Royal Heartbreaker

Chapter Sixteen - Leopold

LEOPOLD

She's being willfully vague.

I don't know what to do with her, how to make her open up to me. Something—some man, some experience—has made her afraid, and I want to know who or what has made her pull back from the attraction we obviously share.

This is new for me—wanting to know a woman's past. Wanting to break down her emotional barriers. Normally I try to keep emotions out of my affairs—it's easier for both parties involved—but every moment I spend with Elle I find myself wanting more. Wanting to understand what she's feeling behind those troubled eyes. Wanting to see the person she hides from the world.

She returned my kiss. Gave herself over, for the briefest of moments, to the passion and energy surging between us. God, I can still taste her. Still smell her. I only had her in my arms for a couple of moments and yet she's taken over my senses completely. Hot desire still burns through my blood—but I don't dare touch her now. I continue to stare at the ceiling while I wait for her to respond to me.

She sighs, and out of the corner of my eye I can see her fidgeting. Her fingers lace and unlace, and finally, she speaks.

"I don't understand why you're so interested in my past," she says. "Especially when you haven't told me a single thing about yours."

If I were sitting up, I'd shrug. "There's little to tell."

"You're a prince," she says. "I don't buy for a minute that there's nothing to tell. And I still hardly know anything about you or Montovia."

At least she's talking, which is promising. "You don't know anything about your employers?"

"I mean, of course I know stuff. I know the names of everyone in the royal family. I know that Montovia is in central Europe and that the flag is purple and has the royal arms on it. All the information in the packet they gave me when I took this job. But that isn't what I mean."

"Then what do you mean?" I ask her. I risk a glance over at her, but she's looking down at her hands, apparently thinking.

And then she looks up, and for a moment when our eyes meet, I feel the shock of connection surge through me, pulsing through my blood. But she looks away again.

"What made you like this?" she says.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You asked me what in my past 'destroyed my ability to feel.' Not that I'm saying anyone or anything did—I'm just saying that it's only fair I get to ask you what made you the way you are."

"And what exactly am I?"

"You...you're this," she says, looking a little flustered as she waves her hand at me. "A womanizer. The kind of guy who tries to get into a woman's pants an hour after meeting her."

"I go after what I want," I say. "I don't see what's so strange about that."

"An hour after meeting someone?"

I chuckle. "Doctor, most men know whether or not they want a woman within ten seconds of meeting her. Any man who tells you otherwise is lying. Am I to be criticized because I'm honest about my intentions?"

"It's not that," she says. "It's that you can do that over and over again without developing any actual feelings for anyone."

"Once again with the assumption that I have no emotions," I say.

"I've seen no evidence that you do."

I can't read her face, not in the flickering candlelight.

"I would think," I say carefully, "that if you're so afraid of getting close to someone, an emotionless affair would be ideal."