Page 59 of Heartless Prince

“Yes,” I said softly. Simply seeing and smelling the roll brought back all kinds of memories from my time at Roden. My friends and I used to go down to the late-night Buttery and get stacks of rolls after all-day study sessions, giggling as we discussed which professors we wanted to slap, which exams we were totally sure we’d failed, and which boys from our classes we thought were cute.

That all seemed so far away now, like it was from a different life I lived hundreds of years ago.

“I had it flown up here for you,” Elias said. “Thought it might make you feel a little less antagonistic toward me.”

I sat up straighter in the tub and took a bite of the roll as he held it out to me. It was just as delicious as I remembered, and I moaned with bliss as I chewed.

If we were here under different circumstances, this could be legitimately romantic: a gorgeous room, a hot bubble bath, a massage, and my favorite guilty pleasure food flown in all the way from Roden. Elias could actually make the perfect boyfriend… if he hadn’t kidnapped me and held me hostage in this beautiful mansion of hideous horrors.

A lightbulb suddenly switched on in my mind. He’d inadvertently given me a clue about where the mansion was. If he managed to get a hot lobster roll flown in from the Roden campus in New Marwick without it getting too cold and soggy, then that meant the Finishing School couldn’t be far away. North, most likely, as he’d said ‘flown up’. For all I knew, we could be as close as Bridgeport.

My heart sank a second later as I remembered Elias was a billionaire. Duh. He had access to multiple private planes, which made the process of flying to and from places a lot faster and easier. A short one-hour flight north of New Marwick could put the Finishing School somewhere in Maine. Maybe even as far as Canada. So again, all I really knew was that we were on the coast somewhere.

I slumped back in the bath and sighed dejectedly.

Would I ever know where I was again?

“Don’t you want any more?” Elias asked, frowning as he held the roll out again.

I shook my head. “Sorry. I’m not hungry.”

“All right. I’ll leave it over there for you to finish later,” he said. Something flashed in his eyes before he walked away. Disappointment? Anger? Concern? I couldn’t tell.

I closed my eyes and sank under the water, one hand reaching up to rub my face. When I emerged, I took a deep breath and kept rubbing at my face, removing all remnants of last night’s makeup which had spilled down my cheeks and encrusted in black chunks when I cried.

Elias stepped over to me with a towel a moment later. Just in time; the water was starting to turn lukewarm. I stood up and let him wrap the towel around me, luxuriating in the soft fabric, and then I stepped out onto the tiles.

Elias kept rubbing me down with the towel, and when I was dry, he tossed it aside and led me toward the large hanging mirror in the bedroom. It was framed with ornamental gold. I stared at my bare-faced reflection, wondering what Elias must think of me when I looked like this. Despite the things he’d done to me, he was still the sexiest man I’d ever laid eyes on, and compared to him, I felt utterly plain and boring.

He seemed to read my mind, because he stood behind me and slid his hands around to my hips and waist, stroking and caressing my body as his eyes focused on my face in the mirror. “Even without makeup, you still look like that,” he muttered. Then he stepped away.

My lips twitched slightly. I suppose that was his idea of a compliment.

He returned a moment later, holding a bag. “For you,” he said.

I tentatively opened the bag to find a beautiful black lingerie set. The bra had pearl details and tiny little ribbons woven through parts of it, and the panties had a split at the front with lacy ruffles to disguise it. Classic with a raunchy twist.

“You want me to wear this now?” I asked nervously.

“Obviously.” Elias smirked.

I slipped into the panties and hooked the bra behind my back. Then I turned to look in the mirror again. Makeup or no makeup, the set made me look amazing. It was incredible what a good bra could do. “Thank you,” I said breathlessly. “It’s gorgeous.”

“I could say the same about you.”

I turned to look at him with a timid smile. “Thank you.”

His eyes darkened as he looked down at me. I felt so short, so tiny and powerless compared to him. “I really wish you weren’t so fucking beautiful. Makes things very hard for me,” he said, voice low and husky.

“That’s exactly how I feel about you,” I said softly. It was true. I wished he wasn’t so goddamned handsome, because it would make it so much easier to keep hating him.

At that, Elias leaned down and took my mouth in a bruising kiss. Urgent, hot, needful. Savage.

His hands cupped my head, tilting my face upward to meet his embrace. I moaned and kissed him right back, my tongue battling his, teeth nipping at his bottom lip as I dug my nails into his broad shoulders, clinging to him.

A distant voice in the back of my mind told me it was a bad idea, kissing the enemy like this. I should feel sickened by it, should push Elias away, but in the heat of the moment, I didn’t care enough to stop. It felt too fucking good.

I could regret it all later, when the moment was over and my sanity had returned.

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