Page 46 of Scorned Princess (Crooked Paradise 1)

Kaige stepped back at my push with a chuckle. “Woah, easy there,” he said in that playful voice of his. It only set my temper more on edge. Why had I let his smooth, sexy talking get to me?

Anthea walked even closer, her heels clicking against the polished tiles. “Am I interrupting something?” She looked down at my shopping bags which had scattered around us, the clothes spilling out of them.

I bent down and began to collect them, stuffing the contents back in as quickly as I could.

Kaige winked at me. “We were just having a little fun.”

I bit back a grimace. The movement of my lips brought back the memory of the kiss. They were still tender. God, if she’d waited just alittlelonger to come prancing down here—

No, it was better that she’d intervened. I needed a clear head, and Kaige certainly wasn’t helping with that. Especially when he slowly wiped his mouth with a teasing swipe of his thumb.

“It isn’t what it looks like,” I said as I stood up.

Anthea scoffed. “Pretty sure I saw his tongue shoved down your throat. But okay, I’ll hear your excuse anyway. What exactly is going on?”

“Nothing that was my idea. This guy started the whole thing. I wasaboutto put a stop to it.”

Kaige just continued to grin at me. It was obvious that he knew just how much I had enjoyed our interlude. “Aw, come on. I’m not that bad a kisser, am I?”

Not at all. I chose to ignore that remark. Turning away from Anthea’s skeptical gaze, I marched the rest of the way to my room.

“We can pick up where we left off some other time,” Kaige called after me, and damn if my pussy didn’t twitch at the suggestiveness in his tone.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Anthea snapped at him in a voice not quite low enough for me to miss it.

“She’s helping clear my name,” Kaige said, unperturbed. “Besides, a kiss never hurt anybody.”

The thing was, it’d been more than a kiss. And it’d felt like a promise of many more things to come.

I closed the door to my room behind me and sank to the floor, bringing my fingers to my lips. They were tender to the touch. My panties were soaking wet.

I was in so much fucking trouble.

“What’s wrong with you, Mercy?” I asked myself. “You can’t let dick distract you.”

So what if it had been over a year since I’d last gotten it on with anyone? I’d been around plenty of guys during that time without wanting to jump their bones in a fucking hallway.

“Fuck.” I took off my shoes and then stalked to the bed, thinking maybe I’d let off some steam all on my own. I was about to flop down on the mattress when I noticed a piece of paper on the floor. It drifted closer on the breeze that slipped through the open window.

It was a lined paper like kids used in school, slightly crumpled, with a drawing covering most of its surface. The lines were haphazard, almost childish themselves, obviously not drawn by any great artist. Even Rowan’s half-hearted doodle had shown more skill, so this definitely wasn’t his. The rough sketch showed the face and shoulders of a girl with cat ears drawn over her hair.

Very funny. It was obviously meant to be me, Princess Katz the Kitty Cat. But who had drawn it, and why leave it for me to find?

I picked it up to get a better look at it, and my fingers tightened, creasing the paper. Any lust that’d still been coursing through my body vanished in an instant under a wave of horror.

At a glance, I’d thought the line by the girl’s neck had been a shirt collar. Instead it was a gaping wound, blood pouring down from it. Someone had drawn me and then imagined slitting my throat.

And they’d wanted me to know it.

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