Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Arthur
We burst into Eddie’s flat as if we’d been chased — breathless, laughing, stumbling over each other’s feet.
I shoved the door closed with my hip, and Bryce immediately pressed me against it, kissing me like he’d been starving all night.
His collar was loosened, tie long gone, and now it was hot, messy, and perfect.
My heart was still racing from the music, the gin, and the neon. From hearing him say the words I never thought I’d hear: I love you.
My chest still ached from it, full to bursting.
Bryce pulled back, panting, his eyes wild. “You nearly killed me out there, the way you danced.”
I laughed, wrapping my arms around his neck, pressing my body flush against his. “You make me reckless, Bryce. Tonight, all I wanted was to drag you into a dark corner and—”
His hand slid down my back, resting just above my arse. “Tell me.”
“I wanted to take you right there,” I whispered, grazing his ear with my teeth. “Up against the wall, my hand down your trousers, making you fall apart while everyone watched.”
Bryce groaned, clutching me tighter. “God, Arthur. You’re impossible.”
“Impossible and all yours,” I shot back, nipping his lip before pulling him toward the bedroom.
We staggered through the flat, shedding clothes and dignity with every step. My shoes clattered across the floor; he kicked his away. We bumped into Eddie’s wobbly side table, knocking a stack of scripts to the ground, laughing too hard to stop and pick them up.
By the time we reached the bedroom door, we were tangled in each other, kissing like it was our last chance.
Bryce shoved the door open and fell backward onto the bed, collapsing in a graceless heap.
He laughed — a sound so foreign from the polished diplomat he was by day that it undid me completely.
“Ambassador Lewis,” I teased, tugging at the hem of my shirt. “You’re positively indecent.”
“Then do something about it,” he challenged, his smile sharp, and his eyes dark with hunger.
I yanked my shirt over my head, not caring where it landed. His eyes widened, then darkened further as he drank me in.
“Christ,” he whispered. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”
I climbed onto the bed, straddling his hips, bracing my hands on either side of his head. The kiss we shared then was frantic, greedy, a clash of tongues and teeth. Every gasp, every moan, felt like proof that this — whatever we had found — was absolutely real.
When I pulled back, my lips swollen, I pressed my forehead to his. “I love you, Bryce. More than anyone. More than I thought I could. And I’m going to show you.”
His hands slid up my chest, palms flat against the muscle, thumbs tracing the ridges of my ribs. “Then show me,” he said, his voice rough.
I kissed him hard, then tugged at his belt, dragging it free with a snap.
He lifted his hips so I could pull his trousers away, baring him inch by inch.
He was glorious. Not delicate — never delicate — but sculpted and strong, all lean muscle and broad planes.
His chest was wide and defined, his stomach taut, his thighs powerful.
“Look at you,” I breathed, running my hands over him, committing him to memory.
Words abandoned him, scattered like frightened birds.
I leaned closer, my mouth grazing his ear, my breath hot against his skin. “I want to taste you. To feel your body quake beneath my hands. To make you forget who you are—except here, with me.”
A sound broke from him, unformed and helpless, more plea than response. His body answered where his voice could not.
My smile deepened against his throat. Then I kissed him there, lips lingering, soft and insistent. My fingers moved to the last buttons of his shirt, slow, deliberate. Each one slipped free with a small sigh, and as the fabric loosened, I parted it and pressed my mouth to the skin revealed.
A kiss against his collarbone. Another, lower, where the flat plane of his chest began. Heat bloomed wherever I touched, spreading in dizzy waves.
The shirt slid from his shoulders, whispering as it fell to the floor. My lips followed, mapping him inch by inch as if I meant never to forget. His breath came faster, shallow and unsteady.
“Beautiful,” I murmured, my voice reverent now. I pushed the waistband of his boxers down with the barest brush of my fingers, and when my lips followed, he shuddered so violently I thought his knees might give way.
Piece by piece, I stripped him of every stitch he wore.
With each garment that hit the floor, I kissed the skin revealed, slow and deliberate, my lips reverent in their worship.
I kissed the hollow of his throat, the slope of his shoulder, the hard plane of his stomach.
Every kiss broke another piece of his composure.
He moaned helplessly, unable to find words.
Years of restraint fell in torn fragments at his feet.
When the last of it was gone, I eased him down onto the wide bed.
The linens were cool beneath him, the mattress yielding, and above him I lingered for a moment, my figure backlit by the moon spilling through the window.
The silver glow caught my hair, my skin, and I watched his face as he looked up at me — his expression raw, open, stripped of every defence.
Slowly, I began undressing myself. The sound of fabric sliding over skin seemed louder than the pounding of my pulse. Each garment fell away. My shirt was already gone. My belt followed, then trousers, kicked free and forgotten. The pale line of my stomach gleamed in the moonlight.
I climbed onto the bed, my knees sinking into the mattress on either side of his hips.
Then I lowered myself until my weight pressed into him, warm and solid.
My mouth found his, no longer tender but rough, demanding, claiming.
He surrendered to the onslaught of my kiss, his hands finding purchase in my hair.
The scent of me, the feel of skin against skin, it was intoxicating, a potent elixir that clouded his judgement and set his senses alight.
He arched into me, a silent plea for more, for everything I could give.
My lips kissed their way down his stomach, slow and deliberate, until my mouth hovered just above the line of his hip.
“Please, Arthur,” he begged, barely recognising his voice. “I need you so badly.”
“Do you,” I growled, and I settled between his thighs.
Suddenly my mouth was on him, hot and insistent, my tongue tracing the length of him with agonising slowness.
He gasped, his hips bucking involuntarily as pleasure ricocheted through him.
