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