Free The Princess and the Pauper by Alexandra Benedict

the room. Her warm eyes, uncertain
and searching, met his, and his chest tightened. Would a time ever
come when she wouldn’t steal his breath?
    She shut the door and stepped nearer to
the bed. “Am I disturbing you?”
    “ No.” He forced a deep, drawn
breath into his starved lungs, then gradually exhaled. “How was your
walk?”
    She curled her slender fingers
around the bedpost. “Unusual.”
    Her skir t brushed the foot of the bed. His
toes almost grazed her skirt. What was she doing so close to him?
Earlier in the day, she’d backed away from him in obvious mistrust.
Her fear had twisted his innards, for she’d never treated him with
suspicion, and he was unfamiliar with the unnatural feeling. But he
now found her inexplicable courage equally disarming.
    “ Unusual?” His pulse quickened
under her probing stare. “How so?”
    “ T he house is empty. Why?”
    “ I have yet to fill it with useless
things.”
    When he ’d purchased the property six months
ago, Lady Hickox had papered the walls and draped the windows in
anticipation of rollicking gatherings, where she would act as
hostess to celebrated artists, politicians and other demigods. Grey
wanted no intrusion into his private world, however, and had
refused to furnish the mansion, much to her displeasure.
    “ I suppose that will change,” he
considered in a low voice, “now that you’re here.”
    She cocked her head. “Why would it change
because of me?”
    “ What will you do in an
empty house?”
    “ What will I do in a furnished
one?”
    Rule it, he thought, then frowned.
What game was she playing?
    T heir dance had to end. If he wanted to be
free of her and the past, he had to regain control of his impulses,
and there was only one way to do that—to confront her and
everything she had ever meant to him, to stand before it all, and
then to turn away from it.
    He whispered, “Will you play for
me, princess?”
    There was a bright, unexpected light in
her eyes—a passionate flame—not borne of anger, as he’d assumed
when he’d called her “princess,” but borne of . . .
hope.
    The hairs on his arms bristled. Hope for
what? he wondered. What did she believe would come of her music
play?
    He sensed the change in her, in
himself, and
his heart thudded, low and fierce . . .
    Emily flexed her fingers.
    Rees studied her with unmistakable heat in
his eyes, and her every pore burst with gooseflesh. She thought
she’d buried her sensual feelings for him, that they might not even
exist after so much time. But as she wondered how it would feel to
hear such soft words whispered against her skin, her blood
simmered.
    An unfinished kiss still lived in her
memory. She watched him on the bed, under the glow of lamplight,
with his mussed hair and partially unbuttoned shirt, and the
smoldering longing returned, burned hotter.
    She hadn’t fully understood the
fire between them five years ago, but she understood it now.
D esire. It
had almost ruined her. But that danger was now gone.
    She was already ruined.
    Emily grabbed the bedpost again, needing
support. Suddenly, there was so much more at stake than their
friendship. There was forgiveness. And the possibility of a life.
Together.
    But i f music failed to rouse him? Then he
hadn’t dormant affections for her. What would she do then? Live
with him in misery? Pray for indifference?
    She trembled as she retrieved a violin.
She had never played with such a sense of urgency or fear. And if
she couldn’t play?
    With a deep breath, she sat on
the edge of the winged chair . Her heartbeat sounded in her ears. She couldn’t
fit the instrument comfortably under her chin or raise her arms
high enough, the shoulder seams so low, they pinched her muscles
when she tried to lift them.
    “ You cannot play in that
dress .” His
voice dropped to a throaty timbre. “It gives you no freedom of
movement.”
    The roughness in his words made
her skin prickle even more. He was right, of course. She couldn’t play in