Page 50 of Jaded Princess

14

CARAMEL COATED WORDS

“Trace is playing cards,”I said to Theo once I caught up to him outside.

“That he is.” Theo opened the driver’s side door and curved himself in, the motor emitting a throaty growl before I reached my side.

“There’s gotta be a million poker rooms around here,” I said as I clipped into my seatbelt.

I could admit, I was intrigued and looking forward to infiltrating England’s version of the poker underground.

“There’s only one person whose House would allow Trace in,” Theo said. He took a corner, glanced at me, then let the wheel spin smoothly against his palms onto the straight roadway.

“You think Trace is playing these gameshimself?”

“I don’t know.” Theo tapped his index finger against the taut leather. “So much of that man alludes me, despite our blood ties.”

“But that’s about all you have,” I said, and despite the urge to, I didn’t take my eyes off his profile. “I remember, too.”

The tapping stopped. “We were close once.”

I faced the front window, but my thoughts remained with Theo. He was never one to offer up some history. Despite becoming so close to him and tracing the mold of his body—the line of his shoulders, the veins in his arms, his very sinew and licking my tongue across the border of muscle on his stomach, shivering each time I was able to touch his skin. His physical essence was forever imprinted into the rest of my life. But mentally, he was a deliberate ingenue. Hearing a word regarding his Before was a treasure. This tiny moment was no different.

I still wanted to know him.

“When you were kids?” I asked.

His brows came down as he thought. “I’m not even sure we could ever call ourselves children.”

The Saxon brothers’ father was known for brutality outside his family, earning his title from intimidation, cheating, and death. Trace was close to becoming the next Gordon Saxon. Vicious, prideful, uncaring of infamy and ideally craving it. His overt exertions made that clear, the one child to lay claim to the Saxon throne with the drive to maintain it just how it is.

Sometimes, I wondered if Theo worried he had the same temptations inside him.

Trace, Theo, and Ward, Gordon Saxon’s three sons, are like a sliding scale in aggressiveness, Trace being the worst. If they were treated the same growing up, how could Theo possibly come out clean?

“What happened back then?” I dared to ask.

His throat bobbed.

The feel of his fingers, his calloused skinwhiskingagainst the small blonde hairs on my thighs, had my hand slamming on top of his to stop the shivers.

He still drove as if he were ferrying Miss Daisy over the London Bridge. Eyes straight ahead, one hand relaxed on the wheel.

“I know what you’re doing,” I said, but inwardly cursed at how unsteady I sounded. “Stop trying to distract me.”

His palm pressed harder into my skin, the pads of his fingers dancing their way up. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”

My front teeth dug into the soft flesh of my lips as I curved them in to stop the groan threatening to unleash. He traced, so lightly, my inner thigh.

“Answer the question,” I said.

“Answer mine.”

“You didn’t ask me anything.”

“Do I have to?”

He braked at a light, using the physics of the stop to come closer to the denim cutoff of my shorts. He played with the threads.