Cinderella's Royal Seduction / Crowned At The Desert King's Command. Dani Collins

      “There is nothing wrong with the way I live.” Everything was wrong with it, but she would die on the hill of defending what was left of her home after the way he had treated her. “This is what a person has to do when they’re kicked around by people who have more power than they do.”

      “I know that!” he shouted, then seemed to pull himself together with a flex of his shoulders and a clench of his jaw. “It reminds me of the way my brother and I lived when we were in exile. I hate it. I won’t stay here, but you and I will talk. Am I carrying you?”

      Shaken by that completely unexpected admission, she only hesitated long enough for one brow to go up in a warning that he was dead serious.

      She swallowed and told herself she was only cooperating because this was too small a space for the explosive emotions still detonating inside her and radiating off him. She found a balled-up pair of socks and sat on the top stair to put them on with her boots, aware of him looming over her the whole time.

      “I don’t know what we could possibly have to say to one another,” she muttered.

      “You will be surprised,” he promised in a dark vow. He followed her down the stairs and out the door.

      His bodyguard flanked them as they crossed to the hotel and blocked anyone from joining their elevator.

      Sopi refused to make eye contact with the wide stares that came at them from every level of the foyer.

      “I forgot my phone,” she murmured as she realized her hands and pockets were empty.

      “It will be retrieved.” He let her into his suite himself, waiting while the bodyguard moved through in a swift check of all the rooms. Rhys stationed the man outside his door with, “Only Gerard, and only if the place is burning to the ground.”