You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

30
RHYS
I WAS ADDICTED.
Me, the man who’d avoid­ed most addic­tive sub­stances all his life
—drugs, smok­ing, alco­hol, even sug­ar, to an extent—had found the
one thing I couldn’t resist.
Strength, resilience, and light, wrapped up in five feet nine inch­es
of creamy skin and cool com­po­sure that hid a heart of fire
under­neath.
But fuck, if she was an addic­tion, I nev­er want­ed to be cured.
“Are you going to paint me like one of your French girls?” Brid-
get teased, stretch­ing her arms over her head.
My cock jumped with inter­est at the sight of her draped over the
couch, naked, though let’s be hon­est, there were very few things
Brid­get did that didn’t inter­est my cock.
She had a rare day off after her morn­ing meet­ings, and we’d
spent the entire after­noon in a hotel room on the out­skirts of Athen-
berg. If any­one asked, Brid­get was tak­ing a spa day, but in real­i­ty, all
we’d done was fuck, eat, and fuck some more. It was the clos­est
we’d ever got­ten, and that we could get, to a real date.
“Care­ful with teas­ing me, princess, unless you want a wart on
your por­trait,” I threat­ened.
She grinned, and the sight hit me like a punch in the gut.
I would nev­er tire of her smiles. Her real smiles, not the ones she
showed the pub­lic. I’d seen Brid­get naked, in fan­cy gowns, and in
lin­gerie, but she was nev­er more beau­ti­ful than when she was her-
self, stripped of all the pre­tens­es her title forced her to wear.
“You wouldn’t.” She rolled over and propped her chin on her
hands, which rest­ed on the arm of the couch. “You’re way too much
of a per­fec­tion­ist about your art.”
“We’ll see about that.” But she was right. I was a per­fec­tion­ist
about my art, and the piece I was work­ing on might be my favorite
so far aside from the one of her in Cos­ta Rica, which had final­ly bro-
ken my artist’s block. “Hmm, let’s see. I’ll add a third nip­ple here…a
hairy wart there…”
“Stop!” Brid­get laughed. “If you’re going to give me warts, at
least put them some­where incon­spic­u­ous.”
“All right. On your bel­ly but­ton it is.”
This time, I was the one who laughed when she tossed a throw
pil­low at me. “Years of grumpi­ness, and you sud­den­ly have jokes.”
“I’ve always had jokes. I just nev­er told them.” I shad­ed in her
hair. It spilled down her back, fol­low­ing the grace­ful curve of her
neck and shoul­der. Her lips part­ed in a small smile, and her eyes
sparkled with mis­chief. I did my best to make the char­coal sketch re-
alis­tic, though noth­ing com­pared to the real thing.
We fell into a com­fort­able silence—me sketch­ing, Brid­get watch-
ing me with a soft, slum­ber­ous expres­sion.
I was more relaxed than I’d been in a long time, despite still be-
ing on high alert about some­one pos­si­bly snoop­ing through my
guest­house. I’d upgrad­ed the secu­ri­ty sys­tem and added hid­den
cam­eras that fed direct­ly to a feed I could access on my phone. Noth-
ing out of the ordi­nary had hap­pened yet, so it was a wait-and-see
game.
For now, I’d enjoy one of the rare moments Brid­get and I could
spend togeth­er with­out wor­ry­ing about some­one catch­ing us.
“Do you ever show your art to any­one?” she asked after a while.
Sun­set crept clos­er, and the gold­en late after­noon light bathed her in
an oth­er­world­ly glow.
“I show it to you.”
“Besides me.”
“Nope.” Not even Chris­t­ian had seen my sketch­es, though he
knew they exist­ed. Dit­to with my old ther­a­pist.
Brid­get lift­ed her head, her lips part­ing in sur­prise. “So I’m…”
“The first per­son I showed? Yeah.” I focused on fin­ish­ing my
sketch, but I felt the weight of her stare on my face.
“Mr. Larsen.”
“Yes?” I drawled, pick­ing up on the sen­su­al note in her voice.
“Come here.”
“You order­ing me around?”
Brid­get flashed anoth­er grin. “Maybe. I’m in trou­ble and I need
your help.”
I set down my pen­cil with a sigh. “You’re not in trou­ble. You are
trou­ble.”
