Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 44703 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44703 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 149(@300wpm)
He tastes like something I don’t have a name for. Something cool and deep that goes straight through me and settles in a place I thought Billy had permanently destroyed.
And the pull, that terrifying, undertow, riptide pull that I’ve been fighting since the moment I sat across from him on that plane, doesn’t just intensify.
It sings.
Like it’s been waiting for exactly this. Like my entire body has been holding its breath for months and this, his lips, his hand, the warmth of him close enough that I can feel his heartbeat through his shirt, is the first full breath it’s been allowed to take.
When he pulls back, I can’t move.
I can’t think.
I can’t do anything except stand there with my hand on his shirt and my lips still parted and my heart crashing against my ribs, staring up at him like he’s just rewritten every law of physics I thought I understood.
His thumb traces my jawline once. Slowly.
And then, gently, so gently it almost breaks me, he says:
“I think you’re mistaken, Zia.”
It’s the first time he’s used my first name.
It sounds like it was made to be spoken in his voice.
“I’m not offering you a choice.”
A pause. His eyes hold mine. Nothing cold. Nothing predatory. Nothing that says ownership or conquest.
There is only certainty.
The sort that has waited a lifetime to arrive.
“But I’ll give you a week to get used to the idea.”
CHAPTER FOUR
DAY TWO OF SEVEN, AND the Prince of Atlantis has stolen four kisses.
I’m keeping count because I’m a rational, organized person who processes her emotions through data, and also because if I don’t quantify what’s happening to me, I’m going to lose my grip on reality entirely.
Kiss number one was the elevator at The Hive. That one doesn’t count because I was in shock and my brain had already shut down and you can’t be held responsible for kissing someone back when your entire nervous system has been replaced by static.
Except it does count. Obviously it counts. I can still feel it when I close my eyes, his fingers on my jaw, the aching gentleness of his mouth, the way his thumb traced my jawline after like he was memorizing the shape of me.
So. Four kisses. Five if we’re being honest.
The second kiss happened on the flight back from Miami, which I haven’t mentioned yet because I’ve been trying very hard to pretend it didn’t happen. After the elevator, after the “I’ll give you a week” that was still ringing in my ears like a detonation, Ruby appeared from nowhere (the woman has a sixth sense for post-crisis logistics) and ushered me back to the plane. I sat in my seat. I stared at the window. I didn’t look at him.
For approximately forty-five minutes.
And then, somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico, he said my name. Just my name. “Zia.” And I turned, because I’m apparently incapable of not responding when he says my name in that voice, that low, intimate voice that makes two syllables sound like a confession, and he was right there, closer than I expected, and before I could form the words Your Highness, we need to discuss boundaries, his mouth was on mine.
Brief. Soft. Gone before I could even decide whether to kiss him back, which I did, which I didn’t mean to, which my lips apparently decided entirely on their own.
He pulled back and returned to his tablet like nothing had happened.
I spent the rest of the flight pressing my fingers against my lips and staring at the clouds and questioning every life choice I’d ever made.
Kiss number three was this morning. Monday. Day two of the week. I was at my desk at 8:47, early, as always, because punctuality is the one thing in my life I still have under control, when the air in the design wing changed the way it always does when he’s nearby. That shift in pressure. That gravitational pull. I looked up from my screen and he was there, standing at the entrance to my section like he had every right to be on the fourteenth floor at 8:47 in the morning.
Which, technically, he did.
“Your Highness,” I managed, and my voice did that thing where it tried to be professional and came out breathless instead. The entire design wing was watching. The whole company had been watching me since the L’Alliance Today headline dropped, their gazes ranging from curiosity to awe to the particular wide-eyed confusion of people who couldn’t fathom how the girl who ate onigiri at her desk had ended up engaged to their boss.
Join the club. I couldn’t fathom it either.
“Walk with me,” he said.
It wasn’t a question.
I walked with him, because what was I going to do, say no to the Prince of Atlantis in front of my entire department? He led me to the corridor outside the design wing, quiet, empty, the early morning light falling through the floor-to-ceiling windows in long amber strips, and stopped.