Chapter 2 #2
“Let me have the fantasy for ten seconds,” Erin said, half amused, half pleading.
“Ten whole seconds?” Alex murmured. “You spoil me, Kennedy.”
The old nickname made something hot curl low in Erin’s stomach.
She swallowed, suddenly nervous in a way she hadn’t been with Alex in a long time. Not because she feared rejection, but because she feared… letting the moment dissolve again. Not getting the timing right. Pushing when Alex was still too tightly strung.
“I was thinking,” Erin began, heart thudding. “As soon as we get them settled—soonish, like within the decade—we could, I don’t know… go for a walk. Or… a bath together. Or a walk that mysteriously ends in a bath…”
She trailed off, because Alex’s beautiful blue eyes had darkened in a way that made coherent speech slightly difficult.
“A bath, hmm?” Alex said, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “Is that what they’re calling it in the bodyguard world these days?”
“We never had baths in the bodyguard world. And if we did, they certainly weren’t like a luxury spa with the most beautiful woman in the world,” Erin muttered. “There were a lot more mouldy tiles and people yelling about inspections.”
“And here?”
“Here,” Erin said, and allowed herself to let some of the want thicken her voice, “we have claw-foot tubs and doors that lock and a babysitter list longer than the line of succession.”
Alex made a quiet, appreciative sound. “Tempter,” she said.
“You like that about me.”
“I do,” Alex agreed. Her gaze dropped briefly to Erin’s mouth, then back up. “More than slightly.”
Everything in Erin tightened, a live wire being fed voltage. She wanted to close the final inch of distance so badly she could feel her muscles vibrate with it. All she had to do was lean in. Just a fraction.
Kids in the snow. Staff at the doors. Cameras nowhere. Vic—God only knew, probably terrorising the kitchen.
Six years of love. Months without properly touching each other. A whole estate full of rooms and they were still always tripping over someone else.
Not this time.
She leaned in.
Alex’s breath hitched, just a little.
And then someone yelled, at a volume completely inappropriate for anyone within a ten-mile radius of a royal residence:
“YOU’RE HERE! THANK BLOODY GOD! WE HAVE EMERGENCIES!”
Vic.
Of course it was Vic.
Erin’s forehead thunked lightly against Alex’s shoulder as her wife dissolved into helpless laughter.
“I swear to God,” Erin said into the soft wool of Alex’s cloak. “I am going to have her reassigned to a distant outpost. Like… Mars.”
Alex shook against her, laughter only barely muffled. She slipped one gloved hand up to the back of Erin’s head, fingers threading into the hair at her nape in a gesture that was far too intimate to be mistaken for anything but what it was.
“It’s not her fault,” Alex said, voice warm. “She doesn’t know.”
“She always knows,” Erin said, lifting her head reluctantly.
Vic was standing just inside the doorway now, slightly out of breath, hair escaping from the ridiculous fox hat, clipboard clutched like a shield.
“I turned my back for five minutes,” she announced, by way of explanation, “and the turkeys mutinied, the cranberries are lost somewhere on the A9, Mrs. MacLeod is threatening to quit if anyone mentions vegan gravy again, and Hyzenthlay has weaponised the mixing bowls. I have never needed you more.”
She actually flung out an arm for emphasis, nearly smacking a passing footman in the face.
Erin stared at her, then at Alex, then at the narrow, rapidly closing window of opportunity between “children distracted by snow” and “children discovering that snow is cold and they are hungry.”
She made a noise that could have been a laugh or a growl.
Alex stepped back just enough to refocus, queen mode sliding over her like armour. “Emergencies,” she repeated, lips still curved. “Plural.”
“At least three, yes,” Vic said. “Possibly five if you count the reindeer recon mission.”
“I’m not sure I want to know what that means,” Erin said.
“You don’t,” Vic assured her. “But we’re in triage mode now. I need royal approval on some last-minute changes to the Christmas Eve schedule, and also possibly your security team in the kitchen, because Mrs. MacLeod is wielding a rolling pin in a very threatening way.”
“Rolling pins are rarely classified as offensive weapons,” Erin said, running a mental inventory out of sheer habit. “But given Mrs. MacLeod’s biceps, I can make an exception.”