I strode over to the couch, and she squealed when I picked her
up and set her in my lap. My cock nes­tled against her pussy, with
only the mate­r­i­al of my briefs sep­a­rat­ing us. “I’m here. Now what?”
“Now…” She pushed her­self up on her knees so she could pull
down my briefs. “You help me out. I’m a lit­tle tense.”
I hissed out a breath when she sank onto my cock. “You’re insa-
tiable.” For some­one so regal in pub­lic, Brid­get was a fire­crack­er in
the bed­room. Or liv­ing room, or show­er, or kitchen counter.
Her grin widened. “You love it.”
My chuck­le mor­phed into a groan as she set­tled into an exquis­ite
rhythm. “Yeah, princess. I do.” I watched her, tak­ing almost as much
plea­sure in the flushed arousal on her face as I did in the sen­sa­tion of
her pussy grip­ping me.
Half an hour lat­er, after we were both breath­less and sat­ed, I
curled an arm around her as we lay on the couch. That was my fa-
vorite type of moment with Bridget—the peace­ful ones where we
could just be togeth­er. We got so few of those.
“How did you get this?” She brushed her fin­gers over the scar on
my eye­brow. “You nev­er told me about this one.”
“Hit it on a table.” I stroked Bridget’s arm absent­mind­ed­ly. “My
moth­er flew into one of her rages and back­hand­ed me. I fell. I was
lucky I didn’t hit my eye, or you’d be fuck­ing a pirate
imper­son­ator.”
Brid­get didn’t smile at my failed attempt at a joke. Instead, she
brushed her fin­gers over the scar again before press­ing her lips to it
in a soft kiss, the way she had for the scars on my back in Cos­ta Rica.
I closed my eyes, my chest heavy and tight.
I’d talked about my moth­er more with Brid­get than I had any­one
else, includ­ing my old ther­a­pist. It wasn’t so hard any­more, but Brid-
get had a way of mak­ing even the hard­est things for me easy.
Relax. Talk. Laugh. Sim­ple things that made me feel almost hu-
man again.
“Do you ever think about find­ing your father?” she asked. “For
clo­sure.”
“Thought about it? Yeah. Act­ed on it? No.” If I want­ed, I could
track my father down tomor­row. Chris­t­ian had told me more than
once it would take lit­tle more than a few press­es of a but­ton for him
to dig up that infor­ma­tion for me, but I wasn’t inter­est­ed. “I have no
inter­est in meet­ing him. If I did, I’d prob­a­bly get arrest­ed for
mur­der.”
My father was a piece of shit, and as far as I was con­cerned, he
didn’t exist. Any man who could leave a woman high and dry like
that didn’t deserve recog­ni­tion.
Even if all I want­ed was a fam­i­ly, I would rather eat nails than
waste ener­gy seek­ing him out.
“It’s crazy how much our par­ents shape our lives,” Brid­get said.
“With their choic­es, their mem­o­ries, their lega­cies.”
A shad­ow of sad­ness passed through her eyes, and I knew she
was think­ing about her own par­ents. One gone at child­birth, the oth-
er pass­ing just a few years lat­er, and she’d had to grieve, as a child,
with mil­lions of eyes watch­ing her.
I remem­bered see­ing a pho­to of her walk­ing behind her father’s
cas­ket as a kid, her face scrunched in an obvi­ous attempt to hold
back tears, and think­ing that even though I had a shit­ty home situa-
tion, at least I could cry at my parent’s funer­al.
“I think part of the rea­son I’m so scared about being queen is I’m
afraid of not liv­ing up to my mother’s lega­cy. Of dis­ap­point­ing her
some­how.” Brid­get stared at the ceil­ing, her expres­sion pen­sive. “I
nev­er met her, but I read and watched every inter­view I could get
my hands on. The home videos, the sto­ries from the staff and my
family…she was the per­fect princess and daugh­ter and moth­er. She
would’ve made a great queen. Bet­ter than me. But I killed her.” Her
voice caught, and some­how, I knew that was the first time she’d ever
voiced those words.
A deep ache pierced my heart, and it only grew when I saw the
unshed tears in her eyes.
I straight­ened and cupped her face in my hands. “Brid­get, you
did not kill your moth­er,” I said fierce­ly. “Do you under­stand? You
were a baby. You are not guilty just because you were born.”
“They didn’t plan for me.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “I was
an acci­den­tal preg­nan­cy. If it weren’t for me, she’d still be alive, and