Kept by Him(9)
speculation, and having someone on your arm always made the evening more bearable. But she’d been
alone, like him, and suddenly it had felt predestined as they kept searching each other out across the
room. Daniel had barely been able to take his eyes off her.
Ever since she’d grown up, his cock didn’t seem to be getting the message that she was a friend.
Still. She was his only female friend and as valuable to him as his male friends. Hell, as valuable as
Chloe, his sister. She was smart and poised and as hardworking as anyone he’d ever met, and during
those times growing up, when things had gotten hard for the Ice Maiden, a strange trust had been
forged between Daniel and Monica.
THE ICE MAIDEN CRACKS IN THE ARMS OF THE PRINCE!
The press had had a field day with that headline. Monica had been in the eye of the storm when her
parents’ divorce became the ugliest divorce in worldwide history. Even worse than any Hollywood
movies had ever depicted such dramas, they’d ended up killing themselves, leaving Monica at barely
eighteen to have to testify as a witness in court. The War of the Roses had nothing on the Davenports’
famed divorce.
She hadn’t batted an eyelash saying how she found them … when … what they’d shouted at each
other …
Daniel still got chills remembering. Monica hadn’t wept. Hadn’t broken. Not while the jury saw.
The press had been stunned, and the Ice Maiden had emerged, Monica’s poise exceeding even that of
British royalty.
But the press didn’t know Monica had been unable to go back to her home and had been staying
with the Lexingtons for several weeks as she got a new place ready. They didn’t know how every night
before the hearing she would slip into bed and cry softly into her pillow. They didn’t know how Daniel
could hear from his own room, and he’d quietly go to her, slide into bed beside her, and let her cry on
him.
Something happened those evenings. They didn’t even talk. It became routine to him. To her. At
first, he stayed only until she stopped crying. Later, he’d stay for hours, until they were both tired and
groggy from lack of sleep the next morning.
He’d spend all day waiting for it to be nighttime just to have those stolen moments alone with her.
The week before she left the household, her tears had long dried up, and yet every night after the
others fell asleep and he opened the door, he’d always find her sitting in bed, awake, waiting for him.
They’d forged a bond so strong, they could each guess what the other was thinking. Feeling. In fact,
the only time Monica had ever broken down in front of the public had been at her parents’ funeral.
When Daniel put his arms around her.
She’d started sobbing immediately and breathlessly pleaded in his ear, “Don’t let them see this.”
He’d hugged her harder and ducked his head, holding her as tight as he could without breaking her
bones, but he couldn’t keep the press from noticing, everyone from noticing.
THE ICE MAIDEN CRACKS IN THE ARMS OF THE PRINCE!
How that story made headlines. Soon after, the press tried to pair them as a young couple—Daniel
was twenty-four, Monica twenty. Monica bought a place on her own and asked him to stay away from
her to let the speculation calm down.
Daniel knew the paparazzi weren’t to blame for this request.
The night before she left, Daniel hadn’t been able to merely hold her in his arms anymore. He’d
kissed her cheek. Her jaw. Her temple. Her forehead. Told her how pretty she was … how much he
wanted her.… And when he moved to fit his mouth to hers in the way he’d been dreaming of
constantly, morning and night, she leaped out of bed and across the room, looking so genuinely
startled Daniel had instantly backed off with an apology.
She began dating older men, and Daniel—wound up from two months of sleeping with Monica in
his arms, warm and vulnerable and yet completely physically immune to him—forewent the dating
and went straight to fucking, basically. Anything that he could. He tried kink, he tried variety, he tried
screwing everything and anything that could help him forget those nights, that kiss-that-never-
happened, that one girl.
Even with his more lasting involvements of a couple of weeks, Daniel was never again interested in
knowing a woman like he knew Monica. Hell, those first few years, he could hardly talk to her, his
frustrations flaring every time he saw her cool smile and guarded gaze, every one of their encounters
causing him to react like a wounded beast who would go bury his pain between another woman’s legs.
He’d cursed himself for making a move on her for years, for it had taken that long to gain Monica’s