“See?” Vic said to Alex, triumphant. “This is why we keep her.”
Erin opened her mouth to retort, then paused.
Alex’s eyes met hers again over Vic’s shoulder. There was apology there, yes. But also something like a promise.
Later, that look said. Not forgotten. Just postponed.
Erin blew out a breath that fogged in the cold air and nodded once.
“Okay,” she said. “Fine. Emergencies first. Sex later.”
Vic choked. “I—what?”
“Nothing,” Erin said smoothly. “Lead on, General. I’ll wrangle the troops.”
“The small troops,” Alex added. “You wrangle the small troops. I will attempt to stop Mrs. MacLeod committing cranberry-related homicide.”
“That’s actually under my remit,” Erin said. “But I’m willing to share jurisdiction this once.”
Matilda chose that moment to let out a wail of outraged betrayal. “My socks are wet!”
“Mine too!” Frank yelled, as if this was a shocking plot twist.
“My everything is wet,” Florence said mournfully.
Erin turned toward the sound, half exasperated, half aching with love.
“Right,” she said. “Change of priority. Warm, dry children before both of you get frostbite and start a constitutional crisis.”
Alex smiled, that small private smile again. “Sergeant.”
“Ma’am—Alex,” Erin corrected, and almost got it right on the first try.
Vic was already rattling off something about cranberries and backup turkeys as she retreated inside, Alex falling into step beside her.
For a second, Erin watched her go, the swing of that dark green cloak, the tilt of her golden head as she listened, the way she briefly reached out to steady an elderly footman on the slick flagstones.
All these years of our love, Erin thought, bending to scoop up a wriggling, damp Matilda. And apparently zero uninterrupted minutes of privacy.
Matilda latched onto her, cold and clingy and complaining into her neck. “My feet are soggy,” she announced. “I don’t like soggy.”
“Me neither,” Erin said, hoisting her up with a grunt and reaching for Florence’s hand with her free one. “Come on, troops. Let’s get you inside before you merge with the snow and I have to explain to the press why the royal family now includes three small snowmen.”
“What about me?” Frank demanded, arms spread, as if daring gravity to take him.
“You,” Erin said, shifting her weight and eyeing the distance to the door, “are walking. You ate the snow after I told you not to. Actions have consequences.”
Frank scowled, then promptly tried to catch snowflakes in his mouth again as he trudged toward the house. Florence’s small fingers tightened around hers, trusting.
Erin took one last look over her shoulder as she herded them inside.
Alex disappeared into the warm glow of the entrance hall with Vic talking at top speed beside her. Before she vanished entirely, she glanced back, just once, and their eyes met. Her brilliant blue eyes were unmistakable.
Later, Alex’s expression said again.
Later.
Erin nodded, even though Alex couldn’t see it, adjusting her grip on Matilda and bracing herself for the chaos waiting inside.
She hadn’t had sex with her wife for longer than she cared to calculate.
She was exhausted down to her bones. She was about to spend several days trapped in a snow-bound castle with an over-caffeinated event planner, four children, and an entire staff prone to melodrama where traditions were concerned.
And yet.
Underneath the fatigue and the irritation and the constant low-level scan of exits and threats, hope flared, stubborn and bright.
Before Boxing Day, she told herself again, as she steered the triplets over the threshold and into the heat and noise. Somehow, some way.
I will have sex with my wife before Boxing Day.
She wasn’t sure what exactly she’d have to face down to make that happen—rogue reindeer, mutinous turkeys, Mrs. MacLeod’s rolling pin, Vic’s spreadsheets, four overexcited five-year-olds, centuries of royal tradition—but she’d faced worse odds.
Probably.
Behind her, the door swung shut on the drifting snow, muting the outside world to a soft, distant hush.
Inside, the volume immediately doubled.
“Take your boots off!”
“Not in the hallway!”
“Frank, do not lick that banister!”
Erin sighed, shifted Matilda higher on her hip, and went to war.
Her first attempt at intimacy lay in tatters somewhere between the front steps and Vic’s clipboard.
Round one, Balmoral, she thought, as she separated Frank from the dangerously lickable banister and eyed the staircase Alex had vanished up.
But the game was far from over.