Page 23 of Her Royal Master
Seriously?He didn’t need to know that.I was glad my face was pressed into the covers, because I felt a blush streaking my neck and heating my cheeks.I wanted to lie.Didn’t want him to know how terribly inexperienced I was.
But he probably already knew.That was why he asked.
“Only one.”
His hand stilled on the undercurve of my buttocks.“Just the asshole you came to Ibiza for?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“Never, baby.It makes sense why you’re grieving that relationship.”
“I am not grieving it.”
He gave my ass a light slap.“Good.Because I was thinking about finding the asshole and giving him a one-way plane ticket to Turkey.”
I giggled, pleasure curling in my chest at his jealousy.“Turkey?”
“Yeah.Plenty of drugs there, too.”
I laughed some more, my entire being warming from the inside out.The words ‘I love you’ floated up in my brain, shocking me.
I loved this man?Impossible.I hardly knew him.
The feeling swimming in my chest, that light, floaty warmth, that appreciative joy, sure felt like love.
Damn.I needed to get a grip.Because somehow I knew that having my heart broken by the duke would be ten times worse than what I’d imagined I’d suffered as a result of my breakup with Derek.That had been nothing.An inevitable separation that had been more about me readjusting my brain around what had always been than anything else.
The emotions swimming around in me now were real.Real trust.Real desires, real longing.Real attachment.
“Your turn,” he said lightly.
“Do you keep BDSM relationships in a separate category from romantic ones?’
He stroked between my legs, and my breath turned ragged.“This is my romance, baby.”
“I mean—” I struggled for words, hoping my question didn’t reveal too much of my heart.“Would you… would you have this in your marriage?Or keep it for the call girls?”
His hand came down in a quick flurry of spanks, although I had no idea what I’d said wrong.
“Why?”I blurted.“Why are you mad?”
He stopped spanking and soothed the sting from my skin.“I’m not mad at you,” he muttered.“You just summed up the queen’s dictate for Kaspar.Use call girls for kink.Marry a virgin princess.I… don’t like you thinking that of me.”He pinched my butt cheek between two fingers.“You’re not a call girl to me.”
I choked on a sour laugh.“I’m not a call girl, period.”
His laugh was just as harsh.“Jesus, I know that.I’m saying… I’d keep a girl like you.Maybe forever.”
My heart thundered in my chest, bouncing around like a ping pong ball.He said a girllike you,notyou.He wasn’t saying he wanted to keepmeforever.Even so, some part of me had already jumped on a horse and was galloping to a finish line with him as my life mate.
And the rest of me was dead scared.Terrified.Because this was the kind of man I would throw away everything for.The way my mom had given up herself for my dad.
And I didn’t think I’d ever recover from being left by a man like him.
So no.No way.I couldn’t even consider playing house with this man, not even in my deepest fantasies.
“Where do you live in the States?”His tone had gone hard, as if he knew I might not answer.
My brain raced, trying to figure out how dangerous it was to give him that information.But L.A.was a big city.Lots of news organizations there.
