Page 63 of Merciless Heir
“I’ve lived without it for almost thirty-six years, why should it matter?” He slides a little closer, setting his drink down on the side table, then focuses on me. “And why should it matter to you?”
“You’re thinking it matters to me because I want it for myself.” His expression doesn’t change. “You might be right. I like beautiful things. I like expensive things.”
He nods, but he’s still considering me. “You don’t live surrounded by riches, Sadie.”
“I know. But you’re not going to believe me if I say I want to help. Or I want to do this for the challenge.”
Kingston smiles and smooths a strand of hair from my face. “No, but my opinion shouldn’t matter. I think you do want it, but you don’t know what you’re going to do. And I’m not sure of the motivation behind that want.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know enough, Sadie. I know you’re going to help me and then try and do whatever it is you’re thinking of doing.”
My hand clenches on my thigh. We’re too similar, out for the money. But this tiara is part of his family history, a legacy, and as someone who doesn’t have one—not if you don’t count my father’s deplorable ways—it saddens me. Angers me. And he deserves me stealing it out from under him.
I haven’t done that before. Worked for people and stolen, but hey, there’s always a first time.
He slides his fingers down my cheek to rest under my chin. His touch is warm fire, and it burns soft down into me. “Don’t think you can steal from me, Sadie.”
“If I did, you wouldn’t notice.”
“I notice everything about you.”
I shiver and try to shift away, but there’s something in his gaze that pins me to this spot. “You want to cash it in. I thought you loved your family.”
He drops his hand but doesn’t move from me, keeping that closeness, and the something in his eyes turns up to eleven. It’s cold, dark fire that could combust into heat at any second. It’s dangerous and addictive and I wouldn’t move if someone paid me to.
“I do. I don’t give a shit about the rest of it. If there’s a legacy. What I care about is what it can bring me. I want the tiara and you’re going to sell it to the highest bidder.”
I shouldn’t care. I know that.
“So, you really want to go through all this just to sell it?”
He smiles. “It’s mine to do with what I want.”
“You have to get it first.”
“That’s why I have you.”
“You’re a cold, money-focused bastard,” I say deliberately.
His smile, already deadly, turns feral in all the right ways. “And you, my beautiful Sadie, are a common thief.”
The air between us crackles like lightning.
I can’t breathe. I can’t think.
All there is, is him.
And then he moves, slow and deliberate, giving me all the time in the world to speak, to run.
I stay exactly where I am.
Everything in me is humming and buzzing and alive with a deep, dark need.
“Sadie…” He takes my glass and places it on the table in front of us. His gaze doesn’t lift from mine.
And I’m so fucking alive I can barely breathe.