Page 33 of A Princess, Stolen (A Kiss of Revenge, Blood, and Love #1)

“I do.” My heart was pounding. I didn’t want to believe him, but I didn’t want him to leave either.

I felt strange around him. Anxious and confused because just looking at him was enough to make me nervous.

He awakened in me an irrepressible longing for distance and courage.

I took a step forward. “Why did you kiss me if you hate him so much?” I hoped to sound challenging, but Nathan didn’t even move his lips. Not a muscle moved in his face.

“Think of it as payment for saving your life earlier.” He sounded hard and proud. “You said I take what I want without asking. So, I like you…well, physically speaking.”

His dismissive insult hit me as if he had actually slapped me this time. “You do that with all women, right? You always take what isn’t given voluntarily?”

“Oh, it didn’t seem involuntary to me, princess. Am I right?” My cheeks heated up. “But I can reassure you, I’ve never touched a woman without paying. Anything else is out of the question for me.”

“Out of the question?” I stared at him for a moment. “You pay… You go to certain…establishments?” He could certainly have most women that way as long as he didn’t happen to hold them hostage.

Now he laughed contemptuously. “You can sugarcoat it all you want, but it is what it is. I only sleep with whores. Sex for cash. That’s all I need.”

At first, I was actually speechless. I couldn’t believe the kind of conversation I was having with him. He was obviously trying to provoke me. “You’re good at that,” I uttered at some point.

“What?”

“You’re good at hiding your feelings behind humiliation and contempt. I don’t know who taught you, but they were a master.”

He stood there motionless. “Stop it!”

“What?” This time I didn’t blink.

“Convincing yourself that I have feelings for you in some way. It was only a kiss. You and I don’t know each other.

In fact, we’re enemies. We spent a summer watching each other, danced together once, and shared our grief, but we were children.

” He looked me straight in the eyes. “We have nothing in common, do you understand that? Not the world we come from, nor our character or experiences. We couldn’t be more different.

You own almost half of America; everything I own I carry on my body.

You get your food on a silver platter whereas I had to steal mine for a long time.

You would live and die for your dad, I live and die for no one, at most, for oblivion. ”

I could only stare at him with burning eyes.

He was now standing very close to the bars, so close that the bars touched his face.

Everything inside me was twisted. His words didn’t match his feelings.

He had spoken in anger, but with a sadness in his eyes that lay much deeper than his anger.

And, for the first time, I believed I understood where his bitterness came from.

“You’re still grieving. What do you want to forget? Your home, which my dad supposedly took from you?” I asked cautiously. “Coldville on Buffalo Lake?”

He snorted angrily. “I’ll kill Troy! One day, I’ll really kill him!”

“Where is it?”

He grabbed the bars. “If you think I’m going to tell you…”

“What did my dad do to you?” I asked impatiently.

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“From whom, Isaac?” I called out louder than I wanted.

He was silent.

My heart started pounding again. “What do you know about him?”

Nathan sighed. “Too much.”

“What does that mean?”

“I just know him.” He turned his back to me again.

“Talk to me,” I whispered. “Please. Please don’t go away again and leave me alone.

” I didn’t know why I was asking him. Clearly, the past didn’t matter to him and he had decided to continue despising me for what my dad had supposedly done.

I thought he was going to leave, but he stopped without turning to face me.

“Back then,” he said after a while, “in Baton Rouge…you seemed lost to me, bouncing around your yard. No mom or friends, only adults watching you from afar. Adults and cameras. It was so sterile…so sick. You seemed like a tiny animal in a giant cage. You thought you were free, but you were trapped inside. It seemed that you weren’t allowed out.

Your every move was monitored; only in that memorial did they leave you alone.

You were…full of tears, somehow. You felt like I did and maybe that was what attracted me.

Or maybe it was your braids or your dress.

I’d never seen a girl like you, so chic and classy.

So beautiful.” Now he turned to me, towering over me and looking down at me through the bars.

“Two years prior, I buried my sister. For two years, I hadn’t seen anything beautiful.

Until that day, nothing could make me happy.

The bracelet I gave you…Lea had made it for me.

For after her death. It was supposed to comfort me.

She said it had magical powers, so I wanted to comfort you with it. ”

He noticed that I clutched the ribbon like a treasure. I received that brief smile that grazed his face more than it spread. At that moment, he seemed much younger than he looked.

We were silent for a while. We stood facing each other, staring at each other almost like we had eight years ago. “Why were you in Baton Rouge anyway? Did you want to kidnap me back then?” I finally asked what had been on my mind for a while.

He laughed darkly, sounding contemptuous. “I was barely thirteen. I didn’t even know how to spell kidnapping or who you were.”

“Your companion was older.”

“Nineteen.”

“And he knew who I was?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly, I understood. It was so obvious that I could only shake my head at myself.

He had said on the phone that he was twenty-seven, which meant he must have been nineteen at the time, eight years younger.

And I was nineteen today and I was eleven back then in Baton Rouge.

And I remembered something else. Troy had said that Nathan had stowed away down the Mississippi with his brother and sister.

There were two leaders, one on land and one at sea.

I took a step back. “Isaac. He’s your brother, isn’t he?” I whispered. “The man, the mastermind on land. He’s your older brother.”