“Tell me, tell me, tell me—-” The prince stopped the rush of words with a finger on her lips.
But then her puppy brown eyes flew to his, and it was almost like he could hear the same words coming from her.
Tell me, tell me, tell me.
Ah.
She won, he lost, and taking his finger off her mouth, the prince said with a sigh, “I’ll probably miss you a thousand times more, parthena mou. When you’re not with me,” the prince muttered, “I’m thinking of you, and when you’re with me, I still end up thinking of you—-” He broke off.
Fawn gazed at him searchingly—-
And then she saw it.
Fawn gasped. “Are you blushing?”
The prince glared at her. “No.” But fuck it, he knew he was.
Fawn was still staring at him.
The prince wanted to strangle her.
Fawn opened her mouth.
The prince said coldly, “Don’t even think of it—-”
“If you’re not blushing—-”
“Do you want to die?”
“—-then why are your cheeks red?”
FUCK.
Fawn rubbed her eyes once, twice, thrice, but oh! It was really happening.
A darker shade of red was staining the prince’s high-boned cheeks, and she blurted out, “You’re so cute, too—-”
The prince suddenly pinched her cheeks hard. “Shut up.”
“Woway.” That meant okay, and she really was okay with shutting up, but oh, what she couldn’t do was stop herself from grinning.
The prince would miss her a thousand times more!
The prince thought of her when he wasn’t with her!
The prince—-
Made her happy.
Her entire body sagged at the realization.
The prince made her happy.
She stared at him with eyes made blank by all the memories rushing to her mind.
“Fawn, answer me. Are you alright?”
“I a-am.” And she was, even if all her eyes could see was the prince in the past.
She remembered the days she had used to desperately hide from him while working, and the day that he had caught her in the hallway outside his study—-
“That’s quite a frown you’ve there.”
She remembered the way she had tried so hard to smile—-
“You look like a clown.”
And when she had tried harder—-
“A psychopath now, but it will do.”
She remembered the day she had spewed water all over the prince’s shirt.
“You know I didn’t mean it. It’s j-just that I didn’t expect you to be here. I mean, everyone said you’d be away for another week—-”
Any other employer would have her fired on the spot, but instead the prince had actually apologized, albeit sarcastically.
“I apologize if I failed to inform you in advance about the change in my schedule.”
He was the Prince of Darkness, a man whom everyone thought was colder and crueler than most people, and yet all she could remember from him was kindness.
She looked at the prince.
And she remembered the day when she found out about Grant cheating on her—-
She remembered the prince using the darkness to protect her, covering her eyes as he asked—-
What do you want to do?
And it was such a simple question, but even then she had known.
The prince would have done anything she would ask of him.
Anything.
Because he was that kind of man.
The kind that could make her smile, laugh—-
The kind that could make her happy—-
The kind that could make the bitterness disappear, the sadness fade—-
And just like that, she knew.
She wanted to make him happy, too.
Because she loved him.
****
The prince’s gaze narrowed when Fawn suddenly looked at him with determined, calculating eyes, almost the way a predator eyed its prey. It was a ludicrous idea, considering how he was much more powerful than her, but even so, the slightest frisson of unease ran down the prince’s spine.
When Fawn started leaning towards him, he almost leaned back to avoid her—-
Dammit, this was ridiculous.
He glared at her, warning darkly, “Whatever it is you’re thinking—-”
To his even greater surprise and unease, Fawn cut him off, asking in a suspiciously high-pitched voice, “A-are you in a h-hurry to leave?”
Fuck. His unease deepened, and the prince asked warily, “Why do you ask?”
“B-because I’d l-like to kiss you goodbye.”
The prince stilled, but even as his body went taut in an instant, he didn’t allow himself to relax completely, thinking that he was missing something.
In front of him, Fawn wetted her lips, her pink tongue darting out—-
Fuck.
Arousal, raw, deep and excruciatingly hot, forced his cock to stretch into longer and harder proportions, and the prince sucked in his breath.
Fawn’s heart started to beat harder and harder at the near-feral look of lust in the prince’s gaze. “P-prince?”
Their gazes collided, and oh, the way he was staring at her now—-
She almost threw herself at him but caught herself in time, the few functioning brain cells she had warning her against being selfish. If Jason Christakos had a grave need for the prince, then she had no choice but to wait for another time to do what she wanted.
But if not—-
She raised her gaze to him, her tone unconsciously pleading as she asked, “P-please tell me you’re not in a hurry?”
The prince rasped out, “No.”
Oooooh.
“I don’t have to leave right away.”
The moment the words left the prince’s lips, Fawn didn’t let herself think.
She simply pushed the prince down, his back bouncing against the bed, and even as his raised eyebrows made her turn red, she still rose on her knees and reached for his belt buckle, saying determinedly, “It’s my turn t-to please you. I’m g-going to kiss you goodbye t-there.”
The prince stilled in surprise, unable to believe that he had heard Fawn actually utter such a promise. But then she started to wrestle with his belt, her cheeks turning redder by the second, and he found himself fighting back a smile.
His beautiful liar was really quite unpredictable, he mused, and it was sexy as hell, the way she kept surprising him. When her clumsy fingers moved on to the zip of his pants, the prince drawled, “Do you need help?”
“No.” She glared at him even as she continued to blush and struggle with lowering his zip without actually touching his erection. “I can do this.”
The prince raised himself on his elbows, asking in
