Master of his heart (Max and Brielle) novel Chapter 1057

King gazed at her, his heart a storm of emotions. He knew the game she was playing, the tricks she had up her sleeve, and that this was a trap. Yet, he willingly stepped right into it.

"Good student? Little Canary?" he called out, gently cupping her face.

Brielle blinked, puzzled by his sudden use of nicknames.

But catching the look of fondness in his eyes, she quickly realized he was seeing someone else through her.

Too smart for her own good and a bit slow on the uptake with emotions, Brielle mistakenly thought King fancied someone who resembled her, maybe someone like Annie, or another. She figured he was looking at her but seeing someone else.

To King, she was just a stand-in.

This realization somewhat lightened the emotional load on her shoulders.

If he saw her as a stand-in, she could do the same with him. Fair's fair.

"Okay."

She murmured her agreement, and then he pinned her to the bed. "Remember something?"

Brielle wasn't quite sure what he meant, but she knew better than to contradict him when he was in one of his moods.

"A bit," she replied.

A spark lit up in his eyes as he leaned down to her neck, chuckling softly. "Is that so."

Brielle stared at the dim ceiling, feeling a strange sense that he wasn't as fierce as she thought.

Pet him the right way, and he was quite easy to appease.

Like a large wolf nuzzling at her neck, a gesture Max had also done before.

Thinking back on her times with Max, she realized he had his mean streaks too.

Like how he enjoyed seeing her flustered, or ducking his gaze, vulnerable as a hedgehog exposing its soft belly, always eliciting his gentle laughter.

A shiver ran through Brielle, her gaze complicated as she watched the man at her neck.

They were different, yet not so different.

King's mean streak just ran deeper than Max's.

He was not Max.

Brielle pulled her gaze away, refusing to soften towards him. If she did, Max would never make a comeback.

King, who had plotted so much in Beaconsfield to keep the Lynch family from finding her, deserved to disappear for his selfish brutality.

A warm trail of kisses moved down her neck.