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‘Seriously,’ she said in that little half growl of hers that reminded him more of a kitten than a lion.
Turning his back to the window, he pinched the bridge of his nose. If Theron could see him now, he’d be in tears. Actual tears.
Lykos pivoted back to face the car. He couldn’t see her through the layers of dress froth, but he’d expect her to be watching him closely. He pressed the key fob again for good measure and, as expected, she pressed down against the internal lock.
He looked up. ‘Officer,’ he said, shock marking his features, his hands raised in surrender. ‘It’s not what it looks like...’
He saw movement amongst the masses of material, hit the key fob and pulled the door before she could realise it had been a ruse, sliding into the driver’s seat and slamming the door behind him.
‘Officer! Officer!’
‘Sorry, Princess. No police officer.’
‘What? No!’ The bridal dress shifted again, hands pressing the skirts down to reveal a mass of blonde hair that looked less bed head and more utter mess and two hazel eyes that bored holes into what little conscience Lykos had left. He shrugged it off and fired the car’s ignition, the purr of the engine easing his irritation and putting him firmly back in control.
Before he put the car into gear, he turned to those hazel eyes still spitting fire. ‘I know you’ve thought about it, but I’ll ask you not to mess with the car while I’m driving. It’s dangerous and you’ll hurt yourself. Or worse, me. Your brother told me you were reckless, but not stupid. I’m counting on that.’
The cupid’s bow thinned and her cheeks flushed, which only made the scattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks more prominent. He flexed his fingers around the steering wheel and took her silence for surrender. He nodded, satisfied, and pulled away fromLe Jardin Exquis.
Driving in Paris was a lot like driving in Athens: crazy, stupid and the most fun Lykos had had in ages. The beeped horns, the curses, the raised fists. It forced him to focus on the restrained chaos of the roads rather than his feelings as he tried to ignore the push of his need for vengeance and the pull of the woman in a wedding dress beside him. Twenty minutes later he pulled into the underground parking beneath his apartment that was about as far from Athens as he could get, and turned off the engine.
‘What happens now?’ The question came from the powder puff beside him, but the tone scratched against his conscience.
‘We call your brother and arrange for you to be sent home.’
He saw the hand closest to him, slender and pale, form a fist that looked delicate more than dangerous. He could practically feel her need to rebel. To argue. But she had to know by now that it would be useless.
‘Do we have a truce?’
There was silence. Eventually the tulle rustled as if she had nodded. Lykos exited the car and waited. But nothing happened. With a great deal of suppressed impatience, he walked around to the passenger side and opened her door for her. A silver-shod foot thrust from the skirts at the same time as a hand, which he reached for only because Lykos honestly couldn’t see another way of her getting out of the car. But tugging gently on the hand brought her out and much closer than he had ever intended.
Large eyes stared up at him, shards of jade slicing through rich caramel, framed by long thick lashes. His gaze dropped to her lips, slick with gloss, but the cherry-red richness was all natural. The sheer vitality of her struck a note within him and vibrated into a chord of need that wound out from the deepest core of his being.
Until he remembered who she was. And who he was.
Marit’s breath puffed from her chest into the space between them the moment the look in his eyes changed. Before then she’d felt... She shook her head. She’d felt nothing more than stress from the day’s events.
But it had been the first time she’d been able to properly look at the man who had kidnapped her. His eyes were the palest grey, which was why she’d thought them silver earlier. His brow was low and made him look frustrated. Or it was simply the effect she had on him. High cheekbones cut into an angular face not softened by the swirls of artfully trimmed dark hair covering his jaw. He was taller than her by quite a bit and she felt tiny. As if everything about him surrounded and dwarfed her and for a moment it had been...delicious.
Until ice had formed in those silvery depths and she had to resist the urge to shiver. She cast her eyes over his shoulder to the exit sign. Maybe she could—
‘Don’t even think about it,’ he commanded as his hand wrapped around her bicep and he guided her to a bank of lifts at the back of the car park.
They watched in silence as the lights counted down the floors and when the lift doors opened she couldn’t tell who was more surprised, she and Lykos or the elderly couple disembarking.
‘My child, are you okay?’ The look of concern was unmissable across the woman’s heavily wrinkled face.
The question pulled Marit up short. No one had asked her that since she’d been told she would be needed as second in line to the throne. No one had asked her that, even though her entire life was about to change, even though she’d never be able to continue with her youth project, given her new royal obligations, even though she would never be justMaritagain. The empathy shining in the warm brown eyes knocked a chink into her armour and for a second she thought she might cry.
Until she was roughly tugged against the side of Lykos’s lean torso, knocking the air out of her lungs.
‘Oh, it’s so very sad,’ Lykos said, shaking his head and tutting as he pushed Marit into the lift. ‘Jilted at the altar.’ The gasps of shock from the couple were just too much. Marit gritted her teeth as he swiped his card in front of the scanner for the penthouse suite. ‘I blame the dress, personally,’ he pronounced as the lift doors closed.
CHAPTER TWO
HOWDAREDHE?
Marit knew that it was the height of ridiculousness to be mad at Lykos for—of all things—his comment about a dress she knew did absolutely nothing for her shape or colouring, but somehow that sent fire coursing through her bloodstream.
