Total pages in book: 230
Estimated words: 217798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1089(@200wpm)___ 871(@250wpm)___ 726(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 217798 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1089(@200wpm)___ 871(@250wpm)___ 726(@300wpm)
She sat up and started to gather her books. “I don’t and I should remember that, Your Highness.”
Okay. That was bad. Even he knew that particular tone in a woman’s voice, though he rarely heard it in Day’s. It meant he’d screwed up. Normally that tone of voice represented an off ramp, and after a few weeks with a woman, he tended to look for those.
He didn’t want one with her. He liked her. They were friends and he was starting to think they should be something more. He wasn’t a child. He was twenty years old and maybe Shray wasn’t the only one who was thinking about settling down. Not right away. Not marriage anyway, but it would be nice to settle in with her and see where they could go. The truth was he was tired of models and actresses who had no idea who Stephen Hawking was. The playboy was tired and wanted his brainy girl.
“What did I do wrong?”
She stopped, hugging her books to her chest. “Nothing. I’m being exactly what I promised myself I wouldn’t be. I’m being a foolish girl. I have a unique chance to make something of myself and here I am mooning over a boy I can’t have. I’m sorry, Your Highness. I need to go.”
He reached out, gripping her wrist gently. “Stop calling me that. Please call me Kash. I’m not my brother. I’m not destined for the throne. I’m nothing more than a young man trying to ask a lovely woman out for a date and screwing it up terribly.”
Those gray eyes went wide. “A date?”
There was something about the breathy way she said the word that let him know all would be well. He got to his knees in front of her, facing her so she could see how serious he was. “A date. It’s when a boy and a girl go out into the world and have fun.”
Her eyes never left his, never shifted coyly away. It was one of the things he loved about her. Day took charge. “I’m not one of your fun-time girls, Kashmir. You should understand that about me. If you think I’m going to giggle and hook up and walk away happy I screwed around with a prince, you don’t know me at all.”
He liked the strength in her voice. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do all these months. Get to know you. We’ve become friends. I would like to see if we could be more. Dayita, I know you think you’re nothing but a brain on two legs, but I see you as something more.”
“More?” She stared at him as though trying to find the definition in her head.
Yes, this was one of the things he needed her to understand. “You’re brilliant, but you’re also a woman. You treat all the men around you as if you couldn’t care less.”
“I don’t think the men around me like me.”
“I like you,” he said quickly, not willing to let a moment of misunderstanding pass. “I like who you are.”
Her cheeks had flushed, a deep color coming to them. “They don’t think I’m especially feminine.”
Because she knew what she wanted? He liked that most about her. “How do they know what femininity is? You’re a woman because your body is different, but I…I like your soul, too. You don’t have to be different with me. You can be exactly who you are and I’ll still like you.”
“If this is some kind of game to you…” she began and he could see the shimmer of tears in her eyes.
The last thing he wanted to do was ever make her cry. She was so strong. He wanted to add to that strength, never take from it. “It’s not a game. I like you, Day. Even better, I like me when I’m around you. Does that make sense? I like how I feel when you’re with me.”
“How do I make you feel?”
How to explain it? It was something he thought about a lot lately. He’d started to study it like a scientist would, considering all the angles, measuring his feelings versus others and coming up with the theory that Day was the right woman for him. “I feel peaceful around you. I feel secure.”
He knew it was a risk. Some women would see that as unmanly. He should have talked about protecting her. He wanted to protect her from everything, but he’d never in his life felt like a woman wanted to protect him, too.
She bit her bottom lip and seemed to think things over before she reached up and pulled the tie out of her hair, shaking it out. “Let me kiss you.”
He stopped, his whole body going on high alert. His dick twitched in his slacks. When he’d proposed this little picnic, he’d known he was going to start to ease her into a more traditional male/female relationship, but he hadn’t expected this. He’d thought he would get her to go to a pub with him and they would have fun, and after three or four outings she might not even recognize as dates, he would kiss her.