Page 9 of Twelve Nights In The Prince's Bed

‘You know this shouldn’t have happened.’

‘You came in here very willingly...’

His eyes flashed with frustration. ‘I had no idea you were a virgin. How the hell could I have known? You’re twenty-four!’

‘Yeah, well, we don’t all live the way you live, Your Highness,’ she snapped.

Her attitude was only making his anger worse. He didn’t want to be reminded of his lifestyle in that moment. Strangely, it felt inappropriate to bring the shadow of other women into this room, now. ‘Fine, but surely you’ve had boyfriends?’

The pink in her cheeks deepened.

‘Poppy? You’ve had boyfriends, haven’t you?’ But Adrastos already knew the answer to that. He frowned, staring at her without seeing, as he realised the truth. Not once had a man been mentioned in connection to Poppy. He’d met a few of Eleanor’s boyfriends, but never had Poppy brought someone home. Not once had her mother called him excitedly about some guy Poppy was dating, as she had for some of Ellie’s men.

‘So what?’ she muttered, and something in the region of his heart splintered, something sharp and painful. Suddenly, Poppy was fourteen again, her cheeks tear-stained as she sat sobbing in the library, when he’d known he’d move heaven and earth to stop Poppy from ever feeling like that again, when he’d felt some strange sense of imperative to remove that pain from her life. They shared that grief—Poppy was better at expressing it, but it was inside Adrastos too, growing as a tree, wild and out of control at times.

‘You should have told me,’ he finished, his anger evaporating on a wave, leaving only a sense of sick disappointment in himself, and a sense that this was all going to get much worse.

‘I meant to.’

He closed his eyes, remembering her insistence that she wanted to tell him something and the way it hadn’t seemed anywhere near as important as losing himself in her.

He swore then, a short curse filling the air like an explosion. ‘You should have just said it. I deserved to know.’

‘And you’d have stopped.’

Anger whipped again. ‘Excuse me?’

‘You would have stopped what we were doing.’

‘So youchosenot to tell me, to trick me, into being your first?’

She blanched. Perhaps she hadn’t consciously realised what she was doing, but that was what it amounted to.

‘You had no right.’ He pushed home his point. ‘Of course I would have stopped. That would have been the right thing to do. Damn it, Poppy. This was—a mistake.’

‘I don’t want you to feel that,’ she said quietly. ‘I—I don’t want to be something you regret.’

‘It’s a little late for that.’

He glared at her and now, fully dressed, if somewhat dishevelled-looking, he stalked to the internal door of the room, wrenched it open and strode out, slamming it behind him with a dull thud.

He had to get the hell away from her, to go for that run, to hope like hell he could push this from his mind. The one saving grace was that nobody knew what they’d done.

CHAPTER THREE

‘OH,CRAP...OH,CRAP.’ She pushed her mahogany-brown hair back from her eyes and blinked several times to focus on the screen of her phone as words swam before her over-tired eyes.

The taste of champagne rose in her throat and Poppy winced as she remembered how many glasses she’d consumed in rapid succession after rejoining the party, in an attempt to blot out the events that had transpired.

She stared at Ellie’s text and prayed to any god who’d listen that somehow Poppy had misunderstood.

Please tell me nothing actually happened between you and Adrastos?

Memories sliced through Poppy and, despite the argument that had come after, all she felt was the rush of desire and awareness, of tingling, sensual heat as she felt again the sensations that had twisted inside her as Adrastos had kissed her, held her, touched her and finally made her his. Heat coloured Poppy’s cheeks and slicked between her legs.

But why would Ellie even ask? Was it possible she’d said something after glass number however many of champagne?

She swiped out of the message and into another, this one from Ellie and Adrastos’s mother—Poppy’s godmother—Her Majesty Queen Clementine Aetos.

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