Royal Line by Carrie Ryan (lightweight ebook reader .txt) 📗

me. I could feel the waves of heat emanating from his body. What the hell? It was just the adrenaline spiking through me, the confusion of everything.

I was not attracted to this man. He was a caveman. A bossy one at that.

But someone had shot at me, and someone had known where I was and tried to kill me. He wasn’t wrong. You need to trust him.

Bile filled my throat, my hands started to shake, and I cursed at myself. I was just hungry. It was just a blood sugar issue. That was it. I refused to let fear take over.

Kannon gave me a pitying look, and I wanted to hit him again. I wanted to scream and to thrash and to just make everything go away. Because I didn’t have control here, and that was the one thing I’d strived for all of my life. The control to do something. But every time I turned around, someone kept stripping it away from me.

“Let me help you with this, and we’ll get you home. Then you never have to see me again.”

I didn’t really have any other choice. “Fine.”

“You can relax. I’m not going to hurt you. Right now, I’m whoever you need me to be.” And with that line, he moved past me, riffled through my purse, and pulled out my phone. I wanted to throw something. I wanted to say something. But instead, I just stood there, my hands fisted at my sides, glaring at him.

“You’re taking a lot of liberties.”

“I’m trying to save your life.” He turned away to look down at his phone as if I hadn’t spoken. Jerk. “We’ll contact your brothers, and we’ll see what they say.”

“And I don’t have a choice?”

“When it comes to your safety? No, not really.”

I hadn’t felt safe in a long while, and the last twenty-four hours were just one more step into that inevitable cage that was my royal throne.

Chapter 6 Kannon

This is going to be a problem.

Scratch that.

She’s going to be a problem.

Walking away had been for the best, or I would have turned that princess over my knee.

Fury surged through me, but I did my best not to pay attention to it as I looked down at London’s phone. Lock it down. Every emotion. Tuck it away.

I was good at that. There was no need for me to let emotions influence what I needed to do. Alden’s Princess might not have hired me for this job, but I’d be damned if I let anyone else down on my watch.

I knew she was scared. But she didn’t understand. If I wavered for even a moment, she could get hurt or worse.

Memories of screams echoed in my head, a woman calling my name. I dug my hands into the sides of my head, trying to push those images and sounds out of my mind. There was no use dwelling on them.

I wasn’t that person anymore.

Also, fuck those memories.

I needed to deal with the London situation, and then I’d be back to even. She was right; she wasn’t a client. I’d do the minimum to make her someone else’s problem and walk away. Get her to safety. That was all.

I had Olly and Sparrow at my disposal. Olly was still dealing with scrubbing Lilith from any footage. You want to call Sparrow for what? To talk? Bullshit.

She’d worry about me and wonder what the hell I was doing.

Somehow, in a business where we were supposed to be about security and taking care of other people, I had a mother hen on my team. What was worse was if she sensed I was having any residual memories; she’d call the whole team back to Paris. And I didn’t need them all clucking.

I groaned before I made my way back to the bedroom. Our bedroom.

Fuck. Nope. Just the room that was available.

It hadn’t even crossed my mind to put London in any other room but mine. It didn’t matter that I could have put her in Sparrow’s or found a way to keep her out of my bed. But as soon as she had winked at me the night before, if I was honest with myself, all I had wanted to do was make sure that she was in my sights at all times.

The problem was, I liked her. She had a quick, sharp wit and she’d managed to make me laugh last night…before all the bullets.

As if I had time for that kind of bullshit. She was in my bed, but I sure fucking wasn’t.

There was no way I was going down that road.

She was a princess, and I was just a guy who had shown up in the right place at the wrong time. I hadn’t even been hired to keep her safe, but I’d be damned if I let her get hurt. I’d get her pert little ass home, then I’d be done.

Then deal with her.

I knew that twisting feeling in my gut. The one that kept me in the suite’s living area… It was fear. I was losing my goddamn mind.

Sac up. She’s a princess. She can’t hurt you.

Lies. But still, I went back into the room and pierced her with a grim, determined expression. In response, she scowled back. She had her arms wrapped around her knees, and it looked like she was counting to herself, probably to hold back that temper. How often did she do that? I had to admit that I liked it when she spit fire though.

Because even though I knew that she had that fear within her, she still had a temper on her and wasn’t afraid to match me. And if I was capable of caring about another human being like that, I probably would have thought it was hot.

But no way.

“Okay, we’re calling your brothers.” I held up the device I’d retrieved from the other room. “This device will scramble our location. But you still need to be brief. Do you understand?”

She nodded enthusiastically and