Claiming His Princess: Duty at What Cost? / A Throne for the Taking / Princess in the Iron Mask. Kate Walker
registered all that godlike male possession. He was just so big. So strong. When he’d manacled her hands and held her prisoner…Ava shivered and rejected her body’s instant softening. But he’d just played with her and then he’d left. His actions spoke more loudly than his words ever could.
That old insecurity she’d thought long gone raised its knobbly head like a sleepy dragon and yawned. But she wouldn’t go there. She’d dealt with that childish feeling when she’d moved to Paris, and it was no longer relevant to who she was now.
Maybe this whole business—her father’s phone call combined with her emotional response to the wedding—had affected her more than she’d allowed herself to consider, made her act out of character.
Another one of Anne’s comments snuck into her consciousness. ‘Women drop like lemmings around him,’ she’d said at lunch. ‘But he lives a fast-paced life. According to Gilles, the man is never in the same city for longer than a few days at a time. It’s like he’s combing the globe for some holy grail.’
More like variety in his bed, Ava thought with a burst of asperity. And good luck to him. She hoped he enjoyed himself.
He did invite you to dinner, that devil’s voice reminded her.
Yes, out of some sort of guilt, she told herself. He’d sensed her uneasiness after the sex and had made the invitation on the spur of the moment. It had been a nice gesture but his voice had lacked conviction. And his actions this morning only backed that up.
No.
She wouldn’t be having dinner with Wolfe. He didn’t really want to take her out and it would only be prolonging the inevitable. Also, she could think of nothing worse than forcing someone to do something they didn’t want to do. That was her father’s modus operandi, not hers.
Okay.
Shower. Get dressed. Hire a car. Drive back to Paris. She had a meeting with a new artist she was sure was going to be a pain in the backside but who had the potential of van Gogh and she couldn’t be late.
She didn’t have time to dwell on a man who had taken as much pleasure as she had without any promises for the future.
When the right one came along she would know it, and until then—well, she was nearly thirty. She didn’t have time to waste time on casual encounters with ripped Australian security experts. And if fate was kinder than it had been yesterday she wouldn’t run into him this morning and would be spared the whole awkward morning-after thing.
Feeling more like her normal self after a shower, she smiled as she crossed the marble foyer and propped her small suitcase beside the front door. Bending down, she’d retrieved the thank-you note she’d written to Anne and Gilles, which she planned to leave with Gilles’s butler, when she heard a dark voice behind her.
‘Leaving so soon?’
Ava wheeled around, her hair flying over her shoulders in a slow arc. Wolfe stood in the arched doorway, ruggedly handsome in worn boots, black low-riding denims and a basic white T-shirt that drew her eye to every solid inch of him.
Placing her hand against her chest, Ava tried to smile into his hard face. ‘You scared me.’
He crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Obviously.’
‘I…ah…’ God, she sounded like a silly debutante! And why did he look so angry all of a sudden? It wasn’t as if she had been the one to walk out on him before the birds had started chirping. ‘I have a busy day lined up.’
Wolfe could tell instantly that Ava had put last night behind her. It was in the regal tilt of her head, the squared shoulders and the way her gaze didn’t quite meet his. Not to mention the small, reserved smile she bestowed on him, as if all that had passed between them last night had been polite conversation instead of intimate body fluids. It was the same smile he’d seen her give plenty of other men the night before, and to say he felt infuriated by it would be a grand understatement.
He recalled the way she’d told him he could leave her room after sex. At the time he’d thought she had been politely trying to give him an out, but what if she’d been trying to get him out instead?
‘On a Sunday?’
Her chin came up, most likely because of his sceptical tone. ‘Yes.’
‘And what about dinner?’ he asked casually.
It appeared she had a guilty conscience, because her gaze cut to the left before returning to his. ‘Tonight?’
Damn.
Wolfe read her meaning in that single word and knew she had no intention of having dinner with him, that night or any other. He didn’t like it. ‘Yeah. You, me, a bottle of red. Or do you prefer champagne?’
‘Actually, I have a meeting with someone this afternoon, so I won’t be able to make tonight.’
Someone she was sleeping with, perhaps?
Wolfe raked her slender figure in a floaty summer dress and lightweight sandals and tried to rein in his uncharacteristically possessive response as his mind immediately stripped her naked.
On some level he knew he was behaving completely irrationally. Really, he should be rejoicing that she didn’t want to complicate things between them by prolonging the inevitable, because—well…he knew his interest in her would wane at some point.
‘And it’s probably better this way, don’t you think?’ she said a little too quickly.
‘Better what way?’ He refolded his arms and rocked back on his heels. No way would he make this easy for her.
Her gaze snapped irritably to his and then cast over him, lighting little bushfires in its wake. ‘Better if we forget dinner. Forget last night.’
‘Forget last night?’ Wolfe wasn’t sure if this had ever happened to him before. A woman waking up after a night of phenomenal sex who not only didn’t want to have dinner with him but looked as if she never wanted to see him again either.
‘Oh, come on, Wolfe.’ Her slender hands fitted around her hips just as his had done last night. ‘I’m sure this isn’t a novel concept for you. In fact it’s probably a relief.’
His eyes rose to hers as he forced himself to focus. A relief? Yes, it should have felt like a damned relief. The fact that it felt more like an insult only increased his aggravation.
‘You think I pick women up and sleep with them every time I go out?’
‘I don’t know.’
And she didn’t care, if he read her tone correctly.
‘But why are we arguing? Did you want more from last night than just sex?’
He stiffened, suddenly uncomfortable as she turned the tables on him. Saying no just felt wrong, but…‘No.’
She nodded quickly, as if she’d expected his answer. Wanted it, in fact. Did she do this all the time? Pick up men for a night of no-strings sex? The idea made his stomach knot.
‘Great, so we’re on the same page. Last night was lovely. I had a good time. Hopefully you did, too.’
She shrugged almost apologetically and he had an unpleasant moment of wondering if this was how women felt when he walked away from them. But then with all the previous women in his life he’d established the parameters from the start. Perhaps he was just reacting badly because this time he hadn’t done that.
‘What more is there to say?’
Ava’s challenging question brought his mind back to her.
‘Clearly nothing,’ Wolfe ground out. ‘You seem to have it all worked out.’
She mashed her lips together, as if confused by his tone, and Wolfe warned himself to stop being stupid. This was the perfect scenario, wasn’t it?