Page 10 of His Highness's Hidden Heir

She started to walk through, kind of in a daze, but halted belatedly as his words hit her ears. Her equilibrium teetered.

“If I want to?”

Oh, don’t, she warned herself. This man was dangerous. Maybe not violent, but he possessed the sort of power that could destroy what was left of her free will and peace of mind.

“I want this night with you, Lexi. I wantyou.” His voice was quiet, yet it reverberated enough to make her cells quiver. “You want me, too.”

A painful sense of exposure made her feel naked and obvious. She tried to reassemble her inner defenses, but it was too late. She already knew he’d breached them. So did he.

“But this is not a quid pro quo.” The sea of his eyes roiled with the same frustrated conflict she’d seen on the dance floor. He was exerting supreme control over himself, but it took effort for him to leash his most barbaric instincts—which he had in abundance.

Recognizing that atavistic side of him should have terrified her. On some distant plane of consciousness, it did. Another part responded to that wolfish power that wanted to run her to ground, mostly because she already knew he didn’t want to kill her. He wanted tomate.

It was such a wild, instinctual knowledge, she felt drunk on it. Petrified, yet excited.

“If I go in here, you won’t follow me?” She set her hands behind her against the doorjamb, telling herself to step inside and close the door.

Make the smart choice, Lexi.

“I will not. This is your decision.”

He braced his hand above her head, as though grasping at the only thing that would keep him from tipping into the room. He stepped close enough she had to tilt her chin up to hold his gaze. Her heart was going a mile a minute.

“Sleep alone or come to my room where you won’t get much sleep at all,” he clarified thickly.

Raw electricity pulsed through her torso, out to her limbs.

He wasn’t touching her, but she felt compressed by his wide presence. Squeezed into making a decision. Move into the bedroom or step into the hall. Reject him or abandon herself.

“Are you trying to force me to make the decision for both of us? So you can say I seduced you?”

“You seduced me the moment you looked at me.”

Same.She swallowed.

“The whole world already saw us together. Things will be said regardless.” His gaze traveled all over her face, as though memorizing its contours. “Go inside and close the door. It’s the best thing for both of us. I’ll only hate you a little for it,” he added with a sardonic curl of his lip.

A tiny whimper throbbed in her throat. Being hated didn’t bother her. Or, rather, she’d grown numb to it. And he was joking. He wasn’t trying to manipulate her. She didn’t feel a need to appease him andmakehim like her. No, this yearning went deeper than that. She kept thinking of him saying she’d seen the man in him.

She had the sense he saw the woman in her. He wasn’t staring at her chest. He was looking into her eyes. He wasn’t sneering at her sordid history. He had asked her to tell him about it and wanted her in spite of it. She wanted what he was really offering her: acceptance.

“I’ll hate myself either way,” she acknowledged. “What’s one more night?”

A growling noise resounded from his chest. Disapproval? Agreement?

He leaned closer. His free hand cupped her throat above the collar of silk, so she became ultra-aware of her quickened pulse as it thumped against his palm. Her breath stuttered.

He nuzzled the corner of her mouth with restless lips, sharpening the yearning within her to a razor’s edge. Her hands were trapped in the small of her back as he used his weight to press her into the doorjamb. The wool of his trousers abraded the silk of her gown, shifting the slit open so she felt the coarse fabric against her inner thigh.

She tried to catch her breath, but her breasts were crushed by his chest. A small, helpless sigh escaped her, parting her lips. Her mouth wanted to find his. He was toying with her, though. Touching soft, soft kisses to her chin and the indent of her upper lip and beneath the pout of her lower one.

Her lips stung with anticipation as he teased her. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she flicked out her tongue, striking against the smooth flesh of his bottom lip.

With a gruff noise, he angled his mouth across hers, smothering her small cry of surprise as he swept her into a stark, untamed place. Colors shot behind her closed eyelids.

In an instant, she was both trapped and utterly free. Soaring. There was a vague discomfort at the back of her head where it was pressed to uneven wood, but she was far more conscious of the hardness against her abdomen, his arousal unmistakable despite the layers of their clothes.

“This is what you want?” His mouth roamed across her cheek and his teeth lightly clamped near the stud in her ear. Every hair on her body stood up.

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