Page 36 of In Love with a Ruthless Man

And God, he was tempted.

Damn tempted.

Drawing a deep breath, the prince forced himself to lift her off his lap and place Fawn back on her seat.

They stared at each other, her gaze full of questions.

When the prince finally spoke, it was in a carefully neutral voice. “Before you ask anything, you must know that the more questions you ask of me, the more secrets you will have to keep.”

Oh.Fawn could feel her fear gradually ebbing as she stared at the prince. Her heart started to squeeze, tighter and tighter until she realized that she was hurting...for him.

And that was crazy, wasn’t it?

He was the Prince of Darkness, and he had the world on its knees, begging, craving, and crying for his attention.

So why was it that she felt he was suffering more than those women she would from time to time see sobbing about having their hearts broken? Why was it that when she listened to him talk about secrets he didn’t want to burden her with—-

Why was it that she felt he was already breaking, bit by bit, by the weight of them all—-

And she was the only one who could see it?

She heard herself say, “Tell me. Please.”

And so he did.

In a voice devoid completely of expression, the prince told her about the dungeon hidden under the house and how it could be accessed from inside and outside of the house. People held in his custody weren’t good in the conventional sense of the word, but neither had they completely gone off the deep end either.

It was, the prince said, his job to persuade them to turn over a new leaf.

Gulping, Fawn asked, “Persuade...how?” When the prince’s gaze bored through her, she could only shake her head, and her heart started squeezing again. “Why?”

“Don’t you believe they deserve another chance?”

“I do, but that’s not what I’m asking.” She bit her lip. “I meant...why does it have to be you?”

He said simply, “Because I’m the Prince of Darkness.”

Ah.

She touched her chest, feeling like her heart was starting to give up on the pain it was trying to absorb from the prince.And the funny thing was, she thought dazedly, he didn’t even seem to realize just how much all this was hurting him.

“T-the woman I saw,” she heard herself say. “Who did that to her?”

The prince stilled. He had expected her to assume he was behind the woman’s injuries...but she had not.

Why?

He wanted to ask. Wanted to demand. Wanted to force her to see that there could only be one reason why she did not suspect him.

But he could not.

Because if he did – it would mean forcing himself to listen to something he didn’t want to hear either.

“Her name is Beatrice Crichton,” the prince said finally. “She’s a special case, someone I took in as a favor. She’s actually the stepmother of my friends, Nick and Jason Christakos.” Hepaused. “She’s a star witness in a lawsuit filed by the twins.” He told her about how the shipping tycoon Abraxas Davos had almost succeeded in killing Beatrice to silence her and how, to ensure she remained safe, he had volunteered to shelter Beatrice until it was time for the former Mrs. Christakos to take the witness stand.

“Her ordeal’s left her mentally unstable, but the doctors believe there’s still a way to save her.” As the prince finished revealing the entire story to Fawn, it was then he realized just how much he trusted her.

It had him sucking in his breath, and again the prince felt his world tipping further to the side. And just like before it was because of Fawn – always because of her – that his whole world kept spinning off tangent.

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