Page 12 of Her Royal Master
I let out a harsh laugh.“Won’t I?You have far too much faith in me.”
She lifted her chin.“No, I don’t.You’re not the bad boy they portray you as.”
“Stop.”
“Not even close.I don’t see the selfish playboy or a violent man.”
“Shut up.”I stalked over to her.
“All I’ve seen is a respectful gentleman who’s more concerned with protecting others than himself.”
Something splintered inside my chest.Something painful and real.To shut Chelsea up, to block out the intensity, I yanked her up and kissed her, hard.It wasn’t the sucking, nibbling kind of kiss.It was the bruising, teeth scraping, I-want-to-devour-you variety, and she softened to it immediately.
My good little sub who didn’t know she was a sub.
“Looks like you’re going to be my prisoner, then.”
~.~
Chelsea
Darius shuffled a deck of cards and dealt us each thirteen.We sat facing each other, cross-legged on his bed, the tray of food set between us.Shadow, his loyal dog, lay curled in a ball on the floor beside the bed.
He tossed the last card on his pile and flipped one over on the stack in the middle.“Queen of hearts.”He arched a brow at me like the card was significant.“I can’t believe you know how to play whist.”
“Why not?”I tossed down the first card of the first trick, a ten of spades.
He shrugged.“I thought Americans only played games like blackjack and gin rummy.”He tossed an eight.
I picked up the queen, since I won the trick.“My grandmother loved card games.She taught me every one she knew,” I told him, then cursed myself for offering up such inane conversation.
He picked up the face down card on the top of the pile and flipped over the following one.“Yeah?I learned them all from my father.He was an incurable… in English I think you call it anerd.”
I snorted.
“Ja.Raised in isolation by his grandmother, the Duchess of Halsburg, he only knew the stuffiest parlor games, poor man.It’s a wonder he ever married.I used to wonder if my mother had actually died of boredom, not in childbirth as I’d been told.”
I choked on a laugh.
“It was just me and him for my entire childhood.I think he didn’t know how to relate to a child, except to hire the nannies.All he knew was games and polo, so that’s what he taught me.”
My mouth must’ve hung open.
“What?That my father was a nerd?”
It was more that he’d revealed this personal, extremelynormalside of himself to me with no prompting, but I nodded, finally noticing that it was my play.I laid down a card.
“You thought I came from a long line of playboys?Nope.My black sheep status is largely a product of rebelling against the crippling boredom I was born into, lack of proper supervision, and then an early assumption of my father’s title.”Darius took the trick and picked up the face up card.
I drew from the pile and flipped over the next card.“How old were you—no wait—I’ve read this.Twenty-three?”
He grinned, and warmth trickled down to my toes.“Very good, American.Yes, twenty-three.Just a year younger than you are now.Although you are far more mature than I was at the time.”A shadow crossed his face, and I kicked myself for asking because it brought up his father’s suicide.I’d often conjectured that his wild streak, which worsened after he inherited the title, had been his form of grieving.
“You were probably already promoted to head journalist by twenty-three.”He winked at me and tossed out a king of diamonds.
My face heated at the teasing.“I’ve always been a little career focused.”I said it apologetically, like it was a bad thing.“My mom abandoned her career for a man.She had to drop out of college when my dad got her pregnant with me.She married him and put him through law school with her seamstress skills.She planned to go back to school when he was out, but he left us for his first secretary, and my mom was stuck with nothing but a sewing machine and me.So I wanted to make sure I had my career set before I married or had kids.”I realized he was staring at me as if I had said something quite fascinating.I tucked my hair behind my ear—my nervous tell.“I’m sorry, that was probably more than you wanted to hear.”
He smiled a little sadly.“We both tried hard not to become our parents, didn’t we?”He lifted his chin toward the cards in the middle.“It’s your play.”
