly malicious, why bring me to his home?

He could have insisted I live in my parent’s estate with no staff, or if he wanted to keep an eye on me, he could have had me institutionalized.

He kept me here because he wanted to. He wanted me.

Why make every sexual encounter of ours, even ones that were meant to be punishments, pleasurable for me?

If the rumors were true, most men didn’t care if a woman found pleasure in sex. Most, apparently, didn’t think women were capable of feeling sexual pleasure or gratification.

Maybe I hadn’t given him enough credit, or maybe he hadn’t communicated properly before.

But what did I expect from a king?

Chivalry, charming conversation, and poetry were for princes and knights.

Kings did not have time for such frivolity.

He had shown me that he cared in his own way.

From the start, he’d never forced me, not really. He’d given me what my body was craving, and I’d needed it.

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