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“You!” She jerks away from my touch, anguish marring her beautiful features.

“Don’t look so shocked, Princess.” A quick look around confirms we’re alone.

“Stop calling me that!” Adelaide’s voice rises an octave.

“Should I call you Addie, then?” I can’t help myself.

I love to watch the way her ivory cheeks flush with anger—it makes me wonder just how red her perfect pale skin would turn beneath my touch.

“I hate you.” She brushes past me to walk back out the way we came.

“That’s not what it seemed like last night.” I grab her arm, a little more rough than necessary, to lead her through another way, avoiding the mirrors… and the queen.

“I knew it. You’re him. The man from my dreams?” She fights me every step of the way down the dimly lit corridor.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Princess.” My grip tightens on her.

“I’m not a fool.” She grinds her heels and refuses to move in the middle of the passageway. “I saw you!”

“Fool? No. But you are confused. You don’t know what you saw.” I need her to forget that ever happened, just like I’m trying to.

Because she might have been the one to drink the poison apple shots, but it was me who was drugged that night.

She’s my forbidden fruit. And I’d have to be crazy to take a bite of what doesn’t belong to me.

No matter how sweet she smells. No matter how tempted I am.

I pray she never really remembers that night, so maybe I’ll stand a chance in hell of finally forgetting. How when she turned and collapsed into my arms that her ruby-red lips latched onto my neck as I lifted her into my eager arms. How her poison-coated tongue darted out and tasted my skin, branding me and filling me with a deadly desire to taste her right back.

“I know what I felt when you were standing behind me, digging your fingers into my hips.” She leans in closer, challenging me, making me want to do the same thing right now, but this time, she’s wide-awake. No music. No drinks. Just her. And me.

And the queen.

“You were drunk,” I remind her and myself. Knowing I couldn’t touch her… wouldn’t touch her was a sobering thought.

She’s not mine to take.

That’s the excuse I keep giving myself, the only thing that might explain why when we mirrored and brought her from the bar in her realm to the castle in mine, it felt like my heart was shattering. I knew that I was escorting her to certain death when the only place I wanted to take her was my bed. The unexplainable connection I feel with her is one that I wish like hell I didn’t. I wish I could sever it. Closing that dungeon door, leaving her down there… it was like closing the door on the only little bit of humanity I had left.

“Thanks to you and your poison concoctions. But not too drunk to know that you couldn’t get close enough.” She jabs her finger into my chest. My little fighter.

This is going to be fun.

“Exactly. What you felt.” Twisting her arm, I flip her around, leaning into her from behind, careful not to scratch her cheek into the stone wall. “Arousal doesn’t mean anything. It’s just basic physiology.” The evidence of my own arousal puts pressure against her back as she squirms against me. “Who knows, maybe it was all a dream. Maybe you’re dreaming right now?”

I wish she was because we would be safe there. And I could finally touch her the way I want to.

“Now you’re mocking me. Drugging and kidnapping me wasn’t enough? Are you working on your supervillain platinum card?”

“Clever. Are you always this mouthy?” I release her before I take things too far.

“Are you always Mr. Tall, Dark, and Douchey?”

“Only when provoked. Now, let’s go. You have a big night ahead, and the queen wants you showered.”

“Do you always do everything the queen tells you?” Her arrow hits its mark with deadly accuracy.

Ouch.