Page 4 of The Forbidden Bride He Stole

And danger.

She sensed danger.

But it wasn’t the kind of danger that she wanted to run from. No, it was a predator’s gaze. Watchful. Waiting. Hungry. It didn’t frighten her, because it mirrored the feelings she’d carried for him for all of these years.

Her breath exited her body in a rush.

He...wanted her.

Or at least for a moment, he had looked and seen her as a woman.

It’s working.

No, that’s not what she was doing! She didn’t want him to be attracted to her, she just wanted to get out from under his authority so she could go on and be a functional, human adult who wasn’t hanging on his every move.

She couldn’t deny that this moment, being pinned beneath his dark gaze, was the single most erotic moment of her life. It was like everything had stopped around her, yet her body had come alive. Her heart was pounding, a mirrored pulse beating between her legs. Her breasts felt heavy, her knees shaky.

She wanted...

She wanted to go to him. She wanted to touch him. She wanted...

And then, as quickly as that heat had flared in his eyes, it was gone.

If you want him to wash his hands of you, follow your teenage dreams and seduce him like an idiot. Do you really think a virgin’s inexpert fumblings are going to make him abandon the Apollo of it all?

No. Apollo was a locked box filled with nothing but honor. If she dared disturb that lock, she would disrupt everything.

She couldn’t afford that.

She’d made friends at her new job, and she loved them. But in the grand fabric of her life, there was one thread woven all the way through.

Him.

This was a very dangerous high-wire act she was doing. Trying to get him to be frustrated enough to let her have her freedom, trying to get him to understand she was too old to be treated like a child.

Then there was the matter of her father’s company.

It was being taken care of by a Board of Trustees. Because, yet again, it was another thing that technically belonged to her but could not be hers until she was twenty-five. Or married.

She thought of her friends at the hotel she worked at. Of all the things that she could do for them. If she owned an entire hotel chain, she could give Mariana the hotel to manage. God knew she was better than the frosty manager where they worked. She had ideas. Energy.

And the idea of something belonging to her... That excited her.

The foundation would always belong to her father. But she didn’t hate her father, even if she was newly going over some of her resentment.

What she needed was to get her own life.

What she needed was to not be in love with Apollo.

And that brought her right back to the moment.

His burning gaze made her feel as if the flames there had reached out and licked over her skin. Though the fire now was much more apparently anger.

“I think working at this hotel is not good for you. Your friends there are a bad influence on you.”

Then her rage matched his own. How dare he?

“You can’t tell me where to work, Apollo.”

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