CHAPTER 14 #3
"Betty."
"If you're about to give me an out, I don't want one."
"I was going to say that I'm falling for you. That this isn't just attraction or convenience or whatever we're supposed to call it."
I turned my head and pressed a kiss to his palm. "I know. I'm falling for you too. It's inconvenient and terrifying and I don't care."
"Good." He kissed me again, slower this time but no less intense. "Because I've been thinking about this since the library. Since you told me I was less intimidating when I laughed."
"For me it was the dinner at Giuseppe's. When you told me about the panic attacks. You stopped being Prince Archibald and started being just... you."
He smiled against my mouth, and I felt it all the way down to my toes. This wasn't a seduction scene from a movie. This was us, being us, except with significantly fewer clothes in our immediate future.
"Bedroom?" I suggested.
"Bedroom."
We made it about halfway there before he stopped to unzip my dress. His fingers fumbled slightly with the clasp at the top.
"This thing has a hook," I said. "And then a zipper. It's a two-step process."
"Who designed this?"
"Someone who hates spontaneity."
He figured it out, and the silk slid down my body to pool at my feet.
I stepped out of it, suddenly very aware that I was standing in my sitting room in nothing but underwear and heels.
The cool air raised goosebumps on my skin, or maybe that was the way he was looking at me, his gaze traveling down my body with open hunger.
"You're staring," I said.
"I'm appreciating." He traced a line from my shoulder down my arm, and I shivered. "You're beautiful."
"You're overdressed."
"Also true."
I reached for his shirt buttons. My hands were shaking slightly, not from nerves exactly, but from the intensity of wanting this, wanting him. I'd done this before. I knew how buttons worked. But the way he was looking at me made everything feel heightened, electric.
"Nervous?" he asked.
"A little. You?"
"Oh yeah."
That surprised me. "Really?"
"You're sharp and funny and you don't take any of my royal nonsense seriously. If I'm bad at this, you're going to remember it forever and probably mock me about it at diplomatic functions."
"I would never mock you at diplomatic functions." I got the first button undone. "Private family dinners, maybe."
"That's so much worse."
"For what it's worth, I'm not expecting perfection. I'm just expecting you."
"That might be the most romantic thing anyone's ever said while undressing me."
His shirt came off, and I let myself look.
I'd known he was fit, you couldn't miss it, even under formal wear, but knowing and seeing were different experiences.
My hands found his skin almost without permission, tracing the lines of muscle, the trail of dark hair that disappeared below his waistband.
"I believe you mentioned a tattoo," I said.
He turned slightly, showing me his left hip. A compass rose, small and elegant.
"So I never lose my way," he said. "I was eighteen and very philosophical."
I traced the lines with my finger, and his stomach muscles jumped. "Ticklish?"
"Sensitive."
"Good to know."
We made it to the bedroom eventually, though we kept getting distracted.
He discovered that the spot where my neck met my shoulder made me gasp in ways I would have found embarrassing if I'd had any brain cells left for embarrassment.
I discovered that he really liked having his earlobes bitten, which wasn't something I would have guessed about a prince.
By the time we fell onto the bed, I'd lost my bra somewhere in the hallway and he'd lost his belt and one shoe. The other shoe was still on.
"You have one shoe," I pointed out.
He looked down. "So I do."
"That's a look."
"I was focused on other things." He kicked it off and pulled me on top of him, his hands settling on my hips. The contact, skin against skin, the heat of him beneath me, made my breath catch. "Better?"
"Much."
I kissed him, long and deep, while his hands explored my back, my sides, the curve of my waist. But there was an urgency building now, a need that the slow exploration wasn't satisfying. I wanted more. I wanted everything.
"Can I tell you something?" I said against his mouth.
"Anything."
"I haven't done this in a while. Like, a significant while."
"How significant?"
"Two years? Maybe closer to three?"
His hands stilled. "Really?"
"I was busy. School, work, not meeting anyone worth getting naked with." I propped myself up to look at him. "Is that weird?"
"No. I just, " He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and the tenderness in the gesture made my throat tight. "I want this to be good for you. Not just physically. All of it."
"It's already good. You made me smile while taking off your shirt. That's more than most people manage."
"Low bar."
"You'd be surprised."
He rolled us over, settling between my thighs, and the weight of him felt right in a way I hadn't expected. Not crushing. Present. Real. I could feel him hard against me through the thin fabric still separating us, and I arched up instinctively, wanting more contact.
