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When he looked down at her, for a moment at least, it wasn’t nice what she saw there in his dark eyes. No. It was something else entirely.
She looked down at the floor.
“I will start the music. Javier is a very good dancer, and he will make it easy by providing a solid lead.”
He was solid all right. And hot. Like a human furnace.
His hand down low on her back was firm, and the one that grasped hers was surprisingly rough. She would have thought that a prince wouldn’t have calluses. But he did.
She wondered what sort of physical work he did. Or if it was from grueling workouts. He certainly had the body of somebody who liked to exact punishment on himself in the gym.
Music began to play in the room, an exacting instrumental piece with clear timing. And then she was moving.
Sophie gave instructions, but Violet felt as if her feet were flying, as if she had no control over the movements herself at all. It felt like magic. And she would have said she had no desire to dance like this, in an empty ballroom in a palace that she was being held in, by the man who was essentially her captor, but it was exhilarating.
She hadn’t lied to him when she said she had been given the opportunity to indulge in a great many things in life. She had turned away from most of them. They just hadn’t appealed.
But this...
Was this the evidence of being so spoiled that it took some sort of bizarre, singular experience to make her feel? No. She didn’t think that was it.
She looked up slightly and could see his mouth. There was something so enticing about the curve of it. Something fascinating about it. She spent a lot of time looking at people’s features. Using the natural planes and angles, dips and curves on people’s faces to think about ways that makeup might enhance them.
But she had never been entranced by a mouth in quite the way she was now.
She licked her own lips in response to the feeling created inside her when she looked up at him. And she felt him tense. The lines in his body going taut. And when she found the courage inside of herself to look all the way up to his eyes, the ice was completely burned away. And only fire remained.
But she didn’t feel threatened. And it wasn’t fear that tightened her insides. Wasn’t fear that made her feel like she might be burned, scorched from the inside out.
She took a breath and hoped that somehow the quick, decisive movement might cover up the intensity of her reaction to him. But the breath got hung up on a catch in her throat, and her chest locked, as she leaned forward. Her breasts brushed against the hardness of his chest and she felt like she was melting.
She swayed, and he seemed to think she was unsteady, because he locked his arm around her waist and braced her against his body. She felt weightless.
And she had the strangest sense of security. Of protection. She shouldn’t. This man was her enemy. After the way he had dismissed her suggestions for finding ways of not being forced into marriage, he was her sworn enemy.
But in his arms she was certain that he would never hurt her. And when she looked up into those eyes, she could easily see an image of him in her mind, holding a sword aloft and pressing her against his body, threatening anyone who might try to claim her. Anyone who might try to take her from him.
She was insane.
She had lost her mind.
She never reacted to men like this. Much less men who were just holding her in captivity until they could marry her off to their brothers.
But looking up into his eyes now, looking at that sculpted, handsome face, made it impossible for her to think of that. It made it impossible for her to think of anything. How isolated she was here. How her friends weren’t here, her family wasn’t here. She didn’t even have her phone. She hadn’t thought about her phone from the moment she had woken up this morning.
She had gotten up, scrubbed the makeup off her face, discarded her fake eyelashes and seized on the idea to play a ridiculous damsel in distress. Over eyeliner. And see where that got her. She hadn’t been able to stomach it. Because it was too ridiculous.
He might have believed it, but she found that her pride had to come into play somewhere.
So that had been her first waking thought. And then he had appeared.
There had been toast.
He had been handsome.
Now he was touching her.
And somewhere in there logic was turned upside down, twisted, then torn in half.
