AllFreeNovel
Share Us
With three days to go before the Kronig, Elle found herself sweaty, panting, and flat on her back underneath Dom. Of course, she was fully dressed and in the compound’s gym, which took all the fun out of things—at least the kind of fun she imagined every night when she was alone in that mammoth bed with her fingers between her legs. The man was lethal to her self-control.
“Explain to me again why we’re doing this?” she asked between heavy breaths as she remained pinned between the thick workout mat and Dom’s hard body.
He stood up, planting his feet on each side of her as he reached down to help her up. “Because I won’t always be with you.”
“And because of that, I have to go to princess pummeling academy?” She took his hand, the now familiar sizzle of electricity arcing between them and jolting her down to her toes, and he yanked her up into a standing position.
He gave her a crooked grin and winked. “Exactly.”
Once again, they faced off, circling each other on the red mat. Muscles she didn’t even know she had ached from the daily afternoon workouts, and her brain was so full of the latest political gossip about Elskov’s most powerful and influential people that it was about to leak out her ears. And when she wasn’t getting beaten up, learning how inadequate the self-defense class she’d taken in Harbor City was, or watching yet another PowerPoint presentation about the realities of ruling a country, she was fantasizing about picking up where they’d left off in the library her first night here. Not that he’d made a move in that direction. Oh, he’d flirted as easily as he breathed, but that was it.
She should be glad.
She wasn’t.
“This sucks,” she muttered as she landed a solid punch to his rock-hard midsection.
He laughed off her effort. “Not as bad as dying.”
True story. Death was not part of her plan to get out of here, ditch the throne, and disappear again before the Fjende had a chance to know she was in the wind. “You’re smug when you’re right.” Another jab that he dodged without flinching.
“I guess that means I’m smug all the time.” He rested his hands on his narrow hips, his thumbs even with the V-shaped indents along his hips that made her mouth go dry.
Judging by the way his gaze kept flickering between her eyes and her hands, he expected another punch or jab. Taking advantage of the moment, she kicked out her leg, sweeping his out from underneath him. He landed with a solid thump on his ass.
Triumph soothed her aches. “Not so full of yourself now, are you?”
Too late, she felt his fingers close around her ankle. The ground flip-flopped with the ceiling, and she landed on her back. Before she could force the air back in her lungs, Dom straddled her with his knees on either side of her hips. He clasped her wrists and pushed them above her head, trapping her beneath his perfect body covered only by a loose pair of workout shorts. Sweat glistened on his defined pecs, and his biceps bulged. Above her, his blue eyes darkened as his gaze dipped to her mouth.
The air crackled with possibility and promise. Her nipples strained against the cruel confines of
her sports bra, and it took everything she had not to moan out loud and grind her hot center against him. Even if she could wriggle free from him, she didn’t want to—a recurring motif over the past few days. The more she moved away, the closer she got to him. Over the past few days, she’d learned the compound’s layout, familiarized herself with the security personnel and their procedures, and filched a set of car keys and a thick stack of unmarked bills from the kitchen cookie jar. Yet here she was, hoping like hell that he’d rip her pants off and pound into her until she came all over his hard cock. She wanted it despite knowing she shouldn’t—maybe for that exact reason—and even with knowing there were surveillance cameras in the room.
“It seems no matter what you do, you keep ending up on your back beneath me.”
With his fingers around her wrists as the epicenter, desire spread out over her skin, making her breasts heavy and her core ache. “I have no idea how that happens.”
His jaw hardened, the vein at his temple going into overdrive, and time stopped moving. The rest of the world fell away, and her hips arched upward of their own volition, the need for contact overwhelming her better judgment. He was iron against her slick softness. Dom squeezed his brilliant blue eyes closed, glorious torture etched into every line on his face. Then he sprang up to a standing position, his hands fisted.
“You ready to go again?” He settled his stance and let his arms fall loose at his sides.
Pulse racing through her tingling body like a runaway train propelled by a nitro boost, she fought to regain her composure, like she always seemed to be doing around this man. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He laughed but didn’t come closer, didn’t offer her a hand up as he usually did. Looked like she wasn’t the only one affected by their constant proximity. A few days ago her plan had been to use that to her benefit. Now she had everything she needed to escape, but she was still here torturing herself by teasing the Viking warrior who meant to lock her away in a castle. What in the hell was wrong with her?
Dom circled her, stalking her as he prepared another attack. “Did I mention this place has its own movie theater and access to almost every movie on the face of the earth?”
She rolled into a sitting position, sweat dripping down her neck and exhaustion making her limbs heavy now that he wasn’t touching her. “That’s not fair.”
He’d scored a direct hit to her weakest point without a single swing. No one knew her like the Netflix recommendations algorithm. Movies were her drug of choice, especially the old black-and-white romances. When deciding what color to dye her hair as part of her I’m-not-Princess-Eloise disguise, she’d almost gone with Audrey Hepburn black, but with her pale Nordic skin it would have looked more Morticia Addams than Sabrina, so she’d gone with Nancy Drew strawberry blond instead.
“One last go-around and winner gets to pick the movie,” he said and set the timer on his cell phone to four minutes.
She leaped up and eyed him for weaknesses; after all, he had to have at least one. “Your ass is mine, Dom.”
“Talk dirty to me all you want, Elle, I’m still going to win.” He smirked, the corners of his blue eyes crinkling up at the corners, and hit the start button on the timer. “Just like I always do.”
Not this time. “We’ll see about that.”
