“So, you decided you want to spend your potential last moment with Vincent fucking Hauz?” I scoffed.
“You don’t even know him.”
“I know enough.”
“Please.” Bridget spun toward me, fury and something infinitely sadder glittering in her eyes. “Every time I so much as smile at a man, you bulldoze your way between us like a territorial bear. Why is that, Mr. Larsen? Especially when you told me in no uncertain terms when we first met that you don’t get involved in your clients’ personal lives.”
I didn’t answer, but my jaw continued to tick in rhythm with my pulse. Tick. Tick. Tick. A bomb waiting to go off and blow up our lives as knew it.
“Maybe…” Bridget’s expression turned contemplative as she took a step toward me. Mistake number one. “You want to be in their place.” She smiled, but the haunted look remained in her eyes. “Do you want me, Mr. Larsen? The princess and the bodyguard. It would make a nice story for your buddies.”
Mistake number two.
“You want to stop talking now, Your Highness,” I said softly. “And be very, very careful what you do next.”
“Why?” Bridget took another step toward me, then another, until she was less than a foot away. “I’m not afraid of you. Everyone else is, but I’m not.” She placed her hand on my chest.
Mistake number three.
Her gasp hadn’t fully left her throat before I spun her around and bent her over the nearby dresser, one hand gripping her chin and forcing her head back while the other closed around her throat. My cock pressed into her ass, hard and angry.
I’d been on edge all night. Hell, I’d been on edge for two years. The moment Bridget von Ascheberg entered my life, I’d been on a countdown to destruction, and tonight might just be the night everything went to hell.
“You should be, princess. You wanna know why?” I growled. “Because you’re right. I do want you. But I don’t want to kiss or make love to you. I want to fuck you. I want to punish you for mouthing off and letting another man put his hands on you. I want to yank up that tiny fucking dress of yours and pound into you so hard you won’t be able to walk for days. I want all those things, even though I can’t have them. But if you don’t stop looking at me like that…” I tightened my grip on her chin and throat. She stared at me in the mirror, her lips parted and her eyes dark with heat. “I might take them anyway.”
They were harsh, bitter words, drenched with equal parts lust and anger. They were meant to scare her off, but Bridget looked anything but scared. She looked aroused.
“So, do it,” she said. I stilled, my hand flexing around her throat as my cock threatened to punch a hole through my pants. “Fuck me the way you just promised.”
15
Rhys
Hearing the word fuck leave Bridget’s mouth in that posh, proper voice of hers…
It took every ounce of self-control I had not to do what I’d said I would do. What she’d asked me to do.
But even though I wanted nothing more than to throw caution to the wind and say fuck it, I’d give her exactly what we both craved, I didn’t. Bridget was still drunk. Maybe not as drunk as she’d been half an hour ago, but intoxicated enough to have compromised judgment.
I had no clue if this was her or the alcohol talking. Hell, she’d been ready to go home with Vincent Hauz, and she hated him.
“That wasn’t a promise, princess.” My fingers dug into her skin.
“It sounded like one to me.”
Jesus. Temptation was so close I could almost taste it. All I had to do was reach out and…
What the hell are you thinking, Larsen? my inner conscience snarled. She’s your client, not to mention a goddamned princess. Get the hell away from her before you do something you regret even more than what you’re doing now.
It didn’t matter she was only my client for two more weeks. She was still my client, and we’d already shattered almost every professional boundary tonight.
“This is what I meant,” I bit out, unsure who I was more pissed at, her or me. “You’re acting like a different person. The Bridget I know wouldn’t be asking her bodyguard to fuck her. What the hell is going on with you?”
Her face hardened. “I didn’t sign up for a heart-to-heart, Mr. Larsen. Either fuck me, or I’ll find someone else who will.”
She let out a small yelp when I bent her fully over the dresser so her body was at a ninety-degree angle and her cheek pressed against the wood.
I leaned down until I was so close, I heard her every shallow, panting breath. “Do that,” I said. “And you’ll be responsible for a man’s slow, bloody death. Is that what you want, princess?”
Bridget’s hands clenched into fists. “You won’t touch me, and you won’t let anyone else touch me, either. So tell me, what the hell do you want, Mr. Larsen?”
You.
My frustration with everything, my whole damn life, reached a boiling point. “I want to know why you’ve been acting like an impulsive teenager instead of a grown-ass woman!”
Bridget was the most levelheaded person I knew. At least, she had been before her personality transplant.
“Because this is the last chance I have!” she yelled. I had never, not once in the two years I’d worked with her, heard her raise her voice, and it shocked me enough I loosened my hold on her and stepped back. Bridget twisted out of my grasp and straightened to face me, her chest heaving with emotion. “I have one week left. One week until…”
Sudden, icy terror gripped me. “Until what?” I demanded, bile rising in my throat. “Are you sick?”
“No.” Bridget looked away. “I’m not sick. I’m just getting the one thing most people dream of.”
Confusion chased away my brief flash of relief.
“The title of Crown Princess,” she clarified. She slumped against the dresser, her face weary. “Before you say it, I know. First-world problems and all that. There are people starving, and I’m complaining about inheriting a throne.”
My confusion doubled. “But Prince Nikolai…”
“…Is abdicating. For love.” Bridget flashed a humorless smile. “He had the gall to fall in love with a commoner, and for that, he has to give up his birthright. Because the law forbids the monarch of Eldorra to marry anyone not of noble blood.”
Of, for fuck’s sake. What was this, the seventeenth century? “That’s bullshit.”
“Yes, but it’s bullshit we have to follow. Including me, now that I’m next in line to the throne.”
My mouth curled into a small snarl at the thought of her marrying another man. It was irrational, but nothing about my reactions was rational when it came to her. Bridget could wipe away every sense of logic and propriety I had.
She continued, oblivious to my turmoil. “The palace is making the official announcement next week. I’m not supposed to tell anyone until then, which is why I haven’t said anything.” She swallowed hard. “After the announcement, I’ll officially be the heir to the throne, and my life won’t be mine anymore. Everything I do and say will reflect the crown, and I can’t let my family or country down.” She took a deep breath. “That’s why I’ve been going a little…crazy lately. I want to savor being normal for the last time. Relatively speaking.”