Conveniently His Princess. Olivia Gates
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maybe just downright wretched.”
He hit her with another of his pouts. Then he raised the level of chaos and laughed again, his merriment as potent as everything else about him. “I’d take that.”
Trying to convince her heart to slot back into its usual place after its latest somersault, she again tried her best glower. It had no effect on him, as usual. Worse. It had the opposite effect to what she’d perfected it for. He looked at her as if her glare was the cutest thing he’d seen.
She voiced her frustration. “You talk about my incinerating glares, but I could be throwing cotton balls or rose petals at you for all the effect they have on you.”
“It’s not your glares that are ineffective. It’s me who’s discovering a penchant for incineration.”
Instead of appeasing her, it annoyed her more. “I’ll have you know I’ve reduced other men to dust with those scowls. No one has withstood a minute in my presence once I engaged annihilate mode.” She lifted her chin. “But you seem to need specifically designed weapons. If I go along with you in this game you got it in your mind to play, it’ll be so I can find out if you have an Achilles’ heel.”
“I have no idea if I have that.” His gaze grew thoughtful. “Would you use it to...annihilate me if you discovered it?”
She gave him one of her patented sizing-up glances and regretted it midway. She must quit trying her usual strategies with him. Not only because they always backfired, but it wasn’t advisable to expose herself to another distressing dose of his wonders.
She returned to his eyes, those turquoise depths that exuded the ferocity of his intellect and the power of his wit, and found gazing into them just as taxing to her circulatory system.
She sighed, more vexed with her own inability to moderate her reactions than with him. “Nah. I’ll just be satisfied knowing your Achilles’ heel exists and you’re not invulnerable. And maybe, if you get too obnoxious, I’ll use my knowledge as leverage to make you back off.”
That current of mischief and challenge in his eyes spiked. “It goes against my nature to back off.”
“Not even under threat of...annihilation?”
“Especially then. I’d probably beg you to use whatever fatal weakness you discover just to find out how it feels.”
“Wow. You’re jaded to the point of numbness, aren’t you?”
“You’ve got me figured out, don’t you? Or do you? Shall we find out?”
It was clear this monolith would stand there and spar with her until she agreed to this “retrial” of his. If she was in her own domain or on neutral ground, or at least somewhere without a hundred witnesses blocking her only escape route, she would have slammed him with something cutting and walked out as she’d done in Johara’s office.
But she couldn’t inflict on her friends the scene this gorgeous jerk would instigate if he didn’t have his way. She bet he knew she suffered from those scruples, was using the knowledge to corner her into participating in his game.
“You’re counting on my inability to risk spoiling Johara and Shaheen’s party, aren’t you?”
His blink was all innocence, and downright evil for it. “I thought you didn’t care what other people thought.”
“I don’t, not when it comes to how I choose to live my life. But I do care about what others think of my actions that directly impact them. And if I walk out now, you’ll tail me in the most obvious, disruptive way you can, generating curiosity and speculation, which would end up putting a damper on Johara and Shaheen’s party.” Her eyes narrowed as another thought hit her. “Now I am wondering if maybe they didn’t extend an invitation to you after all because they’ve been burned by your sabotage before.”
He pounced on that, took it where she couldn’t have anticipated. “So you’re considering changing your mind about whether I was invited? See? Maybe you’ll change your mind about everything else if you give me a chance.”
She blew out a breath in exasperation. “I only change my mind for the worse...or worst.”
“You’re one tiny bundle of nastiness, aren’t you?” His smile said he thought that the best thing to aspire to be.
She tossed her head, infusing her disadvantaged stature with all the belittling she could muster. “Again with the size references.”
“It was you who started using mine in derogatory terms. Then you moved on to my looks, then my character, then my history, and if there were more components to me, I bet you’d have pummeled through them, too.”
Refusing to rise to the bait, she turned around and stomped away.
He followed her. Keeping those famous three steps behind. With his footfalls being soundless, she could pinpoint his location only by the chuckles rumbling in the depths of his massive chest. When those ended, his overpowering presence took over, cocooning her all the way to the expansive reception area.
Absorbed in warding off his influence, she could barely register the ultraelegant surroundings or the dozens of chic people milling around. No one noticed her, as usual, but everyone’s gaze was drawn to the nonchalant predator behind her. Abhorring the thought of having everyone’s eyes on her by association once they realized he was following her, she continued walking where she hoped the least amount of spectators were around.
She stepped out onto the wraparound terrace that overlooked the now-shrouded-in-darkness Central Park, with Manhattan glittering like fiery jewels beyond its extensive domain. Stopping at the three-foot-high brushed stainless steel and Plexiglas railings, gazing out into the moonlit night, she shivered as September’s high-altitude wind hit her overheating body. But she preferred hypothermia to the burning speculation that being in Aram Nazaryan’s company would have provoked. Not that she’d managed to escape that totally. The few people who’d had the same idea of seeking privacy out here did their part in singeing her with their curiosity.
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