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As Damen crouched down next to her seat, he noticed the way Mairi’s eyes suddenly squeezed shut. Her throat had bobbed silently, too, and Damen’s lips twitched as he realized that his bride was actually pretending to be asleep.
No doubt she, too, had been unable to think of a way to break the ice between them. He was the man who had her thrown into jail, and she had married him. She had admitted to his face that she had allowed another man to touch her, and he had married her. It just wasn’t ice between them – it was a whole glacier the size of Mt. Everest.
He said quietly, “Mairi?”
Now was her time to let him know she was awake,Mairi thought.
But a second later, what she ended up doing was...
“Yoooooaaaaaarrrrrrr...”
Damen tried his best to suppress his smile as Mairi let out the most grossest-soundingsnore.Aside from knowing for a fact that Mairi did not snore when sleeping, no human female could produce such a sound naturally. It sounded more like a cross between a rhino’s roar and an ogre’s phlegm-filled cough.
Deciding to tease her a little, he said again, “Mairi?”
Now’s the time to let him know she was awake,Mairi thought. But if she did, what would he say? What wouldshesay?
“Mairi?”
Panicking, she ended up flipping to her side as if in deep sleep.
Swallowing back a silent, startled chuckle, Damen deftly swerved away from Mairi’s flying kick as she almost kicked him to the floor while flipping to her side.
He waited for her to “settle” before speaking again. “I guess you’re tired, mm?”
Mairi almost stopped breathing.Oh my God, she knew what was going to happen next. He was going to confess Something Important.It always happened like that in books and movies. Always!
If she squeezed her eyes any harder, Damen thought with amusement,she might end up bursting a blood vessel or something.
Clearing his throat, Damen continued in a grave voice, “I suppose it’s better this way,matakia mou.It would be easier to tell you without you seeing me.” He almost had to bite his tongue to keep himself from reminding Mairi that people stillbreathedin their sleep.
Mairi was dying of anticipation.Oh my God, the wait was killing her!!!
“I just want to tell you that——”
Thaaaaaaaat?
The pilot’s voice suddenly boomed out of the speakers, cutting Damen off as he announced that the jet would be starting its descent in a few minutes.
Mairi wanted to scream.Nooooooooo!
But there was no going back. The moment was gone, the mood broken, and it was time for her to “wake up”. She tried to channel Sleeping Beauty as she did, thinking she should flutter her lashes several times before she could open her eyes.
So fucking hard, Damen thought,not to laugh out loud when Mairi seemed to be aiming for a Guinness record for the most number of times she could flutter her lashes under one minute.
Mairi finally opened her eyes.
And the first thing she saw was Damen’s dazzlingly handsome face, which was too close for comfort and made her cheeks flush red. The second thing she saw was the gleam of wicked amusement in his silver eyes.
She gasped. “You knew, didn’t you?”
“Knew what?” he asked with complete innocence, but the grin tugging at his beautifully shaped lips ruined it.
Her cheeks turned a darker shade of red. Her voice turned into an embarrassed wail. “You knew!”
Damen allowed himself a small chuckle. “Yes, I did know you’ve been awake for quite some time.”
She wailed again, but when she started to cover her face, Damen was there to pull her hands away, and just like that the air between them sizzled, the simple contact of their hands generating enough heat for Damen’s smile to disappear and Mairi to swallow audibly.