Page 9 of Deviant Princess (Knight's Ridge Empire 5)

She gasps, not expecting the move as she glares at me, pretending not to be affected by it.

“I know what you’re trying to do, Hellcat. And I can tell you now that it’s not going to work.”

A coy smile pulls at her lips. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, husband.”

I grin back, but it’s pure malice. “If you think I don’t know that you’ve been trying to escape, that you’ve trashed my flat, then you really need to reconsider who you’re dealing with.”

“And here I thought you were losing your touch, what with leaving evidence out for me to find.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to be searching under my coffee table, Hellcat. For some fucking reason, I trusted you not to snoop through my house.”

“That was probably your second mistake,” she hisses.

“Oh, and what was my first?” I ask, genuinely interested in finding out what she thinks my worst crime here is.

“Lying to me.”

Fair play.

“I—”

“Don’t,” she snaps. “Unless some honesty is about to fall from your lips, save it.”

The second my grip on her loosens the slightest bit, she slips from between me and the wall and storms toward what I already know is my trashed living room.

Kicking off my shoes, I follow her, taking in the devastation. There are feathers from the sofa cushions everywhere. The contents of all the cupboards and drawers are all over the place, and she stands in the middle of it all looking like a smug goddess.

My eye twitches at the mess, but I refuse to show her just how much it affects me.

I hate mess. I hate chaos. I like everything in my life to have a place, to be calm. It’s why she’s driven me to the edge of insanity over the past few months, because she’s neither of those two things. And if I’m following my rules, then she doesn’t fit in my life.

Only… she does.

Staring at her now in the middle of the devastation she’s caused, I realise just how right she looks in my home… in my life.

My fists curl with my need to march over and show her exactly how all of this makes me feel.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Theo?”

“Because I couldn’t,” I answer honestly.

“So you’d happily lie to me about something this… this fucking important, because you’d rather follow your father’s fucking command?”

“It wasn’t just because of him.”

“No, right…” she says, clearly jumping to the wrong conclusion. Not that I’m going to correct her, because that would mean baring my soul to her more than I already have.

I could have told her. I could have gone about this an entirely different way, but then she wouldn’t be here now. If I’d told her from the get-go, then we wouldn’t have had this time together.

I wouldn’t have gotten to know her. The real her. Not the façade she puts on for everyone else to see. I got behind the mask, even if just for a little bit. And damn it, she burrowed her way under mine, too. I’m just not sure she knows which parts of me are real yet, like I do her.

“How could I forget? It wasn’t only your dad that signed off on this fucking insanity, but my mum, too.”

My stomach dips at her assumption, and before I can decide whether telling her is the right thing to do or not, the words come tumbling from my lips.

“Your mum didn’t know.”

She rears back as if I’ve just slapped her.