Astaroths Proposal

‘Ah,’ he drawled. ‘In one of those moods, are we?’ Stepping further

into the room, he closed the door. ‘What would you like me to do?’ he enquired, ever so politely. ‘Grovel at your beautiful feet?’

Which was his own unique brand of sarcasm, Evie made rueful note.

Quite deliberately she took the words at their face value.

‘Right now, I would much rather you feed me,’ she replied. ‘I haven’t eaten since breakfast this morning, and it is now…’ she paused to glance

at her watch ‘… almost nine o’clock.’

‘So, you do want me to grovel,’ he assumed from all of that, not in the least bit fooled by her cold manner.

What he wasn’t seeing was the anxiety lurking behind the coldness—

thank goodness—because now that she actually had him here in the

flesh Evie had cravenly decided she needed time before she said what she had to say to him.

So her barely perceptible shrug sent one of his sleekly defined black

silk brows arching, and in two very economical and outwardly innocent gestures war between them was declared. It was not a new aspect of their relationship. In fact the whole foundation of it had been built on a

refusal on both parts to pander to the arrogance of the other. Evie

refused to pander to his god-like ego and Raschid refused to pander to her ice-princess image.

‘I have responsibilities,’ he clipped out.

‘Really?’ Evie drawled.

His eyes began to spark. ‘My time is not always my own to do with as I please.’

‘So it didn’t please you to keep me waiting for almost an hour?’ Her turn to use sarcasm, his to respond—or not—depending on his mood.

What he chose to do was to begin walking towards her with the sleek soft tread of a predator ruthlessly stalking its prey. Her nerve-ends began to tighten, sending out electric signals to all parts of her body as she

watched him grow in height, in power, in skin-flaying mastery the closer he came to her.

The man was sheer poetry in motion. So lean and lithe and dark and deliciously dangerous that, by the time he came to a stop mere inches

away from her, the breath had completely seized in her chest, and tiny

tight tingles of a very familiar excitement were beginning to shimmer through her blood.

And this, Evie told herself helplessly, was why she could not bear to consider the prospect of giving up this man.

He touched parts of her no other living being had ever touched.

Liquid gold eyes held iced blue in challenge. A hand with long, lean brown fingers that knew how to be cruel if the moment presented itself

came up to take hold of her tilted chin.

‘Word of warning,’ Raschid murmured softly. ‘I am in no mood for temperament tonight. So be wise, my darling, and drop the disgruntled

act.’

‘But I am disgruntled.’ Evie immediately defied the warning. ‘You treat

me like a lackey and I don’t like it.’

‘Because I arrive late once in a while?’

‘You arrive late more often than you arrive early,’ she grimly pointed out.

To her annoyance, his mouth twitched, an unexpected dash of wicked

amusement entering the battle. ‘And aren’t you ecstatic that I am such a latecomer, hmm?’ he countered lazily.

It took her a few moments, but when his meaning did manage to sink in Evie sighed, wrenching her chin from his grasp as a wave of pink ran into her cheeks. ‘We weren’t talking about your sexual prowess!’ she admonished.