Page 34 of A Prince of Smoke and Mirrors (Billionaire Sanctuary: The Heir #1)

So much for virginal explorations that morning. I wanted to snap at everyone who had interrupted us.

Instead, I turned and found my undershirt in the small clothes bag attached to the hanger and wrestled it over my head. “No, he won’t.”

One of her hands flapped back and forth between us and then the door, a panicked move. “We were alone. The door was closed. He’s going to think.”

I fished around in the canvas bag of toiletries I’d ordered, finding a travel-sized stick of deodorant, which I applied before I plucked my dress shirt off the clothes hanger. “We weren’t in here nearly long enough, and there wasn’t any passionate feminine screaming. He won’t think a thing.”

Ueli absolutely would think such things. He’d been with me too long and knew too much about me. However, he wouldn’t show it or ask about it, which was all that mattered.

Just a few moments later, I was appropriately dressed, my collar open because I hadn’t worn a tie the previous night.

As I was reaching for the doorknob, I looked back at Lexi, who was still plastered against the rear wall of the bathroom.

With all our negotiating and my security’s sudden intrusion, she was still wearing what I’d assumed were pajamas, including a clingy knit tee shirt stretched over her breasts.

Her delectable, round, jiggling breasts.

Yeah, Lexi wasn’t wearing a bra.

A sudden vision drifted through my mind of Ueli and the other men looking at her, at the slight outline of her pebbled nipples visible through the thin pink cotton, and then me ripping through the security men, slicing the throats of every single one of them with a long, thin saber for laying their eyes on her.

To be clear, I didn’t have a sword, in that I didn’t ordinarily travel with one of my collection, but revenge for any man thinking he could look at my Lexi seemed to call for running someone through with a gladius, or a kopis, perhaps a rapier.

Before that murderous thought could twist my face into some horrifying grimace, I dropped my blank mask over my features.

No tension, no emotion, just a face. It was my only defense against behaving like a raging lunatic with every emotion that crossed my brain on display. “Did you have some other clothes you might want to change into, perhaps, that I could bring to you?”

She glanced down at herself and crossed her arms over her chest. “In my gym bag over on the side. There’s some shorts and a real tee shirt, and my bra.”

“I’ll get them for you.”

“Thanks,” she muttered, but she didn’t look up to meet my eyes.

I should not find repressed sexuality arousing, but if I thought about her demure blinks any longer, I was going to have to shove my dick back into my trousers.

I was shrugging my suit jacket on, the silk lining sliding smoothly over the crisp cotton of my clean shirt, and I closed the bathroom door behind me as I crossed the tiny hotel room in a few paces to find Lexi’s gym bag.

One of the security guys, Dushyanta, was staring at Lexi’s wedding dress that was now clipped onto a hanger and hung over the door of the television armoire, scrutinizing it as if he were looking for recording devices.

Her bag was on the rickety metal-pole luggage rack.

As a rule, I didn’t notice brands, whether they were flashy logos for the pretentious classes or a more subtle quality brand, but her ragged gym bag seemed to have a high school name and a rodent silk-screened on the side.

I poked around inside, finding the clothes she’d described, and took them back over to the bathroom door to toss them through the door.

Inside, Lexi was sitting on the closed toilet, her hands still firmly affixed to her face.

“Anything amiss?” I asked.

“Still mortified.”

I lowered my voice so the security guys outside might have the option of not hearing. “We will have security around us at all times. It’s a thing to get used to.”

I closed the door and hoped I’d phrased that as not-insultingly as possible.

As I turned, Ueli stood right in front of me. “Tell me what the hell is really going on.”

Ueli had been with me for twelve years at that point, which meant my uncle had picked him out for me before I’d turned eighteen and thus was able to hire my own employees. European labor laws made it difficult to fire him and several of the other men my uncle had surrounded me with.

Ueli was good at his job, but I wasn’t sure what the entirety of his job description was. “I already did. Is the transport here yet?”

He stiffened. “Yes.”

“Then let’s go. She has a vehicle in the hotel parking lot. We’ll need to move it somewhere more secure.”

“And where should we move it to, sir?”

I rubbed my face, wishing I could sand off my thick stubble and throbbing hangover headache with my palm. “The house in Los Angeles is fine. Have it trucked over. There’s an empty garage bay there, right?”

“I think so.”

“If not, move the Cayenne outside until we can reorganize some vehicles. I’ll get you her keys and the license plate number. And she needs to finish eating breakfast before we leave.”

Ueli frowned. “We don’t have time.”

The urge to grab Ueli by the throat swirled up in me, and I turned to him, blandly firm. “I said, Lexi needs to eat.”

He lowered his eyes, angry. “Very well, sir.”