easy for you to say.”
“Why? Because I’m a powerful man? It wasn’t always that way. I’ve had my own conflicts. Two different roads I could have taken. It would have been easy for me to take the simpler one, the one I was drifting toward at the time, but it wouldn’t have been the right one. Taking yourself out of your comfort zone is the most powerful thing you can do.”
That intrigued her. “What were they? The two roads?”
“Ancient history.” He tucked a wayward curl behind her ear. “My point is you should take the jump, Princess. Privilege is a powerful thing. Use it wisely and it’ll be worth the reward.”
His touch sent an electric impulse firing through her. She sank her teeth into her bottom lip as a shiver of reaction chased up her spine. If she’d been hoping her visceral response to him was a product of the champagne that night, she’d been sadly mistaken. She hadn’t touched but two sips of her wine before dinner, and still she was so aware of him she wanted to jump out of her skin.
His dark, sinful gaze commanded hers. Dragging his thumb along her lower lip, he nudged the tender flesh free of the bruising grip her teeth had taken of it. “Stop fretting,” he murmured, “and make the decision.”
She got all tangled up in him. In the intimate claim he was staking on her mouth, the pad of his thumb stroking the vulnerable curve of her lower lip. Her stomach went into free fall as heat built between them, wrapped itself around her like an invisible force she was helpless to resist.
Her mouth went dry, anticipating, willing the kiss she knew would be worth the insanity of allowing it.
He brought his lips to her ear, his warm breath playing across her skin like an intimate caress. “That would be breaking the rules. I have a great deal of incentive not to do that, angel.”
Rolling to his feet, he picked up his jacket. She hauled in a breath, attempting to corral her racing pulse.
He tossed his jacket over his shoulder, his gaze on her. “The woman who sashayed her way into the royal ball insisting on speaking to the king would see this for the opportunity it is. Guess you have to decide which one you are.”
Turning on his heel, he sauntered off into the night. She watched him go, head spinning. Inhaling a long, steadying breath, she digested the encounter. Attempted to determine the veracity of what he’d said.
Had she been missing out on the world in Stygos? Would she regret it if she stayed there? It had been easy to work most of her waking hours, to devote herself to the family business in the pursuit of a better life for her and her mother. To satisfy her need to know the world by burying her nose in a book, lost to the adventures she’d found there. Safe.
She thought about everything that had happened since her mother revealed her shocking news. How it had seemed as if the world had shifted beneath her feet. How everything she’d thought she’d known seemed like an illusion, and everything she hadn’t, her earth-shattering new reality.
She had a choice. To take back control of her life or have it control her. Because one thing was for sure; Nik had been right. Her life would never be the same no matter what she decided. She was a royal. A princess.
Perhaps it was not duty that would inform her decision, but a desire to truly know herself. To expose herself to the world and see what it reflected back at her. To stop living her life on the pages of a book and instead experience it for real.
Did she have the courage to take another huge leap? To leave everything she knew behind? If she did, what would she find when she got there?
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