I held him down with firm hands, and my mouth worked his thick shaft with precision, exploring him with a confidence that left him breathless.
He was liquid under my touch, molten and desperate for more.
Each stroke, each deliberate movement of my tongue stoked the fire within him higher.
Bryce’s fingers tangled in my hair, not to guide me but to anchor himself to reality as it blurred at the edges.
I moaned against him, the vibration sending shivers through his body. I was relentless, my mouth working him with an expertise that suggested I knew exactly how to wring pleasure from his body. And he was more than willing to let me.
“Oh God, Arthur,” he cried out, his voice ragged. “Don’t stop, please don’t stop.”
I responded with a hum of agreement, the vibrations nearly sending him over the edge. His body was no longer his own. It was mine to command, mine to pleasure.
As the waves of ecstasy crested, I felt his muscles tense, and his breath hitch.
And then release — sudden, blinding, absolute.
Bryce came apart beneath me with a cry that echoed off the walls of the borrowed flat, his body trembling, his hands gripping my shoulders as though I were the only solid thing in a dissolving world.
I crawled up beside him, pressing a kiss to his damp temple. He pulled me close, chest still heaving, fingers tracing lazy circles across my back.
“You’ve ruined me,” he whispered, voice cracked and awed. “Completely. Thoroughly. Ruined.”
I grinned against his skin. “I did promise.”
My body ached, and my heart felt weightless.
As sleep tugged at me, one thought burned bright and fierce.
I want this to last forever.
* * *
I woke with a start, a heavy-limbed grogginess that comes after too much gin and too little water.
The room was still, lit only by the faint grey glow that seeped around the edges of the curtains.
For a moment I lay still, listening to the rise and fall of Bryce’s breathing beside me. Deep, steady. Safe.
Then my bladder reminded me of the drinks I’d downed at the club.
I eased myself out from under the sheet, careful not to jostle him. The floor was cool beneath my bare feet as I padded across the bedroom, snagging my toe on the heap of clothes we’d left on the floor.
Inside the loo, I shut the door gently and stood at the toilet with a sigh of relief. The hum of the fan filled the silence. I leaned one hand against the wall and let my thoughts wander while I pissed.
What if this were our life? Not just a night borrowed from the rest of the world, but every night. Waking up together, sleepy and tangled. Cooking breakfast, arguing about food and washing up, taking the bins out. Boring, domestic, ordinary things.
I imagined us in some poky little flat in Islington or Hackney, two men who paid rent on time and bickered about whether to paint the kitchen cabinets. No titles, no embassies, no press secretaries waiting to pounce. Just us.
Would it really be so terrible to be ordinary?
Bryce wasn’t all polished marble and tailored suits.
Underneath it, he was a man like anyone else — he got headaches, bitched about traffic, laughed too loudly at Chris’s terrible jokes.
And me — Windsor or not — I stood here like every other man, half-asleep in a borrowed bathroom in the early hours, thinking about how blissfully normal it felt to be with Bryce.
Mundane. Necessary. What never made it into palace biographies. Every man did this, no matter how glittering his title.
My eyes drifted to the edge of the tub. Bryce’s razor sat there, balanced precariously on the porcelain lip.
I thought about how often I reached for my own.
I shaved like anyone else, worried about stubble in the wrong light, about morning breath, about my hair doing something odd on days when it mattered most. Sometimes I wished I were taller, and I thought my ears looked ridiculous in photographs.
Strip away the pomp, and we were just two men with the same quiet insecurities, the same routines, and the same longings.
I flushed, the sound loud in the tiny room, and washed my hands before slipping back out into the flat. The carpet muffled my steps as I padded toward the bed.
Bryce was sprawled across it, sheets tangled around his hips, hair mussed and sticking adorably to his cheek. A faint trail of saliva glistened down his chin. My chest tightened.
* * *
The morning light leaked through the edges of Eddie’s curtains, casting pale streaks across the sheets. I lay tangled in them, propped on one elbow, watching Bryce button his shirt with a precision that made me grin. He could make putting on a shirt look like a state occasion.
“Coffee is beckoning. Be right back,” Bryce said walking out of the bedroom.
I hated coffee — bitter mud as far as I was concerned — but it was his morning ritual, as natural as brushing his teeth. And if he was making coffee, he was making tea for me too.
A smile tugged at my lips.
Sure enough, a moment later, Bryce appeared in the doorway, balancing a tray. Steam curled from his mug, and beside it sat my tea in Eddie’s chipped mug, along with two sad-looking pastries that had clearly seen better days.
“Breakfast of champions,” he announced, easing his way in.
“You spoil me,” I teased, pushing myself upright against the pillows.
He rolled his eyes, grinning as he settled beside me, setting the tray between us. “Don’t get used to it. You’re lucky I forgot to eat these.”
The pastries were stale, the tea a little too strong, but it didn’t matter.
What mattered was the way he leaned into me, his shoulder warm against mine.
We traded bites and sips, murmuring about nothing important — how terrible the DJ had been last night, how Chris’s friend with the glittery jacket had definitely been hitting on Laurence, and how my shirt would need professional resurrection after last night.
It was blissful, and delightfully ordinary.
And then his phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Bryce froze, mug halfway to his mouth. The vibration rattled against the wood, insistent.
“Damn it,” he muttered, setting his coffee down too quickly, the liquid sloshing dangerously near the rim. He snatched up the phone, thumb flying over the screen.
His face tightened. “Oh, shit.”
A knot formed in my stomach. “What is it?”
He turned the phone so I could read. A message from Paula, his ever-efficient deputy.
Call me the second you wake up. Urgent.