Free To Dance with a Prince by Cara Colter

and be pulled to it, and want it for her, but at the same time, not be a moth that would be pulled helplessly into the flame.
    He danced her around the courtyard until she was breathless. Until she was his whole world. All he could see was the light in her. All he could feel was the sensuous touch of her fingertips resting ever so lightly on the place where his back met his hip. All that he could smell was her scent.
    The last note of music spilled out the window, held, and then died. He became aware again of a world that was not Meredith. The horse stood, his head nodding, birds singing, sun shining, the scent of lilacs thick in the air.
    Now, part two of the equation. He had danced with the temptation.
    Walk away.
    But she was finally looking at him with the approval a prince deserved. He steeled himself not to let it go straight to his head.
    â€œThat was fantastic,” Meredith said softly.
    â€œThank you.” With a certain chilly note, as if he didn’t give a fig about her approval.
    â€œI think you’re ready to learn a few modern dance step moves tomorrow.”
    Tomorrow. He’d been so busy getting through the challenge of the moment that he’d managed to completely forget that.
    There were more moments to this challenge. Many more.
    Kiernan had known she would be that kind of girl.
    The if you give an inch, she’ll take a mile kind.
    The kind where if you squeezed through one challenge she threw at you, by the skin of your teeth, only, another would be waiting. Harder.
    And just to prove she had much harder challenges instore for him, she stood on her tiptoes and brushed his cheek with her lips.
    Then she stepped back from him, stunned.
    But not as stunned as he was. That innocent touch of her lips on his cheek stirred a yearning in him that was devastating. Suddenly his whole life seemed to yawn ahead of him, filled to the brim with activities and obligations, but empty of the one thing that truly mattered.
    It doesn’t exist, he berated himself. He’d learned that, hadn’t he?
    For a moment, she looked so surprised at herself that he thought she might apologize. But then, she didn’t. No, she crossed her arms over her chest, and met his gaze with challenge, daring him to say something, daring him to tell her how inappropriate it was to kiss a prince.
    But he couldn’t. And therein was the problem. She was challenging his ability to be in perfect control at all times, and he hated that.
    Resisting an impulse to touch the place on his cheek that still tingled from the caress of her soft lips, Kiernan turned from her, and went to his horse. He put his leg in the stirrup and vaulted up onto Ben’s back. Without looking back, he pressed the horse into a gallop, took a low stone wall, and raced away.
    But even without looking, he knew she had watched him. And knew that he had wanted her to watch him and be impressed with his prowess.
    Some kind of dance had begun between them. And it had nothing at all to do with the performance they would give at An Evening to Remember .
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    On the drive home from the palace, Meredith replayed her audacity. She’d kissed the prince!
    â€œIt wasn’t really a kiss,” she told herself firmly. “More like a buss. Yes, a buss.”
    Somehow she had needed to thank him for all the experiences he had given her that day.
    â€œSo,” she asked herself, “what’s wrong with thank you?”
    Still, if she had it to do again? She would do the same thing. She could not regret touching her lips to the skin of his cheek, feeling the hint of rough stubble beneath the tenderness of her lips, standing back to see something flash through his eyes before it had been quickly veiled.
    She parked her tiny car in the laneway behind her apartment, a walk-up located above her dance studio in Chatam. She owned the building as a result of an insurance settlement. The building, and No Princes, had been her only uses for the