Page 6 of Savage Princess

If only he weren’t so goddamn stubborn.

I know I shouldn’t go into his room. It’s not going to help anything in the end, and it might make things so much worse. But the tension builds and builds, my frustration humming through my veins, until I finally let out a frustrated huff and throw the blankets back.

The door will be locked. I won’t even be able to go in without waking him up.

The knob turns, and I jerk back, startled.

Does this mean he wants me to come in? Or did he just forget?

I know, deep down, that it’s almost certainly that he forgot. After everything he’s said, the chance that the door was left open because he wanted me to come in is impossibly small. But I can’t help wondering—and that’s enough to give me the last push I need to open it and step into the room.

It’s dark and quiet, and I see Levin’s shape in the bed, lying on his side. I tiptoe towards the bed, my heart beating so hard in my chest that it hurts. I get up to the very edge of it, hardly able to believe what I’m doing, and reach out to him, touching the back of his shoulder.

He moves so fast that I don’t even have time to breathe. One moment he’s on his side with his back to me, my hand brushing over the slope of his shoulder, and the next, he’s out of the bed, and I’m flat on my back on the floor, gasping for breath as his heavy bulk pins me down, his forearm over my throat.

“Levin!” I squeak out his name, my heart suddenly hammering for an entirely different reason. There’s a dim light coming through the window from the streetlights, and I catch a glimpse of his glassy eyes, realizing in a terrified instant that he’s not entirely awake. He’d reacted on instinct, not knowing who was in the room, and now I’m in actual danger.

My body doesn’t entirely seem to grasp that, though. Every inch of my skin feels as if it’s tingling with desire, my pulse beating wildly in my throat as I look up at him, acutely aware of the pressure of his body atop mine. I realize, as his forearm presses against my windpipe, that he’s entirely naked and my robe has fallen open, his skin warm and bare against mine, and he’s hard. His cock is pressed to my belly, throbbing with desire, and without thinking, I wrap my legs around his hips, arching into him as I let out a low moan, half strangled by the pressure on my throat.

Thatjolts him awake. “Elena?” he groans, and for one instant, he’s pressed more tightly against me, the straining flesh of his cock rubbing against the soft skin of my stomach as he pins me to the floor, and I have a moment’s wild hope that he’s going to slip inside of me and fuck me right here, hard and fast on the hotel room floor.

He jerks backward instead, sitting back on his haunches as he looks down at me in stunned horror. “Fuck, Elena–” he breathes, rubbing a hand across his mouth. “Fuck, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine.” My throat feels a little sore, but overall, itisfine. I reach up for him, half-sitting up as I curl my hand around the back of his neck, trying to pull him back down to me, heedless of my open robe. “I kind of liked it.”

Levin stares at me as if he’s never seen me before, shaking free of my touch. “You can’t be serious,” he mutters, his jaw clenching. “Elena, I could havekilledyou.”

He’s not wrong—I’d felt how close he was to crushing my throat. But that already feels far away, as if it happened to someone else. He hadn’t hurt me, and I know he hadn’t meant to, and I’m more concerned now with how naked he is and how close to naked I am, and all the possibilities of that.

“But you didn’t,” I tell him simply, reaching up to run my hand down his arm, propped on one of my elbows. “I’m fine. See? No harm done.”

“Therecouldhave been.” His gaze skates down the front of me, a brief flash of hunger in his eyes as he sees all of the bare skin where my robe fell open, and then he reaches out, jerking it closed.

The moment he does, my hand closes around his wrist, tugging him forward. I catch him off balance, and he falls atop me again, barely catching himself in time to not crush me with his muscled weight as he looks down at me, an expression of hopeless frustration written over every inch of his face.

“Elena–”

“I’mfine,” I insist, my ankles twining over his calves as I reach up to run my fingers along his jaw. “And while I’m down here—”

A shudder goes through him. Ifeelit, the way it ripples through him all the way down to his toes, the same way I can still feel the heavy weight of his cock trapped between us, even through the now-closed folds of my robe. I can feel how much he wants me, and allIwant is for him to give into it.

Why would that be so bad?

His mouth is hovering over mine, so close. I can feel his warm breath on my lips. For one instant, his hand comes up, his fingers tracing across my cheek as he looks down at me with an expression in his eyes that I can’t entirely decipher. I’ve never seen anyone look so hungry and so haunted all at once.

“You can’t sneak up on me like that,” he says quietly. “I’m a trained assassin, Elena. I’m hard-wired through years of training to react in an instant if I’m woken up unexpectedly, and I’ll react before I know who’s there. ThankgodI didn’t have a weapon close enough, or I could have really hurt you. I need you to understand that, alright? We’re going to have more nights like this before I get you home.” He lets out a heavy sigh. I can feel his desire ebbing between us as he looks down at me, his fingers still touching my cheek with a gentleness that belies everything he’s ever said about wanting to stay away from me.

“I understand,” I whisper, and I do. Now that it’s sinking in, especially afterthatexplanation, I can grasp how bad of an idea it was to try to wake him up out of a dead sleep. I dimly remember him warning me about something like that back at Diego’s, when he’d slept in the other room and I’d taken the bed. I just hadn’t been thinking about it—all that had been on my mind was how much I wanted him.

For the first time, I get what he means about this type of distraction being a danger for both of us. How it can impair our judgment.

I just don’t want to believe that it’s so impossible to get past that.

I reach up, cupping my hands around his face as I try to pull him down for a kiss. My entire body feels as if it’s pulsing, like there’s a second heartbeat in my veins that can only be fed by his lips on mine, his body pressed to mine, his cock inside of me. I want him like food and water and air, and I feel like I’ll die if he rejects me now.

For a moment, I think he’s going to kiss me. His fingers go still against my cheek, pressed there as he looks down at me, that same look in his eyes as they flick down to my lips. His mouth is so close, achingly so, and I lean up a little, just enough for my lips to brush against his.

Levin’s entire body jerks, as if the kiss were a slap instead, and he pulls back, his hand suddenly hard against my face as he holds me away from him. “You don’t understand what you’re playing with, Elena,” he murmurs, his voice thick with what I know now is lust. “None of this is a game. And I’m trying my damndest to be the one who keeps us both alive.”

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