29. Miri
29
Miri
LONDON
I vy had an eight-hour layover at Heathrow that she extended to twenty-four hours. She had to return to the States, but she could do some homework from the UK, enough to get her up to speed. The rest she’d finish when she could. From the plane, security snuck us into the limo waiting for me. Even though the windows were tinted, Ivy ducked down to stay hidden, just in case.
Photographers swarmed the car on either side, circling us in all directions, shouting questions about where I’d been and if there was any truth to the rumors about me and Reginald, prince of Monaco. I rolled my eyes, remembering the nonsense I’d escaped when this whole thing started—the dinner with the prince and the donations for Danae. I’d caught up on the plane ride, sent a few emails, and agreed to several events so I could squeeze more money out of the right people, but I’d practically forgotten about my upcoming nuptials.
Bollocks.
I was supposed to go to Monaco sometime soon. I was supposed to deliberate his proposal. I was supposed to be the Duchess of Aberdeen. I’d gone on this fantastic magical journey only to arrive right back where I’d started with an entirely new perspective on the whole thing. Me included.
I’d seen terrible things—a queen made humble by her own husband, a child that could teleport halfway around the world and back, a completely new realm full of creatures that were only supposed to exist in fairy tales. I’d learned the truth about my connection to my spouses and what the implications were of the vows we’d made that night in ruins.
I remembered.
I remembered Alberich saving me from the wreck.
Yes, Little Thistle, you’ll come to owe me quite a bit before we’re through.
I shoved it down inside of me, relegating it to a part of my mind that I could lock and forget about. The point was, in the span of a few days (or what felt like a few days to me), I’d become a completely different person and the rest of the world had stayed much the same.
Once my driver felt confident we’d lost the paparazzi, Ivy sat up and shook her head, heaving a deep sigh and muttering something about vultures.
“You used to say it was the price we paid to live the life we did,” I said.
“My mother used to say that,” she corrected, smiling from next to me. “I’m not so sure I agree with her anymore.”
“Uh-oh,” I said. “That sounds like rebellion.”
She shrugged. “Maybe it’s time for me to be rebellious.”
Oh, I liked this side of Ivy. Perhaps a little too much. Maybe she read that in my gaze because she winked and leaned in to kiss me, but my phone vibrated and drew my attention to my lap.
Gran.
“Shite,” I said. When my phone finally regained signal, I’d had three missed calls from her and thirty from Sandra. If Grandmother had bothered to call me three times, and I hadn’t answered, I was in immense trouble. This was now call number four. I picked it up, my hand shaking, my voice more anxious than I’d liked. “Hello, Gran.”
“Hello, Gran?” A brief, appalled silence before, “Darling, where have you been?”
“Would you believe I lost my charger?” I lied. “I went on a trip to Ireland, to that college where I did the intensive. You remember the place, surely.”
“I wish you’d let someone know,” she said. “I almost deployed the royal guard to find you.”
“Gran.” I sighed. “I’m twenty-four years old. I’m allowed to vacation when I want.”
She clicked her teeth, a noise that echoed her disapproval. I was her granddaughter and her subject. One did not simply tell the queen what to do, but it got Ivy’s attention, and she raised an eyebrow at me.
“Now, listen to me, my dear,” Gran said, but my attention drifted to my wife, my one and only wife, as she kneeled in front of me. I zeroed in on her hand going to the switch for the partition, sliding the tinted glass up so my driver couldn’t see back here.
It set my heart racing.
What is she planning?
Stupid question, of course. The look in her eyes and the flick of her tongue across her bottom lip told me what she wanted. Heaven damn me, but I wanted it, too.
I should have been paying attention to whatever the queen of England babbled on about. I should have been the respectful, responsible granddaughter and listened. But I only mumbled an unintelligible uh-huh at appropriate breaks in the conversation and followed that piercing gray stare as it slid down my body.
She coasted her palms up either side of my legs, tucking under the hem of my floral patterned skirt. My pussy clenched, and my clit throbbed in time with my heart as she twisted her fingers in the fabric of my tights, right at the crotch. Then she yanked, splitting them up the middle.
I gasped and jumped. It was one of the hottest things anyone had ever done to me, made even more so because I was on the phone with the queen while THE daughter of the American Revolution went down on me in the back of my limo.
“Miriam, darling? Are you okay?” Gran asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay.” She didn’t sound convinced, but she continued.
Ivy disappeared under my skirt and pushed my satin panties to the side, sliding her tongue against my skin in a decadent display of pure euphoria.
I hissed in a breath and rolled against the touch, rewarded with a small chuckle and her arms over my hips, pinning me in place.
