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was looking at her was anything but. His own throat was actually a little tight, and he couldn’t stop his feet from moving toward her. They had a little time left and he was going to use it to take away her pain, at least for a little while.
    He stopped when he stood directly in front of her, his breath quickening as she tilted her head back and looked him in the eye, revealing the graceful column of her neck and the decadent expanse of her cleavage. Slowly, he knelt in front of her until their bodies were only inches apart and cupped her face in his hands. Her lips parted and a sound halfway between a sigh and a moan escaped as he wiped away the black streaks left by her tears.
    “You really believe me? No one’s ever believed me.”
    “I believe you. I have a ten-year-old. He’s a good kid, but we’ve had our rough spots. People who think children are all sweetness and light usually don’t have any,” he said with a smile, feeling a strange little tug somewhere in the vicinity of his heart when she smiled back. God, she was stunning when she smiled.
    It made him wish that the words he’d just said were completely sincere. It was true that kids could lie and cheat and steal as much as any adult, but he couldn’t honestly say that he believed Edna was telling the truth. He’d known the queen for two years, and while sometimes impulsive and flighty, he’d never witnessed any deception on her part. He’d met Edna less than twenty minutes ago and the first words out of her mouth had been a lie, promising him complete domination at her hands.
    Maybe not exactly a lie, but a promise she failed to keep. But how could he complain when he hadn’t wanted her to keep the damn promise in the first place?
    “You don’t look old enough to have a ten-year-old. Are you married?” “I’m thirty-five. My wife passed away when Christian was four.”
    “I’m so sorry.” The empathy in her eyes was real and touched him more than he wanted to admit. It had been a long time since a woman had looked at him with such compassion.
    “It’s all right. It was a long time ago.” He moved his hands to the tops of her thighs, letting his fingers play back and forth between her knees and the bottom of her shorts, and watched her start to breathe faster. It would be best to keep their interaction purely physical. He didn’t need compassion from a woman he didn’t trust.
    “But it still hurts, doesn’t it?” she asked. “I’m sure you know I lost my husband. We’d been married two years, but no kids of our own. Cindy lived with us though, so I got to be a full-time stepmother.”
    “You don’t look old enough to have a teenaged stepdaughter,” he said, sliding his hands beneath her knees and gently pulling her legs farther apart.
    She trembled and her dark eyes grew even darker, but she kept talking. Just like a woman. If they were better acquainted, he’d order her to be quiet until she came—at least twice.
    “I’m twenty-eight. My husband was twenty years older. That’s part of the reason I didn’t want Cindy dating the prince. I knew how hard it was to be with an older man. My experience was that they died on you, leaving you alone with a stepchild who wants to murder you in your sleep.”
    “Murder you?”
    “Not murder, but sometimes this life feels like a kind of death. Almost everyone I meet thinks I’m a child-abusing monster. It can be hard to stomach after a while,” she said, her eyes suspiciously shiny, though her fingers were smoothing up the sides of his arms.
    Her soft touch made his muscles bunch as she wrapped her hands around his neck and scooted closer to the edge of the couch. Only a breath or two separated them now, and it was quickly becoming impossible to resist closing the distance between them. He
    was dying to know if she tasted as sweet as she looked, and what those elegant fingers would feel like digging into his shoulders while he attended to her pebbled nipples.
    “I’m sorry.”