Page 95 of Vow to Claim You

That makes him chuckle, and God, the sound is as intoxicating as those dimples on the sides of his mouth. “Are you embarrassed?”

My cheeks flush. “No.”

“No?”

“No.”

His gaze moves over my face, slowly, and comes back to my eyes.

“You stopped pretending you don’t want me.” His voice is now stripped of the tease.

“That kiss was…was reflex.”

“Enthusiastic reflex.”

“I was surprised.”

“You didn’t kiss me back like a woman who was surprised.”

I glare at him. He is entirely unbothered by it, which is somehow worse, and he leans in just enough to make the space between us shrink to something dangerous again.

“You know the real problem, Princess?” His mouth quirks with satisfaction. “You enjoyed it.”

My traitorous heart chooses this exact moment to attempt escape. “I did not.”

“You did.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“Yet you married me.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

And he laughs—actually laughs, low and dark and far too pleased with himself, the sound of it sending my pulse racing.

The infuriating, conceited, devastating man.

I should be appalled by it all. The trouble is, I’m not. And we both know it.

“We should do something about your shoe,” Aric says, once the worst of the heat between us has banked down to something I can almost stand inside.

I glance down at the broken heel dropped on the ground. “I have another pair. In the suite.”

“Then we get them.”

He doesn’t offer his arm so much as make it unavoidable, and I take it, because the alternative is limping across a terrace of the most observant people alive, and I have given them quite enough to talk about for one evening.

The suite feels cool and quiet after the noise outside. I sink onto the edge of the low couch and reach for the spare heels packed in tissue at the bottom of my case.

Aric takes them out of my hands.

“Aric—”

“Sit.” He lowers himself in front of me, down onto one knee on the floor, taking my bare foot into his hand, and for a moment, I forget how to breathe.

His head is bent. My gaze follows the dark sweep of his hair, the broad line of his shoulders, the wrecked knuckles I’d watched him try to hide all day—now cradling my ankle as though it were something precious. He settles the heel against my foot. Threads the strap. Fastens the buckle with a tenderness that doesn’t belong in hands made for violence.

He does the other one the same way. Unhurried. Methodical. As though buckling his wife’s shoe is nothing more than a task to be completed, not something that is unraveling me one inch at a time.