Dominated: A Kinky Adult Fairy Tale (Bedding the Bad Girl Book 4) Read Online Free Page B

cheek.
    “Don’t start that again.” His throat was tight, and he couldn’t seem to stop his feet from moving toward her. They had time to spare and he was going to use it to take away her pain, at least for a little while.
    He stopped in front of her, his breath quickening as she tilted her head back and looked him in the eye, revealing the graceful column of her throat and the decadent expanse of her cleavage. Slowly, he knelt in front of her until their bodies were only inches apart and cupped her face in his hands. Her lips parted and a sound halfway between a sigh and a moan escaped her mouth as he wiped away the black streaks left by her tears.
    “You really believe me?” she asked. “No one’s ever believed me.”
    “I have a ten-year-old. He’s a good kid, but we’ve had our rough spots. People who think children are all sweetness and light usually don’t have any,” he said with a smile, feeling a strange tug in the vicinity of his heart when she smiled back.
    God, she was stunning when she smiled.
    It made him wish that the words he’d said were sincere. It was true that kids could lie and cheat and steal as well as many adults, but he couldn’t honestly say that he believed Eleanor was telling the truth. He’d known the queen for two years, and while she was impulsive and flighty he had never witnessed any deception on her part. He’d met Eleanor less than twenty minutes ago and the first words out of her mouth had been a lie.
    Maybe not a lie, but a promise to dominate him that she had failed to keep.
    But how could he complain when he hadn’t wanted her to keep that promise in the first place?
    “You don’t look old enough to have a ten-year-old,” she said. “Are you married?”
    “I’m thirty-five. My wife passed away when Christian was four.”
    “I’m sorry.” The empathy in her eyes was real and touched him more than he wanted to admit. It had been a long time since a woman had looked at him with such compassion.
    “It was a long time ago.” He moved his hands to the tops of her thighs, letting his fingers play back and forth between her knees and the bottom of her shorts, watching her chest rise and fall as she began to breathe faster.
    “But it still hurts, doesn’t it?” she asked. “I’m sure you know I lost my husband, too. We didn’t have children, but Cindy lived with us so I got to be a full-time stepmother.”
    “You don’t look old enough to have a teenaged stepdaughter.” He slid his hands beneath her knees, gently pulling her legs farther apart.
    She trembled and her dark eyes grew even darker. “I’m twenty-eight. My husband was twenty years older. That’s part of the reason I didn’t want Cindy dating the prince.” Her breath was coming so fast now that the creamy swells of her breasts threatened to spill out of her top. Frank massaged the sensitive skin behind her knees, hoping her tits would follow through on their threat.
    “I knew how hard it was to be with an older man,” Eleanor said, words coming faster. “My experience was that the person you loved died, leaving you alone with a stepchild who wants to murder you in your sleep.”
    “Murder you?”
    “Maybe not murder, but sometimes this life feels like a kind of death,” she said, her eyes shiny, though her fingers were smoothing up the sides of his arms. “Everyone I meet thinks I’m a child-abusing monster. It can be hard to stomach after a while.”
    Her touch made his muscles bunch as she wrapped her hands around his neck and scooted closer to the edge of the couch. Only a breath or two separated them now, and it was quickly becoming impossible to resist closing the distance between them. He was dying to know if she tasted as sweet as she looked, and what those elegant fingers would feel like digging into his shoulders while he attended to her pebbled nipples.
    “I’m sorry.” And he was sorry—sorry that he couldn’t do more for her, and that these few moments might be all they