Page 23 of Promise of Darkness
“I do like a challenge. Getting you into bed will be deliciously satisfying, all the more so, when you come willingly.”
He’s got to be joking. “You think I wouldinviteyou into my bed?”
Another dangerous smile. “Stranger things have happened.”
“You’d have better luck with my mother.”
Instant erection killer.
His smile dies. “That’s disgusting.”
“My mother is beautiful,” I point out, relishing the look on his face. Oh, he doesn’t like this thought at all. “They say she’s insatiable too. And adventurous.”
“Please, Princess,” he mocks. “Have mercy. No more talk of your mother and her bed. Leaving me for the assassin would have been kinder.”
On that we agree.
I cross the bedchamber, avoiding the bed. “So… if you’re not intending to take what isn’t offered… where shall I sleep?”
He gestures toward the bed. “Right there.”
The bed looms, the demi-fey carved into its massive headboard practically leering at me. “But you promised. You swore an oath.”
“Did you think these chambers were mine?”
There’s a distinct masculine aura to the room. And I assumed they belonged to him.
He watches me with amused eyes. “My chambers are down the hall. Unless you want to share the bed? Platonically, of course.”
“I snore like a drunk troll. You wouldn’t want to risk your hearing.”
The prince smiles again, reaching inside his shirt pocket for something. “You don’t snore.”
“Oh? How would you know?”
He leans back in his chair. “Because I can read you like a book, Princess. You’re a little nervous right now, which makes you bluster and speak a little faster than usual. It’s endearing.”
Endearing.
I want to murder him for the thought, but my hands wouldn’t fit around that thick, muscular throat.
“I’m an Asturian princess,” I say in a frosty voice. “You can pretend to flirt, but I’m not falling for it, Your Highness. We are enemies—"
“We don’t have to be,” he says, in a smoky, sultry voice that could tempt a priestess of Maia.
“Unfortunately, that was written in the stars.”
“A prince makes his own destiny. And this war is between your mother and me. Not us.”
“I’m my mother’s daughter.”
“I’ll try to forgive you for that, if you can forget the fact I’m despicably handsome.”
I growl under my breath. He’s next to impossible. “I’m tired and I want to go to bed. Alone.”
“Come here.”
“It’s been a long day,” I protest.
