“Spoken like a true prince.”
“Better than a fake prince,” he shoots back. His breath is warm against my cheek and he’s tracing small circles on my stomach with his thumb. It somehow feels more intimate than the sex we just had, this easy touching and relaxed pillow talk.
It’s that thought more than any other that gets me up. I sleep with men when I choose to, but I never talk to them. Not like this, with my defenses down and my mind still cloudy from an overload of pleasure.
Rolling out of bed, I grab my robe off the floor and shrug into it. “Two eggs coming up,” I tell him as I tie the belt. “How do you like them?”
He gets up too, rolling out of bed and pulling me into his arms for a long, tender hug that leaves me equal parts melting and alarmed. Then he puts a finger under my chin and tilts my face up to his for a slow, sweet kiss that has my knees trembling in a way that has nothing to do with desire and everything to do with the shaky, scared feeling deep inside of me.
Damn it. What kind of idiot am I, anyway? I’m the queen of keeping business and pleasure separated and yet here I am, swooning like a fifteen-year-old with her first crush.
I pull away as soon as he lifts his mouth from mine, determined to put a little distance between us. But Garrett isn’t having any of it. Instead of letting me go, he sweeps me into his arms and then carries me into the kitchen. As he does, the fact that he’s warm and hard and still very naked is far from lost on me.
He deposits me on the kitchen counter next to the stove, with a firm, “Don’t move!” Then he’s turning on the old radio on top of the microwave and bopping his way over to the fridge, where he rummages through the remnants of the various meals that I’ve collected in the week I’ve been here.
It’s a surreal sight, Prince Garrett of Wildemar shaking his naked ass to the Chainsmokers’ “Closer” as he assembles ingredients on the counter next to him for what I’m rapidly beginning to fear will be the world’s stra
ngest omelet.
I want a better look—at his beautiful body and what he’s planning on feeding me—so I reach over and turn on the overhead light. We both wince a little, since we’ve been operating on the lights filtering in from the living room and hallway since we woke up. But as my eyes finally adjust to the brightness, I realize that Garrett is doing more than wincing. He’s stiffened, his whole body ramrod straight despite the carton of eggs he’s still holding.
It takes a moment for me to register what I’m seeing, but when I do…when I do, it’s all I can do to keep from crying out. He was wearing a rash guard when I met him at the lake the other day, and combined with his board shorts, the outfit did a good job of covering up the damage three months in captivity wrought on his body.
And oh my God, there is. So. Much. Damage. It makes me want to cry, makes me want to vomit just looking at it. Looking at Garrett and thinking about what he must have endured, what must have been done to him to create scars like these.
I start to say something, to tell him how sorry I am—how can I not?—when my eyes meet his. There’s a vulnerability in their blue depths that has never been there before, a plea I didn’t even know this proud, proud prince of a man was capable of. But it’s there, clear as day, along with a wariness, a resignation, that gets to me even more than the vulnerability does.
And so I stay where I am instead of rushing across the kitchen to pull his brutally battered body against mine. Though I don’t know him well, though this is just an interlude, it’s still one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
Long seconds pass, tense and silent, as he waits for me to ask about the scars…and the captivity that caused them. When it finally registers on him that I’m not going to do that, that I’m just going to let him—and that whole horrible mess—be, I can all but see the relief pouring off him in waves.
He turns to the counter that he’s filled with everything from mushrooms and peppers to prosciutto and four kinds of cheese. “So,” he says as he rummages through cupboards looking for a bowl. “I have this theory.”
“Do you?” I concentrate on the beauty of his eyes and cheekbones and razor-sharp jaw, doing anything—doing everything—not to look at the scars below his neck. Not because they disgust me, but because I don’t know if I’m strong enough not to offer comfort. And since he obviously doesn’t want that, I need to find a way to be that strong. “And what exactly is this theory about?”
“Women,” he says with that ridiculous Boy Scout grin of his. “And omelets.”
Now both my brows are up. “You have a theory about women and eggs?” I don’t try to keep the incredulity from my voice.
“Not eggs. Omelets.” He cracks an egg into the bowl for emphasis.
“Excuse me. Omelets.” I wait for him to expand on this so-called theory of his, but he doesn’t. Instead, he concentrates on adding four more eggs to the bowl.
Curiosity gets the best of me—as it always does—and I hop off the counter and cross the kitchen to peer over his shoulder. Or, more precisely, to peer around him, as my head barely reaches his shoulder. Being short bites on a good day. When I’m dating a man who is literally a foot taller than me, it bites way more than usual.
“So, what is so special about this omelet you’re making?” I ask.
“You tell me.”
“What does that mean?”
He reaches for one of the pans hanging on the ceiling rack. “What do you want in your omelet?” He grabs the butter, puts a generous pat in the pan, then sets it on the stove.
I look at the ingredients, but the truth is I can barely concentrate. Not when I’m standing this close to him. Not when I’m dying to trace his scars in some belated and fucked-up effort to take away just a little of his pain. “You choose.”
“Nope.” He pops the P and it sounds so American compared to the perfectly formal English I’m used to getting from him that, for a second, I can’t help but stare. “That’s not how this works. You have to choose.”
“Why?”