Page 46 of Tall, Royal and Grumpy

I nodded and headed straight for the stairs, climbing them two at a time.

* * *

ESMERALDA

Someone cleared their throat behind me. Loudly.

I looked up from my book for the second time in ten minutes, hesitant to turn, but I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t heard them. So, I closed my book and wheeled around.

And regretted it instantly.

I suddenly found myself standing before a huffing, raging bull only to remember I was dressed in bright red from head to toe.

That was how it felt coming face to face with Kai’s broad, heaving chest before my eyes automatically flicked up. I was caught, captured, caged by his furious ink black scowl.

Oh shit.

My heart and stomach launched forward from a slingshot then collided with my bones and slammed back into place. I barely managed to suck in a breath before my lungs seized to function and my muscles turned to ten-tonne blocks of lead.

What was he doing here? How did he find me? He hadn’t been looking for me, had he?

He looked irate. And sexy with his hair ruffled and his tie pulled loose. But mainly irate.

Shit.

Before I could think of a way to escape, he clamped a hand tightly around my arm just above my elbow and stomped past me, yanking me with him.

“Kai,” I gasped, stumbling sideways.

He dragged me around the bookcase, pulling me into the corner of the floor-to-ceiling wall shelves and around to face him. He crowded me in, forcing me right up against the books. I had to tilt my head all the way back to look up at the frustration etched all over the hard plains of his face.

I squeezed the book against my chest like it was a safety blanket and gulped. “Hi,” I managed. “Is there, um, something you needed from me?”

His eyes flashed and his brows scrunched tighter together. “Esmeralda—” he growled from somewhere deep within his throat but immediately cut himself off with a hard clench of his teeth.

Something dangerous, warm, and bubbly sparked in my belly that made me want him to finish whatever threat he’d been about to issue. But at the same time, I valued my life.

“Why have you been avoiding me all day?” he eventually said.

“I haven’t been avoiding you.” I looked everywhere but directly into his eyes.

“You have and you are.”

There was a gap on my right between Kai’s large body and the bookshelves, big enough that I could slip through and make a run for—

Kai’s hand shot out level with my shoulder, turning his arm into a barrier that cut me off from my only escape route. “Don’t. Even think about it.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I stared wide-eyed up at him. Partly in shock that he’d known what I’d been thinking. But mostly because his growled warning jabbed me right in the belly with a sharp jolt of excitement. So warm and delicious that my thighs locked together.

There was several moments of tense silence, then: “What did you mean last night?”

The dreaded question.

Even though I knew it was coming, my face heated in embarrassment. I cringed and squeezed my eyes shut, turning my head away from him.

I couldn’t have been hoping for the floor to swallow me up for more than a few beats before I felt the roughened pad of two fingers brush my chin gently. My lashes lifted as Kai guided me to look at him. I fell right into the endless darkness of his eyes, softer than before yet still unyielding.

He dipped his head closer. “Tell me, Esmeralda. What did you mean when you said you liked me?”

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