Page 44 of Vengeful Princess

So why was Thea different?

Touching her didn’t make my skin crawl. It felt right. Natural.

I closed my eyes and listened to her breathing. Every inhale and exhale soothed me, and before long, my eyes fluttered shut.

It wasn’t until my phone buzzed in my back pocket that I realized I’d fallen asleep. Shit.

Thankfully, Thea hadn’t woken. I carefully eased away from her warm body and moved off the bed. She mumbled in her sleep, but didn’t stir. Outside, the sky had begun to lighten. I needed to get out of here before she woke and caught me.

There was no way I could explain why I was in her room without sounding like a creep. Or ending up dead like the asshole she’d stabbed on the side of the road.

I edged out of the room. The door closed behind me and I paused, waiting for a scream or some kind of noise, but there was nothing. With a sigh of relief, I hurried down the staircase and back to our apartment.

When I walked in, Cassian was on the sofa, his laptop resting on his lap and a coffee cup in his hand.

“Where have you been?” he asked, knowing full well I hadn’t been with a girl.

“Couldn’t sleep, so I went for a wander.” His eyes narrowed with suspicion, but he said nothing else. I guessed with the upcoming dinner his father had arranged for this weekend, followed by the masked ball the following Saturday, he had enough on his plate.

“Is everything… OK?” He watched I made a coffee.

“Yeah, fine.” More than fine. I was practically buzzing despite my lack of sleep.

“Good.” He looked away for a moment, then turned back to face me. “You would tell me if it wasn’t, right?”

“Of course,” I smiled, keeping it casual. “Just a bout of insomnia. Nothing a walk in the cold can’t cure.”

What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

23

Cassian

Glasses chinked and the soft murmur of conversation filtered out onto the terrace where I hid with a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes I’d lifted from my father’s office while he wasn’t looking. I wasn’t normally a smoker, but tonight, I needed the distraction.

The party was an exercise in lavish excess. Dad had gone the extra mile to make it more than clear to John Bale-Lyon exactly why marrying his daughter off to me, his only son, was a smart decision.

A decision I didn’t agree with.

It might have been possible to circumvent the whole ridiculous proposal, but Camilla was determined to lock me down forever. The Troll had coveted me for a very long time, and now her happy ending was in sight, she had her claws well and truly into me.

What Camilla wanted, Camilla got.

She was a spoiled little daddy’s girl.

The weather was a lot warmer here compared to Scotland, with the gardens a riot of color, even though we were well intoOctober. The first hard frost would kill off the remaining flowers, but for now, it was lovely.

The scent of roses drifted upward, adding a touch of perfume to the smoke from my cigarette. I wondered what the guys were doing. When I left, Kyril had gone out for a run, and Milo had locked himself in his room. Landon was probably balls deep in some chick, ticking off another name on his ‘to-do’ list.

I smirked at the thought, then my smile faded when I remembered Dad telling me the engagement photos would appear in the society sections of the Sunday papers tomorrow. From that moment onwards, my sex life was officially dead in the water.

No respectable girl would touch me once the engagement became common knowledge. Not unless they were happy with a discreet one-night-stand, which most of them weren’t. Like Camilla, they wanted the house, the title, and the bottomless bank account.

With Camilla hovering by my side at every social engagement from this day forth, I had no chance of getting laid unless I hit up Raya or paid for sex.

Neither of those things was an option for me. I was too well-known. It would be all too easy for a random girl to sell her story to the press.

Government Advisor’s Engaged Son Beds Blond Lap Dancer!

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