It wasn’t until his hand closed over hers that she realised she’d held hers out.
And just like that slow drift of his thumb over her lips, he took his time wrapping her small hand within his, his gaze never straying from hers as his fingers gripped firm. Then firmer. Until she felt her pulse drumming between their heated flesh, completely drowning out the moment he answered. ‘Deal.’
‘Why is this taking so long? This weasel had the nerve to scatter his DNA and digital footprint all over her bedroom. So why has he managed to evade you for almost a week?’ Valenti snarled into his satellite phone.
A throb of uncomfortable silence pulsed through the still air of his cabin office. Then his most experienced operative cleared his throat. ‘The two locations we pinged turned out to be dead ends. We’re doing everything we can to find him, Your Highness.’
Por el amor de dios.‘Do better!’
He ended the call with barely restrained patience. Then surged to his feet to prowl to the window.
The sun was almost up but it’d been white outside for several hours now. Not that it mattered to him one way or the other. He’d barely slept more than a half-hour stretch last night after Lotte headed upstairs to bed and he locked himself in his office.
What he was suffering from was more than cabin fever.
He snorted under his breath. It was a different sort of fever entirely. The kind that seemed to push him into makingcuriously unwise decisions. Like touching the softest skin he’d ever felt in his life. Then compounding that forbidden temptation with striking deals he had no business making. Willingly agreeing because hisward, a womanfourteen years younger, stared up at him with those…breathtaking eyes? The plea to divulge information they both found painful, and him agreeing?
Eyes that reflected every emotion she was experiencing?
Was that all it really took? Or was it something else? Something even more disturbing.Dios, he could feel that emotional landmine he’d been avoiding inching ever closer. And it was imperative he stop it. Before he failed someone else.
He was almost relieved when his phone buzzed. He sensed who it might be before he swiped it off his desk.
Everything okay?
He gritted his teeth and his fingers tightened around his phone. For a brief time back in his teens, he’d mourned the sudden loss of the emotional connection he’d had with his twin.
In the trying years in the army and the different, harrowing path he’d had to take by decree of his father, the King, followed by the hell of loss and tragedy, he’d been secretly grateful to nature, the cosmos or whatever entity existed out there that he’d been given the tools to spare his brother the turbulent oceans that ran beneath his pretended calm.
Except recently, that connection had begun to regain strength, breaking through his resistance once again. It’d started recently at Azar’s wedding, slowly, sensing a twinge of Teo’s anxiety here, a spark of his frustrated resentment there. Then a flurry of elation when Teo had pulled his disappearing act and ended up on Morocco with Sabeen, his creative director and soon-to-be wife.
After that it’d tapered off for a while and Valenti had been ambivalent about it. On the one hand he was pleased for his twin, but he’d been grateful for the reprieve of being bombarded by hints of Teo’s bliss.
You know I’m going to keep asking until you answer, right? That or you stop bombarding me with these…interesting feelings.
Valenti squeezed his eyes shut. The last thing he needed was his well-meaning but incorrigible twin brother digging beneath the surface of emotions Valenti seemed unable to stop broadcasting.
Because not even one could be allowed to escape the forbidden darkness.
Because he couldn’t possibly find hiswardinsanely breathtaking enough to want to—
No.
He exhaled a harsh breath and punched in a swift response.
Nothing to worry about. Just dealing with persistent irritants.
He wasn’t surprised at all when his phone trilled to life almost immediately the text was sent.
‘Qué deseas?’ he demanded tersely.
‘Nice try, brother. We might do things differently, but if you don’t know I’m a stickler for details, then we’re not twins. So spit it out. What’s going on with your ward? I’m assuming you’re still in Reykland?’
‘Yes. And nothing is going on with her. Nothing that’s not under control, anyway.’
His twin’s laughter grated his last nerve. ‘You forget I can feel you lying to me?’
‘We both knowthat’sthe lie. The connection doesn’t work that way.’ He sighed. Right now, he wished it would return to being defunct. ‘Seriously. Leave it alone,hermano.’