“What was that?” Gran asked, bringing my attention back to the phone call.
“Nothing,” I sputtered. “Stubbed my toe.”
Ivy laughed again, and the vibration rattled through me at our connection. I arched into her, my free hand going to her soft hair. She grabbed my wrist and held it down, staring up at me with that spark of mischief in her eye that had originally attracted me to her. I loved her so very much, and this impulsive creativity was only the start of the reasons why. Ivy sucked at my swollen nub and licked me until a breathy sigh poured out of my throat. Pleasure skated across my skin, warm and ecstatic, and I never wanted to come back to reality.
“Miriam!” My grandmother was near hysterics.
“Yes?” I said, my attention diverted again.
“Reginald has asked when he can see you again.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Gran, I’m feeling a bit flu-ish. I’ll call you later.” Without waiting for a response, I hung up. It was likely the most unceremonious goodbye she’d ever received, and I’d pay for it later.
Ivy pushed two fingers inside me, slowly allowing me to accommodate them before she did that thing with her tongue that made me fall apart. I clamped my thighs around her head, but she giggled and held them open with her elbows, tipping me over the edge, bringing me back down to earth.
I panted and hummed a sick sadistic noise as I planned my revenge for this Yankee brat who took what she wanted without care for the repercussions.
“Fucking hell,” she said, wiping at her chin with the back of her hand, leaning the side of her head against my knee. “I love making you come on my face.”
“You owe me a pair of tights.”
“Bill me,” she said with a scoff.
I wanted my retribution right then and there, so I used my body weight to push her onto her back on the limo floor, devouring her mouth with mine. She tasted like sex and me and her, the perfect mix to drive me wild. I wanted to see her fall apart. I wanted to make her as wild as she’d made me. I grabbed the button on her trousers and flicked it open.
“Princess Miriam,” she whispered. “How naughty you’ve become.”
I laughed and bit her bottom lip, sliding my hand down her trousers, finding her wet and ready for me. “You love me this way.”
She started to reply, but I swallowed down her moan when I pushed my fingers inside her and rubbed at her clit with my palm, focusing on her contorted features as her pleasure ramped up. Ivy had always been very selective about who she let inside her body, so to be given the privilege of this intimacy almost made me come again from the thought alone.
What a silly little queer I’d grown up to be. I watched as Ivy fell apart around my fingers, a delicate pink flush creeping up her neck and into her cheeks. Ginger hair stuck to her face as her breathy moans urged me on. I loved fucking Ivy, even more when she let me have control like this. Most of the time, when we were together, she took the lead. She liked being in control of me, but oh, to have her bucking against my palm, to bury my fingers deep inside her, it reminded me of the first time. She’d been so naive and innocent in that dorm room, and I’d been the deviant princess who stole her innocence. No one could ever take that away from me.
When she rolled her hips against me, I worked her faster, deeper, inhaling her moans and sucking her neck just the way she liked. I licked over that succulent X and held her through her climax, smiling when my fingers came away from her wet and sticky. I licked them clean and kissed her again, delighting in her disheveled smile.
“Stay with me tonight,” she whispered against my lips, breathing down her climax. I loved her when she was relaxed and euphoric, her mind free of that frantic race it normally contained. Like this, she was vulnerable, sweet, and unguarded. Like this, I could see the girl I’d met in a dorm room in Virginia all those years ago.
“I can’t,” I whispered back.
“Sure you can,” she said, kissing the tip of my nose. We were still on the floor of the limo, her arms wrapped around me, my head on her chest, right above her heartbeat, so familiar and soothing and steady. “You’ve already insulted her by hanging up on her. What’s a few more hours?”
I sighed and laughed, curling into her. “I shouldn’t.”
“But not won’t,” she whispered. “C’mon. I’ve had to share you with Lucifer this whole time.” That made me look up at her where I met that steel gaze, flickering with something sinful. “Let’s have a girls’ night. Like we used to.”
“You need to be sure,” I said. “One wrong move, our affair is on the front page of The Puck. Nowhere is safe. ”
“I’ll sneak you into my room,” she said. “I booked the presidential suite on Lex’s credit card.”
I snickered, everything in me wanting to give in to her, wanting to give in to this sweet temptation. A night alone? With my wife? In a big hotel room? Well, not even the end of the world could sway me from that.
“Okay, darling.” I pushed up to kiss her, and her moan of approval sunk deep down inside of me.
I spent the rest of that night making her moan.
