Crowned For The Drakon Legacy. Tara Pammi

the handle. Pure lean muscle grazed her heaving chest.

      Her eyes closed; the whispers of her breath were like a drumbeat in her ears. Her lower belly felt molten, her entire body thrumming with tension. She willed her body to quiet down, to lose this painful awareness of his breath and breadth, of his compelling masculinity. Frustration to guilt to such deep want that it buckled her knees, she seesawed on emotions.

      Finally, the handle clicked and she almost fell out.

      There was a part of her that told her she was being irrational, that she couldn’t just walk away from him in the dead of night. That his opinion, far from what she’d claimed, was mattering too much. But she couldn’t grasp control over herself.

      Had Brian told Nikandros everything? How Mia had stopped wanting to be near Brian, about how hard she’d found it to be touched by him once she’d learned of his first indiscretion?

      Her trembling legs barely straightened when she heard him join her out on the dark road. Broad shoulders covered her. “You’re being ridiculous, Mia.”

      The handle of the car pressed into her spine as she tried to melt into the door. Anything to avoid the scent of him from entrenching deep inside her. Anything to stifle the overriding need to fall apart in his arms. “Go away.”

      He stretched his arms wide, jet-black hair falling forward onto his forehead. “I should not have spoken of Brian. Not tonight. Not when you’re dealing with—”

      She poked him in the chest, vibrating from the force of her fury. “You’ve no right to talk about our relationship, now or ever. And if that was an apology, then it stinks.”

      He caught hold of her wrist and crouched closer, his tall, lean body her entire world. Her belly dipped as he clasped her jaw, raising her chin to meet his gaze. “I’ve never apologized to a woman in my life. Except my maman.”

      He said maman with a French accent, a lilt to it. Like caramel over dark chocolate. “Then I’m shocked at the number of women willing to put up with you, Your Highness.”

      “Get back into the car. You can spend the entire night telling me how much I stink.”

      “Why are you being kind to me all of a sudden?”

      He blanched, as if he hadn’t realized it himself. The gleam of his blue eyes was mesmerizing in the moonlight. “I’m not an unkind man usually. I stayed back after that debacle at the press conference because I thought you...might need a friend.” He pushed a hand through his hair, a rough exhale leaving his mouth. “But like every other time... I lost track of what I intended.” His languid mouth curved in self-deprecation that made shock swirl through Mia. “Stay at my penthouse until this furor about Brian calms.”

      “No.” Under the same roof with this man, and her emotions in a riot... A shiver snaked up her spine. “Thanks for the offer, but I... I need peace and quiet. Not Mr. Judgy looking down his nose at me when he knows zilch about relationships.”

      “You know a lot about my relationships. Or the lack of.”

      Her skin heated up, and she desperately prayed he couldn’t see it. “You’re not exactly known for your distance with the media. No wonder your poor aide looked like he had the worst job in the world.” She ran a hand over her nape, exhaustion slowly creeping in. “I just want to go home.”

      “The press will be swarming there. My apartment has twenty-four-hour security and is a fortress against the media. You will be safe there.”

      The thought of the media shoving their cameras in her face, those salacious details of Brian’s affairs—Mia sank back against the cold metal.

      Hiding away in the Daredevil Prince’s lair seemed like salvation.

      “Admit it, you’re tempted. This is not a situation either of us wants, but it was clear that I couldn’t leave you there.”

      “Why were you at the press conference in the first place?”

      After almost a year, her agent had convinced Mia that her fans needed closure, that she should announce her retirement from soccer publicly. Any contractual ties she’d had with Nik’s team had been severed months ago when she’d learned that the third injury she’d sustained would damage her knee irrevocably if she continued to play.

      At least, her everyday life hadn’t been affected.

      With that devastating blow and Brian’s accident, her life had been on a downward spiral. The announcement at the press conference—it was to be a new start. Only she’d been ambushed by the press about Brian’s affairs.

      And Nikandros had been there.

      Sweat beaded her brow. That nauseous feeling returned with a vengeance. “Did you know the news about Brian’s affairs? Why didn’t you warn me?” Her fingers bunched in his shirt, renewed betrayal coursing through her. “Or did you decide I deserved to be humiliated and turned into a spectacle for my alleged sins against Brian?”

      His fingers clamped over her arms, the warmth from his body teasing her awake in more ways than one. “I did not know what was going to come out. Mia, I did not know what he...was doing with all those women. I... If nothing else, I would have told him he had a problem.”

      “Somehow I doubt that the vows of marriage would mean anything to a serial womanizer like you.”

      His chin drew back. “Who is drawing conclusions now?”

      His eyes were hard, flat, his fingers tightening over her arms. He tensed, and then slowly the breath he’d been holding pushed out. She’d hurt him?

      It was the most nonsensical thought on the most bizarre night of her life.

      But then, the man she’d thought him to be would have never offered help tonight. He wouldn’t have even looked at her twice, especially since it was obvious that he’d made up his mind that she had driven Brian away.

      But Nikandros had never pretended a friendship or even an acquaintance. Among Brian’s friends, he’d always maintained a polite, even wary, distance from her. As if she’d contaminate his pedigree if he got too close.

      “Then why were you there? You sold the women’s team, I know. They said you were leaving Florida. Maybe even the States. You dumped your latest girlfriend.” She rattled off everything she had gathered about him from social media, a habit she hadn’t quite kicked from when he’d first appeared on the scene.

      “You had to know... Don’t lie to me, Nikandros. God, please, no more lies.”

      Mia closed her eyes. It made her face the one thing she’d been trying to deny—that something inside her had sparked into life tonight, inside the car. Because of the Daredevil Prince.

      The sense of him around her amplified a thousand times. The scent of him—dark and delicious and so fundamentally different from her own, clung to her nostrils.

      So when he spoke, when his breath feathered over her skin, when his hands descended on her shoulders and pulled her into his body, when the strength and heat of him teased her into a desperate, deep longing, she drowned in the sensations.

      She felt his powerful body shudder around her, felt his sharp inhale as he buried his nose in her hair, felt the raw, shameful urge to press her body into his, vibrating through her like a quake.

      “I came because I needed to say goodbye.”

      A brittle laugh escaped her. “I don’t believe you. You’ve never even considered me a friend. You couldn’t stomach the idea of Brian marrying me. You—”

      He pushed her away from him with a contained sort of violence that was far more terrifying than the way Brian used to lash out at her. Roughly, he pushed his hair back, his mouth curled into that familiar curve. “I couldn’t stomach the idea of him with you because... I wanted you for myself.

      “From that first moment when you came onto that field like a streak of lightning all those years ago,