Page 83 of Underground Prince

“Believe me, I know I don’t.”

He was suddenly closer, and my gaze darted away from him, staring at the couch, the walls, the kitchenette on the far end—it was dangerous to keep him in my sights, but it was alarming to lose him.

“But I seem to recall someone, a woman who looks remarkably like you, with hair the color of sunsets, telling me that I’d be missing out if I didn’t try to see through her layers.”

I sidestepped, refusing to come under his magnetism willingly. I needed to think.

“In fact, she asked me to take her out on a date.”

“She did?”

“Not one day ago.” He ducked into my vision. “Maybe ‘ask’ is too weak a word, because this woman is not to be underestimated. Dare, maybe. Be so bold as to risk being alone with me.”

Oh, this heart of mine. It pattered, pounded, sucked in my oxygen and rode on the high. “Maybe she changed her mind?”

“I don’t think so.” Our chests were nearly touching. Could he feel the thumps? “You were at the bar last night. The Drop Down.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And?”

“You own it—your family runs it. You didn’t tell me that.”

He was much too close. “Would you like a list of our establishments?”

“No.”

“You met my brother.”

“Y-yes. No.” I was losing words. My mind. “I saw him.”

“Saw him.”

Crap. “Yes, bar. At the bar. He walked through, I was with my friends—Verily—we were just leaving and he came into th—”

“I’m not hiding anything from you.” He raised my chin with the knuckle of a finger, using that damn thumb again and rubbing across my lower lip. “You know what I am. What I do, what my family does.”

“Y-well, kind of. I can assume. And I…”

“Became frightened.” He leaned in farther. Easier to search me this way. I blinked away his survey but hell if he was winning simply by maintaining a low-lidded stare.

“I don’t get scared,” I said. Rebellion. A spark of my earlier confidence. So I wasn’t completely lost to him. Good.

My lower lip followed the drag of his thumb. “Prove it,” he said.

One second. Two. Three seconds of nothing but stirring air between us.

Four.

His lips opened.

Five.

The slide of his tongue.

Six.

“Screw it,” I said, and I dove.

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