Sometime later…much, much later…after I let her strip me bare and lick whichever parts pleased her most, we lay in the king-size bed on our stomachs, facing each other. Naked from the waist up, I let my eyes trail over her freckled ivory skin. Such beautiful skin. I wanted to spend all night connecting the dots, seeing what constellations I could make.
We talked about everything. Poppy. Lex. Carter. My grandmother and her mother and the upcoming wedding.
“She’ll expect it before I run for Congress,” Ivy said. “Sometime in the next year.”
I could no longer act like it didn’t hurt, and I bit my bottom lip as I imagined what it would be like when it finally happened. When the two loves of my life stood in front of the whole world and pronounced their love for each other. I’d have to pretend to be happy, even as it spread like rot inside every part of my heart.
“It doesn’t change anything.” She grabbed my hand, bringing my knuckles to her lips for a tender kiss. “We still married each other in those woods.”
I snorted. “Yeah, and now we even have a child to take care of.”
She pulled one side of her mouth into a smile. “How are you feeling? After the thistles?”
“Fine,” I said. But my secret weighed on me. I didn’t tell anyone about my memory or what Alberich said. Part of me wanted to spill it right then and there. Ivy would understand. Ivy might even know what to do. Of the four of us, I’d loved her first. We were best friends, lovers, girlfriends, soul mates. She understood me in ways no one else ever could.
But Alberich’s words rattled through me again.
Little Thistle, you’ll come to owe me quite a bit before we’re through.
It sounded so…intimate. The nickname. The promise of a debt to be paid. What did he know that I didn’t? How was he able to be at the car accident? He was supposed to have been locked up in Faerie. Cursed! Unable to come to the realm of man. If he did, his first act was supposed to have been the complete annihilation of my species, not rescuing little ole me from a tumbling car wreck.
Perhaps I imagined the whole thing. Perhaps I made it up — a dream, an invention of my subconscious to deal with what I’d seen and done.
“Are you okay?” Ivy danced a finger over my shoulder and down the center of my spine. I shivered at the touch, scooting closer to her so I could use her body for warmth.
“Of course,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“This trip was intense,” she said. “It’s okay to be messed-up about it. I am.”
“Honestly, darling,” I said, “I survived growing up royal. I can handle a deposed king’s temper tantrum.”
She tried to smile, but concern radiated out of her gaze. “Miri, you stopped him dead in his tracks.”
Little Thistle, his voice hissed through my head again.
“We got lucky,” I said. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the rest of you.” I knew that in my soul. They each gave me strength, and from that, I’d been able to surprise myself.
Ivy raised a skeptical eyebrow, but that was her. Her mind was always working, always calculating the next risk, always planning four steps ahead.
I should tell her. The words were right there on the tip of my tongue.
But…I stopped myself.
I promised her honesty. I promised her the truth. But I didn’t even know what this was yet. Until I did, I wanted to keep it to myself.
* * *
Ivy left the next morning in a tearful goodbye with promises of Christmas on her lips. I’d do everything in my power to make it happen. Then with my tail firmly between my legs, I dragged myself to Kensington where Sandra waited for me with her arms crossed and an eyebrow halfway up her forehead.
“She’s been expecting you,” she said.
“Yeah, I’ll bet she has,” I murmured.
Technically, my grandfather was the regent. He was the one who had inherited the throne from his father, and so on. But they’d been married since they were fifteen and had long ago decided to split up the duties in a manner befitting 1942. She would handle the family, the house, and the matronly tasks. In turn, he would handle the Commonwealth. It was what had made the English crown work for many centuries.
My stomach twisted as we made our way to my grandmother’s sitting room, my hand trembling on the railing as I climbed the carpeted stairs, the scent of Ivy’s perfume lingering in my nose.
I can do this.
Be strong.
I wasn’t the same person I was when I went running out of here.
I know that.
When we reached the door, the attendant knocked twice and waited for Gran to ring her bell before opening the entry and walking inside.
“Her Royal Highness, the Princess Miriam, duchess of Aberdeen?—”
“Get in here this instant.” My grandmother cut him off, quite out of character for a woman of her stature and grace. My knees shook as I walked inside. She sat in her favorite lavender chair with one of her Corgis across her lap, stroking a wrinkled hand between its ears. “Where have you been?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but she shook her head to silence me. Her question was rhetorical. Knowing her, she had implanted a tracking chip in the back of my brain when I was a child. She knew where I was without my needing to say so.
Her attendants left us alone together, the door closing with a deafening snick.
“So long as you are Duchess of Aberdeen, you will never hang up on me again.”
Fair enough. Even if she wasn’t the queen of England, it was still a rude thing to do to someone.
