Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LEXI
Oliver opens the door to our bedroom—our bedroom, sweet Jesus—and steps back to allow me in first.
He dips his mouth to my ear level as I pass him. “What exactly are you up to?”
His whisper tickles the side of my neck. Goose bumps, ludicrous goose bumps, erupt where it touches.
Shaking it off, I head toward the nightstand and the listening rose vase.
“I’m going to take a shower before dinner, sweetie,” I say as clearly as possible and turn around to face him, raising my eyebrows. “Fancy joining me?”
His mouth drops open, those green eyes sparkling with mischief as he approaches me. Well, I suppose it’s the vase he’s approaching, really.
“Christ, yes.” He’s right next to me now, leaning slightly toward the flower, but his eyes are on mine.
“However I kept my hands off you on the plane when there was that big comfy bed on board, I’ll never know.
And when we were just outside, it was all I could do not to drag you behind the rhododendrons for a quickie. ”
I slam my hand over my mouth to contain a laugh, delighted that he’s taken to my game immediately. I turn the splutter into a shocked and horrified sound. “But what if someone had seen us?”
“They’d probably say, ‘There goes Oliver, being a dick again.’”
The smile has fallen from his face, the sentiment in his voice is natural, unforced. He’s not pretending now. That sentence was all him, from his heart, nothing fake about it.
How awful to go through life thinking that’s your family’s opinion of you.
All I want to do right now is to put that smile back on his face, that glint back in his eyes. Purely, of course, because the happier he is the better our interviews will be, and I’ll have the best shot at writing him the book he needs to redress the errors in how he’s been perceived.
Then I’ll never have to succumb to professional blackmail and write a celebrity memoir ever again.
“Come with me, my provocative, pulse-raising prince.” I affect an overly seductive tone and beckon him with my finger as I back up toward the bathroom door.
“Try stopping me, you sexy little minx.” He waggles his eyebrows as if he can’t do the old-timey sexy lothario voice without it.
I turn to open the bathroom door and stop in my tracks. “Whoa.”
Oliver slams into my back. “Oops. Sorry.” He rests a hand on my waist to steady us.
I wish I could say it feels weird, or wrong, or inappropriate given that we’re essentially work colleagues, but it doesn’t.
Maybe our lips having already touched has lowered the physical contact barrier.
Well, they almost touched. I did my best to kiss him without actually kissing him.
So his hand on my waist now is hardly worse than that.
But, since no one’s watching us, he can’t be leaving it there for show—it’s obviously something he’s doing naturally.
But no good can come of unnecessary touching. There’s a fucking-with-the-spies mission to accomplish here. I lengthen my stride until his hand falls from me.
“This is unreal.” I spin around, absorbing a bathroom that is both massively over the top and massively dated.
“I like to think of it as 1950s ritzy,” he says.
“So this is positively new and modern then, compared to the rest of the castle?”
“I think it was the first real bathroom to be installed in the place. And I don’t think anything’s been changed since.
This is definitely the original marble.” He indicates the black stone with white and gray veins that covers the lower half of the walls, lines the shower at one end of the room and acts as a backsplash around the tub, which is boxed in under the window at the other end.
Above the marble, the walls are a faded turquoise color, and the floor is covered in small square tiles that, together, form a floral pattern.
It’s a confusing mixture of designs.
The only nice thing in the room is the white bowl sink sitting on top of an old wooden washstand with a white-framed mirror hanging over it.
“The faucets look like they’ve seen better days.” I pull the chrome handle on the shower door, and it opens with a stiff squeak.
“Everything in here has seen better days. Including my parents.”
“Funny guy.” He really is, and I’m not sure why that surprises me.
I turn the lever on the shower, and water splutters out in spits and spurts, splashing me in the face and making me flinch with a squeal before it settles into a weak, but steady, stream.
I turn around to find Oliver behind me holding a hand towel that was probably once white. “Here.”
I go to take it from him, but he dabs my cheek and forehead for me. The concentration on his face as he searches for every little spot of water is mesmerizing.
“What are you smiling for?” he asks.
Was I smiling?
Doesn’t matter—that’s not what this is about. It’s best to dodge that question and get on with the game.
“Well, hey, big boy,” I say loud enough for the vase on the nightstand outside the door to hear. “Good to see you standing at attention for me, like a fine royal guard.”
