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The light turns green and I’m about to press the gas pedal when I hear her door open. I look over but am too stunned to react as I watch Linnea get out of the car, slam the door behind her, and walk across the two lanes of traffic to the sidewalk.
“What thefuck?” I yell. I roll down the window. “Linnea! Get your ass back here!”
She keeps walking, not even looking in my direction.
The cars in the lanes between us are now moving and the car behind me lays on the horn. I lift my middle finger.
“Linnea!” I roar.
But even if she can hear me, she doesn’t slow down or look back.
I don’t know where the hell she thinks she’s going, but she won’t get far.
I press the gas and the car lurches forward. I immediately signal, jerking the wheel to the right, and merging into the lane next to me, then the next. If you can call causing the cars behind me to slam on their brakes and call me very unflattering names ‘merging’.
I round the corner, speed to the next, round that block and realize…fuck it. I pull over at the curb, not even bothering to note if it’s actually legal to park there. I grab my phone, the keys, and make sure I have my wallet, then I take off at a run in the direction she was headed.
Thankfully, she’s walking resolutely but not quickly.
I catch up with her a few minutes later.
I walk up behind her, wrap my arm around her waist, and pick her up.
She starts fighting, exactly as she’s been trained, but she doesn’t have her pepper spray in hand. I’m both irritated and relieved by that.
“It’s me, you little hellion. Stop it,” I say against her ear, carrying her down the sidewalk to a bench.
She stops fighting but when I deposit her onto the bench and squat in front of her, caging her in with my hands on the seat on either side of her hips, she’s glaring at me.
“What thefuckwas that?”
“That was me refusing to be spoken to the way you were speaking to me,” she says, chin up.
If I had forgotten for one second this woman has spent twenty-seven years planning to be a queen, in that moment, she is royal as fuck from the top of her gorgeous head to the tips of her feisty toes.
“No one tells me when I can and cannot speak,” she says.
I tip my head. “You’re right, Duchess.” She is. There are some very specific instances where this woman will enjoy me bossing her around. My body heats with that simple thought and I have to clear my throat. We will both enjoy those instances. But they won’t extend to every circumstance, for sure. “I’m sorry.”
She crosses her arm, and her leg, kicking me in the stomach—thankfully just above my fly—in the process. She regards me with a cool look I haven’t seen in months. And I hate it. I only want warmth and heat from her.
“Afteryoukissed me the first time, you stopped speaking to me. And now after another man does it, you decide you don’t want to speak to me,” she points out. “You seem very emotional about the topic of me and kissing.”
“I am,” I agree. “I have a lot of very big emotions about that subject.”
“Well, you’re a big boy and you’re going to listen to what I have to say anyway,” she tells me. “And I’m a big girl and I am not telling you this because I’m naïve and need you to help meanalyzethis. I know very well what’s going on. I’m also not telling you this because I love when you’re jealous, though I do. I’m telling you this because it concerns you.”
A lot of fucking thingsconcernme about this woman. But I blow out a breath and nod. “Fine.”
“Christian asked to kiss me.”
I grind my back teeth together. “And you said yes.”
“I did.”
“Okay.” It’s not okay. She’s mine. Everything in me is screaming at me that she’s mine and that every other man needs to back the fuck off. Even if they are future presidents and kings.
I’m so fucked.