“Apologies, Gran,” I said. “I was in the middle of something.”
She pursed her thin, dry lips and placed her dog on the floor before reaching for the tea on the table next to her. Then those haunting eyes raked over me, looking for imperfections, looking for cracks she could use to her advantage. But I’d been extra careful to dress myself appropriately this morning—calf-length dress, sensible kitten heels, wool blazer. I looked like a modest member of the royal court.
“You left before an event to go to Washington, DC and spend several weeks with Ivy Washington and Alexei Fairfax.”
I cleared my throat and linked my hands behind my back. No sense in denying it. She already knew.
“Why?” she asked.
“They’re old friends from college,” I said. “I missed them dearly, and Ivy needed my help.”
“With?” Gran raised her eyebrows, expecting a proper response.
“That’s none of your concern.”
She didn’t like that answer. Deafening silence hung between us while she sipped her tea, a clear sign of her disapproval.
“You’re my granddaughter by blood, my daughter by law.” She tried to soften her tone despite the words dripping with disappointment. “Everything about you is my concern.”
“I’m twenty-four, Grandmother,” I said. “Well past the age of adulthood. You gave me a duchy before I was married.”
“Because I wanted you to bloom,” she said, clearly exasperated by my insolence. “Not cause more scandal.”
“No one saw me.” I’d made absolutely sure of that.
She took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “What to do with you, Miriam? What to do, indeed?”
“I know,” I said. “An independent woman is such a dangerous creature.” I stomped on thin ice at this point, waving a red flag in the bull’s face and daring it to impale me on its thick horns.
She shot her stern gaze to me. “Do you think this is about independence?”
“This is about you having different expectations for your granddaughters than you have for your grandsons.”
“Of course, I have different expectations for you.” She pushed to her feet, and despite the fact I had at least five inches on her, she dwarfed me. “ They have different expectations for you.”
She meant them— out there, the world, England, the public I’d sworn to serve. I snapped my mouth shut because she was right. I’d known this my whole life. It was the same reason Lex could sleep around in his adolescence and I’d been called a whore for doing the same.
She brushed a piece of my hair behind my ear with her cold, bony fingers, attempting to be maternal for the first time in my life. “I’ve already lost a son and daughter,” she said, almost tenderly, her eyes softening for a moment as she mentioned my parents. “I won’t lose you, too.”
“I’d like to have my own space,” I forced myself to say. “An apartment. A few blocks away. Close, but far enough to live my life.”
It landed like a dead fish at her feet. Her expression hardened again as she dropped her hands to her side. She gave me no reaction, but that was the worst one. It meant my request wouldn’t even be considered, much less granted. If anything, now that I’d mentioned it, she might tighten her grip.
“We’ll see,” she finally said. “For now, prove to me you want to be a member of this family and update me on your progress with Danae Enterprises.”
Shocked and outraged that there wouldn’t even be a discussion about my living elsewhere, I forced myself to say some words about the Prince of Monaco’s donation and how we needed to secure more funding to make a dent.
“I’d like to see you get America involved,” she said. “They’re one of the biggest polluters on the planet, but they have a liberal government right now. See what you can do.”
See what I can do? As if it was as easy as that.
I nodded and said something like, “Of course, Grandmother.”
“Anything else?”
I shook my head and left when she dismissed me, wandering the cold, isolated walls of Kensington Palace back to my apartment on the third floor. It was the same hallways, the same portraits, the same people bustling about, but it all seemed so… comical compared to what I’d lived through.
I’d made a fairy vow in a different realm that etched itself on my palm, binding me to three other people for the rest of my life. I’d stopped a fairy king from enacting his maniacal plan. I’d grown kilometers of thistles in seconds, using nothing but my bare hands.
Look at these na?ve, ignorant people.
They had no idea the chaos that would be headed this way. My grandmother thought that what some wanker said on the front page of a magazine was the most important thing about me. How… ridiculous.
It made me laugh, and the more I thought about it, the more idiotic it seemed. I could cover this whole world in ivy, choke the life out of everything in it. And she thought keeping me trapped in this castle would keep me safe?
Ohhh…how little you know me, Grandmother.
On the other hand, staying here would keep them safe. If Alberich came looking for me, the first place he’d check would be here. He brought the queen to heel with very little effort. What would he make of my aging grandparents? My cousins? My uncles and our hundreds of employees?
Yes, I had to stay, I agreed. But not for my protection, and certainly not because my grandmother thought it was the best for my reputation. If Alberich came, I’d have to protect them. If Alberich came, I’d be the only protection they had.
So, begrudgingly, I went back to my apartment, determined to fall in line.