Royal's Untouched Love by Sophia Lynn Read Free Book Online Page A

just as good.
    "You look pleased," Jaque said over his cut of rare steak.
    She blushed, wondering if she had given herself away somehow, but he looked happy.
    "You should always look at least this happy," he commented, taking a bite of his own meal. "Your smile is amazing."
    She laughed a little self-consciously. "You're very free with your compliments," she said softly.
    "But I mean each and every one of them," he said with a smile. "When I tell you that your smile could light up a cave miles beneath the darkness, or when I say that your hair rivals the sunrise … I mean those things."
    She told herself that this was simply the way that European men were, prone to give compliments, prone to admire, but there was something else there.
    "Thank you," she said finally, unable to hide the smile on her face.
    Jaque laughed a little when he saw it. "So you smile when I compliment you? What happens if I compliment you more?"
    Heidi couldn't stop herself from laughing at his inquisitive tone. "I don't know, are you planning to try?"
    "I might," he responded.
    "Well, be careful. Maybe I'll get such a swelled head I’ll float off back to America, and then who will you get to help you get your yachts good and green?"
    He nodded, and their conversation shifted to other things. She wasn't thinking about it at all until they were in the middle of a conversation about their favorite movies, and Jaque spoke up again.
    "Your lips could make a chaste man give up his vows."
    She coughed on the water that she was drinking, shooting him a mock-stern look.
    "No more compliments when I'm drinking something," she said. "It's not good for me, my clothes, or our table."
    "Oh, of course. I'll respect any boundaries that you put up," he said peaceably.
    When the waiter came to get their plates, she thanked him, and Jaque touched her hand lightly.
    "I love the way your voice sounds, it reminds me of velvet brushed over skin."
    She would have responded to that, but then her brain helpfully supplied her an image of Jaque draped in nothing but red velvet, and she only sputtered instead.
    When it came time to order dessert, Jaque grinned.
    "I can imagine that if you were kissed, you would taste as warm and as smoky as burned sugar."
    Her eyes went wide, and while she was still staring at him, he ordered a dessert for them to share, waving away any objections she had after the fact.
    The dessert, when it came, was a perfect scoop of vanilla ice cream in some kind of crisp golden pastry. Drizzled over the top in an expert intricate design was a sauce that she quickly realized was singed cinnamon sugar.
    When Heidi took her first bite, she glanced up to see Jaque looking right into her eyes. She thought that she had never seen eyes so blue. She had never seen a man look at her the way that he did.
    Heidi felt a deep warmth course through her, as if there was a gentle fire licking at her insides. She had had kisses that felt less intense than that look.
    "You're beautiful," she murmured, too entranced to even be embarrassed by it.
    Jaque, for all his suave good nature, looked genuinely taken aback. "I am?" he asked, and though she felt a deep blush come up her cheeks, she nodded.
    "Yes, I mean, I'm sure you know that you're good looking, but this close, when you look the way you look now? You're beautiful. Almost … not like a man, but a statue, or some other piece of art. That you were created only to please the person looking at you."
    "I think I like the idea of pleasing the person looking at me very much," he said quietly.
    To her fevered mind, it almost sounded like an invitation, but she dismissed it. Surely it wasn't. Princes didn't make invitations to girls like her, no matter what jobs they gave them or where they took them for dinner.
    The topics turned to lighter things, but that deep and pervasive warmth did not go away. Instead, when he took her hand to help her up from the table, it only intensified.
    This time, when she walked through the