Pretty Perfect Toy - Angel Payne Page 0,53
the other room before I showered.”
Groan.
I let out a real one while rolling to my back. Instead of shaking off his hold, the move just drags him up and over, until I am returning his probing stare with a glower. “‘Spied’ is right,” I accuse. “You were not supposed to—”
“Listen to everything you were muttering at the same time?”
At least the assertion unseats his grip on my ass, forcing his hand up to stop the face palm I prepare to indulge. I battle him with a not-so-ladylike grunt.
“I—I do not know what you—”
“Yes you do.” His voice is lenient but his grip is not, locking my arm into the pillow next to my head, his thumb digging into my palm. “Things like ‘what the hell was I thinking’ and ‘all these dresses make me look like a cow’ and ‘Cassian will have me on the next plane home after this’.” His thumb pinches deeper. “Sounding familiar, beautiful?”
At first, he receives only my peeved hiss. His face is like a lake from a European postcard: breathtaking and serene. Dammit.
“The idea was mine!” I debate. “You remember that, yes?”
“Of course I do.”
“So I had no bloody right to feel so nervous about it.” The past tense reference is useless. Just thinking about it now turns my stomach into an emulation of the designer fountain in the Court Towers lobby, with bile and nerves instead of chrome and water.
“Bullshit.” Cassian leans down, pinning me tighter with the pressure of his whole body. “You had every goddamn right. You still do.” Impales me with even deeper intensity in his gaze. “You think I was kidding when I called the idea crazy?” he charges. “Chantal Dunne is a hell’s hare in bunny’s clothing—fluffy on the outside, vicious on the inside. Think Barbie meets Maleficent, marinated in a subtle Nurse Ratched.”
“Huh?”
He snorts. “I have to stop picking spy thrillers on movie nights. But for now,”—he moves his hold to the side of my neck, brushing a thumb along my jaw—“I’m in this with you, Ella. All the way. Though the idea may be crazy, it’s also brilliant.” The kiss he presses is quick but intense, sending tingles down to my toes. “Now, we just need to make sure it’s really brilliant.”
I twist my head a little. Dip a frown. “‘Really brilliant’. I hope that comes with an instruction manual?”
“Not a word of one.” He releases a long breath. “But we’ll write it the best way possible. Together.”
I counter him with a deep inhalation. “All right.” Give him the steady trust of my gaze. “How do we start?”
“By recognizing where Chantal will start,” he asserts. “Beer pong or not, her staff has undoubtedly been ordered to do their homework on us.”
My belly floods with fresh anxiety. Brims over, sluicing a chill through my bloodstream. “H-homework? About what?”
His touch still reassures, but his brow furrows. “I don’t know yet. Doyle and his team are doing what they can to find out, but we likely won’t know everything she’s got until we’re face-to-face with her on set tomorrow.”
The chill becomes ice. “Everything she—” I push against him. “Cassian.” Sit straight up, clutching a hand over the wild pounding of my heart. “Do you think she will find out…about the real terms of the contract?”
He pushes up. Then a little more. The sheet obeys gravity—and the thirst of my gaze—to slide away from the crests of his chest and the ladder of his abs, puddling between his thighs like a loincloth on an Italian statue of gold marble.
“Not if the people who know about it value their relationships with us—or their status at Arcadian court.” His commitment to every word is engraved across the solemn angles of his face. I nod, believing him. Nobody on the short list of insiders about the contract terms, Mother and Father included, has any reason to spill the sordid fine print about our agreement. At least I hope…
“Ella.” He cups a hand around my shoulder. I look up, already craving the look on his face—the one saying he has listened to every thought in my head, and now has the perfect answer for them. “It’s going to be okay.”
“You do not know that for sure!”
“I don’t,” he concedes. “But I do know she has no reason to even look there. That’s not what she’s after.”
“Then…what is she after?”
His reaction is not what I first expect. The little jog of his head and the sly smile on his face are such a switch from his