Page 82 of The Princess Trap
The tightness in his chest eased slightly. He didn’t stop to think about the fact that this plan would cause the collapse of everything he’d ever clung to. He had no doubt Harald would do his utmost to twist this situation, to paint it as some kind of criminal act—kidnapping, probably. Ruben’s place in the royal family would disappear, and he’d officially become the shame he’d always been treated as.
But that didn’t matter anymore. All of a sudden, he was struggling to understand how it had ever mattered at all.
A thought gripped him. “What if she doesn’t agree? What if she doesn’t want to risk it?”
Cherry sucked in a breath. “Then we’ll stay. We’ll make some kind of excuse and stay for as long as it takes.”
Ruben looked down at her face, the steely conviction in her eyes. This would work. This would work, because she would make it so, through sheer force of will, through the power that hummed through her like a heartbeat. He wanted to fall at her feet. He wanted to tell her exactly how he felt about her, but he wasn’t foolish enough to think that she’d listen.
This didn’t change a thing between them. She was just the sort of woman to do what was right, regardless of the circumstances.
So he nodded, and squeezed her hands, and then he let her go. “We should get some sleep,” he said softly.
“Yes,” she agreed. “We should.” She turned away from him without hesitation. It hurt more than ever.
Cherry slid further under the covers of her huge bed, staring into the darkness. She tried her best not to imagine a five-year-old Ruben, orphaned and alone, left in the care of those vipers, but it was hard. Almost impossible.
She hoped more than anything in the world that they’d leave here at the end of the week with Lydia and her children in tow. But she’d seen enough abusive relationships to know that things might not go to plan.
Fuck.
Ruben had gotten ready for bed and laid down on the stiff-looking sofa in the parlour without prompting. Not a single complaint had passed his lips since the horrors that had taken place at dinner.
She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all.
She didn’t want him silent and accepting. She wanted him angry, protesting, and pushing his fucking luck.
And of course, at that moment, when she was feeling weak, a memory floated to the surface of her mind. Ruben, explaining why he lived in a normal house on the grounds of his huge bloody mansion.
I don’t like big houses. Feels like a palace.
Well, now they wereina palace. And she knew he was suffocating.
With a sigh, Cherry pushed the covers aside and got up. She stumbled through the dark, fumbling for the ornate, crystal handle that marked the room’s heavy door. Then, once shefound it, she pulled it open and whispered through the gap, “Ruben.”
For a moment, the silence was as heavy as the darkness. But then she heard a slight creak as the delicate sofa strained under his shifting weight. “Cherry?”
“Come here,” she said softly.
He moved faster than was reasonable in the dark, in the middle of the night, when he should have been on the edge of sleep. But she’d known he wouldn’t sleep. He probably couldn’t.
He banged into something, cursed, and she bit back a smile. She couldn’t fall into the trap of laughing with him in the dark, as if they were something other than… associates. Associates who had to maintain a certain level of intimacy, but not anexcessivelevel.
When his hands settled on her shoulders, Cherry almost leapt out of her skin.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly. “Do you need me?”
She snorted. “I’ve never needed anyone, and I don’t intend to start now.”
“Cherry,” he murmured, and his hands slid down her arms, tracing white-hot fire over her skin. “Oh, Cherry. You’re perfect.”
She jerked back, away from his touch. “Stop that. I thought we could share the bed, since it’s so huge, but if you can’t keep your hands to yourself—”
“I can,” he said immediately. “I can. Whatever you want.”
“Hmph.” She turned and fumbled her way back towards the bed. “We’ll see.”
He did keep his hands to himself, in the end. But that didn’t stop their bodies from sliding together as they both settled into the mattress. It didn’t stop the ghost of his warmth from enveloping her, or the scent of his skin. And it didn’t stop memories from drowning her, teasing out her reluctant arousal, even as she gritted her teeth and lay stiffly on her back with her hands by her sides.
