Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 130048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
“Can I help that I like pretty things?”
His nose wrinkled. I braced myself for another tirade, but he exhaled heavily and dropped his hands. “You’re a pretty thing. Can I help that I like you?”
I stiffened, but accepted the olive branch for what it was. “Thank you for the compliment.”
Smiling wider, doing his best to shed the tension between us, he slid his arms around my waist and pulled me closer. We stood on the outskirts of the busy dance floor and the noisy racket classified as dance music blared far too loudly. The fact that we’d been able to argue at all was a small miracle.
“I’ve always found you gorgeous. You know that.” His hand skated up my side and played in the pin-straight, blue-black hair skimming my collarbones. Sam definitely had Irish somewhere in his lineage, but—if I believed the fairytales my adoptive father whispered to me—then I was the half-blooded descendant of a maharajah.
According to him, somewhere, somehow, a king had corrupted a maiden and created my family line. If I hadn’t been dumped outside the local hospital where my father worked as a heart surgeon, I might never have existed past a few days old—bastard child of a long-ago maharajah or not.
Luckily, I now belonged to the best people in the world, and a pang of homesickness filled me.
We’d only been in Paris two nights, and I already wanted to leave.
I miss Krish. Wonder what he’s doing right now?
Damn, this was a mistake.
This relationship.
This holiday.
I…I’m done.
I’d been done for months, yet it’d taken all my savings and a foreign country to finally admit that.
Sam brought me closer, his lips puckering to kiss me. His eyes closed in preparation for making out in a raucous French nightclub.
I braced myself.
I went to kiss him back.
Only…in the time it took for our lips to meet, a surge of bravery washed through me. The strange courage was definitely ill-advised, but I couldn’t fight it anymore.
I couldn’t stop the urge to flee and be free.
“Sam.” I swayed back, refusing his kiss. “Sam…we need to talk.”
His eyes flew wide, the glittery disco ball dancing in his green gaze. “What?” He cocked his head against the music. “What did you say?”
Great.
I finally get the strength to break it off, and he can’t even hear me.
I could just pretend I hadn’t said anything.
Pretend I was happy.
Pretend I was fine.
But…I needed out.
Right here.
Right now.
Tonight.
Taking his hand, I tugged him away from the writhing dance floor. If I was going to do this, we both needed a drink.
His fingers latched around mine as he followed me.
We weaved around a sea of dancing, happy people, ducked around a few bouncers, then reached the crowded bar.
Taking a gulp of air no longer tainted by smelly sweat, overpowering men’s cologne, and overly sweet perfume, I tried to get the barkeep’s attention.
“Hi!” I waved my hand as Sam plastered himself against me.
“Hey, over here.” I waved harder, desperate for something to bolster my rapidly flagging courage.
“Getting in the mood, huh? I like it.” Sam’s hand slid down my ass, going far too deep and low. I flinched as his fingers probed between my legs, digging my flouncy rose gold skirt into my unmentionables.
My entire body jerked, not with passion or familiarity but with dreadfully building disgust.
Shifting my hips and doing my best to dislodge his fingers, I threw him a scowl. My lips parted to command he stop pawing me—
But…
Something farther along the bar.
Someone.
Someone who stopped my heart and made the awful music screech to silence in my ears.
Oh, dear lord in fanciful heaven.
Who.
The.
Hell.
Is.
That?
My gaze completely bypassed Sam and zeroed in on a demigod.
The man had to be descended from gods because no one, I meant no one, looked as impossibly perfect as he did.
Dark hair cropped close to his head. Lips a shade too red that only seemed to paint him with violence instead of seduction. Shadowed dark eyes and an impeccably shaven jaw. Cheeks that were slightly hollow and a throat clenching with power.
His lips thinned as he rolled them together, nodding at something his companion said.
His nose flared slightly as if he felt the same snap of awareness I did but couldn’t understand why.
Slowly, his head tipped up.
His gaze scanned the pumping club, his entire body full of predatory calculation.
My tummy fluttered.
His tongue flicked out and ran over his bottom lip, searching.
Look over here.
I couldn’t catch a proper breath.
I wanted him to see me. Just like I saw him. I wanted to know if he felt the same unexplainable flash of incinerating heat. A heat I’d never felt before, even in the hottest moment of passion.
His shoulders tensed as he kept looking.
My heart skipped twenty beats as it tried to remember how to work. My knees gave up being bone and became melted butter instead.
“What can I get you?” A woman leaned over the sticky bar and yelled in my ear.