Stealing Cinderella(14)

When she confessed that she came here with an ulterior motive, the first spark of life I’d felt in months nearly suffocated. I anticipated she was about to propose a scheme in which she would lead me by my dick. But instead, she blurted out the most ridiculously impassioned speech I’d ever heard. About a charity, nonetheless. And while I sit here, trying to make sense of what’s happening, I still can’t find it in me to accept she could be that selfless. If I am to believe her, she came here with the sole intention of gaining support for her furry friends.

“Your Highness.” My line facilitator steps forward, subtly nodding at his watch. “Time is up.”

“Time’s up when I say it’s up.” I shoot him a withering glare and turn my attention back to the mysterious woman in front of me.

“I should go,” she says, trying unsuccessfully to excuse herself again.

“No, you won’t.” I squeeze her wrist in my grip. I don’t know why I’m still holding onto her, or why I can’t seem to stop staring at her. People are starting to take notice, and it makes me irrationally angry. I’m the prince who everyone loves to hate. The man the media can never print a kind word about. And now she’s making a spectacle of me in front of the entire room.

“You came in here and presumed me to be someone else.” I lean into her, my voice low and dark. “You accused me of being wretched and heartless. And now you think you’re just going to walk away?”

“I didn’t know,” she whispers. “I thought you were Prince Aston.”

“That isn’t an apology,” I muse.

“An apology?” She blinks, startled by the notion. “Why would I offer you an apology? You’ve been rude to me from the start. You couldn’t even deign to speak to the likes of me, and now you want an apology for observations that were only the truth? Do you think I don’t know who you are?”

My spine steels at her remark. Has my accent already betrayed the truth?

“I may be nobody in your eyes, Prince Thorsen, but I’ve seen what the media prints about you. And having made your acquaintance, I am now convinced it is all true. You really are as heartless as they say.”

My hand falls away from her, but inside, I can’t temper the rage churning in my gut. I should be accustomed to it. Every day of my life, I have heard nothing less, but from her, it burns worse than all the others, and I can’t understand why.

She stands up again, not bothering with a curtsy this time. “Excuse me.”

When she rushes to the exit and down the corridor, I’m not thinking clearly as I give chase. My security detail attempts to stop me as I wade through the crowd, but my focus is on the blue dress slipping out the palace doors.

“Is everything alright, sir?” My secretary intervenes, trying to block my path.

“Everything is fine.” I wave him away. “Let me be for a minute.”

He doesn’t argue, and I follow the mystery woman onto the lawn. She’s trying to outrun me, but my legs are longer, and she has the disadvantage of heels, which she’s clearly not accustomed to wearing.

When we both spill out into the garden, her heel gets caught in the grass, and she tumbles forward onto her knees. The next time she looks up, she’s at eye level with my cock. She swallows her nerves, and I tug her up into my grasp.

“What is your name?” I demand.

“Why?” she asks breathlessly. “Are you going to have me arrested?”

The streak of fear in her eyes is enough to make me question everything. I can’t figure out what it is about this woman, or why I even give a fuck, but I can’t let her leave without knowing more. It irritates me, and it fascinates me, and I can’t rationalize this senseless hunger to strip her bare and force her to reveal her secrets. But when I reach for her mask, she gasps, shaking her head.

“I can’t. I can’t, Your Highness, please forgive me.”

“It’s too late for forgiveness. Give me a name.”

“Cinderella!” she cries out. “That’s what I’m known by, and now I really must go.”

My eyes drift to her lips, and my cock stirs to life in my trousers. It’s a pity she’s so beautiful. I’m tempted to drag her around the corner of the palace and hate fuck her right here on the lawn, smearing her lipstick and ruining that pretty dress of hers when I spray my come across her tits.

“Thor?” Calder’s voice startles me, bringing order back to the chaos in my mind. “What are you doing out here?”

When I turn toward him, the mystery woman slips out of my grasp, and it takes all of my restraint not to chase after her again as she glances at me one last time.

“Who was that?” my brother asks.

“Nobody.”

“It didn’t look like nobody.” He arches a brow at me.

“She was offensive and needed a reminder of her manners.”

“They are all offensive.” He chuckles darkly. “Isn’t that the entire point?”

I nod and turn to go back inside, but the reflection of her heel stuck in the grass captures my attention. She left it behind. Calder watches me curiously as I kneel to examine it, tugging it from the dirt and tucking it against my side.

“What are you doing with that?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “Perhaps she’ll want it back someday.”