you. It was not my intent. You are sweet, Gabby. I am a man who licks the sugar off sweet things and leaves them discarded. But even if I shouldn’t say this, I want you to understand that while we might be here putting on a show for others, while I may have confessed to you my boredom with life, the attraction I feel for you is separate from that.”
She took a deep breath, her eyes fluttering closed, and then, her hands still curved around the back of his neck, she stood up on her toes and pressed a kiss to his mouth. It was quick, short, but he felt branded by it. Was certain that she had left a crimson stain behind from her lipstick, but something deeper than that. Something permanent.
“Now,” he said, “I think it’s time for us to excuse ourselves.”
* * *
Gabriella had failed in her objective. And she wasn’t entirely sorry about it.
She was supposed to seduce him. She was supposed to flip the tables on him. But from the moment she walked out of her room wearing that dress, she had felt like putty. Particularly when he looked at her, with all that heat and masculine energy radiating from him. He certainly looked like a man not entirely indifferent to what he saw before him.
And that, she supposed, was the variable she hadn’t counted on. The fact that coming close to seducing him might seduce her right back.
Then there had been the touching. Her touching his face, him kissing her hand. She had felt very much the frustrated mouse in the paws of a cat that wasn’t really hungry, just looking for amusement.
That was when she’d remembered herself. When she’d realized she was failing at her own objective. And so she had tried a different approach.
Yet again, he had come out on top. She had turned to nothing more substantial than spun sugar when he complimented her, then she’d nearly lost her nerve when she’d kissed him. Then she nearly dissolved when his lips had touched hers.
She was not a very good seductress. That was just the truth.
But...it turned out she was eminently seducible. Beautiful words from a beautiful man that touched her down deep beneath her clothes, beneath her skin, changed everything around inside of her. Made her forget to protect herself.
The wing of the palace they were in now was completely empty of guests or staff, it seemed. Everyone was in the ballroom, or on the other side of the house wearing a path between the kitchen and the ballroom.
“Come with me,” he said, wrapping his arm around her waist and moving at a brisk pace toward a set of double doors at the end of the corridor.
She did. Because this was the game. Because there was nowhere else she wanted to be. And after tonight it was over. This hunt. This flirtation. Whatever it was.
The only flirtation she’d ever had in her life.
The thought made her want to cry. Sit and weep in the middle of the corridor. But she couldn’t do that because they were on a painting quest.
She hoped it took all night.
That they could spend the whole evening wandering through vacant halls on a quest, and if he never touched her it would be okay. It would be okay as long as she was walking with him.
Are you that easy? A few compliments and you’re ready to melt all over him like butter.
Yes. She was.
But the strange thing was, she knew Alex now. And she knew that what he’d said in the ballroom was real. What she didn’t know was what it meant for him, for them, and for the ticking clock that was winding down to midnight, when the enchantment would break and Cinderella would go back to being a bespectacled bookworm beneath his notice.
He opened one of the doors and slipped through the crack, bringing her with him, before closing it behind him.
“Do you suppose he has some kind of security camera system?”
“Not that I’ve noticed,” Alex said. “And believe me, I’ve been keeping my eye out. But he has no reason to think that any of the guests are going to make off with the art. And we’re not going to make off with any of the art that he knows about.”
“A fabulous technicality.”
“Speaking of technicalities, I want my kiss,” he said, turning to her, his expression suddenly hard, like granite.
The breath rushed from her body. “I kissed you,” she said. “Already, I mean.”
“You kissed me in front of everyone else. You wanted real words for me, and I want a real kiss from you. That kiss always had to happen for the two of us to excuse ourselves from the ballroom. I want one that isn’t inevitable.”
“Is that so?”
“Though I’m beginning to wonder if a kiss between the two of us was always inevitable.”
She laughed, a shaky, breathless sound. “Since when? Since you first walked into my grandmother’s house when I was barefoot and in my glasses?” She wished it were true. She wished he had.
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t. You’re right. Nothing about this makes sense.” He was the one who closed the distance between them, who reached out and curled a lock of her hair around his finger before letting it fall free. “I’m not certain it matters.”
“It should.”
“There are a lot of shoulds in the world, Gabby. But they very often become shouldn’ts. There isn’t much to be done about it. Except perhaps do the one thing that feels right.”
She didn’t know if this felt right. No. It didn’t feel right. It felt wrong. Very, very wrong. But she still wanted it. That was the thing.
She took a sharp breath, taking a step in toward him, pressing her hand to his chest. She looked up at his eyes, hard and dark, his expression still mostly concealed behind the mask. She flexed her fingers, scrunching the stiff white material of his shirt, then smoothing it again, relishing the feeling of his heat, his hardness, beneath the fabric. He was so different than she was. She had never truly fully appreciated just how different men and women were. In a million ways, big and small.
Yes, there was the obvious, but it was more than that. And it was those differences that suddenly caused her to glory in who she was, what she was. To feel, if only for a moment, that she completely understood herself both body and soul, and that they were united in one desire.
“Kiss me, Princess,” he said, his voice low, strained.
He was affected.
So she had won.
She had been the one to make him burn.
But she’d made a mistake if she’d thought this game had one winner and one loser. She was right down there with him. And she didn’t care about winning anymore.
She couldn’t deny him, not now. Not when he was looking at her like she was a woman and not a girl, or an owl. Not when he was looking