"What do you like?" he asked, his voice low.
"I don't know. It's been a while, remember? I might have to rediscover things."
"Then let's rediscover them together."
What followed was less like a seduction and more like a conversation, except the vocabulary was touch, and response, and the soft sounds we made when something worked.
He'd try something, watch my face, adjust based on what he saw.
I told him when something was good and when it wasn't, which felt more vulnerable than I'd expected.
More intimate than the physical acts themselves.
"Here?" His hand between my thighs, exploring.
"A little to the left. And lighter."
He adjusted, and my hips bucked involuntarily, a moan escaping before I could stop it.
"There?"
"God, yes, there."
He took his time, building sensation with his fingers, backing off whenever I got too close. It was maddening, but it was also building something, a tension that coiled tighter with every stroke, every almost-there moment.
"Archie, I swear..."
"Patience."
"I don't have patience." I pulled him up and kissed him hard, tasting the wine we'd had at the reception and something underneath that was just him. "I need you. Now."
He groaned against my mouth. "I like it when you're demanding."
He reached for his pants, discarded somewhere in the chaos, and produced his wallet. "I have a condom. One condom. Which I put in here this morning like an optimist."
"One should be sufficient. For now."
"For now, she says."
He rolled it on while I watched, my body thrumming with anticipation. Then he was settling over me again, lining us up, and I felt the first press of him at my entrance.
"Okay?" he asked.
"More than okay."
He pushed in slowly, giving me time to adjust. It had been a while, and there was a moment of discomfort that made me wince.
"Too much?"
"No, just, give me a second."
He held still, dropping kisses along my collarbone, my jaw, the corner of my mouth. Patient. Waiting. When my body finally relaxed around him, I rolled my hips experimentally and was rewarded with a groan that seemed to come from somewhere deep in his chest.
"More," I said. "You can move."
"Thank God."
He started slow, watching my face for any sign of pain.
But there was no pain now, just the stretch and slide of him, the friction building where we were joined, the growing sense of fullness that was exactly what I'd been craving.
I wrapped my legs around him, changing the angle, and he hit a spot that made me see stars.
"Oh," I said, which wasn't eloquent but was accurate.
"Good oh?"
"Very good oh. Don't stop doing that."
He didn't stop. He kept that same angle, that same rhythm, steady and relentless and exactly right. I could feel the orgasm building now, different from when he'd used his hands, deeper and more consuming.
"I'm close," I managed.
"Good. I'm trying very hard not to embarrass myself here."
"What happened to patience?"
"Patience left approximately two minutes ago."
I pulled his face down to mine and kissed him as I came, swallowing his groan as he followed. It wasn't quite simultaneous, I was a few seconds ahead, but it was close enough that we shuddered through the aftershocks together, breathing hard, sweaty and graceless and perfect.
He collapsed beside me, one arm flung across my stomach. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The only sounds were our ragged breathing and, distantly, the splash of the fountain in the garden below.
"You broke my brain. Give me a minute."
I rolled onto my side to look at him. His hair was wrecked, there was a red mark on his neck where I'd bitten him at some point, and he looked completely undone. I'd done that. I'd taken the polished prince and turned him into this disheveled, satisfied mess.
"Stay?" I asked.
"I wasn't planning to leave."
"Good. Because I think we should do that again in about twenty minutes."
"Twenty minutes is optimistic."
"I have faith in you."
Somewhere in the palace, someone was still trying to drive me away. Tomorrow there would be investigations and suspicions and the constant awareness that I didn't belong here. But right now, with his heartbeat steady under my ear and his arms around me, none of that seemed to matter.
"What are you thinking?" he asked.
"That this is the strangest month of my life. And somehow also the best."
"Strange and best aren't mutually exclusive."
"Apparently not." I pressed a kiss to his shoulder. "What are you thinking?"
He was quiet for a moment, his hand still moving slowly across my back. "That I'm glad you stayed. That night at the reception, when you found out who I was, you could have walked away. Refused. Gone back to Oregon and your coffee shop and your normal life."
"I thought about it."
"I know. I saw it on your face." His arms tightened around me. "I'm glad you didn't."
"Me too," I said, and meant it.
We fell asleep tangled together, and I didn't dream about sabotage or secrets or all the ways this could still go wrong. I just slept, deeply and peacefully, for the first time since I'd arrived in this country.