Page 12 of My Dark Prince
She must’ve been scared shitless. Hell,Iwas scared. Of the responsibilities. Of her future. Of the possibility that I might fail to protect her and we’d both hate me for it. But I’d be damned if I didn’t help my Cuddlebug.
“I amalwaysgoing to be here for you.” I tipped up her chin, my eyes boring into hers. “Not just for the summers, Cuddlebug. If you need me to transfer schools and come live here in Switzerland, I’ll do it. I’ll do anything for you. There’s no mountain too high, no ocean too deep, no planet too farfor me to reach you. This is my oath to you. You will always have me. You will never,everlose me.”
Instead of answering me with her words, she answered me with her body. Smushed my cheeks and pulled me into a kiss. This time, it was different. Virginal, and hesitant, and beautiful. So damn beautiful.
Her lips skimmed mine, and we both traced the edges of each other’s mouths, quivering, like gravity might fail us at any moment. And in that kiss, she sealed my fate.
I could never love another.
Briar Rose was it for me.
Chapter Five
Oliver
Present.
“Hey, can you be my fake date next week?” Franklin Townsend slid into the passenger seat of my Ferrari Purosangue, shimmying her mini skirt down her thighs. “There’s a house party on the beach that I really want to go to, but it’s in the Hamptons and I’d rather not get hit on every five seconds.”
She adjusted her scalloped triangle top until it covered just enough to avoid another arrest. One – I didn’t know why she took a stab at modesty. Her outfit consisted of less fabric than a napkin. Party girl was her entire personality. And two – I had no clue what the Hamptons had to do with the frequency at which people hit on her, but I didn’t care enough to ask.
I revved the engine loud enough to piss off Romeo, whose home Frankie currently squatted in. “Tempting, but I’d rather eat my own spleen.”
“Why not?” She popped her pink gum, unperturbed. “I’m a hot commodity.”
“You know I don’t show up in public with the same woman more than once. People will get the wrong idea and think I’m considering monogamy, Franklin. I’m a fuckboy, not a con artist.”
“Technically, you’re a fuck-man.” Frankie giggled. “The whole bachelor schtick gets old once you hit your thirties.”
I peeled out of our neighborhood as she wrestled free a compact mirror from her Birkin – a gift from her sister, courtesyof a revenge shopping spree. “It’s not that I’m old … it’s that you’re barely born.”
She swiped on an extra coat of lip gloss. “I thought men like young women?”
“My rule of thumb is, I’m only willing to potty train someone who came out of my nuts.” What I didn’t add was that I’d never be a father, so that wasn’t a problem.
“Oh, come on. We’ve never even hooked up.”
I would never touch Franklin. Not like that. The kid thought BDSM stood for Bad Decisions and Spending Money.
“People don’t know that.” I slung my wrist over the steering wheel, eyes dead on the road. “For all they know, you were a conquest. I chased you hard enough.”
“And then I said yes.” She clicked her small mirror shut, throwing her hands in the air with a frustrated groan. “And you said no. Why is that?”
“Spared you the broken heart.”
Frankie snorted. “Please. If one of us were to get their heart broken, it would be you.”
Impossible, of course. My heart was all the way across the pond, in Europe, with a girl I hadn’t seen since I was nineteen. Time didn’t dull that fact. Neither did the stream of women who came in and out of my bedroom along the years.
But Franklin Townsend – the young, doe-eyed sister of Romeo’s wife – would never be on the menu for me. Chasing her benefitted me for the same reason pretending to be a dumbass did – it threw people off my scent. It made them believe I was a shallow, perverted creature of zero scruples. The oldest trick in the book.
“Come on, Ollie. You strung me along. The least you can do is be my date for one night.” She sprawled in her seat, eyeing me with a pout, very clearly unused to rejection. “You can dump me publicly afterwards.” She winked. “I’ve always wanted my name on a Times Square billboard.”
Frankie, like her sister Dallas, was certifiably unhinged. It didn’t take a fortune teller to guess that Franklin Townsendwas destined to end up accidentally burning a zip code or two. In the last year alone, Dallas had to quietly release her younger sister on bail for indecent exposure, possession of weed in a holy place (church), and (allegedly accidental) theft of a box of dildos, which she’d repainted and sold on Etsy as jewelry bars. Frankie was unintentionally hilarious and as high maintenance as a five-star hotel. She was also mentally five and chronologically twenty. Too young to be taken seriously.
I changed lanes, inwardly cursing the traffic. “The answer is still no.”
“How has no one realized what a buzzkill you are?”