“What?” Oliver’s eyebrows virtually fly up to his hairline.
“Who needs to stay in the north tower when I can have the tower in your pants?”
I circle my hand, gesturing for him to get the gist and join in.
He tips his head to one side. “That’s the best you got? North tower?” he says quietly.
I give him a look that I hope says Get with it, guy!
And get with it he does. “Oh my God, I love it when your melons are all wet and slippery.”
Silently, I exaggeratedly form the word melons. Melons? Really?
He beckons me in return, challenging me to give him my best shot.
“Your hands feel so good, like…warm…” I have no idea where I’m going with this. “…mittens…I want them all over me.”
He stifles a laugh at the word mittens.
I shrug, like I don’t fucking know.
“My mittens can’t get enough of you, baby. I want you. So fucking badly.” He’s getting into it now. “I want to soap up all your special little places, then slide right in and take you till you scream so loud the ancient light fixtures rattle.”
“Special little places?” I whisper.
He shrugs back at me.
“Oh my God.” I let out a long sigh. “Your fingers, your… Oh! what was that?”
“All me, babe.” He throws his head back, embodying the part. “My north tower is all yours.”
And that’s the point at which I lose it.
Doubling over, I wrap my arm around my face to block my laughter.
“Come on, hot cheeks.” He makes exaggerated panting sounds. “Tell me how good it is.”
I pull my mouth from the crook of my elbow just long enough to shout, “So good.”
“Tell me I’m the best.”
“The greatest ever.”
“Tell me I’m the best fucking prince you’ve ever had.”
I grab onto the sink to prevent my suppressed guffaws from toppling me over.
“Oh God.” Those two words are genuine and hopefully sound more like the throes of passionate abandon than uncontainable laughter. “You’re the only prince. The best fucking prince ever.”
“And I am giving you the best royal rogering of your life.”
I gather myself enough to look up at him and whisper, “Rogering?”
He gives me a quick nod, like of course that’s a perfectly normal word to use. Guess there’s a whole world of British slang I need to study up on.
“You are,” I cry. “So much…rogering.” Whatever the hell that is.
I rest back against the wall to catch my breath and take in Oliver, who’s standing there, eyes closed, hands clasped behind his head, thrusting his hips.
Is that what he looks like when he’s having sex for real? It is quite the sight. In a good way. But that also makes it a bad way. I could probably be locked in a dungeon for the heat that’s growing between my legs just from watching him.
And the fact that I can’t drag my attention from the outline of the package in his jeans each time his hips move, would probably warrant beheading.
“Oh, my little Yankee Doodle.” He groans. “I want you to yank me while I doodle you to the end of time.”
A laugh flies out of me that I try to turn into a cry of pleasure, but it somehow morphs into a weird squeal.
He’s all the hotter for how hilarious he is. Hm, yeah, I need to wrap this thing up.
“I’m coming,” I cry. “Coming in a castle.”
“And I’m going to fill your moat.”
I just about quell a snort at that one.
Oliver’s eyes remain closed as his ridiculously sexy thrusts continue and we both groan and cry and yell our way to our fake climaxes.
If those are the noises he makes when he actually comes, it’s one panty-meltingly delicious sound.
Not that my panties are melting. Nope. They might be a bit warm, and not exactly dry, but they are fully intact.
Being turned on by a member of the British royal family would go against every principle I’ve ever had. So that is definitely not happening. After my experiences with so-called American royalty at school, I vowed to stay as far away from that sector of society as possible.
It’s just that Oliver’s groans and sighs are, objectively, hot.
When he opens his eyes and looks at me with that broad, devilish grin of his, I give it one more “Oh my God” and sink to the floor, my back against the hideous black marble.
“That was a great idea,” he whispers. “Hopefully whoever’s listening will be thoroughly appalled.”
He joins me on the floor with a sigh. “Although I had no idea fake sex could be so bloody exhausting.”
And we sit here, side by side, with our heads tipped back against the cold stone and our arms wrapped around our knees, saying nothing, almost as if we really did just bang the living daylights out of each other and need a moment to catch our breath and return to reality.
And what a bizarre reality it is.
One where the light fixture in the center of the cracked bathroom ceiling is a mini chandelier, for God’s sake.
But there is something relaxing and comforting about sitting here in relative silence, with the shower water still running and Oliver right next to me, only a couple of inches between our arms.