King of Pride (Kings of Sin #2) by Ana Huang

I allowed myself another minute to cool down before I put on my glasses, opened the door—and ran straight into the devil herself.

We collided with the force of a football tackle—my arm around her waist, her hands braced against my forearms, the air vibrating with a disturbing sense of déjà vu.

My heartrate surged even as I silently cursed the universe for constantly throwing us at each other. Literally.

Isabella blinked up at me, her eyes like rich pools of chocolate in the dim light. “I was right,” she said. Her playful voice contained a hint of breathiness that wound its way through my chest in smoky tendrils. “You are stalking me.”

Christ, this woman was something else.

“We happened to exit the restroom at the same time. It could hardly be classified as stalking,” I said with infinite patience. “Might I remind you I left the table first? If anything, I should ask if you’re stalking me.”

“Fine,” she acceded. “But what about when you followed me to the piano room? Twice?”

A dull throb sprang up behind my temple. I suddenly wished I’d never agreed to dinner. “How many times are you going to bring that up?”

“As many times as it takes for you to give me a straight answer.” Isabella stood on tiptoes, bringing her face closer to mine. Every muscle in my body tensed. “Kai Young, do you have a crush on me?”

Absolutely not. The mere idea was absurd, and I should’ve told her so immediately. But the words wouldn’t come out, and I hesitated long enough for Isabella’s eyes to widen. Their teasing glint dimmed, giving way to what looked like alarm.

Irritation ignited in my chest. I wasn’t romantically interested in her—my interest was intellectual, nothing else—but was the prospect that terrible?

“We’re not in high school,” I said, voice tight. “I don’t get crushes.”

“That’s still not a straight answer.”

My back teeth clenched. Before I could inform her that my response had, in fact, been a straight answer if she read between the lines, a low buzz filled the air, followed by an ominous flicker of lights. A low, collective murmur swelled in the dining room.

Isabella stiffened, her fingers curling around my biceps. My pulse thudded against my veins. “What is—”

She didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence before another buzz traveled the hall, high-pitched and angry, like a saw tearing through wood.

Then, with a final, sputtering flicker, the lights died completely.





CHAPTER 9


Isabella



A few screams from the dining room shredded the restaurant’s hushed elegance into tatters. I gasped—not at the cries or the sudden death of light, but at the weight of a solid, muscled male body caging me against the wall.

One minute, I was teasing Kai as payback for his toy question in the car; the next, I was pressed flush against him, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, my lungs inundated with the heady scent of wood and citrus.

Our proximity carried me back to last week, when we’d found ourselves in a similar position in the piano room. Only this time, it was no accident.

The world went hazy at the edges as we stood there, frozen, Kai’s body forming a protective shield over mine. No words, just the rapid rise and fall of our breaths and the adrenaline leaking into the air like battery acid. It ate away at the fog until my senses sharpened enough to distinguish shapes in the darkness.

I tipped my chin up, my heart giving another unsteady thump when I saw Kai staring back at me. It was too dark to make out the individual contours of his face, but that didn’t matter. I’d already committed them to memory—the elegant slash of his cheekbones, the sculpted ruthlessness of his mouth, the heat simmering beneath the cool veil of dark, inscrutable eyes.

The lights had gone out—nothing nefarious, but shocking enough to trigger a flight-or-fight response—and his first instinct had been to shield me.

My heart squeezed. I fisted a handful of tailored cotton and swallowed past the dry husk of my throat. Despite the power outage, electricity sizzled around us, one spark away from catching fire.

Kai shifted, his arm curling around me like he could sense the tension creeping into my frozen muscles. At first glance, he might appear soft, all quiet politeness and scholarly charm, but he had the body of a fighter. Hard and lean, corded with muscles draped in the most elegant of fabrics. A wolf disguised in sheep’s clothing.

And yet, my inner alarms remained silent, my body pliant. For all the theoretical danger he posed, I’d never felt safer.

A buzz and the darkness vanished as suddenly as it’d materialized. Light seared my eyes; when I blinked away the disorientation, my dreamy, cocooned haze evaporated alongside it.

Kai and I stared at each other for an extra beat before we pulled back with the haste of people who’d accidentally touched a hot stove.

Oxygen rushed into my lungs, amplifying the thunder in my ears.

“We should head back—”

“They’re probably wondering where—”

Our voices tripped over each other in a cacophony of noise. Flags of color glazed Kai’s cheekbones, and his jaw tightened before he inclined his head toward the end of the hall.

Neither of us spoke during our walk back to the dining room, but the air weighed heavy with unspoken words. The side of my body facing him tingled with awareness. I hated how he could do that—make me feel so much when I’d vowed not to feel anything again toward men like him.