Free Broken Prince: A New Adult Romance Novel by Aubrey Rose Page A

his life, his career, his family would have all been destroyed," Eliot said. His lips pressed together, his face pinched. "There was nothing left in my life to destroy. So I told him I would confess."
    "And you came to America."
    "It was an easy decision," Eliot said. "The judge who decided the sentence was close with Otto. He might even have known that I was innocent. But he gave me the option of circumventing the probationary period by simply staying out of the country for three years. And after three years, I decided to stay in California."
    "Does Marta know?"
    "Yes," Eliot said.
    "But she's still with him." I thought of how happy she had seemed when I first met her. She'd told me that she owed Eliot a great debt. Now I knew what that debt was. It made me hate her a little bit, that she was okay with having Eliot take the blame for something he didn't do. And I hated Otto, the brother I had never met, for being the kind of person who would commit that kind of crime and then let his family take the fall.
    "It tore them apart for a while," Eliot said. "I can't know what happened between them. Who knows what goes on between two people who love each other? But she stayed with him, and he's never strayed since, at least not as far as I know."
    "Thank you for telling me," I said. I sat quietly on the couch, trying to make sense of everything.
    "Brynn?"
    "Yes?" I looked up into Eliot's face crisscrossed with furrows.
    "I would never do something like that. Not to you. Not to anyone. I love you."
    "I know." I breathed in and out. "I love you too."
    "Does it matter very much to you, though?"
    "What?" I asked.
    "You know now. I'm not the sterling prince you thought I was. My reputation isn't...exactly what you imagined."
    "I don't love you because of your reputation, Eliot."
    He lifted my chin in his cupped hand and pressed a kiss onto my lips. His breath was warm, sweet, and I nuzzled his cheek after he broke the kiss. My lips grazed the white seam of his scar.
    "I want you," he whispered. I froze at the words. My body ached for him, but my mind was thrown into fear by the desire I felt.
    "Tonight?" I forced the question out.
    He paused, his fingers caressing my face.
    "You're worried, Brynn. Is it because of this?"
    "No," I said, shaking my head. "I just—I'm not ready." I was scared that he would push the issue, but he waited a moment and then kissed my forehead.
    "Then let's go to sleep," Eliot said.
    That night I slept in his arms, my back against his chest, his arms cradling me. I did not see the moon, or any of the familiar constellations, for I made Eliot close the window shutters while we slept.
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Eliot
    “The heart has its reasons whereof reason knows nothing.”
    Blaise Pascal
    Eliot could not find a proper time to tell Brynn about the riot, and he brushed it away by telling himself that she should not have to deal with yet another thing to worry about. She seemed in a better mood in the morning, and he drove them both to the Academy.
    "I've got to talk with the director about this paper," he said as they walked up the steps. "I'll come by afterward to see you in the library?"
    "Sure," Brynn said. He leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek and she smiled at him before turning down the hall towards the mathematics library. She was so beautiful. He did not want to hurt her. No. Better to keep her safe. The protests should be over soon, in any case, and then they would have only the press to worry about.
    He knocked on the director's door.
    "One moment," the director said, opening the door with a phone pressed to his ear. "Dr. Herceg! I'll be finished with this shortly."
    Eliot nodded and sat outside of the office. He rifled through the magazines on the coffee table. The last one had his face plastered across the front page with a photo of Brynn inset. Convicted Sex Criminal Finds Another Victim , the headline screamed. Eliot dropped the magazine in the trash can and leaned back in the chair, closing his