Asteria In Love with the Prince Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Will it be—” I waited for him to take the hint, but he refused to. He was going to make me say it.
    “Will we be…having sex?” I managed at last, blushing down to my toes.
    He pulled back, and suddenly his eyes were wide and blinking. “I—Miss Snow! Of course not!” He seemed half-angry, half appalled. Oh shit! “I’m employing you as my aide: this is a supremely important position in the royal household! For you to even suggest that—”
    He broke off and went silent, eyes burning into me.
    “But—But—What about the party?” I was babbling, pleading. “I’m sorry, I thought— Didn’t we— I thought we—” I broke off because he was laughing. Big, helpless, heaves of laughter that bent him over. He’d manage to stop and then look at me and be off again.
    “I’m sorry, Lucy,” he managed at last. “That was wrong of me. I couldn’t help it. You just look so— You have a word for it. Library owner. No: librarian.” He said the word in English, and that made him start laughing again.
    I sat there and stared coldly at him, but inside I was awash with emotions: anger, at first, but then relief that I hadn’t been wrong. Then anger at myself: was I really relieved that this was all about sex? I still wasn’t sure where I stood.
    Weirdly, though, the laughter didn’t embarrass me. It didn’t feel like he was laughing at me: just the situation. I actually started smiling myself: there was just something so simple and open about him, when he laughed, the counterpoint to all that dark brooding and those long, intense looks. It made him fell…real. Like this could be about more than just sex.
    When he eventually stopped laughing and spoke, it was in Asterian. He looked me straight in the eye, and I knew, somehow, that he was telling the truth. “There is a job, of course. You will be my aide, and you’ll be very good at it, I’m sure. And if you want, then that is all there ever need be between us. You will never do anything you don’t want to.” Not I will never make you do anything you don’t want to . He phrased it as if every decision would be mine. That was reassuring, yet somehow even scarier: was he implying I was strong-minded enough to resist doing anything I didn’t like? Or that I was so kinky I’d do anything and everything he wanted without being pressured?
    “But I do like you, Lucy. I like you…very much.” We sat there in silence for a few seconds, while I absorbed that. Well, I’d wanted to know where I stood. Now I did. “Do you like me?” He asked unexpectedly. And I caught, just for a second, beyond all the arrogance and swagger, beyond the polished limo and the expectation, just a hint, just a tiny glimpse of vulnerability: that question was burning white-hot inside him. Did I like him?
    My mouth moved, but no words came out. He just sat there, doing a good impression of patience, even though I could almost taste his anticipation. “Yes,” I managed eventually.
    He nodded to himself. “I’d like to see your breasts again.”
    The words wafted over me like the wind. It took a couple of replays in my mind before I was sure that was what he’d said.
    Not I order you to show me your breasts. Not even, show me your breasts. He was suggesting it, and letting me respond. It was a test.
    Was it a test I wanted to pass?
    His eyes were locked on mine and I could feel the heat starting to radiate through me, pulsing down my body, through my breasts, down to my groin. I pressed my thighs tightly together at the feeling. My eyes flicked to the window.
    “One way glass,” he said, tapping it with his finger, his eyes not leaving mine. He tapped the glass partition separating us from the driver. “This, too.”
    I stared into his eyes. What did he see in me? What did he want from me? Was I really going to go through with this: go off to God-knows-where with him?
    I felt something under my fingers: a smooth hardness, pushing against awkward, tight cloth. I worried at